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Monday, June 25, 2012

Weekend recap and some other stuff.

You know what's good? Strawberry ice cream with oreos.

Also, large glasses of orange juice with ice in them, but I think I've mentioned that before.

Sorry for repeating myself.

These are lilies in my garden.



This is the first year that they have bloomed. I think it's because I've weeded twice this year, which is more times than the other years we've been here. It must have been just the oomph that they needed.

In other news.

Our internet works again! I no longer have to work in coffee shops. Other nice things that happened this weekend include doing some major spring (summer?) cleaning, a date with my mom and sis, an evening of funnel cake, fireworks and friends at our neighborhood summer carnival, a delicious new recipe of avocado, bacon and basil pasta (I will definitely be making it again! so tasty.) and lot's of time spent catching up with some of my old youth group students at four, count em' FOUR graduation parties on Sunday.

It was indeed a nice time.

Also.

I have finally started visiting a chiropractor. Which really (at least so far) seems to help my ailing old lady back.

And there was much rejoicing!

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Pickled People

I wanted to share with you my most favorite recent thrifting find.



The label on the top of the (very old) jar is blurry and hard to read, but if your eyes are very good at reading blurry things you'll notice that it reads "pickled people."

My co-thrifter Jennie and I just about peed ourselves laughing.

I probably should have bought them and displayed them somewhere on our kitchen counter. I definitely could have afforded them since they were only $.99. (That's a lot of pickled people for under a dollar!) But it appears that if I really want to I can make some myself as I believe that all you need are some cotton balls, panty hose, and googly eyes.

In fact I should probably make a blog tutorial for it. Brilliant!

I'm working from a coffee shop today as our stupid horrible internet at home isn't working right now. (It's the worst. Especially since we just had someone out to fix it like, two weeks ago. It makes me very. crabby. Just ask the hubs.)

But I AM enjoying people watching in the coffee shop. There's Seriously-Rocking-Out-Hardcore-With His-Ipod guy, Throwing-Garbage-Everywhere children, and Looks-Just-Like-Someone-I-Used-To-Work-With-But-Turns-Out-It's-Not-Him man.

However I decided to step outside the comfort zone of my usual drink and try the suggestion of the young and eager barista boy. He gave me some strawberry basil iced tea which sounds refreshing and stylish, but after a few sips leaves me longing for my own beloved and comfortable iced chai tea latte.

It's times like these that make me wonder why I ever try new things.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

5 Years!

We had a great anniversary.

Starting out with trying to get a nice picture of ourselves. Trying is the key word here.



We finally got one with two nice smiles, no double chins, and both our faces.



Activities of the weekend included delicious homemade ice cream at Crema Cafe. (I got chai tea ice cream, and yes the word you are looking for is YUM.)



Dinner and bowling at Bryant Lake Bowl. I tried not to bend or twist my back at all (it's been a-hurtin' lately) so I looked preeetty silly trying to bowl like that. Very stick straight. But in a basketball belly type of way.

In other news, it turns out that I score better when I bowl pregnant lady style.

The hubs bowling and keeping score. He's having a good time, I swear!



Me complaining after realizing that I had no socks to wear with the bowling shoes. This was a large bummer. The second picture is of me making the most of a stinky situation.



The hubs was the perfect gentleman and offered his socks for me to wear...but I wasn't sure that would make things any better. All boys as a rule have very sweaty feet. But I did appreciate the gesture.

Other activities included playing Ticket to Ride at least six times over the course of the weekend - my new favorite game and one of my anniversary gifts. My other gift was a gorgeous new glider and ottoman for the baby's room! What a great (GREAT) hubs I have. I've been enjoying sitting on it out in the living room since the baby's room is no where close to ready yet.

We'd better get on that.

The weekend was such a blast and as it came to an end I felt very happy and blessed. Not only with a fantastic marriage that is still going strong, but also with wonderful and generous family members who have been supporting us all along and are still supporting us as we step into a new chapter of our lives.

Thanks guys.

I documented last year's anniversary too, here!


Friday, June 15, 2012

Summer Doodles

As I've mentioned before, I haven't been spending much time in my sketchbook lately. Part of it is just that there's other things taking precedence right now, but also because every time I sit down to sketch I end up making big elaborate drawings. That take a lot of time. So it's daunting because I don't always want it to be such a huge time commitment.

As I was lamenting my very serious and horrible sketchbook troubles to the ever so wise and understanding hubs, he was all like, "just doodle around, yo." Maybe he didn't say yo, that's not actually how he talks. BUT ANYWAY I took his advice and as we watched an episode of The Office together I doodled some little summer doodles.



Even though there was no purpose to them it was nice to be creating something.



My memory flings me back to freshman year in college when we had to complete a certain amount of "items" in our sketchbook per week. It was tough for me as I am QUITE the perfectionist (you can ask the poor hubs if you don't believe me) and as I mentioned before, my drawings usually take FOREVER. Add that to me being one of theeee most ridiculous procrastinators on the planet and you can guess that I was often up into the very wee hours of the morning the nights before my drawing classes. Working on what were simply supposed to be quick sketches in my sketchbook.

But in other news. College is over and so is drawing class. I'm not sure where I was going with that.

And so I'm off to a fun weekend with the hubs - it's the most special of weekends because it's our 5 year anniversary! I'm supposing that we can call this some type of a milestone. I'm comfortable with that. Fer sher.

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Healthy Desserts.

I've tried a couple "healthy" dessert recipes lately. You know, where you substitute the awesomeness that makes the dessert awesome for something weird and it's not supposed to taste any different.

But I haven't had very good luck.

First I tried that "chocolate chip cookie dough dip" that's been going around the web - the kind you make with chickpeas. "Wow, chocolate chip cookie dough flavored hummus?" I thought to myself. "Let's do this!" I was especially excited since cookie dough has been off limits for me as resident pregnant lady these past 7 months or so, and I pictured myself eating this healthy option with a spoon all day.

But no, no. Maybe I made it wrong but I'm pretty sure I didn't make it wrong and it turns out that there is no way that chickpeas will ever taste like cookie dough.

Oh well. Moving on.

So then, recently I heard that if you take a brownie mix and substitute a can of pumpkin for the oil, water and egg that it's amazing and way healthier. So of course I tried it.

And it tastes bad. And not good. I was so sad to have wasted a perfectly good brownie mix. I had to buy a new one immediately.

Maybe my sweet tooth is too picky? I'm not sure. But I'm pretty sure I just need the real stuff.

Case in point - it's quite possible that I ate an entire container of mini cinnamon rolls from Target today. Which I'm not sure but pretty positive were not healthy at all.

What?

I won't confirm or deny it. Although the hubs is going to be preeetty surprised when he gets home tonight and finds no miniature cinnamon rolls.



PS. People, don't worry. Of course I eat lots of healthy things. But I guess not healthy desserts because I just can't be fooled.

Monday, June 11, 2012

Camping!

Do you ever listen to itunes on your computer, and then mute it when you get a phone call, and then forget to un-mute it until apparently it has silently played through 2 1/2 Ben Folds albums without your knowledge?

That didn't happen to me today.

Just kidding it did.

Well Ben Folds is back on and I'm ready to share a bit about my super fun weekend! The hubs and I had one of my veeery favorite types of weekends - a camping weekend. We ventured off to a nearby state park with a few good friends and got our tents and campfires on.



I was a little bit nervous about going because of the whole baby growing thing and wasn't sure how my body would hold up to sleeping in a tent for two nights since girlfriend has been giving me some pretty severe back pain. But we packed plenty of cushioning (we just car camped this weekend yo, no backpacking trips for us this year!) and I was surprised and so very pleased that sleeping wasn't a problem for my poor back.



The real problem lay in the hiking. We had some great hikes, complete with beautiful scenery, getting up close and personal (and muddy) with the St. Croix River, witnessing some wildlife (including millions of mosquitos), and finding an amazing beach to take a refreshing swim in (it was around 90 degrees all weekend so getting in the water felt GRAND). But by the end I was definitely hobbling around like an old lady.

Or maybe just like a pregnant lady with an extremely sore back, I don't know.

I wasn't the only one who was tired though. This is Sitka, our friends' pup. She was exhausted. And floppy.



The remainder of the time I was able to rest my back as we played fun games, had good chats, ate delicious food (it's true that all food tastes EXTRA good when you are camping) and had great laughs.

Here's the hubs making a Zoolander face. Blue Steel, I'm pretty sure.



So now we are back in the blessed air conditioning complete with a wee bit of sunburn and a tremendous bit of bug bites, and it feels like my body is still recovering. As sad as that may or may not sound. But I'm so glad I got to get a camping trip in this summer in my current state! We'll see if we manage another one.

How was your weekend friends?

Thursday, June 7, 2012

It's a life changer.

Things have been moving right along here, as they always do. The happenings of the past week include a few new design jobs, meeting with my business partner to re-design our website (we are getting super close, can't wait to share the new site soon!), the start of summer violin lessons, water aerobics at the gym (the water makes my lurching body seem almost...graceful), my 28 week appointment (all good and healthy here!) and subsequently the start of the 3rd trimester (WHAT).

I've also been spending quite a bit of time pondering the strange new shape and size my butt is taking on.

ANYWAY. I've been wanting to share with you pet lovers out there our newest pet investment, which we are in love with. I mentioned here that our two cats had been driving us bonkers with waking us up at horrible hours of the morning wanting to be fed. When I say horrible hours I mean that sometimes it was BEFORE 5am. (Shudders.) No matter what we did we could not get them to just. simmer. down.

So. After many months of talk and debate and morning grumbles, we finally decided to splurge and get an automatic cat feeder. And after having it for about a month, we are LOVING it.

HELLO precious hours of undisturbed sleep! Pleased to have you.



We got the "Petmate Portion Control Infinity Programmable Cat Feeder." What a mouthful. We love it. Lu hu hu hu huv it. We programmed it to disperse a pre-measured amount of food (that we decided on) at 5 am to satisfy their early rising bellies. Our cats are from the same litter and have always been good at sharing, so they have had no problem eating out of the same bowl. Otherwise we would have had to buy two. Which would have been an expensive bummer.



They were a little nervous of the noise it made at first, but manned up quickly once they realized that that noise meant food.

You can program it to dispense up to three times a day, and although it doesn't come with a power cord (so far we are using batteries) you can order one from the company. I think we will do that soon, so that we don't have to worry about the batteries dying.

Not that our feline friends wouldn't let us know if they didn't get fed. They have their ways. Their very loud ways.



And so. If you are suffering from lack of sleep because of your stubborn, hungry pets...this is has been our solution and as I have already mentioned we looooove it!



P.S. Don't think that I'm oblivious to the fact that I will soon be having a baby and will once again be losing precious hours of sleep. I'm just choosing not to acknowledge that right now. kthanksbye.

P.P.S. Petmate has no clue who I am and didn't give me any money to rave about their genius product.


Wednesday, June 6, 2012

The problem with peonies.

Hi friends.

Can we just talk about peonies for a minute? Like, how they have poor planning skills? Or something?

Exhibit A. Growing oh so very tall. So far so good. (P.S. I did not take any of these photos at the same time of the day each day that I took them. So even though every picture looks different from the next, it is indeed the same silly plant.)



Exhibit B. Something is starting to go wrong. The blooms that are about to emerge are starting to get heavy and they begin to sag towards the ground.



Exhibit C. The peony blossoms and does many face plants onto the grassy floor below. Cue sad, silly looking peonies.



Is there something I'm doing wrong? (Granted I'm doing nothing except watching these fools.) But it doesn't seem to be just MY problem - all over the neighborhood I see peonies looking like this! It happens to this particular plant every year. Perhaps it's an epidemic.

My pink peonies stay upright for the most part, so maybe it's only white peonies that are dysfunctional. Obviously I don't know much about these types of things...anyone out there have some gardening expertise for me?

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Hi.

Well.

Didn't the last week just fly right by me.

Things have been preeeetty busy around here. And I have lots of fun stuff to talk about! But right now cleaning my house must take precedence as it's been...absolutely far too long. And we have people coming over tonight.

But I figured I'd stop in for a quick chat and the latest bump update.



That's us while visiting Brian's family last weekend for Memorial Day.

Fun times! And all that good stuff.

Ok lets talk soon.