hair adventures

My sister and I do not have a good track record when it comes to coloring and/or highlighting our hair.

One of the first times I dyed my hair, it came out purple instead of slightly red as I'd intended. The first time I highlighted was my senior year of college. My friend Jami did it for me, and instead of having a few blonde highlights spread throughout my brown hair, I practically became blonde! I made an emergency Walmart run the next day and found a sale on hair color--two for the price of one. So I bought two boxes of some shade of brown and dyed my hair twice. You'd think I would have learned my lesson about blonde highlights, but no, a year later I tried again . . . with the same results! This time it was Dollar General to the rescue.

My sister's hair hasn't fared much better. We highlighted it successfully several times, but when she decided to go brown . . . well, let's just say there was some green involved! We learned anything with "ash" in the name wouldn't go over well, so last time, we tried a golden brown. Her hair came out in a nice shade of orange.

Today, we decided to give it a go again. Amazingly, both our dye jobs turned out well! I had one of those dye & highlight kits, and I was a tad apprehensive about the highlighting part, but I like the way it turned out.

So, here's a glimpse of our (matching) hair.

happy anniversary to me

Today is my three year blogging anniversary. I'd repost my first post here (I blogged on MySpace for two years before joining blogger), but frankly, it was depressing! My first post on blogger was in March of last year, so I thought about reposting that one . . . and it was lame, unless you love Dancing with the Stars. I wasn't yet comfortable posting as "me," so it was completely anonymous. It wasn't until May that I began doing all my blogging here (thanks to Jen's gentle prodding).

So instead of reposting anything, I'll give you the last sentence of the first post of each month of the last year . . . and I'll link to the original post, just in case you're curious. (Why the last sentence, you ask? Because the first sentence is too boring.)

• Steve because he's having so much fun . . . and because I loved the Three Men and a Baby movies.
• No blogger post in April. Sorry!
• You don't want the details of this recent bout with the stomach flu, but one good thing did come of it . . . I lost 13 pounds!
• Because why would we have a day with no rain?
• God is good!
• I wonder if I'd have the same reaction if I was married and someone called me Miss . . . I kind of doubt it!
• Sounds like a pretty good trade off to me!
• We'll see how I do.
• And no matter what happens, I'm so grateful to have a voice!
• After I watch it, I'll let you know what I think . . . and you can be sure I'll watch it--what a clever marketing ploy!
• When you think of me, I ask that you would pray those things for me, as well.
• But I don't know their rules . . .
  

in dcTalk news . . .

Michael Tait is the new lead singer of the Newsboys, at least while they're on tour. From this article, it sounds like Peter Furler will still do lead vocals in the studio.

So tobyMac is touring, and Michael Tait is touring . . . perhaps the Newsboys and tobyMac could do a joint tour and pull out a little old school dcTalk while they're at it? (A girl can always dream . . .)

Side note: I just learned that tobyMac's real name is Kevin Michael McKeehan--interesting since his dcTalk bandmates were named Kevin and Michael. Seeing that sent me back 15 years or so . . . I had this dcTalk poster that came in my Brio magazine. My sister would sing their names to the tune of "There Were Twelve Disciples" over and over and over while pointing to their pictures on the poster. It was like a broken record: "Kevin, Toby, Michael, Kevin, Toby, Michael . . ."

it's free!

This month, you can use the online version of the ESV Study Bible for free! I mentioned before that I absolutely love my ESV Study Bible, and I highly recommend you check it out. Go here to sign up.

what's the score?

Recently, I heard someone say that movie scores are the new classical music. I'd have to agree. There's something about a film score that draws me in. Our Nebraska NPR station has a program called "Classics by Request" on Friday afternoons, and we almost always listen to it in the office. Quite often, they will play music from Pirates of the Caribbean, The Lord of the Rings, Titanic, and virtually anything by John Williams.

Last Friday, I spent about three hours working on yearbook pages. For some reason, there is no radio reception in the yearbook room, so I set out to find classical music on an internet station. I ended up finding a wonderful station--Cinemix. (I'm actually surprised Cinemix isn't blocked, since it's so close in spelling to Cinemax . . . and our firewall is annoying like that.) This site has a huge catalog of music, and it's really easy to make requests. In fact, I requested two things while listening this afternoon, and both played within 20 minutes of the request. This is great music to have on while studying, reading, working in the office, or even sleeping. Check it out!

In the spirit of my movie music obsession, here are my top six scores (I couldn't keep it to five!):

• While You Were Sleeping
  by Randy Edelman. You knew this would be there! I play this in the office at least three times a week--I call it my "happy music" :-)
• The Lake House
  by Rachel Portman. Yeah, another Sandra Bullock movie! Portman is quickly becoming one of my favorite modern composers. She also composed the scores for Emma, Chocolat, and many others, and she won an Oscar for Emma.
• Pirates Of The Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl
  by Klaus Badelt. I don't know why, but hearing a Pirates song in the middle of the workday just really perks me up!
• The Return Of The King
  by Howard Shore. I love all the Lord of the Rings music, but The Return of the King is slightly happier than the other two scores.
• The Man From Snowy River
  by Bruce Rowland. I bought this for "Jessica's Theme" and fell in love with the whole score.
• Ever After: A Cinderella Story
  by George Fenton. My favorite track is "The Royal Wedding," simply because that scene in the movie cracks me up! It's a wonderful score--just be sure to turn it off as soon as track 21 is over; the final song is a horrible song by Texas. I've just about killed myself multiple times as I vault over things trying to get to the cd player in time.

weekend update

• The links on my Oscars post should all be working again--until YouTube is forced to pull these videos off, too.
• I bought an iPod! I should have asked for advice sooner . . . when I make a decision, it doesn't take me long to follow through--it's just the decision making process that takes me forever! When I blogged about wanting an iPod, I'd pretty much decided to get one, and I bought it the next day. This is what I settled on. I'm so psyched it's purple! And, of course, I got it from amazon. It's like my favorite store ever :-)
  
  
  
  
• I've finally used up my iTunes gift card. In addition to the music I already told you about, I got "From Where You Are" by Lifehouse, "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz, and "Beatrix & Norman" from the Miss Potter soundtrack. Have I told you how much I love movie scores? We listen to them all the time in the office . . .
  

a wedding comes our way

My brother is getting married at the end of April. So this weekend, Mom and I went "mother of the groom" dress shopping in Wichita.

We started at the Dress Barn. The lady there was kind enough to tell us she didn't have anything fancy enough, so we were quickly on our way. Next, we went to David's Bridal. I've never had a reason to go to a bridal shop before, and let's just say it was a bit overwhelming! We found the "mother" dresses, saw they were out of our price range, and headed to the mall. As we left, I really felt like we were escaping the madness!

Mom's cousin knew we were dress shopping, and she had called us from Dillard's earlier to let us know they had dresses that were 40% off, so we began our mall search there. Almost immediately, Mom found a dress! We had them hold it for us while we checked out Sears and J.C. Penney, but we ultimately went back to Dillard's. The whole process took maybe 90 minutes! Praise the Lord for that dress--we were anticipating a much longer, much more trying shopping trip.

Then in the evening, we made mints, mints, and more mints--somewhere around 400. And we have more to go!They're the cream cheese kind; we used almond and rum flavoring. While "minting," we watched the last two episodes of Psych. (Shameless Psych plug #541.) Because mint making takes forever, we also had time to watch Miss Potter. What a sweet, gentle movie! I highly recommend it.