It feels like home

On the way home from work I stopped off at WalMart to pick up a few things....there are some companies that have such strong brands that it doesn't matter what country or city you are in, it's just as though you are in your local store.

Look familiar?

Contemporary accessories

One thing I like about having my own apartment is that I can decorate it and accessorize it according to my tastes, I don't have to check with anyone.   That said,  I still feel a little insecure about choosing all this stuff without even checking with Alyson my style guru!

Hopefully my contemporary stick display will meet with her approval :)

Another city, another sunset

I don't know what it is about the Texas sunsets, but I am loving them - practically every night they are just beautiful.  I will spend every Monday in Houston, and my Houston office has a lovely view of the sunset...here it is from my Houston digs...

Lots of singing

One common thing for me when I move to a new area is joining the ward and Stake choirs, and I must admit to being surprised with both.  The ward choir is small, but absolutely incredible.  The choir director is a bloke that is clearly very talented and he can make this small choir sound awesome.   We hardly worked on notes, it was mostly dynamics...and he has an incredible talent for making simple music sound good.  Apparently he has perfect pitch.

Consequently, I expected the same quality at the Stake Choir.  We practiced this evening in preparation for a Christmas concert next Saturday - and it felt like a first rehearsal; we were learning notes, hardly any time for dynamics, the mini orchestra seemed to struggle with some of the pieces.  I hope no-one ever actually looks at this blog, I sure don't want to offend anyone!  But you know what was impressive....Mr perfect pitch was in the choir and a few other very talented musicians, and none of them interfered with what the choir director was doing.  That takes a fair bit of humility.

Is it OK to have favourites?

I actually got quite a bit accomplished today - I love days like that.  I went to the temple this morning, and that is always a good way to start the day.  It's so nice to have the temple so close...I can hardly wait until the Calgary one is finished!  But I must say, if it's OK to have favourite temples, Dallas doesn't make the top ten - it's oddly plain on the outside, the inside is beautiful though...and I'm sure the outside would look a lot nicer if it was sunny!  That said, the grey brick is actually grey marble - quite beautiful close up.

This afternoon, wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles - I actually went to the gym at the apartment building. It's a really nice gym, I need to make that a habit!

More like home

So much to blog about today! I was up until about 3am last night, and then got back at it at 8am this morning.  Most of last nights stuff was small kitchen appliances, KitchenAid, Food Processor, Rice Cooker etc etc....This morning I focused on getting accessories to make the apartment look more homely....and now I LOVE my little apartment, it is so cute.  The only thing left to do is to decide on some photo's to get printed on canvas and put on the wall.

Before nick nacks:-

After nick nacks

Also - today I discovered "Whole Foods" which is a REALLY nice supermarket, the stuff is super fresh, super nice.  It looks way more expensive than other places, but I think it will be so worth it - my new favourite grocery store :)

Then I had another walk around the Galleria shopping mall; still heaving with people, but they had an ice skating display with a couple of really famous ice skaters that I've never heard of....but they drew cheering crowds 5 deep on 4 floors!

And finally - having done my grocery shopping, I cooked my first meal tonight...I invited Margaret and the Sisters over for dinner, it was jolly nice!

I found WalMart!

...it took me 3 weeks, but at last I found it.  I did all the grocery shopping and now the apartment is more livable!  Notice the amount of diet rootbeer, I had to be sure I stocked up just in case we go into a world shortage!

I stayed up tonight until gone midnight to shop at Macy's for Black Friday...this is the crowd that was gathering outside just before they opened....the place was heaving with people all night apparently (although I gave up by 2.30 am!