What do you do?

When I get asked "What do you do?" I say that I am a Health Educator. There is a lot that goes with that but one of my first big projects is the Eat Well Waco program. The City of Waco has just started the program and I was asked to interview about the program. Its about 30 minutes but if you are interested in "what i do", this might be helpful.

http://www.waco-texas.com/videos/Gallery/wccctv-city-talk.asp

Organization Station

I was walking through Home Depot the other day and I was surprised by how many organizational baskets and buckets were out. Neil pointed out to me that it is a very popular New Year's resolution. I never knew! He says it because I have been organized since birth!

I don't know about that considering I can never find what I need! Well I did some organizing in our bathroom this weekend. I will spare you ALL the details and show you just a couple of my favorite items.


This one is our main drawer, you know that one that you open every day that holds everything! There was this cool double sliding organizer. And now our everyday items are to be found easily.
I often get "the look" when I leave my dryer or straightener out on the sink-for good reason. But I use one or the other almost everyday! They were being housed in a too-high-for-me cabinet so it was hard for me to put it up and pull it down everyday. I had this left over basket that was supposed to be used for foil, wax paper, etc in the kitchen. Simple. Perfect height. Organized!

That is just one room but it feels better already. We'll see how long it lasts.

It's a beautiful day for.... croquet!

One of our favorite gifts this year was a croquet set. It is January but it is sunny and 62 degrees. It would be shameful to stay inside!

We have played often enough that the wickets have become a permanent fixture in our front yard. It is great to have such a big yard to play in! The leaves and divets and rocks all play a role in our game. Also, rexx tends to think that our croquet balls are his toys and tries to fetch them while we are playing....Today I won, but I must admit it was not pretty! I am competitive and for some reason I feel that *someone* let me win today!

What's on my mind...

In no particular order......

The Sting

I volunteered with Upward Basketball this year and I am loving it! My team is called the STING, after the WNBA team and I have 4th-6th grade girls. They are so enthusiastic and willing to learn. Many have never played but they have some natural athleticism. Of course a major objective of Upward to bring the players to Christ and to learn about sportsmanship and leadership.

We have started an office edition of the biggest loser at work as a worksite wellness program.

There are 8 teams of 3 and each player puts in $20 and the individual that loses the largest percent of body weight gets the money. This is one of the best participation rates that we have ever had in this building and it is getting intense. We have seen an increase in celery sticks and walking clubs. And yet, lots of chocolate candy lying around (to tempt other teams ). There are team challenges every Thursday and we just had our first one. We did a Wii Just Dance challenge and they loved it. We FINALLY found something that works - money! of course! All the programs we do require a budget of $0 dollars so this is an inventive way to get great incentives at no cost to the department.

This is a sneak peak into the upstairs bathroom makeover.

It is a VERY slow process as I have only been able to work on it on Saturdays so far.

There will definitely be future posts about it :)

St. Mary's Quilt

This year for Christmas Megan's present was a St. Mary's t-shirt quilt. She had hinted to me months ago that she wanted one by giving me a bunch of her t shirts. However, she did not expect it or forgot about it by Christmas.

I had never made a t-shirt quilt before and with the help of Mom Shanks, I finished it just before Christmas. The presention of the gift was exciting for me. We waited until Christmas morning to exchange gifts and the only box that it would fit in was one for an air compressor we bought recently. I put in the box, taped it and wrapped it. When she opened it she actually thought that it was an air compressor and acted so grateful but she was much more excited for the real gift.

These are a few close ups of some of the spontaneous creativity that had to happen due to a shortage of t-shirts

Resolutions

Every year, I do make New Year's Resolutions. They either fall apart quickly or become habit quickly, therefore not making them a year long activity. This year I hope to keep myself accountable all year. Three resolutions this year:

1) Cutting down on spending.
Yes, this is a financial resolution that thousands of people make every year...but...its real for me. Let me first say that we have never lacked any necessities and we don't spend very much but we are excited to see what we can save in a year. We have developed a sort of "game" for financial accountability. We have posted a paper on the fridge with headings" home/shopping, groceries, and restaurants. There is a pen attached and we are to write purchases AND initial our spending. (and if you think we might forget, every purchase is tracked online so we can always pull it up). The person who spends the least each month, wins. The prize might be that they are exempt from laundry the next month, or something of that nature. It has gotten intense already and it has just begun. Yes, this will be more difficult for me but its worth a try.

2. Complete a full 90 days of p90X
I am finally at a point in my life when I can commit to a rigorous plan - no school, extra curriculars, or injuries. I have started the program and it lasted 30 days until my internship and full time job started at the same time. But boy did I feel good during those 30 days.


3. Learn to play guitar.
My awesome Christmas gift will be a gift that keeps on giving. I plan to teach myself (with direction from neil). I have wanted to learn guitar in the last few years but have been too busy. I am happy to say that I have already gotten a few hours of practice!


Sounds like this year will be a new kind of fun!

The perfect Duo

Dream Come True

In a past blog post I described my dream kitchen. Well take a look, it seems that dreams do come true.

Dream Kitchen:

My Kitchen:

It is so big and beautiful! I don't want to get it dirty! I got lucky and found the sink at IKEA..... for 50% off. We were not sure if it would fit but we took a chance and although, it was difficult, it fits! Dad Shanks helped Neil for hours! On his vacation! Thanks for that!

This is a close up of the cute faucet. This was also from IKEA. I was unaware of the single mindedness of IKEA products. They are created to fit with eachother and no one else. Since nothing else in the kitchen is from IKEA, it took some retrofitting. To make things easier, we decided to go with an IKEA faucet.

Waco art

This was a packed weekend. It started with graduation. I did not walk the stage but I was still pretty excited. Then, the Baylor vs. Gonzaga game was on which was a super close one. Then, we made our way to downtown Waco.

We were headed to a friend's wedding but we made a quick stop at one of Waco's newest graffiti walls. Its much nicer than it sounds. Randomly hidden behind a Sherrin-Williams, a huge mural of A Starry Night is painted on a brick wall. I had passed by it a few times and thought that Neil would be impressed. He was even gracious enought to pose for a picture. It looks good even at night with headlights on it.

We made it to the wedding and had a great time. Neil was feeling sick but he still managed to make it a great night of celebrations.

Keeping it Simple

I must admit, I think I went overboard on presents this year. I just could not stop buying those cute, unique, thats-so-meg, gifts. It didn't help that we bought 90% of all our gifts online! When you don't actually see them, its like they don't exist. Once I realized that I went overboard, I had to cut back. Some call it being frugal. Some call it being cheap. I like to call it being crafty.

I decided not to buy wrapping paper and all the fun embellishments that I have grown accustomed to. If you haven't heard, gift wrapping is a favorite past time. So I went simple this year. I used most of what I already had. Most wrapping paper comes in rolls of 15-30 square feet. But did you know, packaging wrap comes in 50 square feet and it was $1.00. Can't beat that! So I wrapped em up and thus began the creative process.

Using Christmas colored tissue paper, I was able to create fun, frugal, festive embellishments.

My favorite is the white rosette on Janel's gift!

Memories of Christmas Past

WARNING!!!

THIS IS A LONG POST! Feel free to close this page at any time.

So, I was going through my "1st year of marriage" journal the other day and I re-read over our 1st Christmas together. I cried and I laughed and I cried again. I am so glad I kept the details of our interesting Christmas. Some details are boring but some are hilarious (to me). So here is the journal entry for December 28, 2009.

New family, new house, new holiday for the Shanks. Two of my favorite things about Christmas? Decorating and gift giving. Mom did such a great jo

b decorating our house growing up. Everything was color coordinated and it changed regularly. We got to choose which colors to use and where to use them. Most Christmases were at our house with our huge family. We baked and decorated cookies and wrapped hundreds of presents, including Uncle Rick’s (we wrap ALL his presents, EVERY YEAR). We always knew that Dad would depend on us to pick out a good gift for mom and that grandma always got dad underwear. I can recall each Christmas so vividly. I sometimes wonder if I will remember, in such great detail, the Christmases as a wife (and later, mother).

Looking around our little house with our little family. I’m sure that will change one day but for now its just perfect. Our first Christmas looks ….cute. Of course it’s a relative term but we did good for what we had. We forgot to budget for decorat

ions :) Also, my husband is an energy freak. Therefore, no Christmas lights – anywhere. Lol. Most people cringe at the thought but I will get my revenge next year!

Maybe he felt guilty for the lack of lights but I convinced him that we NEEDED at real tree. I always had a real tree growing up and I loved the smell that lingered into the new year and he never had a real one so it sounded like a great idea. As the weeks got closer to Christmas I watched the trees dwindle at the stores. Finally, we got dow

n there still with two weeks till Christmas. We walk into the garden section at Wal-MartJ and I am sure they have moved them, I only see like 5. After asking, we find out that there are only 5 left! We looked carefully through all 5 of them and decided on the perfect one(of five). I let him get into the spirit of tree shopping but warned him that “that one is too big”. He insisted. Grateful that he let me get one at all, we put it in the truck and headed home.

After dragging it into the house, cutting it to size, and sweeping all the needles up, we decided that a fake one might be better next year. Or at least until there are kids around to enjoy it. Oh ya, it was wayyyy to big! It took up most of our dining room… but it smelled great.

Now we have this huge tree and nothing on it. Thanks to Mom Shanks we were able to fill it with all of the ornaments he had/made as a kid. It was so

fun to hear about each one as he put them up. Still, it didn’t have lights and it looked so sad. I decided to make tissue paper flowers to put in the tree. Much better! Its very…me.

Shopping for new family is stressful especially when your new husband's past shopping experiences usually revolved around gas station stops on the way to Iowa from Texas. Neil convinced me to open gifts early because “we don’t want to travel with them”. Good one. Got me. That was 1st Christmas.

Second Christmas sent us down south to San Antonio. This time it was Dad that convinced us to open one gift each early. Then we decided why stop at one. Lets make it two. We did stop there. After helping mom with decorations and cooking as usual we spent Christmas Eve with 60 family members. The next morning, like kids on Christmas morning, we all came out to the living room to open our santa gifts and stockings. Its funny how Christmas morning always makes you feel like a kid. Then, we packed up to head North for 3rd Christmas. It is Christmas Day.

“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas” is like a fairytale in Texas. Not this year. We had snow on Christmas Day! Its in the books if you don’t believe me. From Dallas on we would have snow. Well, a white Christmas is not all its cracked up to be. We were stranded on the highway going 10 mph at most. At this rate we were never going to get to Iowa for Christmas L. Our patience was wearing thin, not even Christmas carols on my new Ipod could keep the spirits up. Our dog was get antsy. We had no choice. We had to stop. We found an open room at the Drury Inn. There we are on Christmas Day with our dog and cold tamales weeping while watching Marley and Me.

It’s a Christmas I will never forget.

*We did eventually make it to Iowa. As usual, it was great food, fun family and lots of love. I sledded for the first time.

It will be fun one day to look back 20 years from now on these details. I don't know that this year will be as eventful but we are sure excited to see family again!

Decking the Halls

This was a great weekend! It was the first "I-don't-have-to-do-anything" in a LONG time. We got to give some TLC to the house and jazz it up for Christmas!

We decided to go with a smaller tree this year and it looks great.

No homework + no studying = crafting!

I love homemade gifts!

I have been looking forward to putting up our new nativity set since last year!

Hope your decorating goes well too!