Synergy Organic Juice Bar & Cafe: Satisfying the Inner Hippie

Being a vegetarian in the heart of the south is not easy. It's frowned upon. And if you also happen to like healthy food? Whoa! That's pretty much a major character flaw. Needless to say, it can be hard to find something to eat at restaurants.

A 2013 Public Policy Polling survey found 13% of Americans identify as vegetarian.  A 2012 Gallup poll found 5% of Americans identify as vegetarian. A 2008 Harris Interactive poll found that 10% of adults largely follow a vegetarian-inclined diet.

I'm not sure which statistic is true.  Whatever it is, I'm sure that 99% of those vegetarians live outside of the deep south.

Which leads me to Synergy Organic Juice Bar and Cafe in downtown Fort Walton Beach. It's a little piece of paradise if you ask me. They do serve meat dishes, but they also have a vegetarian option for any of them. Their tempeh is great. You can even get a BBQ sandwich....yeaaaaah.

I had this yummy black bean burger for lunch today...

So if you are looking for a delicious and nutritious meal on the Emerald Coast head on down to Synergy - you will love it. It definitely satisfies the inner food hippie in me.

Apparently my inner hippie stops at food because based on this test I'm only 3% hippie. No real surprise there. What's your hippie rating?

The Salty Sailfish

I'm terrible at naming things. If I had a dog I would probably just name him Spot.

Confession: We had to ask our facebook friends to help us name our child. (Thanks, Ariel.)  :)

So when I needed to name my house I turned to my mama. She calls me when she needs left-brained help. I call her when I need right-brained help because I'm not even sure I have any gray matter over there.

If you've seen my house you  might be wondering why I wanted to name it since it's no mansion. And if you live here  you're probably wondering as well because people don't name their beach houses here. (I guess because we are not allowed to rent them on this sweet, little, crazy island.) But whatever. I think every beach house should have a name.

With that said let me introduce you to...

This photo is just a picture that the artist snapped and sent to me. I'm going to have it made into a sign and put it up somewhere. Project #547 for a rainy day.

If you were going to name your house, what would it be?

This happened.

My day was kinda crazy. I went on this marathon shopping trip to Dollar Tree, Home Depot, Sam's, and Wal-Mart. With my four year old. If that can't make you crazy I don't know what can.

While I was in Wal-Mart I saw this mama give her 10-ish year old daughter "the look" and loudly snarl, "DON'T ruin my trip to Wal-Mart!"  I understood the snarl. But did that woman really expect something wonderful to come from a trip to Wal-Mart? Crazy.

Then I had a photo session tonight. And the family...crazy.  I'm kidding. Totally kidding. They were rather perfect, actually.

I was getting a shot of the siblings, and the dad was standing just behind me. The kids started laughing like something was up, and I thought maybe he was giving me bunny ears or something to crack them up. Whatever it takes, right? But then the daughter gasped.

At that point I had to turn around and see what was going on. Lo and behold there was a gorilla on the beach!

It appeared to be a friendly gorilla, so we went on with the photo session.

After the session I wandered down the beach to check out the gorilla. It turns out the gorilla is eight years old and named Samantha. She was quite hungry for some bananas, but I couldn't help her out with that.

 Then I heard people saying we had just missed the flame tricks. This guy was nice enough to do them again so a little crowd of us could see what we missed.

As I was clicking away I noticed a blur in the background, and realized it was THE GORILLA. Two things I didn't expect to see on the beach tonight...all in one frame. That happened!

Bathroom: Before & After

One of the best things about Pinterest is finding projects for you husband to do. Because every guy needs a few more things on his to do list, right?

I wish we could do a complete overhaul on our room and bathroom to create more closet space, but that is not really in the cards right now. We did take the carpet and vinyl out of the bathroom and put in tile. This is the before pic...

Brian also replaced the faucets, made some shelves and put a pretty border around the mirror to break it up some. After all, I can only handle so much refection at 6:00 a.m.  We are not really sure what to do with the lights since they are now not spaced evenly, but I guess we will figure that out one of these days.

You can't really see it well in the photo, but on the left wall under the picture we put up a piece of wood with pegs all along it for hanging towels, swimsuits, etc.  I'm loving that!

Now if I'm keeping it real...this mess of a closet is what you would see if you were to turn around. Whoever invented sliding closet doors should be locked up in a tiny jail cell with other people who invent awful things...like that hard, sealed plastic packaging that is impossible to open without coming close to losing a finger. Or the person who invented those stickers that make it impossible to open a DVD.

So anyway, these doors just won't stay on track, so they have been leaning up against the wall for about  10 months.

I was all excited when I found this solution on Pinterest (below) and thought I would do (or have Brian do) something similar minus the barn-like hinges. But apparently we can't do this because we don't have the right kind of door jambs or something.

So...what to do. What to do? I'm tired of these leaning doors in my way people so please give me some ideas.   :)

Life with a Wild Thing

When I was pregnant with Cole and found out we were going to have a boy I prayed that he would be "all boy." A little boy splashing through puddles, digging in the dirt, and riding tractors is what I envisioned.

I'm pretty sure God said, "Sure thing!" and double dipped Cole in the boy bucket. Then I think He chuckled and dipped him a third time.

On plenty of occasions I have had someone say to me, "You've got yourself a B.O.Y.!"

Of course when I was dreaming of what my boy would be like, I didn't really foresee the filthy walls, the mountain of crumbs that pile up under my table nightly, or the unique places he can find to relieve himself when using the bathroom seems way too boring. But I loooove my boy and wouldn't change a thing about him.

Tuesday morning I grabbed my little, wild thing and we set off for our first kayaking trip together in the sound. We paddled, we watched the ducks waddle along the bank, and we talked about currents.

My boy was so calm, and I was so thankful that he had not tipped us over in one of his bursts of energy that he normally has about every 10.5 seconds.

I asked, "Cole, how do you like kayaking?"

He paused for a moment and said, "Well...Mama...How do you make this thing pop a wheelie?"

That's my boy.

No Pain, No Gain!

We spend a good bit of time in our front yard fighting pirates, kicking balls, and making our way to the hammock. Being that our front yard consists entirely of sand - this translates into at least 547 pounds of sand being carried inside each week. Since sweeping is not my favorite activity I thought I should make a walkway to go around the yard. My neighbor has a walkway that she made with a mold, and she was sweet enough to let me borrow it.

I was up bright and early Saturday morning and determined to use every last bag of concrete that Brian was able to load into his truck. I had hired someone to mix batches of concrete while I filled the mold/rinsed/repeated. If you know me, you know that once I make up my mind to do something I want it done yesterday. I worked hard. Although I did wear gloves, the tips would break and concrete got under my nails. Because I didn't want to stop working, by the end of the day I had dried concrete solidly embedded under my nails and in my nail beds. And if you have worked with concrete (I had not) then you know that concrete burns your skin if left on there. Painful.

After five hours of work we had made 38 2'x2' molds.

My neighbor has tons of fun things embedded in her stones, so I decided to do that also. She gave me some things to get started with - I told you she's sweet. I also found a metal "4" that I decided to use since Cole just turned four. I added other things like an old measuring spoon from a set that my mama used forever and then gave to me, a lens cap, a fish hook, etc.

I also wrote our names and the name of the woman who owned the house and lived in it for almost all of the years since it was built in the 70s.

The bad news is that I still need more work done, and the guy who was helping me yesterday did not show up today. No surprise there because his fingers were at least as bad as mine. Maybe he will come back eventually!

If you decide you would like a cute, little walkway - here is a link to the mold. And be sure to get some heavy duty gloves and wash your hands OFTEN! 

And most importantly - if you need help with it - please don't call me. I'm pretty sure I will be busy washing my hair that day.

Girl Power

Back in March we had a bad storm one morning. After hearing a lot of crashing noises I looked out our back window and saw some outdoor shelves lift up and fly down our stairs into the pool gate. The meteorologists called what happened a microburst. I would have sworn we had some kind of small tornado. When it was over our pool deck was separated from the pool in many areas. Some frames (from bee hives) that Brian had on the ground were up on our second story deck. We also had major roof damage with shingles littering our yard and street.

Which leads us to...a new roof. I woke up this morning and sent Brian a message that said, "Call Africa and tell them to come get the herd of elephants off our roof." The roofers were up and at it before 7:00. When I walked outside I have to admit I was a little shocked to see a girl on the roof. I know, I know...girls can do these jobs. I once had a tough job myself when I owned a decorative concrete business. But I still smiled and thought: Girl Power!  :)
 
So here's superwoman up on the highest part of our roof gettin' it done...

I'll leave you with this...sorry.

Did you hear the joke about the roof?
Awww, never mind... It's over your head!