Five Years

Five years ago (as of August 1st), I started my very first post-college job.

Five years later...I'm still here! 

So, to memorialize my five years here at the Texas Department of Banking, here are five random facts about my job.

1. I love the people that I work with. It takes a special type of person to be able to do what we do, travel as much as we do, and still remain relatively sane. We work together, travel together, eat together, and laugh together. We all know way too much about everyone we work with, and we're almost like a little family. If/when I leave, I'll miss the people the most, hands down.
2. My most favorite part about my job is training new employees. There's just something about teaching something someone and then seeing them utilize their new found knowledge. It makes me so proud when someone else asks them a question and they're able to answer it. Love it.
3. When I first started this job, I thought it was so cool traveling around from bank to bank and staying at various hotels in small towns. Five years later...I'm not going to lie, it gets a little old. Sometimes I hate that I know my way around towns like Sherman, Tyler, Mount Pleasant, Paris, and Longview. This job would definitely be cooler if we got to go to places like New York or Chicago. But if you ever find yourself traveling to a small town in the North Texas region, chances are, I can tell you where you can go to get a decent bite to eat. Oh, and I know a little bit about Washington, DC. When the Department does let us travel outside of Texas, it's usually to DC, but only because the FDIC training center is there.
4. Having every other Friday off rocks my socks. If/when I leave, it's going to be excruciatingly difficult to adjust to a five day work week. Also, I have more vacation and sick time than I know what to do with. And each month, the State throws more vaca and sick time my way. It's pretty awesome.
5.  For the past five years, I have bought every single person in my office a birthday card each year. On average, we have 25 employees in our office. At $3 to $5 per birthday card, that adds up to a lot of moolah. I've also been known to bake or buy cupcakes/cookies for someone's birthday. What can I say, it's my way of improving office morale. I like to think it works.

Working as a bank examiner has been interesting. Most times, people don't understand what you do. And when you try to explain it to them, their eyes glaze over within five seconds. It's not exactly an exciting job, and bankers aren't exactly thrilled to see us each week. But it has definitely been a good job to have. I've learned a lot, both about banking and about myself. I've made a lot of good friends, and if it weren't for this job, I would never have met my husband! All in all, it's been a great five years!

And, as a token of the Department's appreciation for my dedication and hard work, I got this:

A certificate of service...signed by the commissioner himself (I think it needs a new frame).

And I chose this as my five year gift - the Pyramid of Success. I was given a list of options to choose from, and I couldn't really tell what this was, so I picked it. ha! It's actually kinda cool, and I have it displayed proudly on my desk in my little cubicle at the office.

Who knows where I'll be in another five years, but if I could do the past five years over again, I wouldn't change a thing.

Life Planning

Today, the FedEx man brought me something I've been waiting for all month...

 Inside this beautiful box was...my life planner!

Allow me to explain. About a month ago, my friend, Nicole, posted a Plum District deal on Facebook. Plum District is kind of like Groupon and Living Social, but their deals cater to women - moms in particular. The deal that Nicole posted was $25 for $50 towards anything on Erin Condren's website. I'd never heard of Erin Condren, so I went over to her site to check it out. And I instantly fell in love. The fun designs, cheerful colors, and organization overload, had me at hello! More specifically, I LOVED the life planners. For the past year or so, I've been trying to go "green" and use my iPhone instead of a paper planner to keep track of everything in my life (not that there's a whole lot going on). Using my iPhone has been working fine, but there's just something about writing everything down, and seeing everything right in front of you. And color-coding things. Oh, how I love color coding things. So when I saw the life planner, I knew I had to have one.

The hardest part was choosing which design to get! I settled on the Fleur Feliz in Splash. I got to personalize it with whatever I wanted (I chose my name), and even opted for the two personalized notepads (which match my Life Planner, obviously). 

Now, I haven't started using it yet, and I'm not positive that this life planner is any different than a regular At-A-Glance DayMinder that you can get at any office supply store, but it sure does look better than anything you could pick up at Office Max.

There are tabs for each month, and the planner is organized by each week of the month. There are spots to add to-do's for the week, as well as weekly goals that you set for yourself.

There's also a couple of blank pages before each month.

Towards the back, there's more blank pages for notes.

And at the very back of the planner, there's a couple of folder pockets and a zipper pouch!

Talk about organization station! They even threw in a couple of freebies.

Personalized stickers and gift tags!

I can't wait to start using my life planner! If you're like me, and you love planning and color-coding things, this life planner might just be for you!

*This was not a paid endorsement. I'm just way too excited about a planner, and I wanted to share it with you guys!

Casey Turns 2!

Yesterday, our sweet pup turned 2! Last year, I took her to Three Dog Bakery in Plano to celebrate. So, this year, I took her back! Except, this time, we went to the one in Southlake since it's closer.

Where are we going??

Happy girl after the bakery!

 

Casey got a new bone, some "chocolate" chip cookies, and a pupcake!

Birthday bone!

She thought everyone was out to get her bone!

Here she is with the pupcake.

She loves those things! Happy 2nd birthday, Casey girl!!

Summer Vacation Project No. 2: Sewing Extravaganza!

For my birthday this past March, I asked David to get me this:

But, sadly, I haven't really had time to use it. In April, I found some fabric at Hancock Fabrics for $5.99 a yard!! So I made curtains for the dining room...but, I didn't use my sewing machine. I used the no-sew method described here. Easy peasy. Best of all, the curtains cost me $18! Wooo hoo! I also made a table runner out of coordinating fabric using the same method.

Well, I ordered a third coordinating fabric with the hopes of making a seat cushion for our window in the kitchen. Here's the three fabrics:

One day, I'm going to find the courage to tackle that project and we'll have a seat cushion made out of that striped fabric. But for now, I'm sticking to the less intimidating projects. Like making pillows. ha! Really, it's not hard to sew four straight lines. It took me less than an hour to make these two pillows using leftover fabric.

My friend, Melissa, came over last night to sew! She bought this little baby sewing machine from a friend of hers, and has never sewn before. Ever. And somehow, she trusted me to teach her! 

 Our original plan was for me to show her how to make pillows. But then, I came across this tutorial for making pacifier pockets! And it seemed easy enough, so we decided to make those instead. Famous last words...

Melissa came over a little after 6 and we had dinner. Then we started our sewing project around 7. Fast forward FOUR HOURS and we had these:

Melissa's pacifier pocket.

My pacifier pocket.

We may have underestimated the time it took to cut out the fabric from the patterns. And the interfacing. And then sew the whole dang thing together. It probably wouldn't have taken us so long if: 1) we knew what "cut on fold" means, 2) Melissa's baby machine's foot pedal worked the whole time, and 3) if we knew how to turn that teeny tiny strap right side out. Not to mention that this pacifier pocket is like four inches tall and three inches wide, making it VERY difficult to maneuver with the sewing machine. Long story short? I probably won't be making another pacifier pouch, so this really is a one-of-a-kind item. But I'm so proud of Melissa! This was her very first sewing machine project, and she did so well!!! Yes, it was a little bit of a frustrating project, and there were the occasional cuss-fests, but we persevered and did it!

Needless to say, I'm a little terrified to start my seat cushion project now. But at least that will be all straight lines and will be like 90 inches long and 24 inches wide. Should be easier to maneuver...maybe.

Summer Vacation Project No. 1: Wedding Signs

A friend of mine from work, Shelby, is getting married on August 20th! Well, let me back up and give you a little history. When I first started working at the DOB, there were three other girls in my office that I quickly became friends with - Shelby, April, and Melissa. Well, Melissa moved to Houston and transferred to our DOB office down there about three years ago (maybe four? I can't remember). And April resigned about a year ago. :( So that left just me and Shelby in the Arlington office (and out of our office of approximately 20 examiners, there were only 4 girls, including us! So sad.). Well, Melissa moved back to the Dallas area last month, and she came back to our office! So, since the four of us have remained close, we try to get together for dinner every now and again. Which is actually harder than it should be since: 1) we travel out of town for work a lot, 2) April lives in Wylie, 3) Shelby lives in Grapevine/Trophy Club, and 4) Melissa and I live in Arlington/Grand Prairie. We always get together around Christmas for dinner, and then throughout the year, when our schedules come together, we schedule dinner!

Okay, so Shelby is getting married August 20th!! So the four of us decided to get together for dinner to see Melissa's new house and make wedding signs for Shelby. She was kind of going for the vintagey-chic look, so I started googling around to see how we could accomplish the crackle-finish on her painted signs. I figured we'd just crackle the paint and then use an Exacto knife to carefully cut out the wording she wanted and Mod Podge it to the signs. Easy enough, right? Well, that's when I came across this website. Use iron-on transfer paper for the signs?? That would be so much easier! Done! And I found this website that claimed that Elmer's glue would give us the crackled paint finish we wanted. Okay, so spoiler alert: One of these techniques worked amazingly well, and the other was an epic failure. So here's what we did:

These are our supplies: base color acrylic craft paint (black), top color acrylic craft paint (white), Elmer's glue, foam brushes.

Using your base color, paint the wood and let dry completely.

Then, brush on the Elmer's glue - not too thick, but not so thin that it dries immediately.

Then, when the glue starts to dry and get "tacky", you'll want to brush on your top coat of paint. The glue will kind of bubble when it starts to dry and just use your finger to see if it's tacky - you want it to be sticky, not gloppy like wet glue. When you brush on your top coat of paint over the glue, brush it on in one direction and try not to go over the glue over and over again. Just one coat should do ya. When the paint and the glue start to dry, you'll see it start to crackle, and you should be left with something like this!

Crackled paint!

Success! So, as you can see, Elmer's glue + acrylic craft paint = crackled paint success! Which leads me to the epic failure...iron on transfer paper to add print to the signs. I didn't even take a picture. They looked pretty terrible. We tried it on three of the small signs, and the text transferred blurry and weird for some reason. So I painted over them. April's going to use her Cricut to cut out vinyl lettering for them instead. So the painted signs will sit until April mails me the vinyl lettering (you know, since she lives all the way in Wylie). Oh well, live and learn! I still need to get some sandpaper and sand the edges, so they look more weathered, but I think they turned out really well!

4th of July Weekend

Our two week vacation from work started this past weekend! We don't have any real plans to do anything, except NOT go to work. Ha! We started our weekend on Saturday with a July 2nd shrimp boil at our house. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures, and our neighbor hasn't posted any (yet?), so I couldn't steal any from him. I did, however, steal this picture from Amy's facebook. We had two of the cutest little girls at our shrimp boil - Katie and Vaughn! Aren't they adorable in their red, white, and blue???

We boiled about 4 pounds of shrimp, 2 pounds of potatoes, and 7 ears of corn. We also grilled about 25 chicken drumsticks. I was secretly hoping that we'd have a ton of leftovers that we could eat throughout the week, but, we were only left with about 8 drumsticks! Bummer! Oh well. I guess that means the food was good! I also made fruit salsa and cinnamon chips, which apparently was a huge hit! I used strawberries, mango, kiwi, pineapple, and blueberries - sprinkled with just a bit of sugar and cinnamon. Delicious and refreshing!

On Sunday, we drove out to Argyle to Clay's mom's house to go swimming! It was about 100+ degrees outside...and the pool was a nice and cool 90 degrees. Haha! Clay had driven up from Austin the day before with his new girlfriend, Andrea. And she brought with her the most delicious homemade enchiladas, rice, beans, and HOT salsa! Everything was SO good!! I may or may not have eaten two plates of everything...

On Monday, the 4th, we hung around the house being lazy and then we went to the Ranger's game with our friends, David and Krissy. We stopped at Sherlock's first for a bite to eat and a couple of drinks. When the waitress informed us that they had Strawberry Malibu snow cones for sale, we just had to try one.

DELICIOUS. So good. It would have been even better if we could have taken it with us to the ballpark, though. ha! Luckily for us, we snuck onto the Lexus club level at the ballpark and got into the air conditioned Irish pub. We sat in there until about the top of the third inning, when the sun started to set.

After watching the Rangers soundly defeat the Orioles, we stuck around for the fireworks show!

The show seemed a little short, but I'm assuming that has something to do with the down economy and budget cuts. ha! Nevertheless, it was fun! And here's a fun fact - fireworks were first used to celebrate the 4th of July in 1777!! Who knew! They actually first used fireworks on July 8, 1776, but that technically isn't the 4th of July. :)

Last, but certainly not least, I made a 4th of July wreath for our front door! I found this one on Pinterest and LOVED it, but the girl made hers by cutting out over 500 felt stars. I'm sure that took FOREVER. So, I cheated and just cut 3 inch by 3 inch squares. Same thing only different once you cram them onto the wreath!

Hope you guys had a wonderful 4th of July!!

Texas Travels: White Oak, Texas

Yes, another Texas Travels blog post! I haven't had a stay-out in quite some time. Well, that's actually a lie now that I'm looking at my work schedule. I was out of town in May in a tiny town called Cooper, staying in another tiny town called Paris (as in Paris, Texas...don't be ridiculous. The State of Texas is going through a budget crisis, we can't afford to be gallivanting through France). Anyhow, this week I'm working in White Oak, Texas. Where is White Oak, you ask? I couldn't really even begin to tell you. I didn't drive out here. All I know is that I'm about 15 minutes away from Longview. I couldn't even tell you if I'm north, east, south, or west of Longview. But after doing a quick Google Maps search, it turns out White Oak is west of Longview. 

So what is White Oak known for? From the looks of it, nothing. I kid, I kid. But in all seriousness, I don't think White Oak is known for anything. Their official website tells me that the town is located 125 miles east of Dallas, has a population of approximately 5,600 people, and hosts something called the White Oak Roughneck Day Festival (I don't think I want to know what that is). Pretty much all I know about White Oak is that there is a state bank out here with THE biggest flagpole I have ever seen in my life. 

Truth be told, I didn't mind coming out to the middle of nowhere. Want to know why? It may sound ridiculous, but I was a little bit giddy knowing that I was scheduled to come out to the East Texas area...because of the food. Yes, the food. You see, on this job, we go to these small towns that we normally would probably never have gone to. And we get to sample the local cuisine. Now, White Oak doesn't have much to offer as far as local cuisine, but Longview...there's plenty in Longview. Such as...

Jucy's Hamburgers

Amazingly delicious hamburgers with patties bigger than the buns. The burger patties are so "jucy" that they literally fall apart and practically melt in your mouth. Avoid this place if you're on a diet. Everything in moderation, people.

Dudley's Cajun Cafe

Pretty decent Cajun seafood. I had the fried catfish, which came with more fries than I knew what to do with. If you go to Dudley's, you need to accept their offer for complimentary coleslaw before your meal. So good.

Random Sidenote: I took this picture at Dudley's - a basket FULL of saltine crackers. It reminded me of some of my coworker friends. While we were in Cooper, a few of us attempted the "eat 5 saltines in a minute" challenge. Have you ever tried it? Don't. Shelby opted for the 2-crackers-at-a-time technique. She realized her mistake after the first bite. Patrick also tried this technique and he ended up spitting cracker all over his sleeve. I was laughing too hard at the both of them to even finish one cracker. Epic fail.

Pizza King

Delicious, delicious pizza. Oh, so tasty.

Now these aren't the fanciest of dining establishments, by any stretch of the imagination. But they do serve some of the best food around. And, of course, no trip to East Texas is complete without a stop at the Country Tavern in Kilgore for some of the best ribs around!

Lastly, I just had to share this picture. This was my favorite part of the bank. And yes, I took my phone to the bathroom - that's what I call dedication to blogging.