One Year Ago...

Happy Anniversary, Baby. We made it a year without killing each other. :) To the first of many...

A Different Decision

Yesterday, Bryan and I went to Fresno to do a little shopping and to see a movie. After 'The Social Network' we went to the Elephant Bar and had a few drinks and some dessert. We were talking about how we needed to work on the structure of our days and to spend our time more wisely. So, today I made a real effort in being better.

Here are a few simple things I did to change my normal routine:

-I woke up ten minutes earlier than normal so that I would arrive 5 minutes early to work instead of right on time... with make-up on.

-When I got home, I organized my meal plan for this week. Taking care to implement what I already have so I don't spend what I don't have to.

-I watched a little TV before Bryan got home and rested.

-I spent a few moments chatting with Bryan about our days and various other things.

-I started dinner before I was hungry and made sure not to rush. I tend to want until I'm hungry to eat and then I rush through and say things like "That's good enough." And eat it. Even if its NOT good enough. I made a yummy dinner, and managed to get a grunt of approval from the hubs. :)

-Instead of sitting down after cooking to watch TV and relax while Bryan cleaned up, I talked with him, changed out my checkbook and wrote a payment. Then I started some laundry and put my purse back together for tomorrow.

-When Bryan was finished with the kitchen, he found me on my computer surfin' the net. So, he sat down and played a little Wii. When I was finished, he started Arrested Development and now we are watching, cuddled on the couch, eating Halloween candy that we definitely don't need.

All the changes were simple decisions but they really made a difference to my day. I feel accomplished. And it makes me happy. It also makes me want to pass out like my Cali-girl. :)


*Posted via Blogaway on the HTC Incredible. Any errors are because my thumbs get so tired that sometimes they don't hit the right keys.

Owl Be Watching You

Say hello to my new friend. :) I cannot believe I found a white ceramic owl for $13. And he is huge! Who would have thought that Burlington Coat Factory would have cute home stuff? So excited to put him on my bookshelf when I get home!

All good things...

End with a trip to the emergency room. Say-WHAT?


I wish that I could say I ended up in the ER because I went sky-diving and hit my head on a bird on the way down so I had to go get checked out... 


Or I pulled an Evel Knievel and did a little of this:

(Source: EvelKnievel.com)

But, I didn't. I went to the ER because my brain was THISCLOSE to exploding on Sunday night. We should rewind to the beginning, though. 

Friday, (Oct. 8) was my birthday, and I always try to get my birthday off if it's a Friday. My boss, Kim, approved the request and I went to the Fresno Chaffee Zoo, since I had never been there before! I loved seeing the animals, but it also made me really sad too. I can't help but feel like they should be in their natural habitat. Those pens are just so tiny. It hurts my heart. 

Nonetheless, I enjoyed seeing all the different animals and I was able to get a few good pictures... 

Obviously, I was dying to see the elephants. Look how CUTE they are. I was practically begging them to get in the water and play. Of course, animals almost never do what you want them to do. They were both kind of swaying to their own music though. They are so beautiful. 

I had SUCH a great afternoon with my friends (who will remain nameless, to protect the innocent). Thank you for coffee, lunch, and accompanying me to FCZ. It was awesome. :)

For dinner, Bryan and I met up with my sisters and their husbands. We went out to dinner at Fugazzi's. It was so fun. There is definitely never a dull moment when the all six of us get together. We ended up going to Kari and Adam's house after and we all kind of pooped out on the couch. We watched The Office. It was a great ending to a long day.

On Saturday, Bryan and I busted our rumps to get the house in order for my little birthday get-together that night. Luckily we pulled it together. Oh how I wish we had taken pictures! I'm so bad at that. But I had a really fantastic time with my friends and family. Thank you to everyone who help pull Saturday night off and who came and celebrated with me. Love you all!

Kari and Adam held their gender party on Sunday evening, and about 30 of their friends and family members attended to find out if they were having a boy or a girl. 

Now, the minute Kari told me she was pregnant, I KNEW it was a boy. I just knew it down to my toes. And guess what? 

(Stolen from Kari's Facebook page, cause I'm a ninja.)

IT'S A BOY! I knew it. I'm amazing. And I am SO HAPPY for Adam and Kari. Congrats!

After receiving such happy news you would think that I would go home and dream of all the ways I'll be able to spoil my nephew when he arrives next year... but no. At around 10 that night I felt a migraine coming on. I immediately took my medicine and went to bed. I woke up a few hours later with a BLINDING headache. I had Bryan heat up my... I don't know what to call it... bag of corn? Heating bag of kernels that don't pop into yummy food? Anyways, it was so hot that it made lava seem like ice cream. And it didn't help. He rubbed my back, nada. I knew that this was a loosing battle. I had no medicine, none of my tricks were working. I was completely. screwed. 

I started to cry, and Bryan begged me to stop because it would only get worse. Finally, I started to feel really nauseous. And then I knew, this wasn't going to go away. There is no way I would be able to fight this. It was now 1:30 in the morning and I told Bryan that I needed help. I needed to go to the hospital. 

A few minutes that I don't really remember later, we were at the hospital. Bryan gave them all my information, and we got moved into a room in the back. The nurse asked me a ton of questions that I again, don't remember. I was really just focusing on not throwing up. I don't remember asking, but Bryan got on of those bags that you throw up in from the front desk and kept it close to me. 

Finally, the doctor arrived and asked me more questions. Again, I don't really remember what he asked me. But I DO remember him moving to touch my the back of my head. He asked if it hurt, and I remember saying yes. Then he tilted my head up, which was a REALLY bad idea cause I threw up every where. I managed to block my mouth with my hand, and Bryan moved the bag in front of my face, so I hope I didn't get it on the ol' Doc. But I did manage to get it on me, my pillow, and a little bit on Bryan. 

I honestly can't tell you WHY a migraine gets to a certain point where you cannot hold your stomach. I think that the pain just gets so bad that you have to relieve pressure somewhere. I don't know. All I know is that other migraine-sufferers that I have spoken to will base how bad the migraine is on 1. how blurred your vision is and b. if you are nauseous and/or throw up.

So, the doctor, now standing across the room from me, probably terrified of getting more nastiness on his white coat,  said he'd like me to get a CT scan and that they were going to give me a shot and I'd have to wait there for a while. In came the morphine. I remember that I kept telling myself not to tense up, cause then my butt would hurt forever, but due to the communication problems between my brain and I, I tensed. And my butt STILL hurts. TMI? Oh well. Once you say it in blog-land you can't un-say it. All you can do is issue an apology or tell them to go fly a kite. Guess which one I'll pick if people get offended? 

On the plus side, I got to ride in a wheel chair to the room with the donut machine. The only bad thing is that I barely remember the ride, or the test itself. I do remember waking up in the original room and kind of zoning in and out of consciousness. One time, Bryan tripped on something and almost went down into a bunch of cabinets. Which is hilarious now that I'm thinking about it. The doctor gave me a prescription for Vicodin and we left. It was about 4 at this time. I don't remember the ride home or getting into bed. All I know is that I stayed there for the next 13 or so hours. 

It was fun. Doesn't it sound fun? I know. Everyone wishes they were me.

Can I say one thing though? I wish, wish, WISH that Bryan would get a migraine. I wish that he would just get ONE, horrible, rotten, no-good migraine where he was throwing up and thinking that being shot in the head would feel better than this migraine continuing. Because, Boy doesn't know how to be sympathetic at all. On Tuesday, he asked me, "What's wrong with you? Why are you still messed up?" It's like... seriously? 

Brains have to sustain SOME kind of damage after a migraine happens. And brains need to heal. Sleeping for almost 24 hours is not enough to get your brain functioning back to normal, where you can go to work, unpack boxes and cook dinner. No siree!

Cook your own damn tacos, is what I say.

Things I'm Crazy About

1.) Young House Love

John and Sherry Petersik share their journey with the 54 year old ranch house they purchased in 2006. I've been a follower for almost a year and a half, I have read every. single. entry. that they have posted, and was giddy with excitement when they brought Clara into the world. They are a great couple that try to do their best in all things, and they have GREAT taste. 

2.)  Spring 2011, Alexander McQueen

Sarah Burton, who was Alexander McQueen's right hand woman before he passed a while ago, put out a GREAT Spring line this year. She definitely didn't go as crazy as McQueen is known for, but I'm loving the dresses. The dresses have a Nature theme, which is fitting for Spring. Love it! 

3.)  Barnes and Noble Nook

I love my Nook. It is basically the best tech thing that I have ever purchased... Besides my laptop. Or my phone. Okay. It's actually the only "techie" thing that I have ever purchased. My iPod was a gift from my friend Katie, and is now four years old. So... yeah. But its amazing. And it's going to get me in all kinds of trouble with the husband, but I mean, there are worse things that spending $6.99 a few times a month, right? Right!

4.) Candie's Bradley Tall Boots

These boots? SO CUTE. And comfortable. How do I know? I bought them. :) They are originally $79.99 and I bought them for $34.99. BOOM.

5.) Subway Tile / White Kitchens

(Images found via Google Images)

I have kitchen on the brain. I don't care if it is trendy to have white subway tile as the back-splash in the kitchen. It looks so clean, so airy. I could spend all day in any of these kitchens. I'm planning on having white subway tile with very light gray grout lines, with granite countertops and white cabinets. The granite will be white with the black and gray flecks and all my appliances will be black. My accent color with always be changing. Ahhhh... I die. I DIE. 

6.) Autumn

(Images found via Google Images)

Last night, Bryan and I had the door open so that our cat could explore the backyard. Bryan snuggled against me and said that he loved this time of year and that he couldn't wait to bundle up and go on walks, drink hot cocoa and watch movies on overcast days. I was feeling the exact same way. I love when Fall rolls around. It is such a beautiful time of year. 

7.) When my desk goes from this:

To this:

That pile of papers on the right are my "projects" thus they are always there. But it is a LOT smaller pile than usual. So that is good. I really want to get a few pieces of art or something for that white wall underneath the light. I hate looking at it. Its so BORING. I need a view, ya know. Something pretty. I have an idea so we'll see if it happens. 

What are some things you are crazy about?

Rug Rules

I don't think I have ever purchased a rug that wasn't for the kitchen or bathrooms... And maybe one or two mat's for guests to wipe their feet before they come into the house. Needless to say, I am not an expert when it comes to rugs. 

When you walk into the front door of our house, there is an entry way that leads to what I can only call a "great room". Even though it is not huge, it encompasses three different living areas. A sitting area, the living room and the dining area (which is on a raised foundation). 

Now, this great room is weird. It was weird when we first bought the house and we have been trying to, well, un-weird it. The house was built in the late 70s, and it used to have something called a conversation pit. The only reason I know this is because Denise was explaining our house to her coworkers and apparently one of them had been to our house way back in the day and called it a conversation pit. Small world, right? 

Still wondering what in the heck a conversation pit is? Here are a few I found.


This one is actually from some Museum of Art. Come to see our very colorful, artistic piano? Or how about our artistic bookcases? What kind of stinkin' art museum is this?

(Source: LA Times Blog)

This one is from the 80s. I bet ours looked a lot like this one.

(Source: Ugly House)

This one reminds me of the pit that was in Get Him to the Greek.  Except it had a bright green couch.

(Source: Flickriver)

Ours is basically concrete steps leading down to an area with a concrete bench that surrounds the perimeter. Super comfortable, right? I know. Maybe it had carpet on it at one time or another. The previous owners were obviously not conversationalists and they built a wood sub-floor to level the room and create a crawl space/storage area. Along with this genius idea they decided it would be prudent to put a trap door in the middle of this wood floor... which is so easy to hide when you glue wood flooring squares to the wood sub-flooring. Plus the large metal handle gave it away... Like I said, genius. 

Bryan and I (mainly Bryan) ripped up the wood flooring, down came the wall that separated the sitting area to the living room, and we carpeted the whole ding dang thing, and here is a picture of the trap door.

I'm thinking of submitting that picture to that Kodak photography contest this year. It's art, people. ART. Are you wondering what the heck rugs have to do with any of this? Why I went off on some wild tangent of conversation pits? 

WE HAVE TO HIDE THE TRAP DOOR. Duh. If you didn't make that leap, I don't think I can help you. Who cares if you didn't ASK for help. I can't help you. 

Now, that is our first problem. The second problem is that we bought engineered flooring from Lumber Liquidators that is a deep, darkish, not-red-in-any-way color and our dining room table is that light oak color. They clash. It looks awesome. So, another rug is needed. 

And of course, Bryan, love of my life that he is, insists on having a rug in the entryway. Because his sole purpose in life is to complicate mine. This super reasonable and not hard at all request now requires me to find three rugs that will all be in the same space. 

So, I've been pursuing different websites and stores and I really had no idea what I was doing. I mean, how do you LIKE a rug? It's just a...rug! Basically, I would go to a website, and control-click on the rugs I liked so that it would bring up a separate tab. Then, I would look at all the different tabs and I started to find that a lot of the rugs had defined similarities. The colors were often cool tones, the patterns not busy... I could definitely see a pattern. The other pattern I saw was that most of them were in the $250-$300 range, which was not in the budget. Especially since I needed three rugs. 


Now, armed with a defined preference in rugs and a budget in mind, I had to decide what I was going to do about three rugs in the same room. 

Three of the same rug? No. That sounds like a bad idea, even to me. Pretend that each room is separate and buy a rug that fits that particular room? Eh... That didn't sound good either. I was talking to Kari about it and she reminded me that I could ask Stacie. Stacie is Alison's sister-in-law and went to school for interior design. So I text messaged her and she said three different rugs, that coordinate. Whew. Done and done. 

A few weeks ago at Lowes, I fell in love with this rug, the price, and the fact that it matches the vibe I want my house to project.We went last night after dinner and Bryan approved of it. We bought a 5x8 for $129. Such a great price!

I'd been thinking all day about what type of rug to get for the dining area. I felt that a natural fiber, soft rug that had dark and light wood tones with cushion the blow of the two opposite woods being next to each other. We looked, and found one that had different tones of brown and a black border. The rug we bought was a 8x10 and it was $139, I think... I couldn't find it on Lowes.com but I'll post an update later. 


***Updated to conclude picture of Rug***


Our rug looks a lot more... Brown than this... Oh well. 

Once everything is in I'll take pictures. Hopefully, I won't hate it and have to buy and return a million rugs. :)

Can it be true?

Oh... Hello, there. 


I'm sure you have been waiting on pins and needles for my return. Yes? Yes. Or maybe you have been as busy as I have been. That could possibly be true. Well, I'm back. Eight months later. We'll see if it was worth the wait. 


I think the best way to get everyone (all five people that read this blog) caught up is to give a really quick rundown of what the heck has been going on. 


Here is the recap!


In January, this happened:

 Aww, poor little Skeeter. Breaks my heart to see her like this... Although, that looks kind of like blood right there in the right part of the picture huh? It's not. It's engine fluid of some sort. The fire department came and sprinkled some stuff on it, so it must have been flammable.


So, also, as well, this happened in February:

Heeeellllooo, 2007 Vue. Sorry for the poor quality, but I took this on my phone. Well, my old phone. More on that later. 

To prove just how insane Bryan and I are, we also got this in February.

Yeah. Two cars, one month. Luckily, our pocketbook survived. 

March came around and... I don't really remember March. All I remember is that I cooked a lot... and it was Kari's birthday. Except that I never bought her a present, because I promised her that I could make her a Shutterfly book of her wedding pictures, but we haven't gotten around to doing that. (HI, KARI!)

April rolled around, and we were ready to look for a house. So, while Bryan worked, I looked at house, after house, after house, and I found one. And we put in an offer. Then it was accepted. And then we were in escrow, and then it was ours. It closed on May 7 and we received the key on May 8. There was a whole lot of running around during this part, but I'm going to write a separate post about it. 

May was our 6-month anniversary. So, we went to Carmel-by-the-Sea and enjoyed a few blissfully quiet days. 

We spent one night in Carmel, and then we took the road above, named Old Coast Road, to Big Sur and spent the night there. It was really a great vacation. Honestly, any vacation that allows me to have lobster is a good vacation. :)

Once we got back to work and to reality, we waited and waited for some paperwork to go through. Finally, at the end of June we moved into my father-in-laws' house which was all kinds of stressful, but soon a little bit of this started happening...

Yep! We got a bunch of construction done on the house. We took down a few walls, put in a new garage door, and put in some brand new carpet. The construction went on from the end of June to the middle of September. It was a ridiculously long process and we think that it was part contractor laziness and part city inspector laziness.

While the construction was going on, however, Bryan got bit by the technological bug, and we bought two of these:

...Which would be why the picture clarity changes so much in-betwixt the photos above. How much do I love that I worked in-betwixt into this post? Lots.

July and August we busy months but I can't really remember anything that happened because well, I have a horrible memory. Have I mentioned that before? Probably. OH. Big news. In July, Bryan and I went to San Diego so we could visit Alison and family, and so Bryan could play at a wedding that Alison's company, One & Only Events was coordinating. (You can also read up on their blog.) When we returned from said trip, my other sister, Kari and her husband Adam had HUGE news. 

That is right! Kari is pregnant. In this picture she was 16 weeks. :) She is due in February and I'm SO EXCITED to have another niece or nephew. I think it's a nephew but we shall see!

On September 18, we finally moved into our house on Birch. Our wonderful, crazy, project house. Now its October and we have a ridiculous month ahead of us. Let's highlight... 

-October 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 - We're having our wood flooring installed in the kitchen, dining area, entryway and hall way. We're also having our house painted!

-October 8 - My 23rd Birthday. Woo-hoo!! 

-October 9 - Birthday get-together at my place and the unveiling of our house. Hopefully I get everything I can organized and straightened! 


-October 10 - Kari and Adam's Gender party. We're all going to find out what they are bringing into this world at the same time! So cool!


-October 25 - Anniversary.... ONE whole year. I honestly can't believe a year has passed. It's unbelievable. We're taking off on a BIG TRIP. More on that later. :)


That is the end of our catching up journey. I'm sure there is a lot that I forgot, but I'll be adding things in and updating after my husband reminds me of all the stuff I forgot. Did I mention I have a horrible memory?