Happy Birthday to me! A haul of sorts.

Actually it was yesterday.  Again, with the day-lateness.  But it was good!  Want a rundown of the loot?  Let's start with Christmas first, since I totally forgot I haven't gone over that yet:

North Face Masonic Hoodie

Canon Remote for T1i

Zeikos Tripod

Barnes & Noble Gift Card - $25

Sperry Rubber Boots

Wilton Giant Cupcake Pan

The Bell Collection Western Bell

Kohler "Vault" kitchen sink (this is not my kitchen, but I have the same faucet too)

Tickets to see Eleven Hundred Springs on Friday the 13th

 And now on to birthday (some of which I bought myself, b/c that's how I roll):

3 cookbooks, Super Solano Original hair dryer, Tory Burch Reva flats, 3 gator clips for a professional blowout

Vera Wang Lavender "Lara" flats - b/c the only good snake is a dead one, made into shoes

Adissage Sandals - or "chanclas" as they're referred to in my house

Flowers from my boys (yes I know this is a crappy picture)

A mocha cupcake from The Cupcakery in The Woodlands.  Another crappy picture; it was late and I was tired.

So, I've been practicing with my tripod and remote, but only in my office which is painted red and puts a red cast in all my pictures even with a custom white balance on my camera (see birthday haul picture #1).  Basically, my self-portraits suck so far so y'all won't be seeing any of those for a while.  I used my Solano dryer for the first time today and thought about doing a before/after, but then I got lazy and didn't want to put on makeup...another time.

I feel like I'm forgetting another gift but I can't remember...anyway, pretty good haul dontcha think?

See Ya, 2011...Hellooooooo 2012.

OK, I'm a little late. Story of my life - I was once told I'd be late to my own funeral. But y'all, I was having fun yesterday! Having fun flying kites with my boy, eating Mexican food, and taking a nap. It was glorious.

Anyway, resolutions. I don't think I've made any New Year's resolutions in the last 10yrs, mostly b/c I didn't believe you could improve on perfection ;) However this year, perfection could use some tweaking to keep up with the times.

And I give you Amy Drinkie's New Year's Resolutions:

• Give my appearance a little more effort. Now that I work from home, I have gotten really lazy in this area. Most days I don't even brush my teeth until after lunch and I stay in my PJs all day. And let's not talk about keeping up with things like eyebrow shaping. Anyway, this year, I'm going to shower every day (I know, I'm ashamed to admit I don't these days), get dressed, and fix my hair. And if getting dressed every day means I need to shop more and pick up a few more things, that's OK. I won't commit to applying makeup every day, that's a bit of a stretch considering there isn't anyone to see it!
• Meal plan better to reduce waste - wasted food and wasted money. I shop for produce weekly and freezer/pantry items less frequently, but even with meals planned for most weeks I throw out a lot of food. Celery goes limp before I use it all, peppers turn wrinkly, cucumbers get soft spots...blech. Then after every shopping trip, I throw out at least 1/2 a trash can of food that's not fit to eat to make room for the new stuff. I'm pretty sure I can trim more than $50 off the monthly grocery bill just by planning better. To do this, I'm not only going to select certain recipes to make over the course of the week and make a shopping list for any missing ingredients (I already do this), I'm ALSO going to write out when to make what so that I use up fresh ingredients first, instead of letting them get pushed to the back of the fridge and then finding they've gone off when I'm ready to use them. Noting what days to make which meals will also help me remember when to take meat out to thaw so that I don't have to make alternate plans for dinner.
• Get back to exercising. I don't need to lose weight, just tone up. And yes, I hate excercise - I've mentioned it numerous times, but Dance Dance Revolution on Xbox is fun and gets me sweating. I just have to make time to do it...which brings us back to the 1st bullet point.
• Go to bed at a decent hour. No more watching Netflix until 11 and then reading a book until 2am. I need my beauty sleep. I need to be "lights out" at 11, at the latest.
• Clean and organize our closets.
• Closet in my office - DONE, son. It now holds office supplies (duh), board games (which probably should relocate to my son's closet), gifts bought in advance for others, and my coats (our coat closet is already reserved by the vacuum, picnic stuff, and my husband's coats).
• Drinkie Jr's closet is a work in progress, I've washed and hung up all the new 3T clothes he got for his birthday and Christmas, and am pulling out the 2T stuff as it goes through the laundry for donation. It should be done in about a week.
• Linen closet in hall bathroom just needs all the mismatchy things relocated to the garage for shop towels, and all the matchy things refolded. No big deal.
• Gut renovation of my master closet - it's a weird L-shape, and while technically a walk-in, you still can't fit much in there b/c of the poor layout. The goal is to move everything around to make room for shoe storage (right now they're hung on the back of the door, in boxes on the upper shelves, AND in piles on the floor) and bath towels, since there is not much room for linens under the vanity. The towels unfold themselves and get all jumbled around when you reach for toilet paper and I HATE IT. We're still in the planning stage but I'll post progress pics when things get moving - estimated completion, April 2012.

 I think that's about it!  Nothing that requires too much effort, right?  B/c if it requires a lot of effort, I'm not going to commit to it.

You may notice, I don't have any resolutions that are blog-related.  That's b/c lately, my life hasn't been all that interesting so I felt like I didn't have anything to write about.  I thought about adding "blogging more often" to the list, but if there isn't any worthy content, I'm not going to post filler crap.  You're welcome. :)  Although, if you have any suggestions for things you'd like me to write about, I'd love to hear them - like that time I went on a date and my date got arrested and I didn't know how I'd bail him out b/c I'd never had to do that before (I actually said "does jail take credit cards?"), or the time I flipped my Monte Carlo in a ditch on the way to work (that car was crap anyway), or the time my horse bucked me off in the middle of a barrel race, OR the time my girlfriend and I had some Aussies stalk us on a night out and we had to slip out the back door to lose them...those are funny stories.  It's just that none of them happened recently!  My dad has even better stories - like the time his stock contractor buddy backed a trailer full of bucking bulls up to the front door of a bar and let them out IN THE BAR.  THAT is an awesome story.  Maybe one of my resolutions should be "have better stories?"

Happy New Year!  Make it good.

I have a confession to make.

I started running.

Yes, me - the girl who would rather gouge out her eyes than exercise started running.

The girl who would rather do reps of 12oz curls than lift weights...started running.

The girl who would rather eat Chee-Tos and drink wine sitting on her ass watching Real Housewives on Bravo TV...SHE started running.

I'll be real with you, I've only done it a handful of times. :)  But I DID IT.  And I did not die or even hurt myself.  And, I haven't been this skinny since before the freshman 30 I put on at Sam Houston.  I still can't run a whole mile w/o walking a smidge, but I'd say 3/4 of a mile running is a decent start, right? (you better agree here, folks)

I am told runners often keep journals, so I bought a spiral to start my running journal.  My first entry goes a little something like this:

• DATE: (I forgot what date, so let's say it was 11/1)
• TIME: afternoonish
• WEATHER: cloudy and kinda cool
• ATTITUDE: cranky (no surprise there)
• CONSUMPTION PRIOR TO RUN: 1 Panera jalapeno and cheese bagel smeared with 1.5oz add'l cream cheese, 2 Tassimo cappucinos, a couple of glasses of water
• PERFORMANCE: ran with dog. He got winded first. VICTORY IS MINE.  Also, bra is too tight and restricts breathing - shop for a better one.

The other times, I forgot to make entries in the journal.  LOL

Moving right along...

My kid ate spaghetti for the first time last night.  This is not the first time I've given it to him, mind you, just the first time he actually ATE it.  Kid Drinkie subsists on a diet of chicken strips, fries (regular and sweet potato), fish sticks, cheese pizza, sandwiches (grilled cheese or PB&J only), scrambled eggs, applesauce, and assorted pastry items (breads, cakes, etc).  Notice the lack of green vegetables and meat that hasn't undergone some sort of processing.  And last night, he whined and whined about not wanting spaghetti until I basically forced a noodle in his mouth.  Then he turned to me and said "Ian WIKE sketti!!!"  Aaaaand, at lunch today he would not eat the sketti.  Oh, well.

I spent too much during the Sephora Friends & Family and VIB sales.  I returned a couple of things; reviews to come in another post soon.  I've been taking lots of snaps lately, which I promised I wouldn't bore you with here b/c this is not a photography blog, but you can check out my Flickr photostream if you want.

And I guess that's about it for now!