I love being thankful: part four.

I'm thankful for my life. Some mornings life is really tough because I'm so tired and just want to go to the mall and eat Chick-fil-a in my bed with Sasha. Deeeeeeeep down, I guess I really am thankful for even some of the more annoying things in my life! 

I'm thankful for:

• a life where I wake up every morning and believe the only way I can get through the day is if I watch that day's Daily Grace video while I do my makeup. It goes without saying that I'm obviously really thankful for Grace herself.
• having to try to fight my Starbucks addiction - that I even have the money to have an "addiction" like this. 
• my 2.5+ hour commute to and from work every weekday. Jeremy, Scott + Elliott are my radio best friends that make me laugh by myself in the car and look like a crazy lady. I almost did a whole post on how thankful I am for both radio shows (Scott Garceau Show + Elliott in the Morning)...didn't want to seem too crazy though! Talk radio is everything in my life now. 
• my extremely unorganized closet that is constantly a hot mess with hangers half-falling and clothes all over the floor. At least I have enough clothes to fill up my closet!
• the down comforter I have that is CONSTANTLY leaking feathers...everywhere...due to holes that Scamper (a dog I had) made in it. It makes my bed so warm and amazing even minus half of the feathers that were originally in it and Scamper was the best pup ever, even if she's the reason why I walk around all day with feathers in my hair and don't realize it until I get home.
• a job. Truthfully, I work for an amazing company and with a group of hilarious people. Both of those things make getting up early every day and dealing with (insert ridiculous combinations of curse words that I come up with and scream at people while I'm driving) to-and-from work every Monday through Friday.

Happy Thanksgiving! 

I love being thankful: part three

So...five posts on being thankful just turned into four! Whoopsies. I was busier than I expected to be on Sunday + Tuesday and didn't have time to do those days' posts. This one will be a two-for-one type deal and the last one will be tomorrow (for anyone who is keeping track). 

I am thankful for my family. 
Without my mom, I'd be a bigger softie than I already am. I like to think she's made me more of a tough cookie which I'm pretty grateful for. She also is always right. Okay, not ALAWYS but she tends to be right most of the time so she's a great person to go to life advice for! Grateful to have a smart (and tough) cookie for a mama. 
My dad, on the other hand, is probably the nicest and sweetest person I know. Recently, my car has needed some work done to it and without his help, I'd be completely lost. He's helping me save money and get things done that I'd have no idea how to do on my own. Not only that, but he also cleans my bathroom for me every weekend. What is going to happen when I have to move out and clean my own bathroom? Grateful I have him for now, haha. 
Without being TOO sappy, I'm so incredibly thankful for Catie and who she's becoming. She's an amazing sister and person and I feel so lucky to not only get along with her as well as I do, but to share the same sense of humor. 
Brooke maybe doesn't share the same sense of humor as Catie and I...but that's to be expected. She's ONLY 16 years younger than me, haha. She brings a hilarious and entertaining light to the family that wouldn't be here without her. It's hard to imagine what the house would be like without her yell-singing Selena Gomez downstairs. 

I am thankful for my Paul + Shannon.
I try to imagine what my life would be like if I had never met Paul, if we had never started dating, if we were never buddies. Whether I like it or not (I like it), Paul's definitely helped shape who I am and I'm thankful for that. I've grown up with him over the last six years and developed a ridiculous sense of humor and become someone I'm proud to be. He's the most hilarious person I've ever met and is so kind to everyone he meets. He goes out of his way to make sure he helps anyone and everyone he can and it's inspiring to watch. So many people love him and I can't blame them. He's a swell, swell, swell dude. Love you, Paul!
Truthfully couldn't ask for a better best friend, either. Shannon is the best listener ever and never lets me forget how much she cares about me. We always have so much fun when we're together - even if we're just sitting on my bed in the dark looking at the glow-in-the-dark stars that are on my ceiling and talking about the food we're going to eat next. Who else would I be able to talk about foods with while we eat food? She's my fellow food-obsessed best friend who will always go out of her way to be there for me and make me feel better when I'm down. The best best friend! Love ya, miss! 

I love being thankful: part two.

No one will be surprised by this...but I'm thankful for Sasha. 

My whole life, my family has had small/small-medium dogs...but none of them has been as small as Sasha. She's the smallest of her brothers and sisters - isn't that so sweet? I know, it is. She's a lil baby.

I love Sasha so much that I've become unable to speak normally around her/when I talk about her. I know other people do it too but I literally cannot speak like an adult. I say things like "her too schweet" and "her nice" when talking about her to other people. Sometimes I don't mean to...I've just become so used to talking that way around my family + friends that it comes out and I maybe like I didn't go to college/learn how to speak English.

One of my favorite things about her is how excited she is to see me. I'll come home from work, so grumpy about traffic and wanting so many Thin Mints in my mouth, and I walk in the door and she's there to greet me as soon as I walk in. So so so so happy to see me. No one else is the entire world is ever that excited to see me. It really is something. It's something I'm thankful for every day.

Girl can also pull of a sweater AND a Santa suit like no one else. I know she hates having puppy clothes on but I'm glad she at least lets us do it without biting us, etc. See...her schweet.

As sweet as she is, she can also get feisty which I also am thankful for because it's hilarious.  

Feel free to add her on Facebook! 

I love being thankful: part one

For the next five days up until Thanksgiving eve, I'm going to post one thing each day that I'm thankful for. So, here we go...

I am thankful for football. It never, ever gets old.  It's magical. It's exciting. And it brings everyone together. I don't know what my Sundays would be without football, without my eyeblack, without me cursing at the refs. It really brings so much happiness (seriously, though) to my life. Those Sunday afternoons after a Ravens win sitting on the couch with Paul, watching the 4:00 game, and being so genuinely happy are the best afternoons ever. 

Okay, now on to more ridiculous reasons why I am thankful for football:

• Without football, we would never have this gem. So much love for mad/yelling Joe. 
• Joe yelling, "ALASKA ALASKA," and touching his butt. Also, him yelling "Nascar." Also, him just talking, in general. See here.
• I rarely use the word "sexy" to describe anything. But I would describe the Ravens all-black uniforms as being sexy. I can't handle it. Even just the black jerseys - so thankful for them.
• It's a good conversation-starter. Almost always. Unless someone doesn't watch football and in that case, why would you want to talk to them? Hahaha I'm just kidding!
• Purple Fridays.
• John Harbaugh is the best looking coach of any sport ever in the history of the world.  Do yourself a favor and watch this video. 
• Fantasy football. Even when I suck at it like this season. 
• The trash talk + people tweeting ridiculous pre-game and post-game tweets. It can pretty be hilarious. Shout out to Lindsey for the funniest retweets on game day and the most hilarious football-related tweets, in general.
• Football gave me Anthony Allen.  Sometimes, when I'm feeling sad or grumpy, I just go look at Anthony Allen's tweets. They are so hilarious. People want to give me crap for loving him so much but come ON. Just read them...please? You'll be thankful for them too. 

I love weekends.

FIRST AND FOREMOST, let's acknowledge that Grace Helbig acknowledged me. 
Most people probably 1) don't care and 2) don't know who she is because they aren't YouTube crazy like I've become (or maybe a combination of both). But other people - who I talk to on a daily basis - know that this made my weekend. I was freaking OUT. 
I maaaaaybe got tipsy a lil bit on Saturday night and decided to post a bunch of random photo booth pictures on my Tumblr late at night, hahaha. So cool of me. #livingitup. One of the pictures I put up was this one - which is a picture of my youngest sister and I from a month ago:

I won't explain it too much but that's called Grace-facing...and Grace liked the picture on Tumblr.  It's the little things in life. Please watch her videos. She's hilarious and is about to be famous, haha.

Without that happening, something else would have made my weekend instead - a crab pretzel. Shannon and I go out to eat every Friday night but I like to pretend this past Friday was special because it was my half-birthday. I really yolo'ed it up and got dessert (which was a cinnamon roll cookie with pumpkin icing and pecans...SO GOOD) and a beer. It was a great evening! I hope the second half of my 23rd year of living is filled with more crab pretzels + desserts. 

In addition to all of that, I made the most amazing pumpkin cookies in the world. I've made them every fall for the past 2 or 3 years. They're really incredible. "You should sell these cookies and make a fortune" - direct quote from Shannon. I can't really do that because I didn't come up with the recipe but I highly recommend trying these out if you like pumpkin-y sweets + cake-y things. Amazingly easy and amazingly amazing. I made my own icing because I was lazy and didn't feel like going all out - because it'll end up too thin anyways (as always, haha). The cookie itself is enough, in my opinion. They don't really need the icing! But go all out if you want. Yolo, hahaha.

I love(d) Halloween.

Holidays (or any days) that involves candy are awesome in my book. 

But truthfully, I wasn't really in the Halloween spirit this year - partially because I didn't go to any Halloween parties and had no reason to dress up! It felt really weird (and spooky) when after Sandy passed on Tuesday, Halloween was just THERE. Popped up out of nowhere. It was the day before Halloween and I felt like I needed to get my pumpkin carved ASAP before it was the big day and it didn't matter anymore. It took me a good couple hours to decide what I was going to carve it. Ask Shannon. She dealt with my "Wahhh. I don't knowwww." texts. Lucky her! 
My top three choices were the Ravens logo (from the front), Cinderella, an owl and a puppy. Naturally, I picked the puppy. It was easy and didn't cause me to drop the F bomb at all out of frustration (which carving pumpkins will cause me to do if they're too hard and start to look bad) AND IT WAS CUTE. ADORABLE. SO SWEETTTT. Arf.

I barely took part in passing out candy....because it was too cold out and I'm a baby (wah). But I did see a lot of cute lil ones in cute lil costumes. Like a lil guy in a police costume - ahh, adorable! And I did hang out with my sister a little bit while she passed out candy and listened to Big Time Rush and Christian rap music? She's cool. ;)

Maybe it's because of the lack of spirit I had this year, but Halloween felt funky. It just felt like I'm a weird in-between point in my life. Where trick-or-treating obviously isn't a big part of celebrating the holiday (and hasn't been for like 7 or 8 years) and I'm definitely not at the point where I'm having my own kiddies to dress up and take out. Just feels kind of weird! I don't plan on having lil babies anytime soon...so, hopefully I have plenty of parties to go to and dress up for so I don't feel so awkward and "funky" again next year! Invite me to all of the parties.

I thought about it a little and here's some ideas I have on what I could be next year:

• Sasha - who doesn't love her? It'd be a hit.
• Anyone from Pretty Little Liars - specifically "A" with the baby mask, you know? 
• Lauren Conrad...or I would be okay with just looking like her, in general/all the time
• Katniss - she'll be awesome/relevant forever, right?
• Poe - the Ravens mascot. I could probably DIY that somehow, hahaha.

P.S. Sasha was adorable. Look at her lil fairy costume. I'll start brainstorming some new costumes for her next year as well.