project

my cousin made this and posted it on her blog, so i decided to try one.  other than the fact that i am incompetent with a staple gun (and we should have gotten shorter staples so they didn't go through), i think it turned out pretty cute.  definitely a more polished look than dorm-room-chic in our office.  sorry for the poor photo quality, it was an iphone snapshot before work.

a letter...

dear goat cheese,

you are so delicious in my mouth.  thank you for spreading so nicely on bread but also crumbling delightfully into salads and becoming a creamy delight in pasta.  i love how you can be so sweet when paired with dried cranberries.  i love your fiery side when you complement jalapenos.  nothing else can make toasted walnuts or pecans or almonds taste so toasty and wonderful.  i treasure the time we've spent together, and look forward to each chance meeting we may have.  thank you, goat cheese, you really know how to push my buttons.

love,
piper.

and the winner is...

i completely forgot to mention that ollie won a holiday photo contest for the picture we took for our christmas card this year.  the contest was through earthdog, which is a fabulous place to get earth-friendly gear for your pup.  ollie's signature blue collar and leash are from there.
anyway, the prize was a donation of $100 to a pet charity of my choice, so of course i chose blue dog.  they do great work and have given us two awesome pups.  clearly, ollie's cuteness speaks for itself.
oh, click on the title of this post to see the announcement.

why puppies are awesome

so Etta is a climber...

doing yoga with dogs.

in my attempts to sort of try to get back into something that resembles decent shape, i decided to do yoga this morning.  i used to practice ashtanga semi-regularly back before jb and i started dating seriously, but when i started running more, i fell off the yoga wagon...and even when i wasn't running so much, i didn't really pick the yoga back up.  anyway, it's something i really really enjoy, but it's an expensive hobby to have, so i downloaded a practice on itunes and tried to follow the instructor's verbal directions.  it was moderately successful - i can certainly do the vinyasas and warrior pose, etc.  the practice was from a studio i've never been to, so there were definitely some series in there that i wasn't familiar with.
in addition to my general out-of-shapeness and my lack of familiarity with some of the yoga business, i also had the dogs inside.  they were very interested in participating in yoga, particularly young etta james.  ollie kept trying to share his bone with me and my mat.  hilarious.  it's not super easy to focus on your breath when you're laughing because a dog is laying on your face while you prepare for a backbend.  good dogs.

um.

i am tinkering with the way this whole thing looks. please excuse the baby poop colors. this will be normal again soon.

little engine

when i was a kid, my parents read the little engine that could to me, frequently. i think it was partially because the author is watty piper, and partially because the message is great for a little kid who's trying to learn to do so many new and challenging things. the world is daunting and disappointing, but a positive attitude and a belief that you can do it will combat anything, right? so says watty.

fast forward to my adult life. i do actually still think i can, believe it or not. i am 5'4" (this is the truth, though i add 1-2 inches for posterity) but i think i can reach the stuff on the high shelves. i am klutzy, but i think i can run and exercise and take care of myself in a way that is satisfying, if not on the level of a naturally gifted athlete. i am busy and overcommitted and stressed most of the time, but i think i can be a good friend/wife/daughter/eventual mother/citizen. i think i can have and do and be it all. i really think i can. even if sometimes i flip out and get overrun by fear and negative thoughts, at the heart of it....i think i can. haha.

i guess all this positive energy and can-do attitude has permeated my behaviour in some way. so much so that at some untraceable point over the course of our marriage, jb has started calling me little engine, sort of as a pet name. he calls me this when i try to lift 80-lb bags of concrete on my own even though he's standing right there, and when i ask him to reach something for me as i'm crawling onto a counter to reach it myself anyway. he calls me that when i stretch myself too thin and overcommit and refuse to drop anything or let anyone down.

it's my favorite nickname ever.

new year, new leaf.

new years always bring out a pile of lists and endeavors to be better at things. things like organizing and eating healthily and taking care of body mind spirit intellect. i'm a little slow on endeavoring so far this year, but i'll get there.

this weekend was my last free weekend before my last semester of grad school. i'm going to louisiana solo this weekend to see the parents and pick up a couple of christmas gifts that couldn't fit into our overly-stuffed, dog-filled car during the holiday trek. anyway...we managed to get several things done this weekend. i cleaned out all the bathroom cabinets and organized all of that, as well as the desk drawer. then jb hung book shelves high up in the office and the bedroom and we got rid of this massive ikea bookshelf that was taking up half the office. geez i have a crap load of books. so, things are somewhat more organized, or at least on their way to being so.

etta james is getting bigger ever minute and is the sweetest and most precocious little pup. she loves ollie and follows him around, eagerly awaiting his attention. he's adjusting well to her presence, though he's not 100% back to normal yet. i think we need to get on a more disciplined pattern with both dogs, but it's been fun nevertheless.

the past week was insanely cold - a low of 16 one night, in the twenties the others. we put the chickens into a rubbermaid container and brought them inside because we thought they might not make it huddled in their coop along. hopefully it's a tad warmer this week so i can run a few times....

holidays on ice (and snow).

well, it's 2010. we've made it. i don't really know what that means, but there are lots of cool things to anticipate this year. my graduation, some friends having babies, projects, trips, jb turning 30....it's going to be a fun year, i think.

the vacation time this year was different, but still really good. we passed on louisiana - only my second non-louisiana christmas ever. instead, we drove to my uncle's in dallas, where my family met us (me, jb, and the 2 pups). we spent 3 days 2 nights there, mostly eating a ton of some crazy delicious food and watching the snow dump. first white christmas ever! it was beautiful, if ridiculously cold. all in all, a very fun gathering with the fam. nice gifts, good chats, and a few quality board game throw downs. my uncle also happens to live on a lake (his suburb is called the colony) and there is a sweet path all around it that was awesome for morning walks with ollie.

we left christmas night to drive to wichita to hang with jb's family, hoping to miss traffic and be rested for family picture day on saturday. bad idea jeans. the weather was bad all over i-35, apparently, and okc had been absolutely blasted by snow and ice on christmas eve. there were several very treacherous stretches of road, but jb's remarkable driving skills pulled through again, and we made it safely to the cozy basement at his mom's house. nevermind that it took 7 hours instead of 4....

anyway, wichita was a good time. the little dog and the big dog liked romping through all the snow in the parks near jb's house. freaking precious. we ate tons more good food, and got to spend some quality time with the crew, including our nephew maddox.

we made it home in (slightly) better weather and buckled down to get the house ready for our first new years eve party. lots of work, lots of fun, and i think we're going to pass on hosting another one next year. i also mixed a few too many types of cocktails, so new years day was a very rough experience for me. not the best way to start a new decade, but what can you do?

we are full of high hopes and aspirations for 2010: more vegetables, more running, less t.v., less clutter. lots of other ideas and resolutions too, but...that somewhat sums it up.

the new baby

this is just a super quick post to introduce etta james browne, the newest member of the family browne. she is a precious little angel, and details about how she came to join our little zoo and how my husband is the awesomest person of all time will be forthcoming.

eat your greens

in the infamous words of wesley willis, i am sorry that i got fat, i will slim down. in all seriousness, the browne family has been very lacking in the health department of late. before this summer (yes, i know that was a long time ago), we cooked all the time. vegetables and fish and lean meats and whole grains and goodness. we also exercised. not excessively, and not like we never cheated, never ate anything bad for us or whatever, but we both made it to the gym at least 3-5 times a week, took walks, and were often found to be engaged in push up contests.

flash forward to now, when we eat anything and everything we want (this usually equates to cheeseburgers) and i haven't been to the gym really since july. woops. how does this happen?

anyway. in an effort to reverse this unfortunate trend, i just signed us up for the johnson's backyard garden CSA. every other week, we get a big ol' box of fresh, local veggies. i picked up our first one last night. omg deliciousness. new potatoes right out of the ground, heavenly herbs, perfect peppers. yum. i can't wait to start cooking this stuff. and maybe that will help me get my arse back in gear and my running shoes back on my feet.....

it's beginning to look a lot like christmas....

my husband and his mad photography skills took this photo of our tiny little tree. it's a cute one this year - a noble fir from the optimist club place on guadalupe and san gabriel. we put it up on a table this year, which is really nice because it has more of a presence and the pets can't drink water out of the base....there has been so much going on as of late, i feel like it just needs to be listed, in no particular order:

- longhorns are going to the national championship game, despite sucking it up against nebraska

- saints are still undefeated because drew brees is the awesomest qb ever

- i am almost done (8 more days) with my second-to-last semester of grad school

- jb and i have decided to stay in austin, despite a really cool job opportunity in sf - it was really hard, but definitely the right choice

- it fake-snowed in austin on friday, which left none of the white stuff, but tons of dead plants

i guess that's all for now....check out this story if you have a few minutes - crazy and super inspiring.

holiday time

holy gees november flew by. really, all of 2009 did. have we really been in the 21st century for a whole decade? my mind is blown.

thanksgiving was different this year. my mom and dad came to town the weekend before because mom was in a wedding the day after turkey day. we did the traditional dinner on sunday, so we had tons of leftover turkey.

i got sick on monday, and it got progressively worse, so the long weekend was slightly hampered by my incessant coughing. a close college friend and his adorable girlfriend were also in town, so we managed to spend some time with them. we also did lots of hiking and outdoor adventures, of which ollie was a big fan. all in all, a fun time, if very much untraditional. i did find the time and energy to make the annual turkey and sausage gumbo (solo attempt - turned out pretty good), as well as leftover turkey pot pie. so, even though we didn't do the whole crazy dinner extravaganza, our waistlines didn't really get much of a break....

anyway...outtake of christmas card photo is above. have i mentioned how much i love this dog?

pumpkin patch!

We traveled to Elgin Texas to purchase pumpkins this year. Why Elgin Texas you ask? Because the only pumpkins we could find in Austin were at the H-E-B. Procuring pumpkins from a produce section of a grocery store is particularly pointless. Rock on random Elgin family with your farm and pumpkins and christmas trees. Rock on.

halloween and other scares

i'm the worst about blogging, obviously, but i tend to not have a whole lot to say unless there's an event of some sort. this past weekend, that event was halloween. we dressed up like zombies and went to the zombie prom at the highball with our friends w&d and e&d. wicked fun, although i have to say my skin and hair are not fans of zombie couture.

the night before halloween, we went out to dinner and ended up at target for some late night antics (i mean, where else are you supposed to go on a friday night at 9:30?). while there, we found some pet halloween costumes on sale that i decided we needed to have. the pets tolerated them for about 8 minutes, but they were pretty miserable. it was still the cutest thing i've seen in a while though, and luckily we got about 100 pictures of the occasion. here are a couple....

anyway...halloween night was lots of fun. when we got home (super late) and fell asleep, though, i awoke around 4 to the sound of drama in the hen house (literally). i shook jb awake to alert him to this fact, and the conversation went something like this:

me: "dude, there is something in the chicken coop, listen to them!" (they were squawking and generally freaking out a bit.)

jb: "i'm sure it's fine...zzzzzzzz....."

very helpful. anyway, they quieted down before i could decide whether i should brave the chilly evening to see what disturbance was occurring, so i eventually just went back to sleep. when i woke up the next morning, all three hens were still alive (thankfully), but there were feathers all over the place. bixby was missing half of her tail feathers and bernadette had a bunch missing under her wings. bettyrene escaped relatively unscathed. the chicken caper remained a mystery until dusk, when we saw a baby possum creeping along the edge of the yard. we are so lucky it was just a little guy, as i don't think he could do too much damage to the ladies.

anyway...we've decided to get rid of the run that the girls have spent their days in for the past year and just let them roam the yard in the day and spend nights locked up safely in their coop. hopefully they won't have anymore nocturnal visitors anytime soon.

2 years in the making

today is our second wedding anniversary. whew! it really feels like the last two years have flown by, and i feel very lucky to be married to such a wonderful person. i know everyone always says that they married their best friend and yadda yadda, but really i feel like jb is the one person who can keep me in check and handle all my shenanigans, and still likes me anyway. and beyond all that, he's hilarious and kind-hearted, and i love seeing how he and i are growing as people and as a couple. it's a good life, no matter how cheesy that sounds.

the week(end) in review.

this weekend austin was a chilly rainy mess and i loved every minute of it. despite feeling craptacular on friday, i got homework done while i anxiously waited for jb to get home from work. he did, and we made it to the grocery store to pick up some goodies for din. i made whole wheat pizza crust from scratch, and we toppe

d it with delicious organic tomato sauce from wheatsville, mozz, fresh spinach, garlic, goat cheese, and some italian sausage. it was quite tasty.

we ate it while watching you, me, and everyone we know - a random indie flick from our netflix queue. not the best movie i've ever seen, but it was the perfect entertainment for a chilly day. saturday we went roaming and made it out to the elgin christmas tree farms for their pumpkins. there were lots of families and kid-theme

d pumpkin activities, but we had our dog and i act like a kid sometimes, so it was great fun. it felt so autumn-ish - i love it!

saturday night was the UT game against colorado. the first football-feeling game of the season, and we managed to pull out a victory, despite some less than stellar playing during the first half. we lost a spot in the rankings, too, down to #3, but i think that's probably fair. alabama is sick good this year, as much as i hate to admit it. i will refrain

from commenting on USC's rank and my undying hatred for that team.

sunday brought more rain, but we ventured out into the evening for the mitch hedberg tribute at the alamo ritz. here's a pic of downtown in the evening - most of the buildings were covered by tons of fog.

i was sorry to see the weekend end, especially since this week is going to be insanity. the pets were probably more sorry than we were though....

hopefully i'll have time to write some more this week - updates on other happenings, and our second wedding anniversary....two years have FLOWN by.

happy birthday ollivander ezekiel browne

today is ollie's second birthday. he is the best dog ever. seriously. he has been such a great source of fun and love for us, and i hope he lives to be a million.

obituary

LAFAYETTE - Mary Moselle Alexander Hesterly, died peacefully at her residence in Lafayette, Louisiana, on Friday, September 4, 2009. She was 85. Moselle, who nicknamed herself "Rocky" as a young girl, was born on January 15, 1924, in Waco, Texas, the only daughter of Linnaeus Cyrus Alexander and Ella Jane Stephens Alexander. She attended Fairmont School for Girls in Washington, D. C. and the University of Texas where she was named One of the Ten Most Beautiful Women on campus. She was also a cover girl model in New York.

Rocky married U.S. Army Air Corps Captain James Pitman Hesterly, Sr. in 1944. She is survived by their five children, Cynthia Hesterly Powell and her husband, Richard, of Fort Walton Beach, Fla., James Pitman Hesterly, Jr. and his wife, Elizabeth, of Lafayette, John Joseph Hesterly and his wife, Kay, of Lafayette, William Stephens Hesterly and his wife, Denise, of Alpine, Utah, and Mary Monica Hesterly, of Lafayette. She is also survived by thirteen grandchildren, Rebecca Powell Kelton and her husband, Clay, Robert James Powell, Susan Grace Powell, James Pitman Hesterly, III, Miles Crocker Hesterly, Piper Hesterly Browne and her husband, Justin, Joseph Pitman Hesterly, Lindsay Hesterly Geilman and her husband, Matt, Jessica Hesterly Gowdy and her husband, John, Alexander James Hesterly, Austin DeVere Hesterly, Ian William Hesterly, and Andrew Anderson Hesterly; and six great grandchildren.

Rocky previously lived in Alexandria, Lake Charles, Austin, Crestview, Florida, and Fort Walton Beach, Florida before arriving at her final resting place in Lafayette. She spent fifteen happy years in Fort Walton Beach where she was an active member of Trinity United Methodist Church while residing at Westwood Retirement Center. She moved to Lafayette in 2005.

Her last years in Lafayette proved to be some of her happiest as she received loving care from the Olive Branch of the Episcopal Church

of the Ascension. Rocky enjoyed her days at Rosewood Retirement Community in the company of her loyal companion and friend Lisa Wesley. Lisa tended to Rocky's every need with faithfulness and good cheer. The family thanks Lisa for her beautiful years of service.

The family also acknowledges the staff at Rosewood, Sheila Ardoin (Rocky's weekend caregiver), and Rocky's devoted friends Jackie Frentz and Betsy Vigorito.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations in Rocky's memory be made to the Episcopal Church of the Ascension's Olive Branch, 1030 Johnston St. Lafayette, LA. 70501, as their ministry to Rocky made a beautiful difference in her life.

A Celebration of the life of Mary Moselle Alexander Hesterly will be held at the Episcopal Church of the Ascension, 1030 Johnston Street, on Saturday, September 19, 2009, at 11 a.m. The family will receive friends in the Owen Room at the church from 10 a.m. until the time of the service.

View the obituary and guestbook online at www.mourning.com

Martin & Castille - Lafayette, 337-234-2311

happy birthday pippa louise

today is our cat's sixth birthday. though i wouldn't call myself a cat person, i love this cat. she was my first child, my companion when i first moved to austin and one of the few people i talked to when i was working bizarro hours. she has grown into quite the loving and precious little thing, even though she would have nothing to do with a lap when she was younger. she's still quite the little piglet, and will gladly bite your finger while you try to give her a treat. she's a delight.

in other news, my grandmother passed away on friday. this is a sad loss, but she went very quickly, and was not in pain. for this we are very grateful. she will be missed, but she leaves behind five children, thirteen grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren (so far). quite a grand legacy.

and so now. it's sunday night and i'm in my new UT snuggie, courtesy of w&d. phenomenal. the sound of music is on tv, and we don't have to go to work (or class) tomorrow. this weekend has been my favorite kind of weekend. friday night, it rained for over an hour. the first real rain we've had in probably over a year, for real. it was glorious...i sat by the window staring at it and smelling it. yum. saturday morning, the pup and i went for a little run followed by coffee and a haircut. then jb and i ate at trudy's and took a nap before heading to the tailgate and the game opener against ULM. wound up the night at w&d's for the LSU game and pizza.
this morning we had brunch with some old friends who had some great news, and then we dove into the yard. justin had done a ton of work in the yard last weekend while i was at the mba retreat and we just wanted to keep it up and do a few more things. we got new plants and finished landscaping a couple of areas. there's still a ton of work left to be done, of course, but we'll do more tomorrow, and the progress is really obvious, which is super rewarding.
anyway, now i'm sore and sleepy and clean and it's fantastic. can't wait to see what tomorrow will bring...