Annie Blogs.

TOP 5 FRIDAY: Googs it.

Written by Annie on May 18th, 2012

TOP 5 FRIDAY is when we each list five of our favorite things, depending on the topic. Feel free to join in via the comments or by posting on your own blog and linking back here. Play along. It’s Friday.

. . . . .

My pal Lyndsay Rush wrote a great post this week about what she has googled lately. As well, a handful of us sat around the other night with our smart phones in hand, and giggled through the list of things we found important enough to google, or “googs,” on the go.

So keeping it short and sweet this Friday, here are the top 5 things I’ve googled lately.

. . . . .

1. “bake with salted or unsalted butter”

It seems that no matter how mature I get, I will never have this fact memorized. It’s what I call a Mom Fact- things that Moms just seem to know. Sadly, my mom was in France at the time of need, so google had to suffice.

By the way, the answer is unsalted.

2. “I can’t make you love me”

Great song. And it’s true- I can’t make you love me.

3. “China flag”

We were in an emoji war, trying to text as many Asian symbols as possible. I just wanted to make sure I got the Chinese flag right. I want to win, but I want to win fair.

4. “Vandy baseball roster”

Well, no one can be surprised about me needing these stats on hand right now. Love those dudes.

5. “Brentwood skating park”

It’s a complicated story. I needed to find the skating rink, I don’t know why I ever called it a park. Parks are for skateboarding. Skateboarding makes me fall down and cry. We wanted rollerskating, old school style.

But I needed to googs the location so that these things could happen.

It was a dream of a Saturday and thanks to google, we got there just fine.

. . . . .

YOUR TURN!

Look on your phone or computer and tell me what are the last five things you have googled!

Posted in TOP 5 FRIDAY | 7 Responses »

Summer of the invisible small group.

Written by Annie on May 17th, 2012

My people. They are gone.

My Tuesday nights have gotten so quiet now that the gals have all gone home for the summer. No more recipes, no more small group snoozle parties, no more crying and laughing at the same time.

[Yes, we did that. Often.]

One of the hard parts of leading a college small group is that you spend lots of time together for months and then in a span of about 33 hours, they all disappear.

Because we are planning to continue meeting when they get back in the fall, I’ve racked my brain trying to figure out how we embrace the summer break while also staying in each other’s lives. I want this summer time to continue to build our relationships, not be a full on break from them.

[Also, let me remind you, I haven't led a small group of college women in a decade. So.... I am no professional, that is for sure. Every step of this is a new step for me.]

Here’s what we are doing so far:

1. Facebook

Man, for all the ways that I think facebook is slowly killing our world [and I think it may be], it has sure come in helpful for our group. We have one of those secret group things where we post videos and comments and jokes and whatever else we want.

2. Letters

At our spend the night party at the end of the semester, everyone wrote their address on five envelopes and then I collected them up and randomly passed them back out so that each girl has five pre-addressed envelopes. All they have to do is write a note to that girl and mail it sometime in the summer.

3. Book study

For those who wanted to, we decided to read Empty Promises by Pete Wilson together. So each week of the summer, we are reading one chapter. Not the most strenuous schedule, but it’s summer, y’all! Sheesh. On our facebook page, we have running commentary on our thoughts on each chapter.

4. Social media chatter

I’m seeing lots of talks between the girls on social media, not involving me at all. I think that’s good because I want them to feel connected to each other independent of me. Mama like.

5. Enjoying the break

I think there is always something to be said for a bit of absence making the heart grow fonder. And with my writing work picking up, it’s good to have the extra time for a few months. I do miss having the girls pop around, but I know I will blink and it will be August and they will be swarming around my house like a happy little bee’s nest.

. . . . .

I know there are lots of you small group leaders out there. I would love to hear your thoughts on how to connect a small group when they are all living scattered across the continent.

Also- know any good books about doing ministry with college age students?

Posted in Gal Stuff | 1 Response »

This one goes out to all the fellas.

Written by Annie on May 16th, 2012

Here’s the situation. I have some people, you met two of them and there are a few more, that have started checking in on ole AnnieBlogs. In fact, my friend Will just the other day said, “hey, I like your blog thingy you’ve got going on. It’s cool.”

[That's a paraphrase, but I know he said "blog" and "cool." I know that.]

And I am worried because these poor guys keep having to hear about glitter and nail polish and being 31 and single and recipes for small group and really all manner of things that don’t matter to dudes.

And I bet there are more of you out there. Ahem, DAD. Ahem, others I do not know.

So.

I told them I would write a post for dudes in my best dude voice.

[I'm sorry and you're welcome.]

Here goes nothin’.

. . . . .

Yo. [Terrible start] So, like, how are the Clippers and the Lakers and the Kings all going to play in the same arena this weekend? That many teams in the playoffs? LA is sick. [I'm terrible at this] I’m glad I’m not in charge of flipping the Staples Center from ice to court. You know what I would do? Put the wooden floor on top of the ice. Added level of challenge, having the floors freezing cold and all.

I mean, if the Dodgers would put together any kind of season this year, LA might have the sports year of their dreams. They deserve to get pumped about these teams since the Oakland Raiders are the worst.

Speaking of the NFL, wanna be in my fantasy league? Draft will be in the fall. Go ahead and make up an inappropriate but hilarious team name.

You know what’s awesome? Mexican food. Tons of chips. It’s just awesome that you can sit down and order and for like, $8, get piles of meat and cheese and guacamole. I mean, it’s one of the only times I feel totally full. Usually I get home and I’m all, “what’s to eat?” even if I just ate. [Girl Annie isn't like this at all, but Dude Voice Annie totally is.]

By the way, girls are crazy. [I don't know how to expound on this because I, for one, am actually crazy. I just know Connor confirmed that Dude Voice Annie should talk about it.]

Also, you know what’s cool? Wearing shorts. Every day.

And.

Fast cars.

And.

Fart jokes.

. . . . .

And scene.

Well, I think that went great, if you are into stereotyping and all.

It actually went horribly. Apparently I am a disaster when I have to talk to boys like I’m a boy. I can handle myself when I’m talking to boys like I am a girl [in fact, I am a girl], but when your brain doesn’t work like a boy [mine does not] then it is hard to talk like one.

. . . . .

For realz, I am going to start making an effort to have some gender neutral posts every blue moon so the fellas don’t always have to suffer through my constant femaleness.

So male readers- are you out there? Will you identify yourself? Tell me what kind of blog posts you want me to write for you. Questions? Comments? Wanna guest post?

Ladies, you can comment too… what topics should I cover for the dudes?

Posted in Dude Stuff | 11 Responses »

The Wasting Hours

Written by Annie on May 15th, 2012

For the last few weeks, I’ve been calling these “the witching hours” until today when I actually went and read the definition of “witching hour” and yikes.

So these hours shall henceforth be known at The Wasting Hours.

. . . . .

It seems, that in my new full-time job as an author, I have fallen headfirst into a pretty regular schedule, for better or for worse. It goes a little something like this:

7am: attempt to wake up, think about waking up, realize that there are authors all over this globe that wake up and write genius pieces of literature in the early morning hours, then realize that my alarm isn’t screaming at me anymore.

7:30am — “Seriously, Downs. Move it.” And I shower, get ready, dilly-dally, etc.

morning — Working. Seriously. These morning hours are my jam. Super productive, flying through work, writing stuff about stuff. Listening to classical music.

Also, I tend to have biz meetings in this window. I’m the best biz-Annie at this time, so I can yell “BUY! SELL! BUY!” and “I WON’T SETTLE FOR LESS THAN A MILLION!” and “THAT GRANOLA IS DELICIOUS!” with gusto.

12pm — Honestly, I usually have lunch with friends. Or a friend. Or I make friends with people sitting near me wherever I am eating lunch.

1pm – 2:01pm — Finish my Living Social writing that is due everyday at 2pm. [I write the content on the deals for Atlanta and a few other rando cities around the USA.]

2:02pm-5pm – The Wasting Hours.

5pm-7pm — Hard-working time again. Usually while listening to music with words, I bust through emails, blog posts, and get some writing done.

Then it’s dinner and friends and social life until 10ish, when it is back to writing [if I have more to finish] or to reading before bed.

. . . . .

But those Wasting Hours. Man. I don’t know what happens to me. Is this normal? Having a mid-afternoon slump like this? Maybe it is because I used to teach school and we’ve been trained since we were five years old to work from 7am – 2pm [school hours] then rest?

The Wasting Hours always sneak up on me. I will be working on something and then slowly my brain starts to drag. I start clicking from one social media site to another and not really be getting anything accomplished. I look up at my computer clock and it almost always says something in the 2 o’clock hour.

It’s like, ahem, well, clockwork.

Here are some things I end up doing during The Wasting Hours:

Nap. Especially if I am going to working late that night, a nap is just what the imaginary doctor ordered.
Eat a bowl of cereal. Multi-grain cheerios, please.
Walk outside. Even if I just go check the mail [which I actually have a PO Box, so this is never my mail], I feel like I’m not wasting my life. You know, during The Wasting Hours.
Read blogs. This is a great time for me to read other blogs and comment.
Get lost in the basement of the internet. Tell me you don’t, but I won’t believe you.
Feel like I’m throwing away my career because I cannot for the life of me get focused.

. . . . .

Am I a total freak for having The Wasting Hours? Am I a total idiot for thinking I’m the only one who has The Wasting Hours? Does anybody else deal with this? What do you do to get out of your slump?

Teach me your ways, effective afternooners.

Posted in AnnieWrites | 20 Responses »

TOP 5 FRIDAY: Instagram!

Written by Annie on May 11th, 2012

. . . . .

I love instagram. [I also am growing to love phonto, thanks to Adam Buzard, but that's beside the point.]

I think instagram is fun because it makes you feel like you can legitimately take pretty pictures. That may be why photographers, the real kind, don’t love instragram. I dunno. Also, I just plain like looking at what other people choose to photograph.

And since we’ve been quite wordy this week, with all the job talk and alarm talk and all, I thought today we would just focus on pictures.

So I went back through my instagram feed and picked my top 5 favorite pictures… in random order.

. . . . .

1. The lake /// http://instagr.am/p/Jp57YRGyMQ/

I love when we get to spend an afternoon on the lake. It’s probably one of the best parts of a Nashville summer. Our first outing was about two weeks ago with one of our pals who is a member of the boat club, so I took this one off the back of the boat while we were floating around.

2. Cloudy Edinburgh // http://followgram.me/i/212470302_1271735

This picture beautifully displays how nasty days in Edinburgh look and feel. This was out the living room window of my flat, that has since been sold. It’s strange to think of this picture as once-in-a-lifetime since it was my everyday view for six months, but alas. It is.

3. Jett + Annie /// http://instagr.am/p/KY1-_dGyLi/

At this week’s Vandy baseball game, my buddy Jett went with us. When we decided to take a picture, he said, “When we are both famous, we’ll be glad we have this.” Awesome, huh? This kid. I like him a lot.

[BTW... I got parental permission before posting this picture. I'm not a monster.]

4. Glitter is my favorite color. /// http://instagr.am/p/IYSjApmyM9/

It’s just true. And this glitter polish is so cheap, with tiny sparkles, that it doesn’t cement to your nails the way the fancy stuff does. Happy girl.

5. Aiden’s boots /// http://instagr.am/p/HChViOGyA5/

I was watching Aiden while his folks were busy the other week, before we had dining room furniture. He brought his cars, I have lots of poker chips, we made a road. Plain and simple. I love his little boots.

. . . . .

I wish I was smart enough to tell you what each border and filter were for each picture, but I can’t remember. I will tell you this- Brannan is my go-to favorite filter.

YOUR TURN!

Link us to your favorite instagram picture [of your own or someone else's if you don't have instagram]. Or write a post today on your own blog with five of your favorite instagrams and link us to that!

What is your favorite filter to use?

Posted in TOP 5 FRIDAY | 9 Responses »

I don’t have a job. [A homage to Mocha Club]

Written by Annie on May 10th, 2012

Ok, well, that’s not totally true. I mean, I work. I just don’t have what the world would call “a real job” anymore. [But welcome to Nashville where most of us don't. I like it.]

Since August of 2008, Mocha Club has been a weekly part of my life. I started as a volunteer for a few months and then I got a tiny part time job there, calling members, for five hours a week. Five turned to ten turned to twenty and a year had passed before I knew it.

I love Mocha Club. I love what they are doing in Africa. I love the integrity of the people who work there. I love the innovative ways they are raising money and making a difference overseas.

In May 2010, I started a real part time job at Mocha Club as their Social Media and Communications Director. It was a much needed role but the boss Barrett and I kinda made up my job as we went. We would figure out new cool things to do using social media and then boom, that was my job.

It was fun. Really fun.

Meanwhile, for another 40ish hours a week, I was writing and blogging and speaking and etc. So it wasn’t like I was laying by the pool most of the week and only working 24 hours a week.

[Well, I do like to lay by the pool in the summer. But, I mean, I write a lot too.]

When I moved to Scotland last fall, I kept my part time job and spent some hours every day online working and skyping with America. Namely, with the Mocha Club staff.

. . . . .

I came home from Scotland and didn’t know that Zondervan was on the horizon. But when that opportunity arose, and some other things started to shift in the atmosphere, Barrett and I realized that it was time for me to move along, little dawgie.

It was the perfect storm of what I needed + what Mocha Club needed + what I wanted + what I was too scared to do + Barrett pushing me out of the nest and making me fly.

So as of April 1, I am a Mocha Club artist, but not a staff member.

. . . . .

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN, ANNIE??

Let’s do this in a list form.

1. When someone says “What do you do?” my answer is now “I am an author and a speaker.”

2. I work from home every day.

3. The blog and anniedowns.com are getting a major makeover that you will see really soon. Then when new people come along and say, “wow, this place is really pretty and fancy” you can say “she might have been born just plain white trash, but Fancy was her name” because you’ll have been here when this place wasn’t so fancy and you know how much I love Reba.

4. I need your help to make this full-time career work. I need you to tell your friends about my books when they come out, I need you to come hear me when I speak and bring your friends along, I need you to get me a speaking gig in your town, I need you to pray for me, and I need you to hug me when I get super scared that I am not going to make it full-time in this thing.

[Because I do get scared. Really scared. But God is orchestrating all of this, so I throw the scared away and only hang onto the thread of faith. I tie a knot when I get to the end of my faith rope and I hang on.]

5. You know what it really means? It means we’re really doing this thang, y’all. And after four years of trying, I’m pretty giggly that it is finally happening.

. . . . .

Your questions / comments / etc about this new season of my full-time career are totally welcome. I just like keeping y’all up to date on what’s happening on this side of the screen.

Posted in Dreams Coming True, Mocha Club, Perfectly Unique | 11 Responses »

No alarm!

Written by Annie on May 9th, 2012

I have a weird habit.

I pick one day a week and I don’t set an alarm.

Every other day of the week, I make myself wake up at 7am and actually get moving. [I know, some of you have to get up way earlier... don't hate me for sleeping until 7. When I taught school, I was up at 5am and interacting with small people by 7am. I know this is a luxury that won't last forever.]

[Sidenote: why does telling you I sleep until 7am make me feel insecure when I am about to tell you a whole story about REALLY sleeping in? I'm a complicated human.]

Because I rarely sleep in on Saturdays and we go to the 9am service at Cross Point on Sundays, my weekends aren’t the time when I get to sleep as long as I want. I used to do “No Alarm Monday” because we had college ministry stuff until 10pm-ish on Sundays, but now I go to the chiropractor at 8:30am on Mondays, so that isn’t an option anymore.

[Sidenote #2: Would you pray for my neck and back? Nothing serious, just some continual pain that makes it hard to sit for a long time... which is unfortunate when your job is sitting and writing.]

So each week, I strategically plan a No Alarm Day. This week, it was today. No Alarm Wednesday.

I don’t know why this feels like the most delicious freedom in the world, but it does. And I also don’t know why I insist labeling it. I’m a freak.

Since my working life [that I'm gonna tell you all about tomorrow] has some pretty weird hours, and I’m not doing a 9-5 job, there aren’t really OFF hours either. You know what I mean? So it’s not like a Saturday feels like my day off of work. In fact, I worked/wrote for seven hours last Saturday.

So when I left the Vanderbilt baseball game yesterday [which, some of those boys have started frequenting the blog and I'm all, "uh, I better write a dude-centric post every now and again"] I got home and realized, “TOMORROW IS NO ALARM WEDNESDAY!” And I did a jig.

I still was up by 8:30am. I don’t have the sleeping in skillz of my teenage years where I could snoozle until lunch. I wish I did.

So on average, not on No Alarm Wednesday, I go to bed around 11pm and I’m up at 7am. But today… oh it was nice to never hear the bullhorn that wakes me up most mornings.

Here’s what I’m curious about: on average, what time do you go to bed and what time do you wake up? How many hours of sleep do you need to feel human?

Posted in Ze Bloggy Goodness | 34 Responses »

Ingrid and history.

Written by Annie on May 8th, 2012

I got to see one of my very favorite musicians play last night at Cannery Ballroom here in Nashville – Ingrid Michaelson. I have been a big fan since about ten of us girls went and saw her play the Belcourt in 2010.

I had a moment of crisis last night when she was playing my song [ok, not MY song, but, you know, my song] – do I experience the moment or do I video it so I can hear it over and over again? [And, of course, I wanted you to get to see it too.]

I went video. You’re welcome.

Such a fun night… but my mind couldn’t help but rewind to March of 2010, the last time I saw Ingrid in concert. About ten of the gals loaded up and headed to the show in Knoxville. A handful of our guy friends were with this tour and so we just went into total groupie mode and drove to see the show… and honestly, to see them.

The night was perfect. The weather, the gals, seeing our boys, seeing the show. All of it.

Since that picture two years ago, three have gotten married, the two that were already married have had babies, and we have all lived and grown and stayed connected.

Only five of us made it to the show last night. But in the pitch black dark, we took a picture together.

Because Ingrid reminds us that we have history together.

When I moved to Nashville, one of the losses that I mourned so deeply was the loss of people knowing me and having “remember when” moments. And it took time to build those, but they are here. I’ve lived here almost four years now. And we are full of remember when’s.

Ingrid sang a lot from her new album last night, which I love. But it tugs at the deepest place of my heartstrings to hear her old stuff. It reminds me of a really beautiful and challenging relationship from 2010. I can hear our conversations between the lines of the songs from that old album, I can see the girls walking down the street in Knoxville, I can almost feel the tears from that season coming back.

History doesn’t always have to feel good to be appreciated. And last night was a reminder that the sweetest things in friendship are built by time.

. . . . .

Do you find that to be true? What else builds friendships?

. . . . .

This is an amazing cover by Ingrid. Enjoy.

Posted in Nash-livin', Sounds good to me. | 5 Responses »

We can be friends.

Written by Annie on May 3rd, 2012

So y’all. Getting new headshots done yesterday was super fun. I’m gonna tell you all about it soon. For now, here are two pictures that show you kinda what was going on.

But before I tell you about that, I gotta tell you about this.

Going shopping.

So my dear friend / stylist Amber Lehman and I popped down to the mall last week to find all the clothes for the photo shoot. We had, in the words of people other than me, a wicked good time. We laughed, we tried on outfits, we matched belts to dresses and earrings to tops.

And I bought red jeans. I AM SO TRENDY.

I can’t even get started on the discounts I got from Macy’s. Pretty much, I practically robbed them.

[The thing that will keep me out of jail after writing that sentence is "practically." I didn't really. I just got some serious sale prices.]

Amber and I high-fived and walked out of Macy’s and, as happens often in Nashville, Amber saw a friend.

As soon as said friend spoke in her cute southern drawl, I was like, “this girl is gonna be my friend.”

[Yep, that's how I make friends. I force them into it.]

Her name is Joanna Smith. She had been shopping. So had we. Amber loves her. I love Amber. That’s pretty much all I needed to suggest BFF tattoos.

She declined. Weird.

One of these things is not like the other…. meaning somebody [wearing green] doesn’t dress very fancy on a normal day. And she probably should. Also, same somebody [wearing green] has got to learn to curl her hair like everyone else does in this picture.

Amber started telling me about Joanna’s current single on country radio called “We Can’t Be Friends” and I was all, “Oh girl, I do not have time in my life for a song with that title.”

Obviously meaning that songs like that feel true x a million to me right now.

[Sigh... guy/girl friendships in your 30s in the 2010s are a complicated hot mess. At least, for me.]

So after Joanna and I decided that BFF tattoos were unnecessary but a friendship had definitely begun right there outside of the Macy’s, I came home and listened to her stuff.

Y’all.

Dang.

First of all, Amber styled this video for “Gettin’ Married” and when you watch it, you will say, “yep, that is a hilarious song and that Joanna is a doll and duh she and Annie were born to be friends.”

Then I listened to “We Can’t Be Friends” and sheesh. Her voice is supes beautiful and the lyrics are great and I could not like her sound more.

So what I’m saying is you should probably buy her EP and call your radio station and request her music and cheer for her forever.

Seriously. Isn’t Nashville the coolest town? I. Know.

[Also, I own red jeans. That needed to be stated again.]

Posted in Nash-livin', Sounds good to me. | 15 Responses »

Pizza Rollz for my people.

Written by Annie on May 2nd, 2012

Friday night was somethin’, y’all. Really somethin’.

You know those crazy college gals that I meet with every week? They spent the night. All of them, minus one. [You can twitter stalk the whole experience by looking up the hashtag #smallgroupsnoozle. It's funny.]

We had a crazy good time. I’m not gonna blog about how much they ate because they hate when I tell y’all that. And I’m not gonna blog about what we talked about or what we did because mainly, we just had a really great time together before they go home for the summer.

Thanks to my pal Embracing Grace, I found this killer recipe for pizza rollz. So we went for it. I got my sous chef Sarah into the kitchen and we got our roll on for realz.

We started just like the recipe described. Took crescent rolls, laid ‘em out, put on the turkey pepperoni and half a string cheese stick.

Easy cheesy. Literally.

That’s my Sous Sarah. She’s a doll. Here she is mixing Italian seasonings with garlic salt to make some sort of powder drizzle for the top of the pizza rollz.

One thing we decided in our chef-ing [huh?] was that the rolls are better if you close the ends. But then my poor vegetarian could have been bamboozled by a pepperoni. We made some with just cheese on the inside, ya see. So we created an identification system. Tiny pepperoni triangles placed on top of the meaty rolls…. Sous Sarah is a genius.

How beautiful are THOSE? I know. The gals loved ‘em.

Serve it with a bowl of warm pizza sauce and whoa mama these are delicious. I would like to try to make them again with more veggies [by "more" I mean "some"] and maybe other meats? I dunno. I just think it is an easy starter recipe that has a bazillion combo possibilities.

Don’t judge our snack table. We’re growing girls.

We eat strawberries and oreos. My people, they are balanced.

And I miss them already.

[Wanna read more about my small group? They're amazing.]

I’m continuing to bulk up my Feeding The 13 board on Pinterest. Have more big group / low cost recipes that I can start collecting before the gals return in the fall?

Posted in Gal Stuff, That's delish. | 3 Responses »