Month: March 2016

Put a Lil’ Spring in Your Step (and wardrobe…and face….)

The Appalachian BarbieLeave a comment

Is anyone else ready for spring??  

As much as I love snow and winter and warm nights bundled up in front of the fireplace, I’m more than ready for some fresh air and sunshine and, more importantly, some fresh new looks in the wardrobe and makeup department.  Starting with the tips of my fingers, I’ve brightened up my nail game with the new OPI New Orleans collection. Currently I’m rocking “She’s a Bad Muffeletta,” and last time I got “Got Myself in a Jam-balaya.”  Both are perfect pinks on different ends of the spectrum.

I’ve also lightened up my makeup, going lighter under my eyes and brighter on my lips.   

 
“Amplified” by MAC is the perfect almost matte lip.  It stays all day without being too dry.

  
I’m a coral girl through and through.  I LOVE this shade, from the more orange version (above) to the more pink end of the spectrum, it’s such a complimentary color on everyone.  And looks even better with a tan, which I desperately need.  (Lips above are a blend of MAC’s ” Morange” and “Saigon Summer.”). 

I found these amazing Ann Taylor pants at a consignment store brand new, with the tags still attached for $10.  Yet again, with a tan, they would look infinitely better.  (Have I mentioned this is the palest I’ve ever been?)

   

MAC “Viva Glam Nicki” matches this blouse perrrrrfectly.  Highliter on the cheeks for some glow and you’ve got a look that’s totally fresh.

Finally, we celebrated Easter this past weekend at the river. Or as I like to call it, “Annual Big Hat Day.”  You’ll never catch me without MY Easter bonnet on Sunday!  

  

  
This dress looks silver or white but it was in fact pale pink and black.  (Judging by this pic, the love of coral is hereditary).

  
I felt like Julia Roberts in “pretty woman” in this get-up.  It seems wrong to feel like a whore on Easter.  

I hope everyone is enjoying the warmer weather and lightening up your own lives.  Summer is right around the corner!  What are your favorite looks for spring?

Life Changes and Yummy Grub

The Appalachian Barbie5 Comments

Over the past month and a half I have been trying to get acclimated to a new schedule and a totally new lifestyle.  That’s right folks, the Appalachian Barbie has hung up her bar towel and joined the forces in the 9-5 grind.  I love it.  Do I love the pay cut I took doing this?  No way!  But I never believed the old saying “You can’t put a price on happiness” until I was forced out of my comfort zone  and had to do it.  My life within the service industry became like living in an abusive relationship.  The good shifts seemed REALLY good, but that was only because they were far outweighed by the crappy ones and, like most abusive relationships, I didn’t realize just how miserable I was until I was finally out.  I am by no means knocking jobs within the service industry.  It is KILLER money, there are great people who do it, the hours are flexible and your job is never boring.  But for me personally I couldn’t take it anymore.  I could no longer work at a job where I had to be “on” the entire time.  In my defense, I have a natural resting bitch face, and it is 10x worse when I am actually in a bad mood. I am a person who cannot hide their emotions, and if one more person said to me “WHY DONT YOU SMILE?  YOUD BE A REAL PURTY GIRL IF YOU SMILED MORE,” when all I was doing was pouring a beer and thinking, I was going to pull my hair out.  Realistically people don’t just walk around smiling for no reason. They would look crazy! Anyway, I digress, it was a case of right place right time, and now I have my own cute little office and no one bothers me and, as of right now, not one person has asked me to smile more.  And that alone is enough to make me smile more 🙂

Along with this new job comes a totally different lifestyle.  Tending bar meant going IN to work at 9p and getting home at 4a.  I would sleep until noon then have all day to run errands, gym and cook.  Even in my last job where we closed at 10p, I wouldn’t get home til midnight and most days didn’t have to be back until 4p. These days I wake up at 5:45a, get ready, take dogs out, cook breakfast and STILL am 5 mins late for my 8a call time.  I finally have weekends off and I have been filling them by joining as many charitable causes as time will allow. The entire month of May is filled with galas and benefits and spending my free time doing things that are making a difference makes me feel good.  I’ve also had to re-learn how to interact with people.  When dealing with inebriated people or people who are out to have a good time in general, you’re allowed to be a little more edgy with your conversation topics.  Not so much when you walk into an office full of women.  “Hey bitches what’s crappenin?” Is, for some reason, not an appropriate way to greet your co-workers.  

Out of all the changes, trying to get my health and fitness on track is proving to be the most difficult.  Although my schedule is the same every day, trying to get to the gym by 5:30, home by 7:30, food on the table by 8:30 and bed at 10 kind of sucks.  I hate going to bed that soon after eating.  There is no chill time.  And worst of all, I am going from almost 15 years working jobs where I was on my feet, constantly running around for 8-12 hours at a time, to now spending all day sitting behind a desk.  My body physically aches and I am gaining weight.  I have gained back 10lbs since this time last year and am thoroughly disgusted with myself. But I will triumph over these obstacles.  thankfully I still eat healthy, whole foods.  I shudder to think where I would be right now if I let myself fall back into old habits.  I still don’t eat fast food.  I don’t eat pork or red meat, and consume less than 1 1/2 cups of dairy each week.  My problem has been sweets and potatoes.  Every night for a week Mitch and I were unwinding with a brownie and a glass (or 2) of wine.  That adds up, no matter how good the rest of your diet is.  So basically, I need to get off my ass and watch my carbs.  So here are some meals I’ve been especially pleased with as of late.  Theyre not only healthy and low in calories, but also quick and easy to make! Enjoy!  

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”

  

Hearty Savory Breakfast Bowl

I eat this probably 3-4 days a week. It is so delish, and you can change the meat out to bacon or ham if you’re so inclined.  

1/4 C steel cut oats

1C water

1C baby spinach

1/3C liquid egg whites

1 whole egg

1.5oz ground turkey breakfast sausage

Salt and pepper

Texas Pete hot sauce (optional)

Combine the oats and water and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat to simmer and cook until done, around 10 mins.  While that is cooking , put baby spinach in a skillet coated with nonstick.  When spinach begins to wilt, add egg whites and scramble.  Put scrambled eggs and spinach in bowl.  In same pan, crack egg and fry to over easy.  Add it to bowl.  In same pan, cook breakfast sausage, crumbling.  When meat is cooked through and no longer pink, add to bowl.  Top with cooked oats.  Shake on salt and pepper to taste, hot sauce and stir well, breaking yolk from over easy egg and combing everything throughout.  

Calories 320

Fat 9 grams

Carbs 29.5 grams

Protein 28 grams

  

Good, Old Fashioned, Low Country Boil

Does it get any better than this?  If you can boil water, you can make this dish.  It’s stupid tasty, feeds a crowd, and is fun to eat with your hands!

3lbs small red potatoes

1 pk frozen corn on the cob, or 6 mini-ears

2-3lbs frozen raw shrimp, deveined,shell and tail-on, thawed

14oz smoked turkey sausage, cut into 1/2″ rounds

4T old bay seasoning

2 lemons cut in half

Bring a large stock pot of water to a boil.  Add old bay and squeezed lemons. CAREFULLY add your potatoes *note: If potatoes are large, cut them to a smaller uniform size.  You want them to be small enough to cook quickly and at the same rate of time.* After potatoes begin to soften, around 10 mins, add corn and sausage. Bring water back to a boil.  When all is cooked through, add dethawed shrimp last.  Cook for around 5 minutes, until shrimp is pink and no longer translucent.  Drain liquid and serve on newspaper or a large platter.  

   
 
Kathie’s Hawaiian YumYum Chicken

I literally came up with this on a whim, using ingredients I had in the fridge.  It was amazing and totally cured my craving for pineapples. Serve with brown rice and a little teriyaki sauce.

1 red bell pepper, julienned

1 medium onion, sliced

1lb of asparagus, cut into 2″ pieces

1/2 of a whole pineapple, cored and cut into chunks

1 1/2lbs of skinless, boneless chicken breast, cut into chunks

Jerk seasoning, salt and pepper, to taste

Coconut oil or olive oil

Add all ingredients to a large bowl or bag, drizzle with oil and sprinkle with seasonings.  Shake to coat evenly.  Distribute to a foil lined baking sheet and roast for 30 mins on 375 degrees.  

Pert

The Appalachian BarbieLeave a comment

  I am reticent to publish this blog, as I have not posted in so long and I don’t want to seem like one of those people who share Tragedy on a public forum to try and gather sympathy when I’m not really the one suffering. But the truth of the matter is, I’ve been completely silent throughout this process, hoping there would be a better outcome, hoping the inevitable would be postponed, but the sad truth has been confirmed.  And writing is extremely cathartic for me during times of extreme sadness or stress so I would like to pen something that I can look back on and help me work through future periods of grief. 

My last remaining grandmother is dying. And not in the way we’re all dying, slowly, and without acknowledgment. But like the time is here and decisions have been made about her care for the rest of the short time she has left and it is a very sad and scary situation for everyone involved.  

I would like to say that I’ve never been a person who was extremely close to my grandparents.  We weren’t the type of family where grandma took you out shopping for toys and fed you a bunch of sugary treats then sent you packing back to your awful parents who wouldn’t let you do anything.  Not to say my grandparents were cold or unaffectionate people.   Unfortunately I lost 3 of the 4 before I could ever really grasp the concept of death.  Even my mom’s mom, Mamaw, who passed when I was in my mid-20s.  I was far to self-absorbed with my own shitty existence to really let it soak in how painful this process must have been for my own mother.  Also she was someone who was sick my entire life, suffering from a litany of ailments ranging from diabetes and obesity to heart disease and beyond so her death was sort of something I had been preparing for as long as I could remember.  

So it really has surprised me how hard I’ve taken this news.  She’s 87 years old.   People get old and they die.  That’s life, I’ve always said.  I don’t know if it’s the fact that I’m older now and have a better concept of the death process.  Or if it’s because I have a much closer relationship with my own parents now and watching them deal with losing a parent is making me realize that one day I too will be facing these sickening life or death decisions on their behalf.  And I feel deep pain watching my father lose his last remaining family member, as he has sadly lost both his brother and sister and father.  And for the past 6 years he has watched his mother, a healthy, vibrant, feisty little woman, first lose her mind to dementia and now her body has given up the fight and is joining it.  Maybe that is the scariest part.  The fact that someone who never had anything physically wrong with them can deteriorate so quickly, becoming so sick of the brain that even though she had the capability to run circles, her brain simply forgot and kept her bound to a wheelchair. It’s just not fair. 

It sucks.  There’s nothing else anyone can say about the loss of a life. Nothing anyone says to try and make people feel better during this process actually works. So focusing on the person for the time they were here is a much better option.  Keeping them relevant by honoring their memory with things that were important to them and sharing their stories goes a lot further than saying “they’re in a better place.”  

I wish I had known my grandmother as a young woman. Like most everyone else, to me my grandma has always been “old”, even though she was my mother’s age now when I was born.  From family photos, she was a stunning beauty, and lucky for her she was small in stature, petite and blue eyed.  She was a twin, and within her immediate family of siblings and their children, there were 7 sets of twins born, which to me has always seemed like something special and one of those curiosities that should be more thoroughly investigated. I don’t know how she met my papaw, although that is something I would enjoy hearing about.  All I know about their early relationship is that when my papaw went to Japan to fight in WWII, he drank a lot, as I’m sure most in that situation did, and may have gotten in some trouble.  And my grandmother told him it was either her or the booze and he never touched another drop.  That seems like a pretty telling reflection of their relationship–granny was a firecracker and my papaw always gave her her way.  One of the few memories I have of my papaw is that he was such a quiet, even tempered spirit who mostly just sat on the couch reading the newspaper or watching Andy Griffith. And my grandma would give him so much grief, saying he was being angry.  “He’s got that damned ol Billy Hell in him!” She would exclaim, as papaw just read the sports section and drank his coffee.  When he did get angry, he would retaliate by going outside and walking laps around the house.  He was a real loose cannon.

My granny’s strength is probably the most important thing I would want people to remember about her.  My dad said something to me on the phone tonight that couldn’t have rang more true.  “She’s already been through hell 3 times.” And it’s true.  She endured the loss of 2 children and her husband, technically 3 children if you count a miscarriage that was always whispered about.  My aunt Kathy died of melanoma at just 28 and my uncle Bo at 34.  My papaw checked in for a routine pace maker and never came out of the hospital.  How does one person endure so much emotional pain?  A mother should never have to lose a child, let alone 2.  Maybe that is why her mind went before her body, to relieve her of some of these horrific memories.  To be able to carry on with life and raise your grandchildren as your own, being her age and taking on the task of bringing up children under the age of 10 must have been such a daunting task.  How do you stay strong for these children when you’re suffering yourself?  How do you have time to go through the grieving process ?  But she persevered.

When I think back on my grandmother, I don’t have one specific memory of her.  I always just remember her in the kitchen, cooking breakfast for me and my cousins and my parents and the neighbors or whatever other relative was paying a visit.  Funny I don’t really remember her sitting down to eat much, probably because she was so busy serving us! Pulling up in the driveway tonight, I really looked at this house for the first time in awhile and remembered it for when it was hers and not mine.  When my papaw and uncle bud would be sitting on the back porch swatting bumblebees with tennis rackets after working in the garden.  And my granny would have the ironing board out in the kitchen, canning fresh strawberry jam with Scott’s strawberries.  And me and my cousins would be playing in the spooky basement and my granny would tell all of us there were giant rats that  were going to eat us down there and if we were bad she would sell us to the can man and he would put us in the sack he carried around town.  It’s funny how I just remembered that as I was writing this.  Haven’t thought about that in decades.  That is actually horrifying!  Why would you tell kids that??  

I am just so damn grateful to be able to keep this home up that they worked so hard for.  And to make that same jam in the same kitchen and till the same soil for garden and open gifts in the same room at Christmas.  This house has seen a lot of tragedy but it has also seen a lot of happiness and I guess that right there is life.  I hope in taking pride in this home I can keep her spirit alive, especially for my dad. Because it must be really hard right now for him.  It breaks my heart.  

My grandmother began hospice today and now we don’t know when the end is coming, only that it is, and quickly.  I am hoping that wherever she is in there, that she is at peace and unaware of her body performing it’s final tasks.  The time leading up to death is downright horrific, but I can only hope that the transition itself will be one of extreme peace.  It is time for this feisty, foul mouthed little woman to rest, and I wish for healing for all those that will grieve in her loss.  

My grandmothers name is Lois Holly Scalf, but Pert if you were family.