Slacking...

Sorry friends I'm totally slacking on the blog stuff lately. I'll try to get my stuff together soon, I promise. December has been a bit of a tough month for me. Holiday spirit all around makes not being with the person you want to celebrate life with even harder. But, that amazing man of mine sent me a 12 Days of Christmas present with a present for everyday leading up to Christmas. He knew this month would be especially tough for us, and his thoughtfulness and love shines through in each little gift. It's a daily reminder of what a special person I've found.

I hope that everyone's week is off to a good start. I just have this week to get through then I've got two weeks off (kinda... I'll be working remotely some days)- a week at home and a week with my guy. Happy Monday y'all.

Borrow My Heart

won't you borrow my heart

take it love as long as you need

won't you borrow my heart

and don't you ever give it back to me

I absolutely love the TV show Nashville. Country music based drama set in Nashville... That is right up my alley. The music from the show can be hit or miss (in my opinion) but this song from last week's "Two Sides To Every Story" is amazing. Up beat and a bit bluegrass-y "Borrow My Heart" even appealed to my boyfriend who admittedly does not like country music. Unfortunately, for some reason ABC has not yet released this song to iTunes- which makes me very sad.

If you're a fan of the show, be sure to catch the winter season finale tonight!

And link up with Helene to share what you've been listening to lately.

NYE Dress Debate

New Year's Eve can be one of those hit or miss occasions. It generally gets very hyped up and something ends up going wrong. This year, A and I have the same goal- spend it together and don't worry about anything else. We've already booked ourselves a hotel in Columbus and made dinner reservations at a fancy restaurant in town. I'm sure we will have friends out and about or even hosting parties in their homes but we will figure all that business out later.

What I am worried about at the moment... which dress do I wear? I ordered two options from ModCloth and here they are (disclaimer.... I am NOT a fashion blogger, I'm not used to this picture taking business):

[one]

The Giving Legend Dress- This dress is classy and the little flared skirt at the bottom makes it different than any other dress in my closet. The fit is not bad- I might have actually been alright in a small on this one- but it have room in it to be comfortable when I've got that fancy dinner and wine in my belly. Ideally I would like to style this with matte black tights and electric blue heels to play off the blue in the dress.

[two]

The Ruby Blooms Dress- This dress does not leave much to the imagination. It is slinky, and sexy in red. I love the big keyhole detail in the back. I do not have a red dress in my closet yet, which was one of the reasons I purchased it. I think the would make a great holiday party/New Year's dress, maybe even Valentine's day too. But I feel like it's options for repeated wear might be a bit more limited that the dress above (unless I'm planning a trip to Vegas anytime soon). I think I would pair this one with black tights and black heels as I have in the picture.

So what do you guys think... which one should I wear for NYE?

Meatloaf Dinner

Another weekend down... Only two full work weeks until a little Christmas and New Year's time away!

I was nice and lazy this weekend. Friday I spent the evening with friends- hanging around and chatting about life. Call me lame, but it was my kind of night. I would choose a night of lounging on a friends couch (likely not wearing real pants) than a night out at a crowded bar almost any day.

Despite a killer headache for most of the day Saturday I did manage to get my butt to the grocery store and Target... I also made a stop by the brand new CVS that just opened up on the corner near me where I picked up a few make up essentials and some new lip products to test out- maybe I'll tell you about them sometime later this week.

I also cooked myself up a delicious meatloaf dinner which I would love to share with you all today. My mom has been making this recipe for years, and it is just plain yummy. I promise, you will not be disappointed.

Meatloaf:
1.5lbs 90% lean ground beef (I actually just used 1lb and it worked just fine)
1 cup tomato juice (I use the 8oz cans of Hunts)
3/4 cup Quaker oats
1 egg
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Sauce:
1/3 cup ketchup
3 tablespoons brown sugar
2 teaspoons yellow mustard

Directions:
Heat oven to 350. In large bowl combine all meatloaf ingredients (lightly beat the egg before adding it to the mixture). Once you've got all your meatloaf ingredients in the bowl, get your hands in there and mix it all together. Once mixed, form in to a loaf and place in baking pan (you can also cook this in a loaf pan 8 X 4 will work). In a separate bowl combine your sauce ingredients. Mix together thoroughly then pour over the loaf. Bake for 1 hour. Let stand for about 5 minutes and drain off any juices before serving.

I served mine with roasted asparagus and a baked potato.

Let me know if you guys test this recipe out!

A Late Friday Five

Considering I was not at work for an entire week last week, this week went pretty dang fast- and I am certainly not complaining about that! Here's five things that are on my brain this Friday!

[one]
I took zero pictures over my Thanksgiving week in WV/MO so I won't do a blog recap... but A and I had an amazing week together. Sometimes it feels like my "real life", my day-to-day here in Dallas is not "real life". It's this weird intermediary portion of my life that I am just getting through until I get to be in the same place as that crazy wonderful man.

[two]
My absolute favorite beauty vlogger is doing #vlogmas this year and I love it. Ingrid is an inspiration both personally and professionally (and let's be really I just want to be friends with her in real life). Yesterday's video was extremely real- the girl was having a rough day- and I so appreciate that she can be so open with her audience.

[three]
I've been doing some serious Christmas shopping online lately all thanks to many wonderful bloggers suggestions via the #FavoriteThings2014 posts. I wish I could post all the cool stuff I've gotten, but then my friends and family would know what's coming to them! Go check out everyone's posts via April, Elise, Katie, and Zelle the amazing hosts.

[four]
#selfie because #TGIF- I posted this this morning just because... Follow me on instagram ashleycan04, and we can be friends

[five]
I am a really bad blogger if I don't pre-write most of my posts over the weekend. I am writing this in real time because I was too lazy to write it last night (and last weekend was stolen by my love... #sorryimnotsorry). Forgive me?

Long Distance Love

By now you are all fully aware that my boyfriend, A, and I are in a long distance relationship. And it is not an easy thing. Now that I am back in Dallas and won't be seeing A until after Christmas... Today I thought I would talk a little bit about a few of the basic things that we do to make it just a little bit easier:

1. FaceTime: Thank goodness for FaceTime y'all! It makes a world of difference to be able to come home from a long day of work and see A's face while I am talking to him. Long distance love relies heavily on our ability to communicate with one another; and talking on the phone is great but when you can see the person's face it is much easier to interpret and understand what they are telling you. Many a miscommunication is avoided with the help of FaceTime.

2. Snapchat: This goes along the same lines of everything said above, but I love to send and receive little snapshots throughout the day.

3. Watching Movies/TV Shows Together: Again- thank you to FaceTime for allowing us to do this but... just because we live 1500 miles apart, doesn't mean we can't have shared experiences. We have a number of TV shows that we both watch and we will often make an effort to watch them together. These mini-date nights allow us a break from normal conversation and let us veg out while watching the same show/movie. Only bummer about this--- cuddling not included =(

4. VISIT: We see each other as much as possible, of course. For us, it has been averaging out to about once a month. We are diligent about spacing out our visits to make the most of both our time and money. But we can talk more about these visits in another post. And best of all, I get to see him for Thanksgiving in just two short days!

Long distance love takes patience (something I do not have much of) and trust. It is a challenge every day, but when you've got the right person on the other end of the phone each day, it is a challenge that is MORE THAN worth it.

November Goal Recap & December Goals

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A few weeks ago I posted about my November Goals so today I'll check in with how I did and some new goals for the month of December.

• Bring my lunch to work 4 out of 5 weekdays
• I'm gonna give myself a YELLOW on this one. I think I did a pretty good job but didn't meet the goal entirely. Definitely improvement from the past though, so this one is going to remain on my list for the month of December.
• No furniture purchases for the month of November
• GREEN! I did not purchase any furniture this month- although I was very tempted to make a trip to Ikea at one point. I am not going to reward myself with one new piece though, because I think that last minute plane ticket I bought last week negates some of the work I was trying to do here.
• Go to spin twice per week
• RED. Complete fail. I wasn't even close to completing this one. Heading to the gym after work has been tough for me... When I get done for the day, my couch is calling my name! Do you guys know the feeling?

Alright so some new goals for December...

• Complete all my Christmas shopping before I fly home for Christmas.
• Considering I fly home for Christmas on the 23rd, this one is kind of necessary... This will likely mean doing lots of shopping online and having things shipped to my parents house in CA.
• Try three new restaurants in Dallas.
• I get in that habit of going to all the same places, and in the weekends I get in the habit of sitting on my butt. This is my incentive to call up some friends and go somewhere new!
• Bring my lunch to work 4 out of 5 weekdays.
• Like I said, this one is going to continue... I feel really good about myself and the way I'm eating when I bring my lunch and eat dinner at home rather than picking up fast food (duh!). 

There are some other things I would like to do in addition to these things (hello gym, let's find a way to be friends!) but I find that life is better when I don't over commit myself. 

What are you all trying to accomplish this month?

How I Keep Up With The Blog World

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. I can't wait to share mine, but as I've just flown back from Missouri yesterday, it will take me some time to get that recap together- plus last week was HEAVY on the personal content and as exciting as my life is for me it might not be quite as exciting for you guys to read about constantly! Instead today I am sharing one of the ways that I keep up with the blog world.

I stopped blogging right around the time that Google Reader was being discontinued. Unfortunately, when I stopped blogging, I also stopped reading (for the most part). Keeping up with school work, new friends, and a new city did not allow much time for playing in the blog space.

Replace that book with my computer and this is me trying to keep up with blogs.
Photo Credit

When GoogleReader disappeared, I lost all those subscriptions... so when I wanted to start reading again a few months ago, I had to go back and find all the blogs I used to read and start my list from scratch. Now, I like to have all my blogs in one spot- which was why I loved Google Reader- so what in the world was I going to do without it?!

The first way to do this is of course- Bloglovin'. I love Bloglovin' for finding and following amazing blogs, but my poor little computer gets overwhelmed sometimes when it needs to load a new page every time I move to a new post (this computer is on its last leg guys...)

So I wanted something where I could scroll through full posts all on one page. A quick search around the inter-webs and I found The Old Reader. Maybe I am late to the party and this is a well known fact... but y'all it's as if Google Reader never left me. I added my subscriptions back in and BOOM it's all there, in one convenient spot, for me to catch up on day after day.

Example of my OldReader feed (yes that is my own blog post...)

Follow me on Bloglovin' if you want to (then I know you're reading and I can come check you out!)- but you're also more than welcome to just copy my URL up there and add it in to your Old Reader feed.

Just tryin' to make your lives easier =)

Let me know if there is something else out there that is equally awesome that y'all use to get your daily dose of your favorite bloggers.