A little about my life...

I figure I would spend a little time telling you about me. Yes, my few posts have given you an insight into some things I am interested in, but if you are reading this, you might want to know more. If you still want to know more after this, feel free to ask, I am pretty open about all things Shari. I was born and raised in Texas, but would love to move out of the state (hopefully we will in the next couple years). I have 2 older sisters and grew up with divorced parents, my mother remarried when I was 11. I was like most kids and our family was like most. No hidden secrets waiting behind closed doors or anything. I got kicked out when I was 18, told that as soon as I graduated, I was to be out, she actually gave me a couple weeks, as I had to wait for the apartment I was moving into to be ready. I feel she was somewhat justified in what she did, I lied to her about where I was and what I was doing and had parties at her house, but I must say, I was never in any sort of trouble with the police, I didn't have significant school issue's and I was scared enough of my mom, that it kept me on track for the most part. Moving out is kind of when my life changed drastically! I convinced a good friend that she would be much happier out of her house as well, so we set off on an adventure; it only lasted 6 months, then we both went back home. The only difference was, I went home pregnant, I was 19. I gave birth to my first daughter, Cathrynn, in August 1994. I had been dating her father on and off for several years (he was 5 years older than me). When I told him, he refused to believe she was his, I on the other hand had no doubts. He left town and later required blood tests to determine her paternity. He showed up at my door when she was 6 weeks (after receiving the results) wanting to see her. He is not the most dead beat dad around, but by no means has he been there for her; there is currently a lot of stuff going on right now with my older daughter and this info about her dad will help you understand some stuff later in another post I'm working on. She and I lived with my parents until she was 4; I have always been very thankful for my parents support during those years, I was able to complete my degree in 4 years and improve the life I could provide for myself and my daughter. After graduating from Sam Houston in '98, I moved to Austin and have been here every since. In '99 I met my husband (or was reacquainted with him). He is the cousin of one of my longest childhood friends (the one I moved in with after high school). I hadn't seen him since we were young and that night we hit it off pretty quickly. We were together for 5 years before he proposed and we married in Salado, TX under beautiful twinkling lights in front of our family and friends on April 2, 2005. It was an amazing night! We had a wonderful honeymoon to Vancouver, British Columbia. We never planned on having children together and took measures to prevent that, but God had other plans for us and in October of 2006 we found out we were going to have a baby. Whitney was born in May of 2007. We moved into our current home in Round Rock in June 2008. We love it here, but we do want to move to Colorado in the future. Our House:

My Girls:

Is Anyone Reading This?

Is anyone out there? If you are then I want to start by apologizing for not posting more often. I have several posts started, but the problem seems to be that I am not good at condensing; they are lengthy and I am working on editing because I know you didn't come here to read a novel. I love to write, although I haven't spent much time at it in many years. I have wanted to start a blog for a couple years, this year, with all that is going on, it seemed like the best place to release and share. I have so much that I want to write about, but I feel like I need to get things out in a certain order, some things need to come before others. But in the midst of that I want to share who I am becoming, who I have been and how I am learning to get there. I promise you that I will have another post up by tomorrow, a post about me that I have been working on, it will be a little on my history; trust me, you'll need a little background to understand once we get caught up to today. I will start by setting a goal of at least one post per week (I would like to post more than that and will try, but I have to pace myself, until I can get my editing skills up to par, as to not bore you with my ramblings). Any questions you have are always welcome! Have a great day!!

Friendship

I recently read a blog post about friendship and it got me thinking yet again about my friends. I've never really had a large group of friends and other then my husband I would say I really only have one good friend and unfortunately she lives 3 hours away and I only see her about 4 times a year.

(This is the only picture she would ever let me post on the internet.) She totally rocks and is always there for me. If I asked she would jump in her car to come be with me and I would do the same for her in a heartbeat, which I think is what real friendship is all about; an equal give and take (yes that really applies to all relationships, but I am specifically focusing on friendship now). I have found it difficult to find that in a person. I've often questioned whether or not I am worthy of someone who gives as much to the friendship as I do. As far as girlfriends go I always feel like I open myself up and I get back a fake friendship, someone who doesn't really listen or doesn't really share. I hate nothing more than to have an in-depth conversation with someone where we both open up and then at a later date the same conversation comes around and it's like they can't hardly remember anything I've shared. I know people are busy, I understand they have other things going on, so do I and I have a horrible memory, but I make it a point to listen and remember things when a person is speaking to me from their heart. My BF listens, she tells me her opinion honestly, she shares her feelings, but still she is so far away. I sometimes wish I had someone closer who I could call a friend, not just an acquaintance. There are girls I go to lunch with and I like, but they are connections from work or old school acquaintances; none seem to show any desire for a more real friendship. So is it me, do I really have nothing to offer? I am quite at first, I have trouble making small talk and am very self conscience about the things I say or do, so maybe that makes me seem more stand-offish. I am in constant fear of judgement by others.Yes, I know that God's judgement is the only one that matters, but I am human and I am flawed and I am still having trouble getting past this feeling. I am thankful for my husband as he really is my best friend, I am also thankful for my wonderful best friend in Houston. I may not have many friends, but the one I have couldn't be better.

PINTEREST - My New Interest

Do you know about Pinterest? If not you should go check it out. It is my new favorite website. Several years ago I started keeping a binder with all sorts of things I had found in magazines or online, so I could look back and reference them later. That was a huge waste of paper and extremely time consuming, and not really easy to go back and quickly glance for something in particular you remember clipping out to save. So the binder quickly went to the wayside. Had I only been a little more creative and tech savvy, I could have come up with the idea for Pinterest, but alas, like so many other things in my life, somebody else beat me to it.

The easiest way to describe Pinterest is that it is a virtual notebook/binder of all those cool things you find out there on the web. How many of you are continually bookmarking sites, so you can come back later and look at that recipe, or those cool ideas they had for redecorating? If you are like me, you have a zillion bookmarks, which you usually don't label very well and then you never find what it is you thought you saved or just forget you saved it totally. Not with Pinterest, you can "pin" the picture from the page that you are specifically interested in, so that you can see exactly why you were saving it, and then it will always link you back to the place you found it. Plus you can see all the cool stuff other people are pinning.

You set up individual boards, labeled how ever you like, everything from recipes, DIY, home decor, fashion, favorite quotes...you name it, you can find someone pinning it on Pinterest. I have 22 boards, with a total of 87 pins, I would say it is my new internet addiction. I have boards for sewing, crafts, fitness, tattoo's, art...well, here's a link to my Pinterest, feel free to check it out, Follow Me at Pinterest.

Location:Round Rock,United States

A Weekend of Seconds

This past weekend was spent on seconds, yes, that's right, not firsts, but seconds. All the same it's still new stuff that I am learning as I go. For starters I planted my second garden ever. My first was March-July 2011 and it was pretty impressive, if I do say so myself. I had nice squash, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and purple okra (still have some of the same okra producing)!









































These are pics from the late spring/early summer time period. My husband, put a lot of time and energy into this garden. We have 4 raised beds that our 4x16 ft. The area is 45x22 and had to be fenced in as we have a large deer population that would enjoy feasting on it. We had some problems with birds getting tomatoes but we covered with deer netting and that took care of the problem. Our squash ended up being taken out by stink bugs, as they were horrible this year, but we got a pretty good crop prior to them killing it. My husband owns a pest company, but I am keeping the garden all organic. It's only been treated with neem oil and gets a great organic fertilizer called John's Recipe. Applied bi weekly. Its wonderful for the plants but smells like dead fish. My 4-year old hates it!!










So garden number 2, is actually my second attempt at a fall garden, as I tried to plant some stuff about a month ago, but with the terrible heat, I lost pretty much everything except for one pumpkin plant and 3 winter squash. Friday I went to The Natural Gardner (if you live around Austin, I highly suggest you check it out, it's a great place even to just walk around, they have chickens, donkeys and goats as well as an amazing vegetable garden and little gardens set up all over). I was able to pickup some broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts and cabbage there, plus some green bean seeds. Saturday my amazing husband helped me till the beds, fertilize and plant (he eats no veggies, so there is no benefit for him). Then Sunday I went up to round rock gardens in search of a couple more squash. No squash but I did get some Bibb lettuce, Swiss chard, a couple varieties of mint and some sage. Still wish I had more squash, but hopefully the ones I have will do good.

The other thing I worked on over the weekend was my second ever sewing project. I bought a sewing machine about 2 weeks ago and am attempting to teach myself how to sew. My first project was a reversible apron for myself (as I love to cook and I hated the apron I had).

























I thought it came out pretty good. So project number two got underway, a dress for my youngest daughter Whitney. The fabric I originally bought to use, was not enough, I realized after the purchase I was reading the pattern wrong (again self teaching, so mistakes are bound to happen). Still loved the fabric, so I bought a matching solid to make the dress and then used the other fabric to do the pockets and create a trim at the bottom. I have not completed the arms and neck interfacing and hemming yet (and am a little intimidated by that part), but hopefully will be done in the next couple days. It's not going to be perfect by any means, but I'm enjoying it and Whitney loves it, so that's really all that matters to me.

Not the best start but here goes...

This has been one of the toughest weeks ever. The last two days have come to such a boiling point I didn't know how or if I could make it through. A good friend reminded me of this passage from James 1:2-3 "Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance."
God words says it all. Nothing but faith will get me through.
Thank you God for the good news at the end of the day. We needed something to help lift us up a little.

I'll get to me and why I'm blogging later. Right now I just needed to get that out.