Omnia Ferox

  The only pics we took of the meal (I was tired, yall!) This was our first Thanksgiving living together, so I wanted to make it something special and show Tyler a bit of what I grew up eating when my family celebrated the holidays. My family liked to eat, so growing up Thanksgiving was a pretty big deal -- especially my mom's side of the family and other loved ones in Alabama. I decided to prepare a Southern "soul food" feast for him to flex my cooking skills (more than I already have been over the past year, haha!) I had planned on vlogging the entire preparation and meal itself, but to be honest, I was dragging-ass that entire day and didn't even get started until late in the afternoon. I also, unfortunately, didn't take pics of the entire process, because I was just entirely too focused on making the meal -- which included a turkey, mac and cheese, dressing, giblet gravy, collard greens (with smoked ham-hocks), deviled eggs and candied yams.  Inject your turke...

I realize this post is quite a bit late, but we've been pretty busy the past few months and I'm finally getting time to catch up with some writing. We recently celebrated our one-year-anniversary, and spent our first couple major holidays living together as a small family (just us and our cats for now). We carved pumpkins on Halloween Eve and spent time watching horror movies together, and then on Thanksgiving I prepared a traditional soul food Thanksgiving feast for him (a girl's gotta show off her cooking skills, right?) Tyler also took me out to one of my favorite restaurants after we finished carving our Halloween pumpkins.  Carving pumpkins together for the first time Vinny guarded the carving kit We both love Halloween, and since this was our first Halloween as an official couple we wanted to do something cheesy and fun. Tyler chose a big orange pumpkin, and I chose a funky white one. We didn't use a stencil or pattern, instead choosing to freehand our own face de...

  A while back I suffered a miscarriage after gleefully discovering that I was finally pregnant at 40-years-old. This pregnancy lasted nearly six weeks before the loss, after my fiancé' and I had been trying to conceive for several months. While this wasn't our first cycle of TTC, it was the first cycle that we had tried some different techniques for inspiring conception. In particular, I opted to drink Geritol every day of the cycle leading up to this pregnancy. We also used PreSeed lubricant and both of us took Mucinex. However, following the loss of our pregnancy that resulted from this cycle, I learned that I have iron deficiency anemia. This led me to the conclusion that Geritol helped me conceive, and thus I went down a research rabbit-hole. My history of infertility and pregnancy loss I am 41-years-old and I've never had children. I've only been verifiably pregnant twice in my life, but I have also experienced several chemical pregnancies (which are also miscarri...

In September I announced that I was pregnant, after several months of trying to conceive. We were ecstatic, and looking forward to our future as parents, as a family. I found out very early, before I was even late for my period. Since I have a history of recurrent pregnancy loss, we nervously waited before announcing it to our loved ones (and the world). Unfortunately, we should've waited a little longer. We were at the end of what would be my fifth week of pregnancy before I started cramping, and then spotting. Within a few days of that, I started bleeding heavily. My fiance' rushed me to the emergency room, where I was given an ultrasound, and my blood was drawn. At the time, my HCG betas were at around 500, but the ultrasound couldn't find anything. I was diagnosed with a PUL (pregnancy of unknown location) and threatened miscarriage, but was told to come back in 48 hours to test my HCG levels again. As suspected, by the second blood drawing, my HCG levels had dropped to...

(Ignore my scratched hands. We have cats!) I'm engaged to who might be the only man who's ever truly loved me, and I've never been happier. We've actually been engaged since September, but I haven't been in the mood to write for the past several weeks, so I'm a little behind. We'd just celebrated our one year anniversary, when we decided that we wanted to make our commitment to one another official. We both already knew that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together, and we already knew that marriage was the end goal, so our engagement was the next logical step. And can I brag about the engagement ring for a minute? The main stone is a rhodolite garnet, which represents everlasting love and loyalty, surrounded by sparkling moissanites (which are an ethical alternative to diamonds). In my opinion, a prettier ring doesn't exist. It's unique, it's pretty and it perfectly sums up our love for each other. I smile and stare every time my hand c...

 It's been a while since I was in the mood to draw, paint or do anything creative -- especially since divorcing my ex husband, picking up my life and starting over from scratch. I've finally started to get back into drawing, though, and things are starting to feel like they're getting back to normal.