Snow Day!

I have lived in Tennessee all of my life, and am used to our mild winters. Every once in a while we'll get an inch of snow, the whole town will close down, and it will melt by noon. Today we got a real snow day! Last I checked (several hours ago) we have 5.5 inches in our yard. My best friend Crystal told me they measured 8 at her house, just a little north. The last time I saw this much snow was back in 2009 when we lived in that cold antebellum manor house in Columbia.
The weathermen were warning us about it, but it wasn't supposed to hit until Friday afternoon. Travis even went into work early because they were trying to beat the storm. But by the time he got to work at 6 am the snow was already accumulating, and as of 9 pm, it still hasn't stopped! Thankfully his company sent everyone home, and after an hour and a half of route changing, dodging out of control cars, and stopping for tamale supplies he was back home with me.

Our little cottage, so cute in the snow. 

Our backyard about 9 this morning. It snowed for nearly 12 more hours!

The dogs are NOT into it! Thankfully we have a thick cedar tree that has less snow under it, or we might have a potty strike on our hands! The second time I took her out Priscilla just stared at me like "Why am I out here again???"

Snow selfies are a must. I loved looking at all the snow photos on my instagram feed today.

I thought Porter would like it, but he RAN back inside as soon as his business was done. He spent the rest of the day curled up as close to me as possible. I actually talked to someone tonight who will probably end up adopting him! I'm happy for him (and the family!) but I will miss this little boo.

After I took the dogs out I wandered around the yard taking photos while waiting for Travis to pull up. I was a little worried because it had been a while since he told me he was on his way home, but I didn't want to call and distract him since the roads were so bad. Basically it rained all night and washed the salt away, then all the water froze under the snow!

I forget about my heart railing. It is so cute!

Once Travis got home he made us a pancake breakfast and told me tales of all the wrecks he saw! 

He told me that the little market down the street was opened, so we walked down there to get a few necessities: avocados, onions, oreos, and sweet tea. And yes, he is in SHORTS. Travis pretty much refuses to wear pants. He is one of THOSE people.

Yeah! Avocados were what we really needed because Travis decided to use part of his day off to make us tamales! They were REALLY good! I'm so glad he finally tried making them, because it wasn't as hard as we thought. They just take a while. We froze most of the batch, but I doubt they will last long. 

Back down our snowy street. I was surprised how few people were out! Usually Nashville ignores the mayor's pleas for everyone to stay off the roads!

We wanted to build a snowman but it was too powdery and wouldn't stick together much. So we made teeny snowmen! Here is the artist at work. He cracked me up putting his on the mailbox.

I tried to make mine cute and put a gravel mouth on it, but he turned out kind of terrifying! 

Travis found a "scarf" for his. 

We came inside, and spent the rest of the day snacking and watching movies on the couch. What a day!
I'm going to go check right now to see how deep the snow is. Stand by!.......7 inches! I can't believe it! The high tomorrow is 30 so it will probably stick around until Sunday. I'm pretty content to be snowed in for a little while longer. We have plenty of movies and tamales and maybe I can finish my 2015 photobook. It would only be better if we lived closer to Crystal and Marc. I wish we could go sledding with them tomorrow!
If you are up North and rolling your eyes at me, please forgive the enthusiasm. We are not used to this much beautiful snow! It kinda feels like another reality!

Snow Day! Ice Storm!

We don't get much winter weather here in Tennessee and an inch of snow can shut Nashville down. The past few days everyone was been freaking out and buying all the bread at every grocery store in town because of an impending winter storm. We didn't get the foot of snow some were predicting, but the whole city was covered in ice. It was so bad the store I work at actually didn't open, which hasn't happened in YEARS. Travis didn't have to go to work either. I was so happy to be snug at home and not slipping and sliding around town. We had a great day.

I worked until 4 them night before so I slept late. When I woke up Travis made us french toast with caramelized bananas and we watched That Thing You Do! What a perfect morning. In the afternoon we got bundled up and walked around our neighborhood.

The last ice storm we had was in 1995. It was way worse than this though. I'm so glad our power didn't go out!

It was fun walking around looking at all the frozen plants. We only saw a few other people out, and a few cars. We live on a busy road in a crowded part of town so it was strange.

We kicked lots of things to watch the ice fall off too. Like this sweet caution tape.

We walked around for about 45 minutes until the constant freezing rain got too cold. The rest of the day was spent eating carbs and watching Girls. I finally starting watching it and I love it! We just started season 3.
I'm supposed to work at 6 am tomorrow, but the Mayor is telling everyone to stay home because all the ice and water on the roads is just going to refreeze tonight and be worse tomorrow. I won't be mad if I get another snow day.

i finally have something to post about! i think january is always a quiet blogging month for me. i can't wait for it to warm up so we can have some good adventures. we are going to knoxville tomorrow to visit dana and participate in a beard pageant. i'm really excited about it!
i've been trying to take my lunch in my bento box to work. nothing too fancy, i don't have many supplies yet, but here is the cutest one i've made so far i think:
polka dot sandwich. vegan japanese style potato salad with animal pics, hummus in a puppy cup and carrots. so cute and fun. even if i got made fun of sooo much at work.
this may be really dumb, but for some reason i assumed that the library didn't have anything new and interesting to me. which is crazy, i know. so i gave travis part of my "to read list" that i've been keeping for years and most of it is at our downtown library! and i can get anything transfered to the little library down the street from our house so i can avoid all the homeless men looking at pictures of girls in bikinis at the downtown library! i'm so excited!
it's snowing right now, our 5th snow of the winter! which is really really unusual for tennessee. the snow actually stuck around for 5 days in a row about a week ago. that hasn't ever happened that i can remember.

we ended up with a little path through our yard. phyllis won't potty in the snow. so we had to take her back to a bare patch of ground under our cedar tree. i might try getting her some little doggie booties to see if that helps her. (i saw dog bunny slippers that i want real bad.)
DEER TRACKS! in my backyard! i don't know how that could possibly happen because i wouldn't expect any deer to be anywhere near where we live. it was so cute. there were lots of prints from porch kitty franklin. i felt bad for him out in the snow. oh phyllis! she is so freaking cute. she is at my parents house tonight because they are watching her while we're out of town. i miss her!

the other night crystal's husband asked me to spend the night with her because he wasn't going to be home. i said yes of course and we decided to finally go to PLAY. we always want to, but the drag show isn't until 11 and we're old and boring now. but we got dressed and put on false eye lashes and went alone. it was so fun! we kept calling it "independence day" haha. because we've never been downtown without our husbands.
here is a cell phone picture of us sitting front row. which was also brave because that's where you get picked on. but we didn't. oh man the costumes were so good! the last few times we went were amateur nights and this was so much better. we also went into the big dance room between shows and once the lights were down and the fog was on we got brave and danced in public and had such a great time. we didn't get home until 3 am. it was awesome. we're going to do it more often.
did i post about my glasses yet? i just got them. i've worn contacts for years and years and i decided to give my eye balls a break. we have really good insurance through work so i want all out and got real wayfares. i love them so much!

Painting our room

it snowed for three days last week! that never happens her in tennessee, it was so exciting! sadly i worked all three days so i didn't get to make a snow man or anything, but it was still exciting. i hung a bird feeder from that little awning and i love watching all the birds! so far is have seen cardinals, chickadees, and a few kinds of sparrow. i haven't seen a tufted tit mouse yet, those are my favorite.

the other day we painted our bedroom! it was pink. which with the ugly horrible ceiling paper was just too much for me to handle. i also noticed this day that there is a subtle asian undertone to the paper. little pagodas and a man holding a parasol and another man fishing. haha. so weird.



crystal and dana helped! crystal brought her fancy detail brush and did all the little annoying parts. which is good because i don't have the patience to do a good job.

now it is grey! so much better! and we redid all the white trim. i didn't notice how gross it all was until we started to redo it. i can't wait to put all my crap on those shelves!
is calling me...goodnight!

Snow at skipwith

yesterday it randomly snowed! we got over six inches at our house, which is the most snow i can ever remember seeing in tennessee! the day before i was home alone all day so i had no idea it was coming. travis told me it was snowing that night and i didn't believe him.

wow look at that! usually we get about an inch. i wanted to make a snow man but we couldn't find any gloves except ones with the fingers cut off. sadly i never picked the daffodils before the snow. there were some beautiful varieties i hadn't seen before. i hope they will come back. we're going to have our joint birthday back on this porch in about a month. hopefully it will be warm. i want to have most of it outside. we went into some of the out buildings to find out of there was anything we wanted. ms. harlan told us that they are going to clean out the buildings in the next few weeks and to get out anything we wanted. i took a snowball inside for the cats. they didn't know what to do with it! murray ate some. i spent the rest of the day hanging out at my parents house. my mom made a big lunch and i watched travel shows with me dad. it was nice.