Currently listening to: Grizzly Bear

I'm bummed to be missing these guys live at the Mercy Lounge tonight, but since I can't go out and support them I'm doing the next best thing....telling all of you about them. The video is surreal to say the least, I haven't quite figured the connection with the song. If anyone has insights, please share.

Because This Is What We Learned Today

And because so many of you never met the Felton children's little green truck

A Late Summer Suprise

Can You See Why We Got a Ticket?

So instead of dealing with it - we are going to sell it

Summer Cut

This Week

So presently I am sitting on the couch waiting for episodes of Gilmore Girls to load on the computer while Joshua is asleep on the couch. We had a rather trying and emotionally taxing week so we've decided to rest as much as our bodies can take today. Joshua's body can apparently take sleeping until 11am and then napping again at 2pm but I'm not quite there. I was up at 9:30 and now I'll have to settle for mindless TV instead of a nap, oh well.

While work is kind of slow we are going to make it a point to spend our energy on honing other skills. Our goal for the next week is to get out with the camera everyday and we will just post the picture for our daily blog. We are planning on learning some basic photoshop skills so that we can at least begin to process the photos we take.

Hope you all have a great week and we'll talk later.

Screening

So we went to a rough cut screening of the Billy Graham movie tonight and there was my tent revival scene and you know what? Joshua who thought he'd never make the cut had one good clip and then another quick one. You'll never recognize him (because I didn't) but if you happen to see the film in the theater or your church wave at Josh.

Josh vs. Joshua

Moving to a new place gives you the freedom to start over and be anyone you want to be. When Josh and I moved to Tennessee we talked through any changes we wanted to make since we were getting that fresh start.

You know...we could stop bathing as often and no one would think we were weird because as far as they know we've always smelled a little. We could change our backstory so that we came from money and abandoned our trust funds out of moral outrage of our materialistic society. Or he could be Joshua and I could be Samantha (you know when you are young and dream of another name-that was mine).

But no - we moved to Tennessee, continued to bathe and introduced ourselves as Josh and Tiffany.

Fast forward 3.5 years and Josh starts his own business. At this point he decides Josh shouldn't own his own business Joshua should.

Are you kidding me?

At this point I have been calling him Josh for ummmm 9 years, we have a bunch of friends who have called him Josh for 3 years and just one day we have to start introducing him as Joshua?

I've been able to pull it off in business settings and most of the time I get it right in the blog because of the delete button. But in personal setting I give props to our friends who do call him Joshua even though right before it I call him Josh.

As far as I'm concerned this is a "Princess Consuela Banana Hammock" situation and I just am not going to be able to make the switch.

The First Book

So on the same day that I went to the library to get my "Trying Not to Get Stupid" book I also picked up 2 copies of Mere Christianity for Joshua and I to read together. Neither of us had read it so it seemed like it was about time to do that. While I was very disappointed with The Zero I am throuroughly enjoying my other book. Not just are the chapters a nice 5 or 6 page bite everyday, but I just love the perspective that C. S. Lewis brings to things I have heard my whole life.

I need to own this book because it seems like every chapter has something I want to underline.

Now some of you don't understand the weight that sentence really carries. I have this very strange (read weird) respect for book. I read them just barely open so I don't crease the spine and I never set drinks on them and a little part of me dies when one of you dog ear the pages. However, I want to mark this up so that I have a quick reference to the challenges and excellent points he makes.

So, instead of boring you with my critique of The Zero, a book that tried too hard and had to include an excerpt from a playboy interview to explain itself (yeah I'm not kidding, one of the "articles"), I thought I'd encourage you to challenge yourself with Mr. Lewis' take on the Christian life.

Let There Be Light

I know the picture is at night but the sheet coming down and the curtains going up has meant much brighter light in our living room during the day. I guess technically there is also more light streaming out of our house at night if we forget to close the curtains.

You know my favorite things about those curtains?

We took that fabric folded to Texas, had the half made curtains folded on the way back and they were all scrunched up right until we hung them-but we didn't have to iron them. All the creases just fell right out. They are magic curtains.

Curtains Are Coming

So while we were in Texas, I started making the curtains for our living room. I have had the fabric for six months but a couple of things I had to do before I could make them.

1. Get a sewing machine 2. Remind myself how to sew

To take care of those pesky details I got a sewing machine for Christmas and I took a worthless sewing class as a refresher in January. Really the only thing the class taught me was that my sewing machine sucks. Unfortunately by the time I discovered that our finances where in lock down in preparation for the European Adventure. That left me with really no options and a purple sheet still hung in front of our bay window.

On a side note: I do think that purple sheet helped with our home security while we were gone because who in their right mind is going to break in to a home with a sheet hung over the window. They are going to hit up the plantation shutter home and skip right on by us.

On returing from the trip we got a kick in the pants to finish decorating so out came the curtain dilemma again. Then the solution struck me, I can take the material home to Texas and sew it on my mom's machine. So that is why we went to Texas...to sew curtains. It had nothing to do with this. :)

After many adjustments and trials I have finally decided that I don't have a good enough grasp of physics to be creating my own curtain pattern just yet. They aren't going to be exactly what I had planned but they are going to look better than a purple sheet. I'll have some pictures next week of the living room in its new moving towards finished state for all to enjoy. Have a great weekend.

1 Sold

So while we were in Texas a woman in New Jersey bought one of our stained glass pieces from our etsy shop. We still are no where near recovering the costs of the ones that broke but I do think it is fun that our shop says "1 Sale."

Why TX?

So many people who have never lived in Texas don't understand the draw.

Drinks the size of your head...that's why we love it.

Photoessay: A Brief History of Lemon Bread

To those who will smile and laugh (you know who you are):

LEMON: The start and most important ingredient of the Felton tradition.

You have to squeeze as much juice as you can.

For those wondering - those are the hands of my wonderful mother-in-law. She is the "mother"(pun very much intended) of lemon bread. We know this delicacy originated in her childhood, but her memory is a bit fuzzy as to why. An interesting sidenote from the creator: saltine crackers can be used in lieu of bread.

To eliminate any doubts or suspicions you might be having about us "staging" this very real phenomenon.

The final step and pièce de résistance is munching down on all the lemons used, leaving nothing but peels.

With Family

We are in Texas for about a week visiting my family. You get away from Texas for a while and you forget how common things like this are.

My sister, Tawna, had a baby while we were away on our European adventure so we decided to head back down to Texas to visit BriLane. It just happened to work out that she and my parents were heading to Denton to visit my brother the same weekend we wanted to come down so it turned into a mini family reunion. It is very rare that we are all together so it has been a lot of fun.

For your enjoyment Joshua decided to document our trip to Chik-fil-a yesterday.

And finally...Brilane and her mom

Trying to Not Get Stupid

I've begun to notice how easy it is to stop learning. Unless you make yourself do it, you can never learn another thing in your life (except maybe who is supposedly cheating on who at the news stands). When I am crazy busy at work it is really hard for my brain to really think about anything at the end of the day, so I want to take this lull in strenuous work to be strenuous on my mind.

I have always loved to read but it has been a long time since I've had to write about what I read or have a real conversation that goes beyond, "yeah it was good." So...this is where you come in.

I'm going to try to write about a book I've read or documentary I have seen each week. I'll title it something obvious so you can skip it if that bores you or you can use it to get a few book or movie recommendations (or warnings). I might make an exception with a film that isn't a documentary but my goal is to do something studious every week.

So to begin that quest Joshua and I went to the library yesterday and I got my first book: The Zero by Jess Walter. Why that one you ask? It had a National Book Award seal on it and the premise sounds interesting. So we'll see how it goes.

Also, I think the first documentary I'm going to see is Motherland Afghanistan because it is only available until the 13th to watch instantly on Netflix.

Let me know if you have any recommendations on either the movie or book front because as you can tell I'm not being very scientific in my choices.

Wimbledon

Did you guys see that game yesterday?

It has been a long time since I have watched tennis and I forgot how stressful it is. It is really great for the first hour or so, but after that it starts wearing me out. It seems to me that tennis is one of the few sports where you can just as easily lose the game, as you can be beat. That right there is what makes me so nervous for the people playing. It can all come down to a mistake you will play in your head over and over again that cost you the game. Maybe its just me, but that feels like a lot of pressure.

After the second tie breaker in the 4th game, Josh and I took a break. Josh went out in the 90 degree weather with another Josh and actually played tennis while I went out with his wife shopping for stuff for our newly finished bathroom.

After that brief interlude (5 hours) we sat back down to finish the game because our friends have some version of Tivo. It looked like it was never going to end. I was secretly hoping the sun would set in London just to find out what would happen.

Then finally, literally 10 minutes before the sun was gone, it ended the way I was afraid it would. Federer lost the game. Nadal won by perservering but Federer hit the ball into the net and lost. It was painful to watch. You can tell it just killed Federer and the interviewers asking "Is it any consolation that your loss was still an amazing game of tennis and a record setting match here at Wimbledon?" were not helping one bit. I think if he hadn't just played 6 hours of strenuous tennis and was using what little energy he had left to keep the tears back, he would have punched one of them in the face.

The World with 2 Bathrooms

Today the plumbers came to finish out the two bathrooms that we have been slowly finishing (thank you Economic Stimulus check). I'm hoping this will lead to less talk around our house about the other's bathroom usage.

Since they left I have used our bedroom bathroom twice, just because I can. I'm kind of sad now because it is dark and neither of the new facilities have lights so now I'm banished to our regular bathroom for the rest of the night. Tomorrow we add lighting so we'll take pictures to show you all.

Scooter out on Loan

So we lent out our scooter to the first of many friends who say they might want to buy one. You can see his pictures here which totally crack me up. I don't know if he is going to run out and buy one tomorrow, but he did have a lot of fun.

We have loved our scooter for the last 2 years and are proud to say we got one right before the prices sky rocketed not only on gas, but on the scooter themselves. We still don't have an iPod but we smile and wave at all the SUVs when they pull up next to us at stoplights.