Dramatize the Ordinary

Whew

2011-12-22T10:50:00.001-06:00

Boy oh boy did life get away from me.

I just got an email from the Bump telling me that my baby is 46 weeks old. So, yea, there's that. Don't even get me started on how I feel about it.

This morning I am finishing up some work, thinking about our 48 hour day and the road trip we are undertaking this evening and listening to the music on my iPhone on shuffle.

So far this morning...

1. Mumford & Sons : The Cave
2. Girl Talk: Get it Get it
3. Straight No Chaser: Jingle Bell Rock
4. Death Cab for Cutie: A Lack of Color
5. Raffi: Baby Beluga (yea, you read that right...)
6. Ben Folds: You Don't Know Me
7. Worship Tracks: Days of Elijah
8. Jack Johnson Curious George Album: We are going to be friends

I suppose a shuffled playlist is one of the most telling things about a person. I mean, Ben Folds, Death Cab, worship tracks, a little bit of Girl Talk, Raffi and Disney all wrapped up into one really does explain me in a nutshell.

apologies but not really ready to be back yet

2011-09-27T17:13:00.000-05:00

I'm so sorry blogland for my lack of attention to you lately.

See, things have been sort of crazy around here. Well, insanely crazy actually and we're all just trying to get to where we need to be.

Our house is on the market and we're hoping to buy a friend's house that had to move to Stillwater, OK for a new job.

It has been a whirlwind but the house hasn't sold yet which is hard for Paul and I. The more showings you have, the more excited you get and then when nothing comes through, it's sort of a blow in the stomach. Over and over again. And considering the number of showings we've had and the extremely positive feedback the viewers give, we're shocked that we're still sitting on 20th street.

I've been putting off writing about it because if it doesn't happen, I refuse to be that girl that got too excited and jumped the gun and then has to go back and renig her entire post.

I'm excited and nervous and hopeful but I'm wearing thin and waiting for the right buyer is starting to take it out of me.

Everything else in our lives has been just as crazy, so as soon as we settle down, get some clarity, I should be back. Hopefully with lots of re-model projects. They keep me excited!

2011-07-15T10:43:00.000-05:00

When I first imagined staying home with Addison each Friday of the week, I pictured elaborate days filled with learning and trips and shopping.

I've been back at work for two and a half months and my Friday's aren't quite elaborate.

In fact, their quite ordinary. But wonderfully ordinary.

This morning, Paul let me sleep in while he gave Addison her 6 am bottle. Then she sat with me on our bed and played while I ate breakfast in bed. (What a husband, right?!) We played and watched The Cat in the Hat for awhile in my bed when she started to get ready for a morning nap. I laid her flat and laid down next to her and the next thing we both knew we we're out. We both took a long morning nap and woke up happy and content. She giggled as I changed her diaper and prepared her bottle and as she ate we watched some classic Sesame Street. She has been playing in her room ever since she finished eating while watching me pack her things and my things for the weekend trip to see my parents.

It's been a wonderful morning.

Plus it's too hot for the zoo. Right?

4th of July

2011-07-09T18:46:00.001-05:00

For the fourth of July this year, we went to see Paul's family in Michigan. We loaded missy up in the car and were off for a 15 hour drive. We spent 4-1/2 days with family, eating, sitting on the lake and boating and loved every minute of it.

Addison's 1st time on a boat.

Meeting her great-grandma for the first time.

Isabelle and the cousins (Addi & Ava) with Diane.

Addison with her grandma Diane.

The living room was practically a toy war zone. Between two toddlers and Addison, it was wrecked.

Cousins with their great grandma.

Lake Macatawa. We sat in the backyard overlooking the lake, eating smores and watching fireworks that people were setting off from their docks.

Paul and I ended our trip in St. Louis on the 4th of July. We watched the largest and loudest fireworks we had ever seen from our hotel room, sipping on some leftover Coke Zero cans from the trip while Addison slept soundly on the king sized bed. Quite possibly the best 4th of July ever.

a typical conversation with my mother

2011-07-08T08:36:00.000-05:00

Last night I spent half an hour on the phone with my mom:

Mom:    So I took this woman shopping for an outfit to wear at her daughter's wedding. She wanted to go to the Sonshine House to find something (a free clothing place sponsered by the local churches) but that would be a lot of work to find her something so I told her I'd take her to the thrift store and get her an outfit. So I took her to the thrift store and got her a couple of outfits and got myself some outfits.

Me:       Mommmm....

Mom:    I know! But I found this really cute dress. It was so cute I wore it back to the office. I literally bought it, changed in the dressing room and went back to work. Nancy laughed and said, "Seriously, Connie!? It is really cute though."

Me:      Well I don't blame her. You took another woman shopping at a thrift store and then came back in a different outfit.

Mom:   Well later John came in the room and sort of looked surprised and said, "You weren't wearing that this morning were you?!" Which is funny because the dress isn't really normal for me. You know it's tie-dyed and all.

Me:       I'm sorry, did you say tie-dyed?'

Mom:    Yea, and it's a short (did my mom buy a tie-dyed romper?!)...a mini-skirt (please tell me you did not just say mini-skirt), well it's not a mini-skirt, it's just a shorter dress. Like to my knees (oh heavens mom, a dress to your knees is not a mini anything). AND, it's belted!

Me:       This just keeps getting worse.

Mom:    No! It's way cute! I'll send you a picture.

Me:       Well you probably should. The image I have in my head does not sound cute.

Mom:    And what's better is it matches my suede purple heels that I got at the St. Paul Thrift Store.

Me:       Stop.

This is what I was invisioning and please tell me you would not tell your mother to stop talking too if this is what you thought she bought at a thrift store to wear to work and church. Turns out, she did send me a photo, and the dress looks nothing like this. Thank heavens. It's more of a tribal print dress, not tie-dyed. Again, thank heavens.

discovering

2011-06-26T14:57:00.002-05:00

"Hey Dad, what's that stuff over there?!"

"This isn't too bad."

She liked the grass, at least a lot more than her cousin Ava used to!

2011-06-24T17:55:00.000-05:00

Today I only got to spend part of the day with Addi. An impromptu meeting at Tinker Air Force Base with some picky airmen required my time including time to get a military contractor badge. So Addi spent some time at St. Luke's while I tried to keep the air force from asking for her in exchange for a badge.

But after I received my badge, had my meeting and spent an hour walking around an airplane hanger we got to spend a few hours together before Paul came home.

She got a bottle and then we played in the living room and relaxed on the couch together while the painters finished their work.

There is nothing sweeter to me than when she holds me with her hands. She likes to hold our fingers when we give her a bottle, she likes to hold our necks and just recently, she has discovered holding (or more appropriately, tugging) on my hair. Painful, but sweet.

Exterior Reno Update

2011-06-24T10:49:00.000-05:00

Day One (Monday, June 20, 2011)

Power washing, sanding, caulking and misc. prep work

(A.K.A. our bungalow at it's worst)

Day Two (Tuesday, June 21, 2011)

Priming trouble spots, painting body/siding (Sherwin Williams Wheatgrass)

Day Three (Wednesday, June 22, 2011)

Painting eves, trim, columns (Sherwin Williams Egret White)

Day Four (Thursday, July 23, 2011)

Painting porch, brick, chimneys (Sherwin Williams Manor House)

Day Five (Friday, June 24, 2011)

Second coat of paint on trim, painting back porch, miscellaneous touch ups, painting garage doors/trim, and prepping, priming and painting the front door.

(That's our painter Luis. He has helpers, lots of them actually, but if you need some work done in Oklahoma City, this is the guy to call).

And excuse the WonderBug activity center. I promised myself I wouldn't be that parent that posts photos of their kids or other things on Facebook/Blogs where there's just kid stuff everywhere in the background. But alas, I was too lazy to move the thing any further than I needed to.

When that front door gets painted, this house is going to be amazing.

Big reveal next week!

12 months of Addison

2011-06-24T10:26:00.001-05:00

When it came time to send out Addison's birth announcements, I took to Etsy to find something that fit our personality a little bit better than the announcements from Shutterfly, Tiny Prints and Bella Baby did. Not that those announcements aren't sweet, they're just not our style. I wanted everything about this to say, "yep, that's Paul and Christa," when the receipient opened the envelope.

While perusing Etsy, I found Oodles of Color and fell in love with this birth announcement. It may not say to everyone else what I was hoping, but I loved every bit of it. It was graphic but personal. Clean but unique. I no longer cared if it spoke to anyone else, it spoke to me. And it matched her baby book (you know, the important things in life).

Paul and I took her picture in our office using a rigged up photo booth/screen. It involved dining room chairs, a coffee table, towels, a white bolt of leftover fabric and a tripod. We we're shooting so many photos and so quickly, we basically recorded an entire 30 minutes of Addison's life including a spit up, a wipe down, rotations and positioning. They're hilarious to look at like a flip book. In the hundreds of photos we snapped, we narrowed it down to our favorite one (amazingly) and sent it off to Michelle at Oodles of Color to do her magic.

She cleaned up our photo, changed it to black and white and added her text. This was the final result:

I loved it so much, that I got a wild idea to do a 12 month series just like it. I had been toying with the idea of weekly or monthly photos for awhile and was sure that I'd miss a week/month and be totally bummed. But purchasing an image in a series every month would keep me accountable to finish. I wouldn't want to pay X amount of dollars for the first 7 months and then bail on the rest because the first months would have been a waste of money. It would keep me taking photos and journaling what she did month by month, better than I could probably keep up her baby book. So I contacted Michelle and she agreed to do the entire series for me (and at a discounted rate)!

We're only four months in but every time I get my proofs or final images from Michelle, I am enamored with the photos and could stare at them for hours on end. It makes the janky little photo booth we set up once a month and Addison's displeasure for being overstimulated incredibly worth it.

After I purchased the first two months I started having a small amount of guilt for not using a designer in OKC since Paul and I are all about supporting local businesses, restaurants and artists. But I didn't want anything else and I definitely didn't want someone knocking off her work. Working via email/long distance hasn't been a problem at all and even though I know a lot of local OKC graphic designers, if another project comes up, I can't say I wouldn't use her.

Check Michelle Hyster out.
And buy something from her Etsy store.

And just for kicks and giggles, here's a behind the scenes photo:

I'll post after our next shoot on how we set up the room and then a before and after. It's amazing what the power of computer editing does for photos.

Judge all you want, it works well for us.

2011-06-20T10:06:00.001-05:00

Addison was in a different state for four days.

That meant I had to basically pack her entire bedroom to be sent along side her.

And even though she was with my parents who obviously know how to raise a kid since they raised two, they had never raised Addison, and so I sent some instructions.

I mean, come on. Every single kid is different and even though there are four basic rules to keeping a kid happy, it's always nice to have a little more direction so you aren't having to guess all the time. Or at least that was my reasoning with sending the instructions. For real, Paul and I babysat a little boy a few weeks ago and he was wonderful, but anytime he made a peep I had no idea if he needed to nap or eat or if he just wanted to be left alone. With Addison, she is so predictable that with a routine written out, no one would typically need to wonder why she was fussing.

So I did that. I wrote out her routine. But in Christa-fashion of course.

I typed out her typical routine starting at 6:00 am when she usually wakes up and took it all the way to bedtime. And then just for some good graphic measure, I showed that routine on two clocks. An AM clock and a PM clock.

My mom took the typed out routine quite well. My mom and dad didn't make fun of me, well they did a little, but they weren't offended. In fact, my mom told me she expected nothing less. I won't read into that too much.

But honestly, for those of you that babysit, isn't trying to figure somebody else's infant out frustrating? When it's your kid, you know which cry is a hungry cry, or a sleepy cry and you know that those moments are coming before they even happen. You know that at 8:00 pm almost every single night your kid gets sort of cranky and just wants to lay down quietly so you are able to miss the whole crying scene altogether. But no one else knows that.

Wouldn't it be helpful though if they did?!
Even though they probably wouldn't be able to pull out the whole parenting sixth sense right away, they'd at least have an idea of what was going on without having to go through the entire checklist.

Addison does really well with a routine. From the very beginning, she sort of just fell into it and didn't argue. Now, she's pretty predictable.

I know some people think that's nuts, but when you are an uptight, type A kind of mom, knowing that while you are at the grocery store your kid is going to have a meltdown because she is hungry helps keep that meltdown from happening entirely. So it works for me/us. It keeps us prepared and we've yet to have a "crap, she's hungry and I don't have enough food," or "we aren't somewhere I can feed her," type of moment.

It helps that she is just a well tempered baby in the first place.

Only once or twice has her routine been a pain. There have been a couple of times that I couldn't get to where I needed to be quickly enough (I wasn't paying attention to the clock) or I seriously wanted a nap but old Addi girl needed to do what was next and wasn't going to have it. So to combat those moments, I plan our days, I plan our drives, I plan my naps, I plan, I plan, I plan. And I think it makes all three of us much happier.

My parents tried to stick to my routine as much as possible, which meant a lot to me because getting a kid back onto a routine can be difficult, or so I've heard. My dad even made a legal statement at the bottom of my typed routine that he sent back with us.

"We the undersigned believe that we followed this routine to the best of our ability. No matter what Addison says. Signed, Memaw and Papa"

So thanks to my parents for keeping the girl on a routine, it's made the transition back home easier than I expected.

2011-06-17T14:54:00.001-05:00

Unfortunately, what would have been my first Friday with Addison since starting this little series is missing a key ingredient.

Addison is in Texas staying with her grandparents while Paul and I celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary today. Woot Woot!

We just recently found a new home for our cats and so today, on our very special fifth wedding anniversary, we are doing what we love to do. Organizing, cleaning, de-catifying and working on projects like painting dressers, making Addison hair bows (me, not Paul) and making our house our home.

We're also waiting on our painter to stop by so we can discuss what they will be doing starting, get this, next week to the outside of our casa.

And tonight, we're having dinner at one of our favorite local classy restaurants. I'm already salivating just thinking about it.

I have a post later about my neurotic OCD tendencies. It includes a very detailed list and pie charts. I know, you are just anxious to hear about it.

"why grandmother, what big eyes you have!"

2011-06-14T10:29:00.000-05:00

Addison is off to visit her grandparents tomorrow for an extended weekend.

She's been to my parent's house once before on her own, but I had the stomach flu and was not conscious enough to realize what was going on, nor was I awake long enough to really miss her. When I did come around and realize that she was gone it was hard for her to not be with me.

This time, I'm willingly sending her down to Texas for a few days and I'm starting to get sad.

Paul and I have plans to work on our house and we'll be celebrating our fifth wedding anniversary while she is off being spoiled. I know she'll have a great time and I know it'll be good for Paul and I to get time to be a couple again and to celebrate the last five years of ups and downs.

Wednesday night we take miss little red riding hood down to her grandma's (and grandpa's) house. That's where the similarities to the old story will end though (I hope). Got it mom & dad? No big scary wolf, I'd prefer her to stay out of the woods and lets keep her away from men with axes. Ok, I think I covered all the rules.

Stamp (and image) found on Etsy

Fridays with Addsion

2011-06-13T16:36:00.001-05:00

Since returning to work I have been incredibly blessed by being able to take Fridays off every week. My company has been gracious enough to let me only work 32 hours/week but still qualify as a full-time employee (which means I receive all holidays, my vacation time and any & all benefits) and Paul was gracious enough to let us loose some income every month so that I could spend an extra day with Addison.

I really struggled with going back to work. I still struggle with being back at work if we're completely honest here. I'm only a month and a half into this new routine so I'm still giving it time. So far, it's been good overall and working four days out of the week makes me really appreciate my other three off. But especially Fridays. I love my Fridays with Addison. It's our day.

Sometimes, our day is nothing but laundry, bottles and naps but I love those days as much as I love, errands and trips to the zoo.

These days are already going so fast and she is growing so quickly. Therefore, every Friday I'm going to write about our day. A special reminder to myself of how precious my Fridays with Addison are.

"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."

2011-06-08T13:42:00.001-05:00

Lately, I've been thinking about my relationship with Addison and what it is now and what it will be in the future. Currently, I don't have a strong passionate need to keep her safe from emotional harm, because really, no one can harm her with crappy comments or hurtful things yet. I have a desire to protect her phyiscally, but not emotionally yet.

Last night I talked to my brother on the phone for quite awhile and after our conversation ended and it was time for me to crawl into bed my head was spinning and I wasn't even remotely tired. I had a memory running through my mind that I couldn't get rid of.

When we were kids we rode the bus to our elementary school. We we're one of the last pick ups so it wasn't too shabby of a deal because we were never on the bus for more than five minutes. I believe I was in fifth grade and Keith was in second the morning that my memory is from. We boarded the bus as usual and started walking to find seats. We walked by a girl who was in the sixth grade and was a brutal bully. We're talking, absolutely, positively brutal. She went to our church and we knew her outside of school and I HATED her guts. I was terrifed of her. I mean, I think adults were even scared of Joie. Have I conveyed how much I hated her? Well, as we walked by, Joie, as loud as she could, screamed, "Look! It's Christa and her brother Dumbo! Look at those huge ears!" Of course the entire bus erupted in laughter. It was the longest five minute ride of my life. I wasn't embarrassed, I was furious.

I had never felt such a rage towards someone before. You would have thought that my little, scrawny ten year old body had erupted into that of the Hulk. I wanted to crawl over the seats, grab her by her long blond pony tail and make her pay (with as much physical pain as possible) for making my brother feel bad about himself. How dare she?!

I don't know if Keith even remembers this or not. But as I was laying in bed last night, I still had the same anger and hurt balled up inside of me about the event. I think I could still physically hurt her for that morning that happened almost fifteen years ago. I stalked Joie on Facebook from my phone while I was trying to fall asleep to see where she was at, what she was doing and so on. And without totally bashing her, let's just say the Willson kids are living a MUCH better life. I believe in a little bit of Karma.

I've had these unbelievable chest pains/anger bursts about situations that have come up with my dad and Paul too.

I wanted to punch an 80 year old woman in the jugular a few months ago for bad mouthing my dad and not thinking that he would hear about it. He heard about it. And so did I and I about went through the roof.

And before I even knew Paul, back in the day, his high school friends stood him up and he ended up sitting through a movie by himself. Alone. In the dark. He is friends with most of these people still today and I like them all, mostly, but talk about an anger I have buried inside of me. There are times I've wanted to pop off some nasty remark about how crappy of people they are for that one moment.

I've hurt for my mom before, but have never felt like I needed to do something about it. She takes care of herself and quite well might I add. She doesn't let people walk on her (not that my dad, Keith or Paul do. I just have some kind of protection reflex for them).

So I know this will come for Addison. I know that the physical protection I already feel that I need to provide for her will morph into an emotional one when we get to the stage. But it'll probably be 1000 times more intense.

This is your heads up people. If your kid hurts my kid, lock your deadbolt.

in my purse today...

2011-06-07T16:36:00.000-05:00

Let's play a game shall we?
Let's play, what's in Christa's purse!
Ok.

Today, in my purse I have:

Two cans of Infant Enfamil Formula
A handmade doll that Addison's aunt Jenn made her
A dirty pair of Addison's pajamas (with embroidered super cute whales)
A pacifier
A gold necklace
Chapstick
Lip Gloss
Lipstick
Two red pens
Two blue pens
Two black pens
A planner
A small notebook
A Lean Cuisine
A can of Coke
A bag of tortilla chips
My wallet
My cellphone
My keys
A screwdriver
4 Allen Wrenches
A small box of extra screwdriver heads
Command picture hanging strips
My library card
Paperwork from Addison's doctor's appointment
And a pair of sunglasses (Did you sing that like "And a partridge in a pear tree." Because that was the goal...)

Oh, and an empty wallet. Because you never know when you'll need one (that was sarcasm).

cooking for an infant

2011-06-07T16:11:00.000-05:00

Addison had her four month wellness check up today and she checked out great. She's in the 25th percentile for her weight and head circumference and in the 50th for her height. I find that odd because she's looking a little chunky to me. Not bad chunky, baby cute chunky of course.

She's also doubled her birth weight and has been eating rice cereal lately like a champ. We're going to keep that up for another month but her doctor said that around the five month mark we can start her on some fruits and vegetables.

Seriously?!

I just got this whole formula feeding thing down and I'm good at it. Like really good at it and keeping up with it. Now you want me to figure out how to start serving solids, and displace bottles and get my child to turn into a normal human being who eats regular food one day?!

Fuh-reak-ing out.

The plan has been and is to make her baby food. Paul and I got ourselves back in the kitchen at the beginning of May and have been truly enjoying cooking our food again. We were tired of the restaurants we had been frequenting and we we're tired of the effect they were having on our wallets. So, we want to consciously make Addison's food too. We'll know what's in it, how long it's been "fresh" and it'll be cheap, cheap, cheap. And since she eats like a little bird, the cheap, cheap, cheap part seems quite appropriate in more ways than one.

Back when I was pregnant, I swore that I needed one of these babycook do-dads. But now that it's actually getting to be close to time to start this whole process, shelling out $145.00 for yet another kitchen appliance seems ridiculous. Considering we own a steaming pot, KitchenAid blender and Cuisinart food processor. Oh and our kitchen is the size of some people's powder baths and storage space is limited.

So, I've decided to forgo the fancy little steamer/pureeing combo and use the ridiculously expensive appliances I already own. Oh darn.

OK, so I know what I'm going to use, however I have no idea what to do with them. This cannot be rocket science.

I started googling for baby puree recipes and did you know there are entire baby food cookbooks out there? Genius, sort of. Most of the first food recipes say things like, "Steam one cup of carrots. Place in blender and puree. Serve and freeze."

Yea, OK, I know how to do that. I don't need a cookbook for that but I do need one for things like Pumpkin Banana Puree and Banana Avocado Puree. I mean the whole point of making her baby food is to watch what goes in her body right? So I don't think letting someone whose never made baby food before, just whip up whatever she wants and shovel it her kid's mouth is accomplishing the same goal. So I do want a little direction. Mock me if you must.

Here are the ones I've researched online and want to check out at B&N or BAM before I buy:

I know, you probably think they all look ridiculous but I'm at least going to check them out.

The only other question I'm working through is how to store, carry and keep this food. I know a lot of people use ice cube trays to freeze the food they make and that works, but we currently have two ice trays, and we use them for, wait for it, ICE. So I could go buy one, but why buy an ice tray when you could buy one of these puppies:

My only beef with the Beaba trays (above) is that they don't have a container that their little frozen food will fit in perfectly like the same shaped Tupperware or jar. So while it will be fine when we are feeding her at home, it's not so convenient for daycare, trips, etc.

I know a lot of people also buy 15-20 jars of baby food at first and then reuse them to store the items they make. But I'm not a huge fan of glass jars. I do know Gerber has been making their packaging a BPA free plastic container lately. The only thing I'm not sure on is if they are re-usable, dishwasher safe and if the lid snaps back on tightly. I guess I could buy one and check it out.

Anyone use these before and know if they are re-usable?

Exterior Updating

2011-06-06T21:03:00.000-05:00

We are finally biting the bullet and painting the house.

The Sunday afternoon we pulled up in front of the open house almost six years ago (without any intention to buy it) I said, "Cute, cute house. Needs a new paint job though. The colors are a little whack."

That night we put an offer on the house, whack colors and all.

Every time I showed someone photos of our new house I made sure to preface the entire conversation with, "Oh, this is the color now, but we'll be painting it soon."

And here we are, five and a half years after owning this house and it's still covered in the light blue siding, crayola Kelly green trim and pinky tan brick.

But not for long...

Here is the color palette I put together and that we both agreed on. Finally.

For the last five and a half years we've pulled color scheme after color scheme together, all of them being fine and looked right for our home but without a plan to paint, who knows what I did with all of those options. So when our neighbor recently had their house painted and the painter gave us an amazing deal to do ours too, we had to start all over again selecting colors. We tried probably 50+ different combinations. Everything from light blue, red and gray to a monochromatic blue scheme. One day shortly after I had returned to work and didn't have a project to work on yet, I Sherwin-Williamsed our house and messed around with colors until I came up with these.

So, in a very crude rendering, here is where we hope to go. (Note: the photo is from 2004 and our shrubs and tree are now huge and block too much of the house for me to use to test paint schemes).

I've gotten some mixed reviews about it, but I like it and Paul likes it, so it's what we're going to do. I mean, when you're the person living with it and paying for it, it should be something you like, right?

We are going to keep our existing house numbers that are to the right of our front door:

But the mailbox could use a replacement. The mailbox we currently have is dated and looking worn. I want something simple, clean and cheap.I'm thinking one of these two:

And speaking of mailboxes, have any of you priced them lately? I have and let me tell you what, I think I could convince my mail man to stand on my front porch and personally hold my mail in his hands every single day until I got home for less than some mailboxes cost. Geez Louise.

The light fixture is fine, and technically I don't think we're allowed to replace it without going through some historical preservation hoopla. So it stays.

The doorbell has been broken for about a year. One day it just stopped working. It's the old school bell, none of this new age chime stuff. The bell is in our kitchen next to the back door and we have no idea what caused it to quit ringing. Paul's going to take a look soon. When he does and he figures out how to fix it, because he's Superman and all, I'm going to have him replace the button with this one:

We have two large ceramic planters that are a good mixture of the blue and green that we selected for the house and have that paint drip effect going on that are currently on the two brick ledges that protrude from the house. We'll put those back out and I'm going to save up for a super tall planter to go in the corner to the left of the front door. We're talking like hip height tall.

The furniture and swing on the porch will get a good wash down, the white should pop off the brown/gray and the cushions/pillows will be tweaked (possibly) when we get done.

Things are buzzing around our block.

re-evaluating

2011-06-06T09:10:00.000-05:00

via Quiltish who got it from Making Things Happen

Paul and I have been re-evaluating for about a month now where we are and where we want to go. It’s a frenzy of current home location, financial, occupational and spiritual re-evaluations.

Apparently we don’t like to take things one step at a time. We like to cram the entire steak in our mouth and chew on the entire thing at once instead of cutting it up first. Don’t judge, it works for us. Plus, every situation we are evaluating lends itself to another and then another and they are all so interconnected, splitting them up would do us no good.

Making a decision about our future location within this massive city has huge implications on our jobs, our church, Addison’s child care, our finances and our lifestyle.

Our finances have a huge impact on location, me staying at work or not, etc.

And so on and so on.

We haven’t been able to make a decision about anything yet because there are so many variables to each decision and there really is no rush.

What we did decide, however, was that we had to start planning now so that a year from now, or two years from now we aren’t cursing ourselves for not taking any action at all.

everyday defining moments

2011-06-06T08:39:00.000-05:00

Last night I had one of those, “this is your life,” kind of moments.

I don’t find those moments daunting or bad. In fact, I rather enjoy them.

The only other one I remember vividly happened a few years ago (ok, ok, maybe 6-1/2 years ago) when I was driving to work. It was December, freezing and dark. I was a freshman in college and I was driving down Bryant St. listening to the new Death Cab for Cutie album when it hit me. “You are a college kid.” Everything about that moment for some reason personified what I had expected college to be like and I had arrived.

Last night after we had put Addison down for bed I had an urge to scrub down the kitchen. So in I went, bleaching counters, polishing marble, scrubbing the sink, dusting, loading the dishwasher, etc. I was a machine.

Side note: If you have a black shirt you’ve been wearing a lot lately and you are wondering if you look as good in it as you think, accidently dousing yourself in a bleach/water solution while wearing it and cleaning is probably a sign from God that in fact you don’t look very good in it. I’m not sure if it is ruined or not. If not, I’m taking that as a sign that it does look OK.

Paul had just gotten finished with folding the towels and was relaxing on the couch watching some television when I looked up from the sink and saw my reflection in the window. We we’re a family. We’d had dinner together, looked over our budget for the month, played together, put our daughter down for bed and then we went about doing what families do to prepare for the next day. I loved it.

Sometime last year, the girls in my bible class had a bible study and Tara, the one leading it, had asked us to think of three moments that defined who we were. Only three. I thought all day long about them and my first thoughts were things like my wedding day, graduating with my degree, etc.

But the longer I thought about it, even though those events and moments were big, they weren’t necessarily defining.

My marriage was not defined by the day that Paul and I said I do. Even though that meant that we were married, it had nothing to do with what marriage was about for us. What defined me us as a married couple was our experience in the Dominican Republic when we lost a baby and I had to have a D&C in a foreign developing country. We rocked as a married couple.

None of the actual experience had anything to do with the bible study actually, it was taken a different direction which was really cool but all of that was to say that what some people would consider everyday life or circumstantial moments are what define me.

The day we had Addison changed our lives forever. Yes, we became a family that day and it meant the world to us.

But last night, scrubbing my kitchen in my 97 year old house, while my husband watched some television and my daughter slept soundly in her room, we were blowing being a family right out of the water.

man on the moon moment?

2011-05-02T14:12:00.000-05:00

How many blog posts started with "Osama bin Laden is dead" this morning? And you know all those people who didn't start their blogs with that line sure wanted to. They either thought it would made them look cool to not write about it or something but honestly, it happened and it was sort of a big deal.

Not earth shattering big like the people celebrating in the streets would have liked you to believe.

People celebrating in the streets. Chanting "U.S.A." and singing the national anthem at the top of their lungs outside of the White House.

Who are we? It was strange to watch, knowing it was happening within our borders. We don't celebrate like that. That's what we see on TV when other countries celebrate.

And Twitter. Twitter was all over the place. "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead", "Obama is announcing that he is coming around all 50 states to hi-five everyone", "Breaking News: Chuck Norris returns from Pakistan."

I told a friend of mine this morning that when the announcement was made that Obama would be addressing the nation and we found out that Tinker AFB had heightened it's security we flipped on the TV and everything in my living room felt very 1960's-ish. We we're in our pajamas and we we're about to listen to the President address the nation on national television. Was this going to be my "man on the moon" experience? Septemeber 11th was intense, and we watched television for hours at school but this felt a little different.

It might have been that man on the moon moment, if CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and every other network that has live capability hadn't beaten the story to death in the hour we were waiting for the "official" word. I understand needing to alert everyone that needed to know but by the time the calls got to those people, CNN had already told them and so had Twitter and Facebook.

Social media has changed the game.

new business cards

2011-04-27T13:46:00.001-05:00

Today is my first day back at work and I'm having mixed emotions about it.

On one hand, I will only feed Addison 3 times a day instead of 6. I will only change 4 diapers instead of 8 to 10. Her upset fits won't seem so exhausting when I wasn't the one who had her all day when she wouldn't nap. Things feel familiar around here, my desk is clean and I know where everything is. It's kind of nice.

But on the other hand, there's somebody else reading to my baby everyday. There's somebody else singing to her and teaching her and watching her grow. There's someone else watching her talk and laugh and that sucks.

I did really well with all of this this morning. I was a bit rushed and in a frenzy and didn't really have much time to think about the fact that I wasn't at home. And it was day one, I knew it would start to hurt on day 6 or 7 more when it had set in. Everyone was glad to see me back, they brought in breakfast and everyone ooed and awed over me and the picture of the baby.

But then 1:00 pm hit and I hit a slump. I wasn't at home and more importantly I wasn't with Addi. I was done playing Interior Designer and was ready to go back to my real life, her.

I was given my new business cards today. The person giving them to me was either full of crap or knew that if they didn't make every single thing positive about being here that I'd get right up and leave. I'd never seen such a huge smile on someone's face over a 2" x 3" piece of paper. And one that looks much worse graphically than our previous ones might I add. Everyone else's had been handed out a month ago, I was the stragler. All I could think was, "Wipe that grin off your face, this isn't exciting."

Three years ago when I was given my first box of business cards, it WAS exciting and new and meant so many things. Like, I was an adult, and I had arrived.

But today, the box of 400 business cards snapped me out of my first day back frenzy. I was back in the office, working. Funny how a 2" x 3" piece of paper can make you feel a little trapped.

I know that things will settle down and we'll get in new routines and that much thought will have to go into any and every decision we make and chances are that I'll continue to work but right here, right now, with this tiny little piece of cardstock in my hand, I feel like this totally sucks.

February 3rd

2011-04-27T11:55:00.000-05:00

I can barely remember what I had for dinner last night, but February 3rd and the events of the day will forever be burned into my memory. I never knew how much detail I could retain until it involved our daughter.

It was Tuesday, February 1st and Blizzard 2011 was rearing it's ugly head. I was stuck in my house with my in-laws and husband watching a ridiculous amount of TV and eating food we were not hungry for but we we're bored and there was nothing else to do. My mom was trapped in a hotel room five minutes from our house cooking meals for after our babies arrival. I was about to go finish packing for the hospital because we we're headed there at 5 am the next morning to be induced to have our first child. Nerves were high.

And then the phone rang. And it was canceled. Our daughter wasn't coming and I was crushed. I was stuck in a house, my mom was stuck in a hotel so close by, and our daughter wasn't coming.

I spent the afternoon crying in our room, embarrassed at how childish I probably appeared to my in-laws. I wanted to meet her more than anything and because of the blizzard, she wouldn't be coming.

I don't remember anything about that evening but I do remember waking up on the morning of the 2nd and laying in bed, depressed, again, because she wouldn't be coming. I got up for the day, went on about my business and tried to be happy. They'd rescheduled my appointment for Saturday, she was still going to be here but Saturday seemed like it would take forever to arrive. I didn't want to have her on Saturday, I wanted to have her on the 2nd.

As the afternoon wore on, I started feeling a little funny and thought that maybe my water had broken. It was definitely not the gush I had envisioned but something was going on. I put on fresh clothes, laid down for a nap and woke up to find that that something that had been going on was still happening. I got dressed, packed the hospital bag and we braved the snow covered roads to get to Labor and Delivery.

My water had not broken, they weren't really sure what was going on, it didn't seem to be anything of concern. But since I was there, and they had space, and if my doctor OK'd it, they'd go ahead and admit me since I was supposed to be there anyways. The doctor OK'd it and we we're going to have a baby.

Heart beating out of my chest.

I had come into the hospital wearing winter clothing, they put me in a hospital gown and wanted me to get down the hall to the room where I'd be delivering. I was in a hospital gown and black Ugg boots. I felt strange, unprepared, especially in my boots fearing the whole time my backside was exposed to the world. We got set up in our delivery room, Paul kissed my forehead, went to get my mom, some lunch and our hospital bag from the car.

It was happening.

They tried inducing my that afternoon but the first medication hadn't been placed properly, I wasn't progressing so they stopped, let me eat some greasy Pizza Hut pizza as a last meal and gave me an Ambien to sleep through the night. Paul slept next to me in a recliner and before we knew it, it was 5 am on Thursday morning and in less than twelve hours we'd be meeting our daughter.

We woke up slowly, lazily. Only to find the hours we're flying by. Paul spent some time walking around, grabbing himself some food and talking with me. I was dilating about a cm an hour and the rest of my family had shown up to see us.

Things we're going good. I was calm and relaxed. Baby was sounding good and my blood pressure was pretty outstanding.

It was about 2:30 in the afternoon and my nurse Krystal had come in to check on our progress only to find out we had gone from 6 cm to 9.5 cm in about 30 minutes. My doctor was informed, things we're to start being prepared, she was going to run across the street, come right back and we we're going to have a baby.

After about 30 minutes, my doctor's resident and my nurse decided to get me to do a practice push. It worked, things we're rolling and that practice push turned into real pushing. Pushing that was harder and more life sucking than anything I had ever imagined. I'd had an epidural, I wasn't supposed to be in so much pain and so tired. But I was. It was the hardest thing I've ever done and twice laid my head back and told the three people in the room that I couldn't do it. It was hard.

I remember being told, "this will be the push, if you push hard enough." I pushed with everything I had, felt the strangest sensations and heard the most beautiful cry in the entire world. I was exhausted, Paul was crying, my baby was crying and there were more nurses in my room than I knew what to do with. Everywhere I looked there was someone doing something. It was organized chaos and I couldn't focus on anything for more than two seconds.

And then everything slowed down. Like way down. And I was in the room, with my baby and my husband and my life was forever changed.

returning

2011-04-27T11:53:00.000-05:00

Holy Hannah.

That's all I can think to write. It's about all that I can say to sum up the past two months and what I am feeling today.

I really have no idea what to say.
No, I have a thousand things to say, but nothing that runs together in a coherent blog post. It's looking a little something like this in my head right now:

I had a baby. I love her more than anything in the world. I am back at work today. I wish I was eating some buffalo hot wings. We should have friends over for dinner on the patio soon but not for hot wings. I need to finish painting Addion's wooden chair. I have a dentist appointment next week and I don't think I've flossed since November. Seriously, Paul and I made the most beautiful baby (while looking at her photo of course). 581 blog posts to read. Seriously?! 581? Did I fall off the face of the earth or what?

See. Chaos.

settling in...sort of

2011-02-28T17:47:00.000-06:00

We're settling in as a family of 3 around here and it is taking a lot of work! Sorry for the lack of posts, I'm working on two big ones and one of them is a doozy.

Things I've learned in the last 25 days:
1. Don't get dressed until you're sure the kid is done spitting up.
2. You will have sympathy pains for your baby (i.e. I have developed reflux).
3. There is nothing better than looking at your baby and knowing how much they already love you.
4. That without music, days can be sad.
5. To be flexible (OK so I haven't learned this yet, but I'm working on it).
6. That babies are flexible.
7. That as soon as you have a baby, you will immediately lose all knowledge of how to care for a kid and you'll want your mommy.
8. That the Moby Wrap is the most valuable thing that we own right now, besides her of course.
9. Shit happens (I'm being literal here...) over and over again and you should buy stock in diaper companies.
10. And finally, that no matter how much you think you're going to love your baby, you can multiply it by 200 and still not even be close to what you will really feel. And you'll never understand it until it happens. I think that's something special that God gives only to mothers and fathers.

Addison Cole

2011-02-16T09:10:00.000-06:00

Our daughter has arrived!

Addison Cole was born almost two weeks ago on February 3, 2011 at 3:26 pm. She weighed in at 6 lbs 1 oz and was 19" long.

She was (and is) absolutely perfect and both Paul and I are quite smitten.

Paul's parents babysat for us last night and we went out for our first dinner alone, to celebrate baby and a late Valentine's Day. We came in the door and we're both talking and she stirred and started looking for us. Talk about making our hearts melt.

Chicago L, Red Line. Next stop? Addison.

2011-01-24T11:14:00.000-06:00

Our kid has gotten some really awesome gifts.

I mean, tons of them. Store bought, hand made, everything in between. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little jealous.

Today we got an exceptionally thoughtful gift. Paul's co-worker, Sarah, who is having her first baby just a week or two after us, gave us this with a red skirt and pair of pants:

Addison is an actual stop on the Red Line for the L in Chicago (blue line too, but the red line takes you to Wrigleyville).

I'm sorry, but if you know anything about Paul and I, you know how unbelievably appropriate this is. Chicago, kiddo's name, public transit. Check, check and check.

And I guess that it doesn't hurt that just a few blocks away from this station you come to the corner of Clark & Addison, a.k.a. the entrance to Wrigley Field. Last week a product representative visiting my office that was here to show us some new fabrics made a joke about us naming a future son Clark. Would be quite clever, no?

Luckily, Paul likes the Cubs, but doesn't love them.

this morning

2011-01-14T09:20:00.001-06:00

Phone in purse? Check.

Wallet? Check.

Keys? Check.

Teeth brushed? Check.

Snack for the day? In my purse.

Coat on.

Work papers grabbed.

Door locked.

Car unlocked.

Down the porch stairs.

Thought in my head, "my feet are surprisingly warm this morning for being in flats."

Looked down and saw these:

And although very comfortable and my favorite shade of pink, way inappropriate for work footwear. They really didn't even coordinate remotely with what I had put on for the day.

Up the stairs. Door unlocked. 5 minute search for some suitable shoes and then my feet we're freezing.

2011: The year where EVERYTHING about our lives is going to change.

2011-01-14T09:09:00.000-06:00

Resolutions. I don't hate them, I don't love them. They are what they are. Paul doesn't make them (and never has) but I try to at least put some thought into what I'd like to accomplish over the next year even if they aren't firm plans or goals. I'm never a fan of sharing them with people though. It's an open invitation for criticism on what's important to me and written proof that I failed when I don't achieve them. So why would I want anyone to know what they are? I had resolutions last year, some of them I met, some of them I didn't. For the ones I didn't meet, some of them became less important to me over the year and others I just lost track of time.

But for 2011, I think I have created a good mixture of concrete goals and some more subjective ones. Some are about our home, some are about our marriage. Some are about me physically, others about me emotionally. I especially like the second one. I think that's something that just might be achievable this year and not only that, it'll be probably my first one off the list.

Now pretend I'm writing this next part fourteen days ago:

So here is to 2011. A year where nothing will ever be the same and we'll be totally OK with it.

Catching Up

2011-01-14T09:06:00.001-06:00

We're fourteen days into the new year and I have yet to post a single thing. Not only have I not posted, I have not written.

It could be that we traveled way toO much for a woman who was 8 months pregnant. It could be that I'm feeling out of my skin and a little out of control of my current life or it could be that I am overly consumed with thoughts on what is about to occur in my life. Take your pick.

Paul and I have not both been at our home for a Friday through Sunday weekend since two weeks before Thanksgiving. We've been to Texas multiple times for holidays, weddings and showers, Kansas City, Michigan, Florida and Chicago.

My brother got engaged to a wonderful girl while we were all vacationing in Florida and we surprised her by having her family come too.

We shopped in Chicago, exchanged tons of presents on Christmas day, ate too much, walked too much and enjoyed ourselves a nice dance party in a friend's amazing basement on New Year's Eve.

We've been showered, over and over, and we are so thankful for all of the wonderful people in our lives and how excited they are for our first baby's arrival. With a shower left to go, I'm not sure where we're going to be able to put everything, but that's a wonderful problem to have.

Speaking of which, her room is almost done. There are still a lot of things that need to be done, but I've resolved that it probably won't be done by the time she gets here and I'll just have to deal. She won't know any different and to be completely honest, once she's here, neither will I. We're still waiting on our rocking chair and a few other purchases to arrive, I'm debating making another couple of online purchases and there are still some sewing projects that need to occur.

Our around the house to-do list and preperation list is four typed pages long and color coded. We're knocking things off slowly (read: VERY) but surely.

I've set my last day of work with my manager to be Friday, January 28th which will give me a weekend and two days at home to finish any last minute things, or to rest before we're scheduled to induce on the 2nd. Which means, unless she decides she'd like to be here before that time, three weeks from this past Wednesday, Paul and I will be having a baby. I do secretly hope that I go to my appointment next Monday, the 17th, my favorite day/number, and my doctor is ready for us to deliver, but I know that's not practical and not necessarily good for me or her. So planning for February 2nd.

Talk about freaking out a little.

Being schooled in the subject of rock. But not the Jack Black kind...

2010-12-13T10:51:00.002-06:00

Welcome back to your regularly scheduled blogger.

I thought pairing down our technology and getting rid of our laptops and going to one computer would be a good idea. But now that I see what it's done for our hacking ability on each other's accounts I am starting to question Paul's motives for the new computer.

I took the plunge today and bought another piece of furniture. The piece of furniture that I have been sweating and loosing sleep over since June. It's been purchased.

Remember my post about the furniture for the baby's room? Remember the rocking chair saga? Well it got worse.

This was the chair. It had disappeared on me shortly after finding it on Urban Outfitters website, but it quickly came back and had more reviews than just the one I had seen originally.

We we're off to Dallas for all of our furniture only to find the UO store we hit up did not have the chair in. They didn't even have a display model. But it was an overall great shopping trip, our car was packed and I don't know how we would have squeezed it in to the back of our Highlander anyways. I just figured we'd order it online when we got home.

I got home, opened up the laptop and there was the chair. In all of it's glory and with an additional $100.00 price tag that had not been there before. I shut the laptop and debated whether it was still worth it. Some of the newer reviews had not been so praiseworthy and I was back to questioning the choice.

Every time I got serious about buying it, I'd back out. Something about it didn't feel right. I wasn't sold. And the "stone" colored cushions were now being deemed "taupe" which was exactly what I didn't want.

So we sat around on our duffs week after week thinking about and doing better and other things. Except the "you don't have a chair for the room yet!" bug was screaming in the back of my brain.

The bug got bigger last Sunday when I realized we we're looking at 9 weeks before the kiddo was due to arrive and I was no closer to finding a chair I wanted than I had been when we we're only 9 weeks pregnant.

We started our search again and this time, everything was fair game. Upholstered, non upholstered, big, small, cheap, ugly. The molded plastic arm chair was a front runner along with the UO chair still but no serious decisions could be made. I/we just couldn't commit to anything.

Until last Monday when I confirmed my ever so handy designer discount with Herman Miller. I could get the Eames molded plastic arm chair for $100 cheaper than I could buy it anywhere else and I'd only be spending $45.00 more (after tax and shipping) for it than I would the chair from UO.

The UO chair couldn't compete. So we picked the finish we wanted from our Herman Miller chip cards and I signed the quote, and our chair got ordered.

We purchased the chair in white because the first gray, Sparrow, was too taupe-y and the second, Greystone, was too blue. The lime green couldn't sit in any other room of our house in the future and the other colors clashed with the blue on the wall. White was a good, reusable color.

So in 5-6 weeks we'll be rocking away. Paul and I don't plan to do a lot of rocking so the chair didn't have to be plush as long as it was comfortable. And when rocking for more than just a little bit is necessary we still have the La-Z-Boy hiding in our bedroom corner away from public view.

Paul

2010-12-07T12:33:00.000-06:00

My husband is an evil genius. Now that we have a combined computer, he has more opportunities to log into my accounts and write things like:

I LOVE CHRISTA!

She's already a fantastic wife and she's going to be the best mom ever!

2010

2010-12-06T12:01:00.002-06:00

art for the kiddo's room

2010-11-24T11:08:00.002-06:00

In college, one of my professors taught us about decorating in one of our classes and how it relates to fashion. Shirts/pants are the basics of the room, paint, sets tone of the entire space, etc. Jewelry was the artwork and the pizazz.

Gag.

But seriously about the artwork thing...if there's one thing I am not fabulous at, it's artwork and/or jewelry respective to their elements.

So artwork for baby has been sort of stressful. Hours have been spent on Etsy.com and perusing Spearmint Baby in hopes of being inspired.

It was hard, but I've done it. I've successfully decided on what goes up in this new room. Nothing too childish, nothing too adult. Enough education, enough color. All without having a hippo with a letter "H" plastered all over it in primary reds and blues.

First, I bought this alphabet poster from Etsy seller, Bibitty:

A designer/blogger that I follow (via the web) had a child a little over a year ago and put this poster in her daughter's new bedroom as well and I'd always loved it. I hadn't settled on anything else and still thought it was adorable so purchased it got. We framed it in an IKEA Ribba white frame and since the art itself is 16" x 20", it's sort of the "big piece" in the room and on our big art wall.

I then found a seller on Etsy who sold wooden cut out letters. We're not talking Hobby Lobby curly-Q letters here, we're talking modern typefaces in 1/2" thicknesses, stained, not painted or hodge podged or whatever else people are doing these days. I was in love. But I didn't want to pay $35.00 for something Paul and I could easily do ourselves. I opened my AutoCAD at work and sketched out the exact typeface for the letter "A" I wanted and printed it to scale. We purchased a 1/2" sheet of birch and I traced the letter onto the board from the stencil I made in AutoCAD and Paul went to work. After we got the letter cut out using the jig saw, we sanded it down with our power sander, applied a wood conditioner to it and then a coat of stain. And for $15.00 I got myself my letter A and I only had to wait for Paul to get motivated to cut it out, not shipping. Just kidding.

Paul slaving away over my "lets be cheap" antics and the finished product.

To finish off the wall above the dresser where the French alphabet poster and letter A are to go I decided to go with something more local. Although, you really don't get any more local than your own front porch and a jig saw, but by local, I mean Oklahoma City.

There is an Etsy seller, DeweyandWest, that is based out of Oklahoma City. I'd fallen on their Etsy site almost a year ago by mistake, liked their work and favorited their shop but never did anything else with it. A few months ago, we hit up the Plaza Arts Festival with some friends and as we were walking around, Paul mentioned briefly to me that he liked the art work sitting on the very end of one of the tables. I turned to look at it, and sure enough it was a Dewey and West print. When they're shop popped up on my Etsy a few days ago, I knew their work would be the perfect thing to tie the room together. So after a few conversations back and forth we got a custom listing set up and I got these beauties:

They sold me just the linen print, they didn't apply it to the wood block frame.

We're going to frame them in the same white IKEA Ribba frames (but square) to match the frame for the alphabet poster. Fabulous.

Oh and I went ahead and did this too. My frame isn't as sculpted as hers but when I found a frame at the RINK for $4.00, I couldn't pass it up. Ours is painted coral pink from a tester I got at Home Depot and then I covered in a coat of clear gloss spray paint.

Just for future reference, if you need chicken wire, it doesn't exist anymore. It's now called "Poultry Fencing". I want to know who felt it was necessary to change the name to keep the rest of the foul being corraled from getting upset and wanting to sue. I mean, those turkeys, they want to make sure they aren't grouped in the same category with chickens, I guess. There must be some serious political unrest going on with those birds.

Hopefully there will be more to come soon. Since things are starting to get crazy around here just getting the projects done is my number one priority. Blogging about them? Not so much, but I'll try.

elevator talk

2010-11-17T15:39:00.001-06:00

Last week I needed to run up to the fifth floor to help a co-worker with a project. A year ago, I would have taken the stairs but these days I move too slow to go up three floors, so I made my way to the elevator lobby instead.

[Side note: The building I work in consists of a few other businesses but floors 1-5 are primarily my company. Anyone on my floor is an employee of the company I work for. We also all wear badges.]

Standing in the elevator lobby was a guy I had seen maybe once or twice before, he was wearing his Benham badge but I had no idea what his name was or what he did at our company. But by the way he was dressed, I was guessing some part of obscure management or someone who had at least been with our company for awhile. He had selected the down button.

Seeing as I had to go up, I pushed the other button and then we both just stood there in complete silence, waiting. All the while, he had never looked up from his Blackberry. (This is where that new "Really?" cell phone TV ad would have come into play well).

The elevator dinged, I looked up for the indicator and the elevator was going up. I hopped on and he started to follow me, still looking at his Blackberry.

I wanted to inform him that the elevator was going up and that if he didn't mind riding up a few floors first, then he could go down to one. But it didn't come at as informational, or helpful or even remotely cordial.

Christa: "I'm going up, do you mind?"

Unknown co-worker: "Geez, sorry." He hops off, the doors shut immediately and I'm left standing there with my mouth open feeling like a class A witch.

I meant, "I'm going up, do you mind riding up to the fifth floor first? Ya know, before it takes you down to one?" But no. No.

Instead it came out as, "This is my elevator, get off."

Cue mortified face and silent thanksgiving that it wasn't anyone who performs my yearly performance evaluation.

it's time to get serious

2010-11-17T15:17:00.001-06:00

First of all, I find it ironic that a word that means "to reduce" is eleven letters long. Shouldn't words like this coordinate with their meanings or does the entire basis of oxymoron theory fall on this?

Secondly, I find it strange that someone felt the need to come up with a different word for cleaning (simplification, purging, etc.) for women who are pregnant. Other than the fact that it really is sort of a phenomenon that the desire to get things in order overtakes you, it's still the same thing: cleaning.

Whatever you call it, it's setting in hard around the Ryckbost house. The actual action has not happened yet, but the desire to start is huge. It's 3:00 on a Wednesday afternoon, things have been semi-rough this week and I really should just want to nap, but all I can think about is going home and breaking out the toilet bowl cleaner and purging my makeup box.

Please don't judge me when what's really going to happen this afternoon/evening is something more like this: I leave my office and head home to lay on the couch watching TV while the frozen pizza is warming up in the oven, the bathroom door in my peripheral vision, but don't worry, I won't be moving that direction because I know I won't have time to get it all done before we leave for church. And really? Why bother if you can't get it all done?

But no really, I want to de-clutter, clean and purge anything I can get my hands on.

The kitchen? I want to clean out the refrigerator and wipe down every crook and crevice. I want to reorganize drawers and base cabinets and they were all just put together in May of this year when we remodeled.

The office? It doesn't need much purging as I took care of most of that back in September but the dresser needs to be painted and the desk needs to be skirted and on and on and on.

Oh and the bookshelves in the living room! Don't get me started on the bookshelves.

Unfortunately, time is not on our side. With family commitments, holidays, our last big vacation sans baby, church, doctor's and dentist appointments, weddings and showers of all sorts, the next seven weeks are pretty well spoken for. I printed a calendar today and penciled in my to-do items.

Did you read that? I penciled in nesting.

I sent Paul an email talking briefly about simplifying our life and typed the line "because some of the simplifying will involve you." His response back to me was, "You're letting me go? :)"

If I knew he'd be taking half the contents out of our little house with him, maybe.

I kid, I kid.

color: something from nothing or nothing from something?

2010-11-05T15:46:00.000-05:00

Color Collective is a blog that I catch every day thanks to the genius of Google Reader. There's never any text, just photos and extracted colors. Photos of art, clothes, landscapes, objects, you name it she can pull colors from it.

"So what?," you say? "What's the purpose in this?!"

Well, basically, it's like doing what I do, but backwards. Any type of designer or artist has to be able to create something from nothing, from white. To create a color palette that works and works better than what the average Joe-Schmo can come up with. It has to scream at you, it has to pop. People who do this go about it in different ways. Sometimes I have set color palettes before I start a project and then I pull materials and finishes using those colors. Other times I start with a solid white quartz counter that I like and run with it from there and see what I end up with. It's quite genius really.

(Side note: that's the glitzy part of the job that I only do 15% of the time, after that I sit in meetings and in front of my computer making sure my vision becomes a reality. And reality in my industry is not what people would consider so glitzy. I always think people would be shocked if they knew what I spent 85% of my time doing).

Back to the glitz though. And why I love what this blogger does.

She takes something that someone has created and shows you why it works. She shows you what about the art, outfit or room that makes it flow and graphically stimulating. I know people probably think it's as easy as grabbing a color dropper in Photo Shop and clicking on colors, but I know it's not. I know it's more than that.

Everyday, I scroll through my reader and take a look. Some days I like the palette more than others but everyday I'm looking for something that reminds me of something I've done or maybe something I want to make work somewhere. And today I found it.

via Color Collective

The photo didn't quite catch my attention as much as the color palette did at first. Those are the colors of our baby girl's new room. Well, very close to them. I looked at the photo again and realized the style of her clothes, the scenery, everything about it worked too. The bright colors in an eclectic, feminine, somewhat European and whimsical combination without looking too childish way is what I want. It works. I love it. I mean, I still love it. Granted, the room is turning out a little more "vintage" shabby chic than I'd like right now but I think if I curb it now with some other purchases I'll be able to make it work.

So if you need some inspiration, check out her blog every now and again. You may just find the color combo that speaks to you.

the "p" card, i try to use it sparingly

2010-11-05T08:25:00.000-05:00

I wrote this about a month ago, I thought it got posted...alas, it did not. Why not post it now? PS - Paul brought me a cheeseburger and cheddar bites in the middle of that afternoon, he almost went with the French Toast Sticks too but he was trying to keep me from having a heart attack. Good man.

I slept for four hours last night and today all I want to eat for dinner is french toast with a side of cheeseburger, an order of cheddar bites and some sweet and sour chicken.

Don't judge, or I'll pull out the card. You know what card I'm talking about.

Bri, Jenn and Ava come to visit!

2010-10-19T17:17:00.001-05:00

This past weekend Paul's brother Brian, his wife Jenn and their 14 month old daughter came to visit us in Oklahoma City for the first time.

Paul's five years older than Brian and was off to college by the time Brian was able to really hang out and do things. By the time Brian started college, Paul was off to grad school and then moved to OKC shortly after graduating. They have a lot in common, they're good friends but we've never just hung out for long periods of time together, until this weekend.

We had such a good time hanging around our house, driving them around to a couple of "must sees" and "must eats" and playing with our niece. We sat on the porch and blew bubbles, played puzzles and sang songs and danced. You basically can't get any more adorable than this:

I took this right after I downloaded "InstaGram" onto my phone and I feel like I need to print it out and write a caption on the back like my grandma used to do. "Ava, 14 months, Paul & Christa's porch, October 2010". I'm a little obsessed with that app now so if all my pictures look straight out of the 70's for awhile, you will know why.

It was weird having a baby around the house but we loved it. It was a good way for Paul and I to see what our house is going to look like, what we're going to have to move to higher shelves, what must go and what we are willing to let get slobbered on.

They left this morning and I'm a little sad to go home tonight and not see them and have dinner with them.

We only have a few months before we're in the mitten of Michigan again so it's not the last time we'll see them in years, but still.

earthquakes, mascara-less and frozen pudding

2010-10-13T11:02:00.000-05:00

Today I felt an earthquake. A big earthquake. Well, not California 7.0 big, but OKC 4.3 big. That's big. I was sitting at my desk and the building shook and shifted and my desk moved and it was a little intense.

Does it make me stupid for just realizing in the last 3 months that people say "OKC" because it's the airport code? You know, like how people call Atlanta, ATL?

30 minutes later the power went out in our building. It came back on but talk about some weird stuff going down on the Broadway Extension.

I also determined 15 minutes ago that I forgot to put on mascara and eye liner today.

No, I am not tired. No, I am not sick. OK, well, I am tired and that's why I forgot to put on the black junk.

Have you ever had frozen pudding?

Don't.

It was an accident and the texture was a bit nauseating.

I'm having a hard time getting motivated to work. Well that's not true, there are lots of things I want to do and tasks I want to be making progress on. I am having a hard time getting motivated to work at my JOB. WHERE I AM PAID TO WORK. What is my problem?!

the new safari in our house

2010-10-07T10:17:00.000-05:00

Rug shopping is serious business for me.

Living in a house with no carpet and 90+ year old wood floors provides plenty of charm but plenty of cold feet too.

Having rugs is necessary.

I, however, despise paying for rugs.

Currently the rug inventory in our house is in sad shape. They consist of Bed, Bath and Beyond, 5x7 solid colored CHEAP rugs, free tile samples from work that I have turned into rugs, two small 3 x 5 Pottery Barn rugs (both bought on clearance) and a 5 X 7 crewel rug from a previous job that is much too thin for my tastes but works in the space and was basically free.

The cost of nice rugs is out of control, and it makes me miss having carpet because there's no associated "extra" flooring cost with it.

When we decided to do the baby's room and do it up right, I knew I wanted a new rug. The one in the room currently, leaves a little something to be desired in the color and style department. It worked fine when it was a TV room and covered with a coffee table but knowing how much food I alone dropped on the thing makes me want to clean it, roll it up and store for another day, possibly. I mean, we only paid like $80 bucks for it almost 5 years ago, I can't say I'd be terribly heartbroken to see it go. Plus, the pink nail polish stain on it that was so conveniently hidden by the futon has been glaring at me for the past few days.

I started searching for rugs and quickly decided I wanted a zebra rug for her room.

Don't get me wrong, I know it's been done. I'm aware that this is not my most creative moment of all time. But I knew with everything else that I was planning to do, a gray and white zebra (hide shaped) rug would be perfect.

And I guess to say it's been done before is almost an understatement:

But I obviously don't care.

The search was on but I only found one gray and white, zebra shaped rug. I couldn't afford Thomas Paul and since his sold so fast or were discontinued the one I had found would have to do. Except, it turns out it was an outdoor rug and was not quite the soft, plush, infant friendly rug I was hoping for.

I went home somewhat disapointed from work and walked into the living room to find my new Fall 2010 West Elm catalog sitting on the coffee table. Fresh from the mailbox. I've sort of lost interest in West Elm lately and almost didn't pick it up but I'm glad I did because inside I found something similar enough:

Ok, so it wasn't a hide-shaped rug, which was a make or break deal with me, but it was $100.00 cheaper and actual tufted wool, softer and a little more appropriate for the application.

While we were in Dallas last weekend, we hit up the West Elm Store, which is a really well done store. They have the right font, the right flooring, the right materials, the right fixtures, all of it works for them really, really well. It sort of made me a fan again, everything about the store was fun, besides the rotting wood floor piece I almost stepped in when I wasn't paying attention. But other than that, seriously, a fan.

We checked out the Safari Rug, liked it, and bought it. The 8 foot roll was added to the heap of furniture boxes, bags and luggage in the back of the Highlander ten minutes later and we were on our way!

18 weeks to go for...wait for it....

2010-10-04T09:30:00.002-05:00

Things are supposed to be settling down right about...now.

We've had in-laws, gone on a weekend trip with friends, had office deadlines, visited my parents two weekends in a row and have been all over Dallas (on OU/Texas weekend mind you) shopping for furniture.

So, settling down now would be good because we only have 18 weeks before our baby girl arrives! We've picked her name and we're not much for keeping secrets especially with 14 other people out there having babies (not that we're staking a claim here, anyone can name their child whatever they want. We don't mind duplicates but we just don't want other people to be disappointed or angry, so we're going ahead and putting it out there).

Addison Cole. No special meaning, no family namesake, nothing totally crazy. We just liked it, and then loved it.

It's amazing what a name does for the whole experience. We still refer to her as "the baby" or "her" a lot and probably will continue to do so, but knowing she has a name makes it all very...well I don't know how to explain it really, it's just different.

On that note, 18 weeks to go for Addison Cole!

o·c·t·o·b·e·r

2010-10-01T08:55:00.001-05:00

I should be working. I have a deadline. Today.

Which means that for the last two weeks my chest has been tight, my teeth have been clenched, my legs have been bouncing and I have struggled to focus on any one task for more than three seconds at a time. Yea, these things are fun. So, with today being the big day to issue a package of construction documents to the contractor, I should be working.

But it’s October 1st. And what's better is, I'm done at 8:38 am.

The month of October has a special little place in my heart. It is my birthday month and in a fully self righteous and narcissistic way that makes it special. I’m not the kind of person that celebrates my birthday for more than the day it’s on, and even on the day, I don’t make too big of a deal of it. The day doesn’t roll around for another 16 days but starting October 1st, things get good around my neck of the woods. There’s something about October 1st that means newness for me. Most people find spring to be the season that does that for them, but I wasn’t born in spring and therefore, spring means nothing more than green grass and come this time of year, I’ve seen plenty of green grass and I don’t mind the brown so much.

October is when everything started and every year I feel like it’s starting again. I know that that feeling is something I’ve put into my own head and that I don’t remember it being October and cold when I was an infant. But over the last 24 years I think I’ve convinced myself mentally that I do remember it and that’s why it’s so special.

But besides all of that mumbo jumbo, it's October which means celebrating tons of other people's birthday's too, going for walks outside because it's so freaking nice, driving with the windows down, apple crisp (which Paul made last night and I ate for breakfast today), and cardigans. CARDIGANS people.

I'll be heading out of work early today, just because I can and I may spend my free time outside, just sitting. Still too warm for a cardigan, but nicer than it was a month ago.

photo from Etsy seller integrity studio.

an intro to furniture, of sorts...

2010-09-30T15:45:00.002-05:00

Paul and I are ... interesting ... when it comes to furniture. We know what we don't like (style wise) but have pretty eclectic tastes and like all sorts of things. So our furniture tends to fall in a "hodge podge but it totally works" kind of situation. We both like all types of wood finishes depending on what piece it's on so when we started deciding what to do for the nursery it was sort of a free for all.

After much debate (not between Paul and I but the debate in my head) we settled on white. Which was a shock to most people, but it's what worked best for our current house and will work fine in any house we put it in later for future kids. So then it was on to style. We both like modern, transitional and traditional. But we got our crib (as a wonderful present) before we knew what we were having, so that set the tone for the rest of the pieces in the room.

Our crib is from PB Kids and for the price, the quality was well worth it. Every other place I looked, you spent an outrageous amount on a "modern" crib and the quality wasn't always that good. And I've bought furniture from Pottery Barn before so I knew what I was getting into. Plus, this kept us from going too modern or too traditional, which was perfect for the rest of our house.

We then settled on a dresser and bookshelf from IKEA. I've seen a lot of people use this dresser in their nurseries and I've been told, drawers, drawers, drawers. We'll use it as our changing table too. I plan to switch out the knobs for a more decorative style so it's a little different than everyone else's.

The bookshelf will hold a few metal locker storage baskets that will hold books, toys and blankets and the rest of the shelves I am sure will get filled up quickly as we're already accumulating wonderful gifts!

Finding a rocking chair though proved to be, for a lack of a better and more eloquent phrase, total crap. Everything I was finding was either quadruple my budget, ugly or didn't rock. I guess the "ugly" statement isn't completely fair. Some of them weren't ugly, they just were not right for our house, our style or our nursery. I really wanted a vintage mid century danish style rocker but all the ones I could find were in worse shape than I cared to care for. Things were looking down. So far down in fact, I almost gave up and was going to either A) shell out $1000 for a fully upholstered piece or B) move the recliner back into the room (and I was dreading both options). I'd almost made my decision when I stumbled upon this baby:

I about lost it and bought it on the spot. Urban Outfitters? Really? I was going to buy furniture from UO? There was only 1 review and I decided I had plenty of time to purchase it if it was what I really wanted. And then it disappeared. Story of my life.

And I about lost it again, but for a totally different and unrealistic reason. It was just a chair. You would have thought someone would have needed to walk me back off the edge of a cliff. It wasn't really the story of my life, my life's been great, I'm never the "always screwed over type". So I was back to settling between option A and B when it reappeared with more fabrics then ever and tons of reviews!

It was settled, it was the chair.

This weekend, Paul and I are heading to Dallas to pick all this lovely stuff up. With another set of family coming to visit in possibly two weeks, work commitments on weekends, 4 baby showers on the other weekends and the holidays just around the corner we figured now was as good as time as any!

"So long sweet summer, I stumbled upon you and gratefully basked in your rays."

2010-09-22T10:05:00.002-05:00

Today is officially the first day of fall which means I need a pair of these:

Hello gorgeous. It also means that I am dying my hair back to my natural color, so it will be fake "real" for a while but will be my natural dark, fall and winter hair color. Oh and I'm getting a new pair of glasses and I am debating between a brown frame and a tortoise shell frame and I'm extremely giddy about it. Oh fall, how I love you.

Although it is still in the 80's here in Oklahoma City and will feel like summer for probably another few weeks, the calendars/meteorologists say it's now fall and therefore I am celebrating.

But for as much as I love fall every time it comes around, I am terribly sorry to see this summer go. This is the summer that we made major progress on our house, that we celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary, found out we were having a baby and a baby girl at that.

Some old school Dashboard Confessional came up on my Pandora station this morning and Age Six Racer made my morning (and this blog post):

"So long sweet summer, I stumbled upon you and gratefully basked in your rays.
So long sweet slumber. I fell into you, now you're gracefully falling away.

Hey thanks, thanks for that summer. It is cold where your going, I hope that your hearts always warm. I gave you the best, gave you the best that I had. You passed on my letters & passed on the best that I had."

Weekending in Tahlequah and a minor fit

2010-09-20T18:16:00.001-05:00

This past weekend Paul and I and 7 other couples from our church class packed up and headed to the Illinois river for the weekend.

It started off as a disaster for yours truly.

A few days before we were going to leave, there seemed to be some confusion in the plan on how we were all getting there. Paul and I had thought we we're settled with a few other couples on carpooling but it seemed it had changed or morphed or grown and everyone was confused. I asked the boy to look into it which resulted in a lack of handling (the way I would have handled it). I threw a hissy fit because I didn't want to drive after an 8 hour day of work when I needed to get up and move around every 30 minutes to keep comfortable. Driving more than 45 minutes has started to get miserable because I can't shift a lot. Yet it was 6:30 Friday evening and I found myself in the driver seat of the Highlander packed with girls from our class.

Instead of just going with it, the husband decided to be smooth (it was a little late for that) and after more shuffling and a few quiet curse words to myself and an almost full on scene of water works we were on our way, me not driving but very, very furious.

After we got there everything was great and everyone had a really great time. It was just getting there that was the problem.

I struggled over the weekend a lot with what my friend Lauren would call "super insecure junior high Christa" syndrome and I felt like I was back at summer camp when I was twelve and my best friend Vanessa had ditched me for much cooler friends with cooler clothes and jewelry. I also for the first time did not like being pregnant.

My doctor is easy going. No rules really. There was no packet, there was no list of do's and don'ts but the only thing she has flat out told me not to do was float in the Illinios river because of the bacteria. So 15 out of 16 people would be floating and Christa would not be one of them.

So while they went to float, I picked up breakfast for us for the next morning, got my eyebrows waxed and also grabbed our lunch for Saturday from Subway.

We spent the rest of the weekend hanging out, eating and playing games. The guys? A nice game of Mexican Train. The girls? Well, the girls played a ridiculously scandalous game of "Say Anything". I don’t think I’ve ever blushed so much in my life and if you know me, you know it takes quite a bit to shame me.

stupid people make me feel crazy

2010-09-17T11:41:00.002-05:00

I'll leave it at that or i'll get myself in trouble.

Enjoy that post did ya?

the felt bird

2010-09-15T11:51:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, Paul and I took off work and did a little tour of parts of Oklahoma we had never seen before with Paul's mom and dad.

We went up to a small town called Kingfisher, stopped in at a local (small-town) museum and then skipped (well not literally) across the street to a former governor's mansion. It was built in 1892, I didn't take photos, but you know me. I love those old houses so much I thought about hiding in one of the corners and just living there quietly during the day so no one would notice and then living it up at night. Huge front doors, trim and crown molding in perfect condition everywhere, parlor rooms and wood parquet flooring. I should move on or we could be on this house all day long.

After our museum and mansion tour we went up to Enid, Oklahoma to have some lunch and look around.

Lunch was at a place called PaneVino and was really delicious and fun. We we're shocked for a town like Enid to have such a cute, legitamite wine bar/restuarant. I had the Italiano panini off their lunch menu and would order it again, and again and again. If you're ever in Enid, whatever you might be hanging out around there for, it's a good place to eat!

We also hit up a store called B Hip Kids (super cute and we spent lots of time in there) and The Felt Bird.

The Felt Bird is a lot like Collected Thread here in OKC but had a little larger shop with a little more variety. It's run by Riley, Estela and their dog Dexter who was super sweet and just followed my mother in law around watching her look at stuff. They have clothing, jewelry, homewares, gifts, TOMS and a lot of other really cool things.

We bought our first gift for our little girl, it's their Owl Snuggly pillow seen above but ours has small red and pink apples on the front. They also had a big collection of sock monkeys and I'm wishing i'd grabbed her the classic gray and red one too but she's not even here yet, seriously, how many stuffed things does a kid need?

"it's a baby...GIRL!", "I'm sorry, did you just say "girl?"

2010-09-15T11:31:00.000-05:00

Five weeks ago my doctor scheduled my mid-pregnancy ultrasound and I felt like I was going to have to wait an eternity to see our child again. The five weeks flew by though because we kept ourselves busy at work and with the house and before I knew it, it was the Sunday night before my appointment.

All of a sudden I was terrified of going to the doctor. I was nervous something was wrong or maybe nothing was wrong but I'd really have to see it again and it'd all be so very real all over again.

That night I had a dream that Paul and I decided that our 1:00 appointment was not convenient and so we skipped it. We skipped our ultrasound. THE ultrasound. We instead decided to show up at 4:45, unannounced, to which my doctor showed her great disgust and told me I couldn't be pregnant anymore. That was that.

I woke up Monday morning and planned my entire day around that 1:00 appointment. I couldn't miss it, we couldn't be late. We couldn't not be pregnant anymore, that wasn't an option. Yes, we'd still go to the 1:00.

I felt ridiculous all morning. It was all I could think about. I wasn't even remotely concerned about the sex of the baby, but I couldn't figure out what it was I was nervous about. I was sweating like a pig and drinking water like I was dying of thirst. I kept telling myself over and over again that my bladder had to be full and so I'd down 20 ounces of water only to have to pee oh, 5 minutes later. I did this all morning. Water, bathroom, water, bathroom, snack, water, bathroom. And the sweat. I was still sweating. So bad that I pulled my extra deodorant out of my desk drawer, hid in the corner of the finish library and reapplied it TWICE.

I gave Paul a last minute call and asked him to bring me a sweater and a brush because I was a mess with pit stains and my doctor was going to think I had lost it.

The ultrasound tech got us in and we got started and then I cried. I cried and I cried. The baby was there and perfect and the nose was the right length, there were two arms and two legs, I saw it's bones and it's heart beating with all four chambers. I saw it's spine flexing and moving and I watched it kick me with it's ridiculously long legs and watched it pull and play with the cord. I cried some more. It was the coolest thing I had ever seen. No, seriously, you don't understand, even if you've seen it, you don't understand. It was just unbelievably cool.

No really, stop pretending like you understand. You've just never seen anything as cool as Paul and I did Monday afternoon.

[I've been looking for a YouTube video all morning of Jim and Ryan (from The Office) talking about New York City. Ryan keeps telling Jim how awesome it is to live in the City and to be there and to be surrounded by everything going on. Jim keeps saying how much he loves visiting and how he agrees that it is an awesome place but Ryan keeps telling him he just doesn't understand even though he totally did. Yea, if I had found that video, it's clip would have been right here.]

Well, everything was perfect. Absolutely perfect.

And then we found out we were having a baby...girl. Cue the "are you sure?" questions. We were thrilled about it being a girl, but we sort of had a feeling it was a boy. Everyone did. Everyone I talked to (besides my mom) thought it was a boy and I'd sort of nestled into that mind set too. Again, we knew we'd be thrilled either way but we we're sort of in shock. She checked and checked again but there was nothing there. Well there was stuff there, just not the boy parts.

The rest of the day was strange and was a very out of body experience for me. I could now call it a she. I could refer to her by her name if I wanted to. I knew what direction to start taking the nursery. It just got weird.

We bought some stuff while we were out and about running around all of Oklahoma yesterday and it started to make everything more real. Pink tights with a dress with little owls all over it and little gray shoes will make it more real. Here's hoping my shopping bug stays on the down low for a while.

the in-laws have arrived

2010-09-13T11:48:00.000-05:00

My in-laws are visiting this week!

They took a long road trip over the last week and a half and are finishing out with a visit to us. They arrived on Friday night and after a quick tour of the house changes we hopped in the car and headed for dinner. We ate prosciutto wrapped pears and artisan pizza out on a patio with Christmas lights overhead while we talked about their trip and the things they did and saw all over the west.

It was good to have them here again. They normally make the trip down to us once a year (typically in November around Bill and Paul's birthday) but this September weekend worked better. It's the first time they've probably seen our grass green.

Saturday we slept in, and then lazily laid around the house drinking coffee and having breakfast before heading to the mall for a few errands and some shopping. After spending some money and a few hours clothes shopping we headed to RePUBlic OKC for lunch and the Michigan vs Notre Dame game.

For those of you that don't live in OKC, you are missing out on some of the most fabulous food. We ate and ate and ate and ate. There's nothing on the menu there that isn't delicious and since we knew we'd be there so long we had the biggest meal we could fit. We shared a scotch egg, truffle potato skins, coconut shrimp and a pub pretzel for an appetizer and then of course I had the Classen burger which, let me just say, will knock your socks off if you don't have gall bladder problems from all the other things you ate first. The game was fun to watch and Michigan won, so Paul was happy, Bill not so much.

We spent the rest of the afternoon lounging, watching more football and taking naps before we ended the evening with some Orange Leaf for dinner.

They're here until Thursday and we plan to take a mini road trip throughout Oklahoma tomorrow. And then Paul and I will be back to the office while they finish resting up before heading home.

Oh Hermine, I thought we could have been friends...

2010-09-08T17:06:00.000-05:00

Today, it is raining cats and dogs in Oklahoma City.

It started raining early this morning and hasn't stopped. Sometimes it's light rain, sometimes "not so light" isn't even appropriate enough.

For example, a few of us went to lunch with an old co-worker (which we were 40 minutes late to and that's an entirely different story) and when we got done with lunch it was POURING buckets of water from the sky. I'd left my rain coat on the back of my chair because it was only drizzling when we left and I had my umbrella with me so I was fine. Who was I kidding? The three of us had to R-U-N to the car after lunch. The rain was coming down sideways and we we're goners.

Here's how I described the scene to Paul in an email shortly after the incident:

"It’s time to leave and it’s raining harder than I have ever seen it rain. And that parking lot sucked. It took us 30 seconds to get to the car but we were RUNNING and let me just say, I’m wearing four inch heels, skinny jeans that are now suctioned to my body but at the time wouldn’t stay up while I was running, a baby bump that was jiggling all while I was holding onto my purse and running with the umbrella in front of my face because really, that's where the rain was coming from."

Guys, we're talking about so soaking wet, I might as well have jumped into a swimming pool fully clothed, hopped out, picked up my purse and hopped in her Land Rover ready to go back to work. I could squeeze water out of my pants.

Tonight I will A) not be able to get out of these jeans and Paul will have to cut them off of me and/or B) will have a cold.

Thanks Hermine.

The Fun Stuff : Nursery Planning

2010-09-04T22:05:00.000-05:00

So, having a newbie joining our family means lots of shifting and sorting and purging. For example, the office I posted about earlier was technically up first. It's still up, in the process, but so are a thousand other projects around our little house.

In fact, our bedroom was on the list to freshen up and has somehow far surpassed the progress in the nursery or the office. It got a fresh coat a lighter paint, new drapery panels, a new bed, new bedding, updated photos and new art.

We've also re-carpeted the three closets in the house. The brown, old, dirty shag just gave me the creeps when I thought about my kid crawling into one of the closets or the amount of dirt that I wouldn't be able to get out no matter how hard I tried. So one of my carpet product representatives quickly ordered me up 9 square yards of some commercial grade, high quality carpet and Paul and I went to work. For future reference, if you need carpeting work done, call a professional installer. It sucked.

But the really fun room, the room I've been thinking about for weeks now is what this is all about.

Erika Powell said it best when she was pregnant with her first, "And you know, when you are a designer the baby's name is secondary to the nursery. If I had a dime for every time someone asked about the nursery I'd be on in island somewhere in a hammock, drinking a virgin pina colada."

Well, we don't find out for another week whether our little human is a girl or a boy but knowing how insane our schedule is going to be over the next 5 months, we chose to start planning early. Plus, we're planners. Super, ridiculous planners.

I fell in love with a paint color while at Home Depot that is in the new Martha Stewart Living Collection called Seaglass. I knew it was the color for the room no matter what the sex of the baby turned out to be. So it got purchased and with the help of my dad and Paul, it started going up along with a fresh white trim paint on all of the baseboards, door trim and window sills.

*Side note about Martha Stewart paints: If you have fallen head over heels for Behr's Premium Primer and Paint in One, expect to be poorly disappointed in this Martha Stewart product. It's sold in the same freaking store but goes to show that not all paint is created equal. The color was/is perfect and in the mornings and late in the evenings is blue but during the day with the windows open it brings out all the green. But talk about watery. And forget getting it on in one coat. From now on, I'll just have them color match the color chip of any product (including the ones they sell) to the Behr.

My parents came up to help us around the house a couple of weekends ago and my dad and Paul made some serious progress on the room. Paul and I need to cut in the blue one last time, do probably another coat on the trim and then we'll call it good.

This nursery has been a bit of funny subject for me. I know that there are a lot of children that are brought home to nurseries that are not so quite done being finished, or need a few tweaks, or haven't even been started for that matter. But for some reason, in my head, I feel like this is important. I know the kid will sleep in our room for the first little bit but I want to bring him or her home for the first time, take him or her in a fully finished room and say, "This, this is yours."

I also don't want to be tweaking anything once that baby is here. I want to sleep when it's sleeping and feed and play with it when it's not and enjoy every possible second I have at home before I have to go back to work.

So yea, I've started a little early but don't have major plans on taking the room anywhere for a little while. Once we know what we're having, I'll start planning more, but for now, the paint is up and I love it.

Urban Picnic-ing

2010-09-04T21:58:00.003-05:00

This guy makes me smile. A lot. I mean gut wrenching smiling where it makes my rib cage sore.

This afternoon after watching Michigan pummel the University of Connecticut, we hopped in the car, picked up some chicken, potato salad, sodas and a couple of choice desserts and spent the evening Paul style. We took the two minute drive to downtown and had dinner in an "urban park". It was beautiful outside and we spent the next hours walking up and down the streets and driving around with our windows open. We spent as much time as possible outside before we headed back to the house.

And here I am, in all of my new skinny jean glory. Never in my life have I owned a pair of skinny jeans. Never. I have never liked the way I looked in them. Until today of all days. I hated the idea of buying maternity clothes today. It was like shopping for a wig. I don't do it, so I couldn't tell you even where to start. I was not a big fan of trying to figure out what size jeans I wore and asking for help was not an option. But I grabbed a couple pairs of jeans, went in the dressing room and came out in these puppies. Paul loved them and so they got purchased. Why I want to wear them now of all times, when I am rounder and plumper than ever is beyond me but I like them. And it'll make boot season a lot easier to handle. Jamming jeans down into boots was always a pain in the butt. So if that saves that trouble alone, maybe they were worth it.

And we'll make this my first official maternity, pregnancy photo. We haven't been taken them weekly, because we're busy and to be quite frank, I don't love the way I look yet. The stomach has made its debut but I like it better from certain angles and am waiting for it to round itself out. But, this being the end of my 17th week and with the big ultrasound right around the corner, I thought it wouldn't hurt to show it off.

Do Fun Stuff Vol. 1 & my trigger happy purchase finger

2010-08-30T08:00:00.004-05:00

Well, for a week now our baby has been able to hear things and I'm doing that weird, play music for the baby thing. Turns out, quite a bit of my music isn't really kid friendly, and some of it even drives me nuts so I don't blame the kid for not loving it and punching me in the stomach when I turn it on because I've started feeling that now too. So I started looking for kid music that didn't make me feel crazy but that the kid could listen to for years to come. Mainly, because jamming out to Sesame Street and Alvin and the Chipmunks in our new super sweet Mazda 6 makes me want to barf.

I've been reading Pacing The Panic Room for awhile (courtesy of Kathleen) and love what this guy writes about and he's also an incredibly talented photographer and artist. He compiled this charity album to help benefit an organizations that researches SMS, a disease which his wife's son has. I searched for it last week and iTunes released it early, without all the needed band info, but I bought it before I knew that. And after congratulating him on the release via Twitter (because apparently I "tweet" now) I had to keep it quiet for awhile. But it has now been officially released and is for sale on iTunes.

So, basically I was the first person to purchase this album. He thinks so himself. I'm amazing. I guess? And since I've been listening to it for almost a week, I'll let you know, the music is good. My favorites? Morton the Caterpillar, Ladybug, Nothing, Biscuits and Sleep. Oh and the Potty song about made me pee in my pants I was laughing so hard. But according to the song, you don't pee in your pants, you do it in the potty. Glad I got that one figured out. So go buy it. No need to thank me, he did all the work.

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16 down, 24 to go

2010-08-29T21:39:00.001-05:00

Well, a few people have asked me what I've been looking like these days and there is most definitely a bump going on but I haven't had the right picture taken yet to advertise to the world. We'll work on that.

My parents came last week and helped us around the house, I will have an entire post about that later.
I picked the nursery paint color, whether boy or girl, and the room has been painted so we don't have to worry about it later. More on this to come too.

Work in the office/new guest room is underway.

Seriously though, have I mentioned I'm showing, and feeling the baby move and it's all a little weird and surreal?

The only thing that really has sounded good to me, because I've been incredibly indifferent about food this pregnancy, has been some Cherry Lambic Sorbet from Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams. Well, Jeni's is in Columbus, OH and that's a little far to go. I mentioned them here. And the closest place to purchase their pints is 7.5 hours away. AND, we looked into shipping six pints to our house but that would cost $100 and as much as it sounds delicious, we cannot afford pints of sorbet that cost $16.67 each.

So we've been mentioning to Jeni on Twitter to get her stuff to some local specialty grocers. I'm hoping she does, that they love it and want to carry it and will purchase cases of the Cherry Lambic just for me. But this is all wishful thinking.

Today, Paul and I went to the Y to get in some exercise and after we were finished he mentioned that we had to meet his co-worker in the alley behind his office to pick something up from her. A gift of sorts. A gift?! We don't know what we're having yet, why is she buying us gifts? So we go to the alley and meet up with her and all the while I have no idea what's going on. To anyone watching, it more than likely looked shady. Because she did not pull out a pink or blue bag with tissue paper in it.

Instead, Heather pulled out an ice chest holding...wait for it...some Jeni's ice cream! Her husband is working in Texas right now and she went down there for the weekend to visit him. Paul sent her a message on Facebox (oh Conan, I miss you) and asked her to stop at a store in Houston and pick some up for me. They didn't have the sorbet but had plenty of other flavors. Tonight we snacked sparingly on the goat cheese and cherries and gravel road. When I say sparingly, I mean sparingly.

Seriously, what a husband.

I've even got him on board for making another batch of the Cherry Lambic since Jeni shared her recipe with Food and Wine. Sorry, sorry. I know my obsession is a little out of control.

the office, and by office, i totally mean junk room

2010-08-26T13:29:00.000-05:00

We have decided that it is time to re-do our office, also known now as, the junk room.

We thought we were done with the house changing/work for awhile, I mean, everything was fine, but I changed our minds now that a third human being will be living in this little house with us.

When I was in school and had homework and projects and needed tons of space to work, this room was perfect. I had a drafting table, a table to lay things out on, the printer close by, another table to put together boards and even a dresser full of supplies including everything from my Prisma markers to rolls of trash paper and 3M's mighty glue (Super 77). However, since I graduated, rather since my friend Betsy graduated, this room has lost its need for homework requirements and has become the room that our cats' litter box and food is in. It is also the room that gets the brunt force of "I don't know where to put it, put it in the office." It's a disaster.

View of the office in 2007 before I got a rug, but at its height of usefulness and lack of crap.

Taken around the same time but it shows the wall color more acurately.

The beautiful part about this re-do is there is going to be very little construction involved. Well, the construction that does need to be done is bigger than I'd like to tackle, so we're going to pay someone to do it for us. Therefore, I consider it very little.

The ceiling in this room has detached itself in one area from the ceiling joists. We were just going to try and screw it back up, tape and mud it but I'd rather fix it the right way and if something is causing it to seperate, I want to find it. So Phil, our new handy dandy fix-it guy, is going to replace it for us.

We're also adding white quarter round to the perimeter of the room, because at some point, someone felt the need to remove it and never replace it.

This room is not only getting a ceiling lift and some trim, but is going to change in function too. Since I'm obviously not putting together color boards until 2 in the morning at home now (I have an office for that...) we need to re-evaluate and purge. This room will become our guest room/work space. Having laptops makes it easy for Paul and I to move wherever we want to but we still need a place for our files and printer.

We also don't entertain a lot of overnight guests, mainly our parents. Well, Paul's parents. My mom is so highly allergic to our cats that the moment she lays down to sleep, she can't breathe. She's fine walking around, having dinner, sitting on the furniture, but the moment she's laying flat, the wheezing and coughing and inhaler start. I hate that they can't sleep in our house but I'd rather her not die. So, that leaves mainly Paul's mom and dad. The number one issue with this space becoming a guest room is that this is the only place we've been able to make our cat litter situation work.

Our cats are strictly indoor cats and with every room in our house having a very set purpose with no small nook or closet of unknown territory, there just isn't a convienient, out of sight spot for their boxes. We have a back porch that could work, but only if we had it enclosed better. Currently it's a screen door with screened windows and would need a more permanent window system to keep out fleas and other cats that have found their way to our back door. This would also require us to put in a cat door, which just the thought of that makes my eyes roll.

So, we're going to bite the bullet and let the cats keep this as their room too, when guests come, we'll figure out a temporary solution of relocating them but we'll just keep the litter cleaner than ever for now since this has become more of a "living space".

There will be new paint on the walls, trim and ceilings and the window treatments are due for a major overhaul. The current roman shades were already installed when we moved in and were from IKEA and are dingy and needing to be replaced. Oh and there will be a change in wall decor, which will also knock a few things off my life list (thankfully, because I haven't knocked anything off that sucker in awhile).

I'll keep ya posted.

the ugly cry

2010-08-04T16:23:00.001-05:00

Last night, it struck again. The “Christa-wont-ever-sleep-a-full-8-hours-again” bug.

I was furious.

I had been reading in hopes that it would make me tired and it had a little bit. As soon as it happened, I felt my eyes drooping and words blurring together, I snapped my book shut and ran into the room to fall asleep. The moment I walked into the room with Paul though my head started swimming with to-do lists and wants and wishes and what-ifs. I laid there in the pitch black darkness for twenty minutes before I decided it wasn’t going to happen and I’d go into the living room and read another chapter of my book.

One chapter didn’t do it. So I went on to read a second, and then a third and then it would have been stupid to not have just finished the last chapter of the book. By this time I was drowsy, the book was finished so I headed back to bed. Where I laid awake for another hour secretly crying because I was terrified something was going to happen to Paul in the next six months and I’d be left alone to raise a child I am all of a sudden terrified of.

Paul could hear me sniffing after a while and I told him it was nothing, I was done crying so I started talking slowly to make sure the fear was gone and then these words came out of my mouth:

“It’s weird; I can’t really explain it to you. I feel different about everything. I think differently about everything. I worry about things I’ve never worried about before, and worries I have had before are a thousand times more scary now that a child is involved. Even stuff that is not worry worthy, like where to buy our freaking rocking chair from seems to be racking my brain for hours on end.”

And the second the last word came out of my mouth I started doing the ugly cry (that’s what Jodi and I call it). You know the one, where you’re heaving and choking and your face is hot and sopping wet, you can’t breathe and you knew if someone was filming you it would most definitely not be cinematic worthy and people would look away because it was so awkward to watch? Yea, that’s the cry I had at 1:00 this morning. I was hysterical. I couldn’t even figure out why I was crying.

I was sitting up in our bed and Paul gently asked what he could do to help and I knew there was nothing. I told him I just had to cry it out. Cry it out? Cry what out?! Why the hell was I crying?! (I get that my pregnant hormones are crazy now but something had to have set me off…).

I started going through the things that I thought might have triggered it but couldn’t find the one in order to rationalize the fit I was now indulging in and so I could try to calm myself down. Instead, every time I thought of something that would have been pregnancy cry worthy, I just sobbed harder knowing it wasn’t the start of my heaving cry but was now in my head and was worth crying about too. Stress at work. I sobbed harder. Fear of losing my job after I come back from maternity leave. Sobbing harder. Dominican Republic. We’re talking hysterical here. It was unbelievable the things my body wanted to get out. I sat there upright in bed for 5 minutes after I was done, thinking about how very tired I was and furious at how hard it was for me to fall asleep. I leaned back and thought for a bit and then stopped remembering anything at all. Finally I was asleep.

These fits can’t happen often. I’ll drive poor Paul loco. Oh, and I’ll make myself fat (you know, with the cheddar bites from Sonic I had today as a consolation prize for being exhausted).

insomnia: 1 christa: 0

2010-08-02T12:04:00.000-05:00

Saturday night I was exhausted. I went to bed at 9:00 pm and didn't wake up until 8:00 the next morning.

Then I took a nap in the car on the way back to OKC, about an hour long.

Last night we had dinner with some friends from church at Earl's where I proceeded to scarf down my chopped brisket sandwich, french fries and okra with no problem. Oh and a coke to top it off.

I paid dearly for the fact that I had slept 12 hours and had enough acid producing food to give a rhinoceros heart burn.

At 10:00 last night when Paul was exhausted from his weekend of golf playing and running around in the heat, I wasn't even close to ready for bed. So I read a chapter of Harry Potter hoping it would make my eyes tired and I would tucker out.

Wrong.

Apparently when you're pregnant, you start not sleeping early.

I read and read and read. I stared at the wall in the living room. I stared at the cat laying on my lap. Nothing worked to make me tired. I finally just bit the bullet and crawled into bed at 1:00 and pushed Paul off my side of the bed for another hour before I think I feel asleep.

Today, I'm a little cranky.

I wish I was taking a nap, but since I'm not...

2010-07-27T10:49:00.001-05:00

Considering that this is how I feel today, I am going to link/and post an article Paul sent me this morning. Side note: I snapped this photo a few nights ago while laying on the couch. Paul and I were talking and had the TV on and our cat had apparently had enough of our excitement. She plopped down, stuck her face in the couch and took a nap. A face planted nap sounds wonderful doesn't it?

If you are not an interior designer, you probably will have no desire to continue reading this post. I'll be on my soap box for a moment.

Since I started college I have found that "interior design" bashing is quite fun for some people. There's the standard jokes about fluffing pillows and picking paint colors and people rarely realize what an actual, educated, licensed designer does. In fact, I've never "fluffed" or specified a pillow in my entire career. Yes we pick finishes and furniture and accessories, but we do much more than that.

We're given a building shell, and we make the interior what it is. We help determine, or sometimes just determine without help where walls are to be placed, how large rooms need to be, we have to follow the same codes and regulations that architects have to follow. We design ceilings, lighting, millwork, etc. We are more than capable to work on buildings. Most states require you to be registered after you've been educated and passed an examination, just like an architect, or a doctor or any other profession where the health, safety and welfare of people are at stake.

So, when Paul sent me this post this morning written by IIDA HQ about OSU Professor Drab's research stating that some of the problem comes from ourselves and the words we use and that our publications use to describe projects and our process, it made sense.

That Elephant is...umm...Big

Judging by the overwhelming response to the blog post “10 Reasons Interior Designers Matter,” I think it’s safe to say that there are a lot of misconceptions about interior design and its practitioners. And you’re a little sick of it. Ok, very sick of it.

Well, turns out the design community and their publications may not be doing justice to the profession, at least in the printed word. Research at Oklahoma State University over the last decade analyzed the language used by writers of design periodicals and interior design practitioners when describing the activities of interior designers (Drab, p. 543), and what they found may surprise you.

Researchers found that verbs such as “love” and “like” and adjectives such as “beautiful” and “simple” rank among the most used in design publications and by design practitioners. To me, this is like calling an elephant big. It doesn’t do the creature justice. Big is a relative term; that is, it doesn’t take on meaning until the audience interprets the word — and because every audience member’s world of experience is different, it means something different to each individual. To one person, big might mean the size of a house. To another, it might mean a pair of pants she wishes she didn’t have to buy.

Using an objective term to describe the elephant helps standardize the vision; for instance, “that elephant weighs 2 tons.” The same issue applies to defining interior design. “Love,” “like,” “beautiful” and “simple” are emotional words. The emotional context of these words contributes to the misunderstanding of the business discipline and the art of interior design. These words don’t provide the audience with a very complex view of the talents of the designer or the merits of the project.

Since most of you aren’t editors of design publications, your audience will most likely be a client, a friend or an acquaintance. When describing your projects, why not use words that describe how you followed a systematic process when designing the space? Take the time to explain how you researched design solutions to increase efficiency or safety in the workplace. Your work isn’t lazy or one-dimensional, so your words shouldn’t be either.

Lucky for you, NCIDQ provides a multi-faceted definition of interior design on their website. These words and descriptions do more for the elevation of the profession than an emotional outpouring could ever do. And in combination, they’re targeted. If we want the world to take seriously the profession of design, shouldn’t we use serious words?

It’s never a bad idea to double check ourselves before we exclaim over how “beautiful that room is” or “how we love the simplicity of that design.” This isn’t to say that the emotional component of design isn’t important, because it is. That’s the art of design. Just remember to include the business discipline as well. Because while the art of it may be fairly evident to the observer, the discipline may not be. Your job is to explain what about the project’s beauty or simplicity makes it the work of a professional. And then the public will begin to develop the vocabulary for design from both perspectives.

When Google can start to get weird...

2010-07-23T15:06:00.001-05:00

When I first started thinking about posting about our pregnancy, my intial thought was to do a funny post to announce it to the world. So I Googled "i'm having a baby" and looked at Google Images to find things to post about. Bad, bad idea. I highly recommend against that. However, some funny stuff did pop up (that I'm obviously blogging about). Like the duct taped baby:

Really? You duct taped your child to the wall and to keep her happy added the duck? At some point I can see the duck not being able to console her any longer and then you're just stuck with a hysterical baby on a wall that will later be ruined by duct tape residue. Yea, smart thinking. Oh internet world, you amuse me.

12 down 28 to go...

2010-07-23T11:42:00.002-05:00

Baby Ryckbost (via Paul and Christa) will be making a debut in February of 2011 and we are EXCITED!

Hello world changing.

Hello maternity jeans.

I've been waiting for this for awhile. Well, not the maternity jeans part but the baby part, and the shouting it from the rooftops part. However, all of a sudden I'm having a really hard time deciding what to shout - other than "we're having a baby!".

Some days I feel like things have already moved so quickly and that the next 28 weeks is going to be gone before I know it but then other days I feel like it is going to take years to get here.

The days where I'm thinking about refinishing the wood floors, and fixing up the back two rooms, and doing this and doing that are the days I am grasping at what little time I feel like we have to get prepared. Especially since the month of Decemeber, Paul and I will only be in our house for 10 or 12 days.

But the days where I'm thinking about seeing our baby for the first time and what it will be like to be a family of three (because there's only one in there in case you were wondering...) I feel like it is going to take forever for 2011 to arrive.

We are so blessed and so excited we can barely contain it. Paul tells me goodbye every morning, kisses my forehead (because I have a cold) and then tells the baby goodbye too. I love that he's excited. I like seeing him with kids and I know I'm going to love him more as a dad.

dumpster diving anyone?

2010-07-20T15:42:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago a co-worker of mine threw away a couple of large tiles that we didn't need for a project any longer into our large trash can. The next morning, the tiles were all out on our flat files. It was a little twilight zone-ish. Someone had taken them out of the trash and we all laughed about it, she grabbed them, threw them into her desk trash can and went on about her day. The next morning she came in to find them on her desk again. The people who collect our trash after hours apparently thought that those tiles really were worth something and they were not going to be a part of throwing them away.

Here's the deal...we order thousands of samples. THOUSANDS. Tile, carpet tile, laminate pieces, fabrics, solid surface counter pieces, wood door samples, you name it, we order it for meetings with clients and for colorboards. For as sustainable as we are and we make buildings to be, we are typically, as a profession, very wasteful. We have to be, it's part of our job. And we have a library FULL of materials and samples. So full in fact, it's dangerous. We keep as much as we can but at some point we just have to throw things out when we are done with them.

We also try and re-use what we can. Carpet tiles are huge and people love them for the garages, back porches, to cut up and use on shelves, etc. So we have huge carpet giveaways in our office. We also have a co-worker who takes the all of our larger tiles to Peru once a year where she does a lot of mission work to use as grave markers in their small cemetery. I'm not bragging about that, just stating that we try and re-use what we can within reason.

Here's my real story:

Yesterday I was purging my desk of old samples that never got used (that I knew we had a book in the library of) and threw some tile in the trash. I started cleaning out drawers and found a scarf I had bought at H&M for no more than $10.00 that I tore a hole in last winter and decided that it wasn't worth holding onto any longer, especially at my desk. So I chunked it. There's a hole in it.

Well, apparently they pilfered through our trash again last night and pulled out a few of the 5" tiles and the scarf and left them on my desk for me, like I had made a mistake.

They're men by the way the people who take our trash. I've never had a lady take my trash from under my desk when I've been working late.

Well, I'd like to know what this guy thinks I'm going to use a single 5" slate tile for. I can understand if I had a box of them, I could do a table or something, but really, just one?

And the scarf, if you don't think I should throw it away, I obviously don't want it and if the hole doesn't bother you, take it.

Goodwill and Salvation Army won't even want it, in case I haven't mentioned it, it's GOT A HOLE IN IT.

I moved the tile to a different trash can in hopes it gets pitched and amd I'm still staring at the scarf.

robberson steel co., oklahoma city

2010-07-02T09:42:00.001-05:00

We found this steel company while driving around parts of Oklahoma City we had never been in before a few weeks ago. We do that a lot. Around 2:00 pm on a Saturday afternoon, we get fidgety, so we go to Sonic for happy hour priced drinks and then we explore until we find things like this.

ironic that i am posting about owls and fireflies in the same day - no relation to the song, really.

2010-06-29T09:09:00.000-05:00

I have an aversion to bugs. It's not that I hate them, but 1) I don't want them in my house and 2) I don't want them on me. I have no problem letting them live at peace in their outdoor world, I can't hate nature when it's in nature but the thought of a june bug hitting me in the face on my porch or a mosquito perching on my knee in the backyard has me swatting the air like an idiot.

So, the fact that I have an obsession with lightning bugs is a bit strange.

I liked them as a kid but not like I do now. It all started on our honeymoon and it's still the coolest memory I think I have in my little head. (Although, having a candle lit dinner on a pier in the DR watching a wedding party let off 15-20 Khoom Fay (paper floating lanterns) from the beach and watching them float over our heads was pretty cool too.)

We road tripped to Pennsylvania for our honeymoon to see Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater. We had left the Sunday morning after our wedding, drove all day and as we were starting to get tired, and close to our first overnight stop, we had both grown rather quiet. We had done a lot of talking throughout the day and since it was dark and the music was playing, it was good enough to both just be in the car together. I was looking out of my window as we were flying by the tree lined highway at 80 miles an hour and realized I was looking at more lightning bugs than I had ever seen in my life. There were so many of them and they were flashing so frequently in front of and inside the trees that it made for the coolest moment. I quickly made Paul take his eyes off the road and look at them and although he thought it was rather cool too, I knew I was having one of my moments that I couldn't explain to him. One of those, this moment right here, in this car with my new husband, listnening to this song while watching these thousands of bugs was going to be forever burned into my brain. And I liked it.

oh i'm such a hoot

2010-06-29T09:07:00.000-05:00

So a week ago or so (that's a fun sentence starter), LGN posted this photo from Lonny

and she raved about the rug. My first thought was, "what rug?! there's a huge white owl sitting on the island and you're excited about some oriental rug?!". that owl is exciting.

Then, Burke Decor had a giveaway through her blog giving away this owl.

It was like only the second internet contest I've ever entered. I didn't win, wah wah, but still love the thing. I wouldn't use it for umbrellas though. I don't know what I'd use it for.

But I seriously like me some white ceramic owl action.

Thoughts for today:

2010-06-28T12:03:00.000-05:00

At 11:27 am the women in my office building all decide it’s time to run to the restroom. I hate waiting for a stall when I know there’s a bathroom on every floor, so I meandered to other floors to find I would have to wait in every one of them. That just took me back to my floor and my original restroom where I waited out the now longer line. Note to self: pee at 11:25.

I am tired. Yesterday, I slept through Paul waking up, taking a shower, getting dressed, having breakfast and apparently leaving for church. I woke up 20 minutes after he had left and lay in bed for another 30 before I crawled out of the room, only for a bowl of cinnamon toast crunch. I could have done the same this morning if I knew I couldn't get fired for doing it. I was going to work through lunch, but I may go home and take a nap instead.

Catalog Living is funny. Read it.

I want to do this.

And this.

I need this upcoming three day holiday weekend like no one would believe. And the fact that I have to wait two months before I have another day off of work is a bit unnerving. I'm not used to this not traveling all the time and taking three day weekends thing. I can't figure out how people do it.

If a June night could talk, it would probably boast it invented romance. ~Bern Williams

2010-06-24T11:26:00.001-05:00

I haven't forgotten you exist blogger. I've just been busy. Really busy.

Last night Paul came into the living room bringing with him my new favorite around the house shorts, threw them at me and told me to come out front with him. Yes, I was half dressed. It was ten o'clock and I can do that.

So I pulled them on and headed out to the porch with the boy.

It was ten at night and still a sticky 84 degrees outside. We stood in the darkness on the porch for a second when I was just about to ask, "ok...so what are we doing?," when lightning flashed all over the sky to the north above the houses we were facing. All of a sudden the sky was full of clouds I hadn't been able to see just moments before. It was awesome. The lightning was fairly consistent so we both popped down on the porch stairs and watched it for awhile enjoying nighttime summer.

I started to pray in my head for the same thing I've been praying about for weeks, a request of sorts. I am sure God at this point is thinking "yea woman, I heard you the other 900 times you prayed for this - chill out". But before I got to the request in my head last night, the lightning hit again and I thought, how awesome is everything around us. The whole world all of a sudden was just mind boggling to me and I told God how awesome he was and left it at that.

We sat there for a little while longer talking until I started yawning (and shuddering from the idea that June Bugs would be flying around if the light was on). It was affirming, not just the amazing world around us part, but that Paul and I could sit, on OUR porch, and talk at ten at night, like grownups, because we're really not. Ha, if only.

Post Script:

2010-06-17T13:24:00.000-05:00

I love me some Photoshop action:

The fact that I can make things like that, from nothing but a blank screen and some images of fabric that I like astounds me.

I've got to make sure my boss knows just how important it is to stay on my computer. Otherwise, I'd be up a creek when it came to personal stuff!

four years ago today:

2010-06-17T13:17:00.000-05:00

I got married.

To this guy:

Hello wonderful.

We went on a honeymoon, we traveled a lot, we hung out with friends and family, I graduated college, we both got new jobs, we worked on our house and remodeled our kitchen and spent many weekends and evenings just enjoying our time together. I wouldn't have done half of it without him, he's been such a blessing to have in my life. Here's to many more years of gallivanting around together.

it's raining, it's pouring

2010-06-15T11:44:00.002-05:00

This past weekend, we did a lot. I mean A LOT.

I got a haircut, we did our weekly grocery shopping, Paul did some volunteering, we watched a very important soccer game, we volunteered/attended an after party at the art museum, met my parents to check out their fancy new wheels, went to church and even caught a mini Flaming Lips concert.

We did not however build a moat or an ark.

Both would have been quite helpful yesterday.

Oklahoma City received a tumultuous down pour that woke us up early yesterday morning and didn’t stop until the late morning. Paul was up having his morning coffee when he noticed one of our cats staring at the floor vent. She was intent. Paul got a little closer and noticed he could hear something that sounded like water so he popped his head down into the basement to have a look see and boy oh boy was there water.

He came upstairs, put on some socks and boots and got my butt out of the bed to help him. I figured an inch or two of water in the “unfinished” basement couldn’t be that bad but I’d oblige and help him move some things around. I took one step down the stairs and saw Paul, mid-shin deep in water. There might have been an expletive escaping my mouth on those stairs.

He started hoisting boxes and tubs of things up to me which I stacked in nice neat piles on the back porch. I couldn’t get over how much water was literally pouring into the space. He grabbed the laundry that was in the dryer (already getting wet) and we headed back upstairs to watch the disaster happen. Or I did. Paul grabbed on his rain jacket and went outside (still POURING mind you) and spent the next two hours directing the gathering water away from our house with brick and sand dams he built, a trench between our house and the neighbor (whose basement was already waist deep in water) and he cleared out the tiny amount of gutters on the side of our house. The water stopped pouring in through the walls. What a rockstar. We were at that point, two feet underwater downstairs, but it wasn’t coming in anymore and we had to be positive and thankful about something.

We decided to brave the rain and the flooding (stupid idea) and get out in order to get a new hose for our pump at Home Depot. It was amazing how many roads had already been closed and how many cars were just stranded in the middle of roads. We made it to Home Depot and back (with a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit in hand) and after one more trip by Paul, got all the water pumped out of the basement and out into the street. I could see the pavement! Never mind the fact that it is filthy muddy and there is something wrong with our A/C, cable and our washer and dryer were half under water for awhile.

I spent the afternoon at home monitoring the water level and giving Paul updates every half hour or so while baking some fresh bread and marinating dinner. I’d love to only work four days a week and bake bread and cook on the other days. That is, as long as there aren’t any more natural disasters happening!

momma lovin'

2010-06-11T16:07:00.000-05:00

A few nights ago, Paul and I were talking during the commercials of one of our favorite shows and somehow we got on the subject of people who want better for their kids than what they had or grew up with.

We both sat there for a second when I said, "I don't want better for our kids than what we had. We both had really great lives growing up (and we still do) with great parents and I want to strive to provide an equal experience for our kids and if it is better than what we had, lucky them."

Today I got this email from my mom:

We get emails, cards and phone calls all the time from our parents that say things like this.

That's what I want for our kids and I hate that there are people out there that don't have that already themselves but I'm glad they want to give it to their kids too.

summer

2010-06-11T10:46:00.000-05:00

I think I've mentioned previously how much I do not like summer and if I have not, I am now. I especially don't like it now that I am an adult. There is no break from school to enjoy or vacations to go on (we much prefer fall/winter/spring travel). The only thing summer has going for it, in my opinion, is that it is nine o'clock before it gets close to being dark out and there is a prolific number of snow cone stands that crop up.

However, I haven't been hating on the summer as much this year as I typically do. Granted, it's only June11th and we have a long way to go here in Oklahoma City before the fall arrives, but right now, I can handle it. And believe it or not, I've only had two snow cones.

I'm very intrigued by summer entertaining right now which makes me wonder if the prospect of doing so is helping me stem off the hate.

Entertaining, like I like to do, takes a lot of effort though. Not that I am complaining, I just don't seem to have the people to invite to parties like these all the time.

These photos (found at Hostess of course) make me want to break out some mason jars, mix up some lemonade in our glass pitcher and cover my patio table in flowers with candles hanging from the trees. I've also been obsessing over 4th of July celebrating. We're not even going to be in town, rather at my parent's house, but I want to throw a party. My brother's birthday is on the 5th and every year for quite some time we threw him a party with the classic white sheet cake covered in strawberries and blueberries making a flag. I want to throw his birthday party this year (although I doubt he's even in town), and for old times sake, have his flag birthday cake.

I'd have lanterns, flags, galvanized tubs full of drinks and flowers to show off some serious patriotic style. I like the whole New England summer cottage covered in flags, its quite quanit and charming and it's exactly what I'd be going for.

Who is throwing summer parties this year? Because I want to attend them.

My mom always said "If you don't have anything nice to say, then shut it."

2010-06-07T13:06:00.001-05:00

I'm not about to say anything nice. I just need an outlet to vent today.

I want to write about my office so badly it causes a creative block for other things. Knowing the story of Dooce and how well her getting fired from her job worked out for her after she wrote about her co-workers and her job is comforting however; I don’t seem to quite grasp the concept of making a living blogging every day. I just don’t have the internet following, nor do I think I ever will.
I need to write a book or maybe a screenplay about the people I work with. And maybe publish it under a pen name. You’d read it. It would be funny and then I’d be rich.

Today has been one of those days at the office. Can you tell?

In related blogging topics, I don’t understand how it is that a newlywed couple created a blog, started charging people $250 to look at two or three photos, draw a shoddy, unscaled, wavy lined sketch of a floorplan and use Photoshop to copy and paste the same furniture pieces and artwork (from Target and Crate and Barrel) over and over again. Do you know how well I could do YHL mood boards and floorplans and in probably less the time and with a to-scale floorplan that doesn’t look like my cat drew it?

I’m just bitter. The two of them stay home with a newborn and blog and make mood boards for people all over the US because they have good taste when they remodel their own home.

I went to school for it and am working an eight to five job (design job yes, but come on) with no one knocking down my door to do an internet color board for them. Jealous. I’m just jealous.

I’d stay at home and do mood boards and floorplans for people for $250.00 a pop. And they’d be good.

So there.

NOTE: This is one of those posts that I should have saved for a few days. After cooling down, I should have come back to read it and then laugh at myself and delete it. But I'm too into it right now to not just send it out there, envy and all.

Get the Duck to do it.

2010-06-04T13:36:00.001-05:00

Miracle of miracles.

Duct tape gets rid of warts. Gross I know.

I got a wart in high school (I think) on my pointer finger on my left hand, right at the bottom of my nail. It was so small for so long and didn't hurt so I left it alone.

I can't believe I'm writing about this.

Well it got bigger over the past few years and I decided it sucked.

Over Memorial Day weekend I decided it was time to get rid of the thing. I'd asked Paul's uncle, the Doc, about a year ago if it would hurt if I had him remove it and he told me quite frankly that yea it probably would.

I chickened out at that moment and it wasn't until this past weekend I decided to get over it and just take care of it. But then my mom told me that my cousins had been instructed to put duct tape on theirs and that they disappeared. I was a skeptic.

Plus, I didn't want to have to wear duct tape to work every day. So, I bought this stuff:

Nothing like some turquoise duct tape to keep your spirits up in the summer months. I've only been covering it up since Monday, and it's already almost gone. I can't believe it and I can't believe that it doesn't hurt at all.

So tuck that tiny piece of knowledge away for some random party chat.

what chou talkin' bout willis?

2010-06-01T11:03:00.000-05:00

How exiciting is it that it's already Tuesday?! I have nothing to write about right now. I should but can't seem to get into the mood to think. For the first time in a few weeks, I have something that needs to be done at work that is incredibly brain stimulating, so that's exciting and I don't feel like wasting that brain power on a post I'm only half into anyways.

But, I will write about our weekend briefly. It was such a great memorial day weekend. It actually felt like a three day weekend and I was glad we got to spend it with part of our family (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, old friends, etc).

This past weekend:
- we watched my cousin Marlee graduate from high school
- we ate smores by the lake as we tried to convince a three year old to "drop it like its hot"
- I ate breakfast by the lake with my mom while the boys played golf
- I finished "Salt"
- I bought a new watch
- we played Bananagrams until our brains felt like mush
- we talked on the back porch with only the christmas lights and candles until we were too tired to talk
- we went to church
- Marlee, Maryn and I drove around in golf carts keeping score for the boys as they played another round of golf
- we had pizza and hun-cal (yes Lauren, that was for you) fro-yo for dinner
- I bought turqouise duck tape in hopes of getting rid of a wart
- we watched some NCIS because really, we're addicted
- my dad, Paul and I went to the driving range and they taught me how to play golf (i'm pretty excited about it)
- we had lunch with the parental unit and we we're off
- and we finished the evening with a little Harry Potter, oh, and Taco Bueno of course

Hope you had a great weekend!

Oh, and the title has nothing to do with Coleman's death, rather it's something the three year old that was visiting for the weekend said to my cousin Marcus and we got a kick out of it. Oh and since celebrity deaths happen in threes, Nugget, on the radio this morning, predicted Betty White was next. Oh the shame.

oh snap (beans that is)!

2010-05-25T21:17:00.001-05:00

Two years ago, Paul built this planter box and we filled it full of veggies!

We placed it in the small grassy area between our driveway and the apartment complex's driveway/parking lot. We grew tomatoes, peppers and jalapenos. Last year we did some of the same but some birds found our tomato crop and went after them with a vengeance.

Did I mention we live next door to a brick four plex?

We've run into issues with people parking in our driveway before, mainly friends of people who have resided in the apartment who didn't realize it didn't belong to the building, or people who went out late partying and thought they would get back early enough in the morning to move their cars before we would notice. And other than a few loud parties last summer and one guy (from another complex) who lets his very large dog do his very large business in our front yard WITHOUT picking it up, it's been a pretty peaceful living arrangement.

We know one of the couples that lives in this building (they got married the same month we did and moved in shortly after). We talk some and see them around town and at their jobs every now and again but other than that we don't really know the people that come and go in the apartment buildings. The neighbors to the west, in the houses, we all know each other, but everyone to the east of us changes out so often being only renters that we never really get to know them.

Well...

We got up one morning a few weeks ago and headed out to the garage and noticed that our planter box was full of vegetable plants. That we did not plant.

We have new neighbors in the apartment complex and I've only said hello to them once as they were crawling through one of their windows after locking themselves out (which I still haven't figured out). They claimed our planter box!

It wasn't too late for us to plant things yet, and we had plans to do so either that weekend or the next and were completely shocked that they had staked their claim (literally, using stakes for their tomato plants). We laughed about it, both a little shocked, but as the day went on I got sort of pissed off.

I get that it is sitting on the property between the house and the apartment complex and that it could quite possibly belong to the apartment. But why not ask first?! Ask someone in the building, ask your landlord or ask us. And even if it did belong to the apartment complex, why would you be so bold to use the entire thing assuming that no one else in the building wanted to plant something? And I know they didn't ask around the complex before they planted because the couple we know, knows it belongs to us and told Paul last night they (the couple we know) were wanting to plant some things of their own this year but didn't get around to getting a box to put next to ours.

So I chewed on it for awhile and decided that even though it wasn't the end of the world, it still was sort of rude and that we would want our box back for next year. With Paul hating confrontation so much we decided we'd just put a little garden sign in the box. So today, I made one.

My friend Lauren says it's because I'm passive aggressive. I've never thought of myself that way, I'm typically just aggressive. But I'm glad I got to be passive about this one because my note is cute.We plopped it into a small little pot I had with a hosta that came back from the dead, probably only to die again and laid it gingerly in the box. I hope it doesn't rain before they find it, I didn't laminate the thing.

The more I think about it, the whole leaving a note thing may be a bit trashy but I was actually really nice and I left off the part at the bottom about how they needed to clean up their containers and trash because that stuff seemed to always find its way onto our driveway and into our backyard (which theirs did). I just feel like if you live in a building with more people than just yourself you should be more community minded than most people. Plus, when you live on a block like we live on, everyone's looking out for each other and I'm sure they'll get the hang of it soon but until then...I guess I can leave passive notes in pots.

whoop-dee freaking-dah

2010-05-25T21:03:00.000-05:00

This past weekend, I made bread.

I know what you’re thinking. “Whoop-dee-freaking-dah, I make bread all the time.”

Well, I don’t so it was sort of a big deal.

In fact, I’ve never made bread. Paul threw out there that he’s made banana bread and some other things that have the word “bread” in them but he had never made the flour and yeast, sit on the counter rising type of bread either.

There has been lots of buzz on the blogs I read lately about people making bread and I figured Saturday would be the perfect day to try it. And I was right; it was absolutely the perfect day to do it. We spent the day at the grocery store and buying new plants for the backyard. And while Paul worked in the back, I made homemade bread and baked potato soup. Other than the fact that I over-thymed the soup, it was a delicious meal.

I used this recipe after We Met in A Bar raved about how simple it was. Simple was good. Simple was necessary.

And to my surprise it really was simple; in fact, it was a little TOO simple. I want to make bread all the time now. I have the recipe memorized and the amount of time it needs to rest and rise and when to knead it and when to bake it and for how long.

I also snagged this book off of Amazon over the weekend and not a moment too soon since they raised the price yesterday. Hope it’s as good as Kathleen says it is.

saving the important stuff

2010-05-20T10:54:00.001-05:00

The weather in Oklahoma leaves plenty of room for improvement. It's either 10 degrees outside or 108. It's either icing over or we have tornados. We can't seem to find a happy balance, ever. The last 10 days around here have been full of tornados, thunderstorms and freak hail showers (I say freak, because Sunday was a gorgeous day until out of nowhere balls of ice covered the metro making it look like snow was covering the ground).

(this wasn't taken yesterday, but a few months ago from Paul's parking garage downtown)

Yesterday the metro was at a high risk for severe weather so before I left for work, I grabbed a pair of socks and my tennis shoes. I thought to myself while I was brushing my teeth, "If I have to come back to a completely demolished house and I have to sift through the wreckage, I am not doing it in heels." I also thought about what we consider to be our "safe spot" in the house (though I am debating that title as I don't feel like our house is in anyway shape or form going to do well if it gets hit). I thought about throwing a couple of things in the hall closet (our so called safe spot) that couldn't be replaced like our wedding photos, our external drive full of digital photos, etc. I didn't get around to it before I left for the day but as I was sitting at my desk, checking our weather station's website, I pictured our house getting blown over and the only thing surviving the ravaging winds to be the hall closet. Which would not be holding our wedding album or digital photos but rather 30 jackets/coats/sweaters, scarves and gloves, a suitcase, our wedding cake topper, a swiffer, our vacuum and SpotBot, a step stool, cat food and Paul's high school awards. Oh and let's not forget our graduation caps.

Yep, that's what would be spared from the tornado and what we would have to start our lives over with if that closet were to survive. Luckily, the downtown metro didn't get anything at all. In fact, it was sunny and warm all evening.

So the graduation caps are safe for now, just in case you were worried.

I love lamp.

2010-05-18T13:56:00.000-05:00

Brick: "I love...carpet."
Brick: "I love...desk."
Ron (Burgundy, of course): "Brick, are you just looking at things in the office and saying that you love them?"
Brick: "I love lamp."
Ron: "Do you really love the lamp, or are you just saying it because you saw it?"
Brick: "I love lamp. I love lamp."

I never thought I'd have anything in common with Anchorman's Brick Tamland (especially with a tag line like: "I'm Brick Tamland. People seem to like me because I am polite and I am rarely late. I like to eat ice cream and I really enjoy a nice pair of slacks. Years later, a doctor will tell me that I have an I.Q. of 48 and am what some people call mentally retarded.") but lo and behold, I love lamp.
Or lamps to be more accurate.

There are some that are down right hideous but then there are so many options out there and the combinations are endless when it comes to the not so ugly ones. Like below:

Z Gallerie

West Elm

Williams-Sonoma Home - and yes, that is empredor marble. Hot.

I think that's why I like them so much. You can take one lamp and put 40 different shades on it for fresh looks or you can paint them or add fillers to the glass ones and everything about it is different.

Crate and Barrel

Z Gallerie

Pottery Barn

We have two large brass lamps in our living room that I used to loathe (pre-house days, back when Paul had the apartment). They came from my husband's side of the family. They had white pleated shades on them and they looked out dated and I did not like them. I made due with them for awhile in our new house/living room and then one day had the bright idea to put a black leather shade on them. They looked gorgeous. I loved, loved, loved them. Since then I have had to change to a black fabric shade but they still look good. They are the most rocking lamps on my block if not for a good few blocks and right now, they make my living room look good.

If you are ever in an undermotivated mood, find something you fear and do it—and watch what happens.

2010-05-17T13:52:00.003-05:00

I’ve been trapped inside my own brain for a few days now thinking about habits and motivation. It’s a bit of an exhausting internal dialogue all the while being completely invigorating. Making changes to your lifestyle and your habits is what I would consider to be essentially invigorating. Something has caused you to have a change of heart and has motivated you to make a change. What’s more life stirring than that?

The habits I’m looking to change right now are being beaten down (just as quickly as I decide on starting them) with a lack of motivation to actually execute the new plan. Which is why it’s been mentally exhausting for me.

It’s funny to me that there are good and bad habits. Or rather, that we (speaking for the human race here) have made good and bad habits. Why is it that the “bad” habits seem to occur so easily? It’s not like I had to work at biting my nails on a regular basis in order for it to become a habit. It just happened, subconsciously and here we are with pathetically crooked, brittle nails and dry cuticles. Breaking this habit has been twelve years in the making. Sixth grade. That’s when I started trying to stop. It hasn’t been even remotely productive until the last year and even still I have the hardest time keeping up my routine to take care of them. Twelve years. I wish I could fall into good habits as easily as I fall into bad ones. Why can’t washing my face diligently every morning and every evening just happen?

I have to have a plan in place in order to break/create habits. Who am I kidding? I have to have a plan in place for everything (including the order in which my evening was to occur last night, half of which did not get done). I made a list though of the things I wanted to stop/start. But that’s not the kind of list I need in order to actually successfully do things. I need a child’s chore chart for days/weeks/months. I’m kidding…sort of.

Maybe I’m not kidding at all.

I’ve started making changes just recently to lots of areas of my/our life. Health, activity, spiritual, etc. I haven’t been motivated though. I’ve done it all because I wrote it down and that was it. I wasn’t interested in going for a walk or taking my vitamins or preparing for Monday morning the night before. I told myself before I feel asleep last night (with the help of a Benadryl since I had taken a 2-1/2 hour nap) that I needed some serious motivation if any of this was going to work. So I prayed a quick prayer.

This morning when I got to work I got my monthly email update from Books 24x7. It’s a website that my company has access to, giving all of the employees access to thousands of e-books. 99.9% of them are self-help/technical support. With titles like, “Killer Presentations: Power the Imagination to Visualize your Point: with PowerPoint” (gag me), “PCI DSS: A Practical Guide to Implementation” (I don’t even have a clue what any of that means), and “Think Like a Champion: An Informal Education In Business and Life” (authored by, you guessed it, Donald J. Trump), I’ve never even bothered to go to the website. But today, I clicked on the link and the first book that popped up was, “100 Ways to Motivate Yourself: Change your Life Forever.” Ignoring the cheesy subtitle, I held my breath thinking, “Really God? A motivational self help book? This is how you are giving me motivation?” and clicked on the book. I mean how bad could it really be?

The chapters are blurbs. I flew through 25 of them in a matter of 30 minutes and although they were good, I was a little saturated with “go get ‘em-ness” that I had to take a break for fear of quitting my job and opening a fresh cut flower shop on the spot if I finished the rest of the chapters in the book.

I have to say, I’m a little bit motivated. No one said that self-help books didn’t work, just that they were awful. A lot of what I read talked about being creative in finding solutions to things you didn’t want to do in order to make them quicker, easier and more enjoyable. Check out this blurb, “Make a commitment to yourself to find the natural highs you need to stay motivated. Start by finding out what it does to your mood and energy to laugh, to sing, to dance, to walk, to run, to hug someone, or to get something done. Then support your experiments by telling yourself that you’re not interested in doing anything that isn’t fun. If you can’t immediately see the fun in something, find a way to create it. Once you have made a task fun, you have solved the problem of self-motivation.” Mary Poppins much?

Other favorite blurbs were, “When you focus on being a happy and motivated person, that is who you will be” and “Most people are reluctant to see themselves as being creative because they associate creativity with complexity. But creativity is simplicity….It’s hard to stay motivated when you’re confused. When you simplify your life, it gathers focus. The more you can focus your life, the more motivated it gets.”

I can feel the cheesiness seeping out of my pores. I’m sorry. I can’t help it.

I’ve decided that everyday I’m going to try and do two things that I don’t want to do, just for the reason that I don’t want to do them, in order to keep my willpower in check. I’ve always had willpower; I’ve just chosen not to use it until now.

Chapter One, Exaggerate

2010-05-11T17:41:00.002-05:00

My mom left a comment on her birthday post saying that the things I had learned from her could be chapters in her autobiography. But until then, I figured they could be chapters on my blog for funny stories and antidotes.

So without further ado, chapter one:

Very early on, my mother realized I was not a speller. With words like 'mazagine' and 'gril' (instead of 'girl') showing up pretty regularly, I’m sure she started to watch my spelling and reading to make sure I wasn’t dyslexic. I wasn’t, and am not. I just never took the time to proof read or to think about what it was I was putting down on paper. Spelling class and tests were miserable for me and I dreaded playing the popcorn spelling game in Mr. Inman’s fourth grade class because I knew I’d be one of the first people to have to sit down.

Let’s just face it. I wasn’t much for schooling; I liked being social and creating stuff. I didn’t like memorizing how words were spelt or how the hypotenuse of something did something or other to something else. All that information is all well and good; it just wasn’t up my right brained, want to be gluing and coloring something alley. My mom and dad told both my brother and I very early on that classes that were all about memorization were not classes we were allowed to perform poorly in. They could understand not grasping theories or understanding concepts that were of a vague nature. We were still required to learn the information, but if we didn’t thrive in those classes, it was ok. The classes they were talking about were spelling, history, etc. Things that didn’t change, that weren’t affected by a million possible options or other outcomes. I understood what they meant and I respected that. It didn’t mean that those classes were any easier for me so my mom got creative when helping me learn how to spell words. All of the mnemonic devices she taught me I have forgotten, except for one. Finding something to work for the word “exaggerate” took not only a lot of brain power on her side but a lot of naivety and memorization on mine.

As a second grader, the word 'exaggerate' seemed like the most impossible word to remember in the entire world (and I’m not exaggerating here, it really did). How was my seven year old brain supposed to recall all of those letters and in the right order?! My mom worked on a saying for quite a few hours before coming up with this little beauty: “every time a girl gets excited, rockets and trees explode”.

I know what you’re thinking. Where did the word ‘time’ come from for the letter ‘x’?! Well as a first grader, I didn’t question it. Not knowing my multiplication tables or what multiplication even was for that matter played a part into that and I just went with it, but the thinking behind the “time” was that when you see an ‘x’ in multiplication you say ‘times’. Ok, so it isn’t the most fool proof mnemonic device but it never bothered me, I remembered that ‘time’ stood for ‘x’ and ta-dah, I could spell that word correctly. I even remember my mom driving down the road one night quizzing me on my words and being able to recall the entire device and regurgitate the correctly spelled word. I was thrilled with myself. I had no idea, at the age of seven, slurping on a Sonic slushie in the backseat of my mom’s car, spelling words, how often I would use that device and think about my mom.

Since the invention of computerized word processing my brain has decided that memorized spelling can take a backseat (no earlier pun intended) to spell check. I have to say this lack of desire to spell things correctly didn’t actually start until college although I’d been typing papers and emails for quite some time before the laptop emerged. There were still multiple teachers that required hand written papers in junior high and high school and my brain hadn’t quite lost its elasticity for words. Nope, not until I got a laptop and went to college, that’s when it all went downhill. Please don’t think that I’m a frivolous typist and that I have lost all of my recognition for correctly spelled words while I am typing because that is not the case. But for those longer words that take a little more thought and effort, well let’s just say I try and get close enough in order to get my right click action on and find the word in the queue. I remember the first rough draft I hand wrote in college for a paper and how ridiculously hard my brain had to work to remember how to spell some of the words that I regularly glazed over via the computer. I felt incredibly ignorant and ashamed. No one knew how hard I had to think about the proper spelling and all the words that I got down onto the paper were spelled correctly but it took some internal work to get myself there. It was embarrassing. I’ve since tried to put forth a little more effort so that my brain doesn’t completely turn to mush but still find myself thinking “eh, that should be close enough to find the right word”.

I don’t do that with “exaggerate” though. Not that it is a terribly difficult word for an adult to know how to spell but it doesn’t even seem to register with my brain before I have it typed or written on paper. And you better believe, that every single time I write it down that the entire saying runs through my brain and I smile.

I was in college when I thought about what the saying meant. I had never done that before, I’d always just repeated the necessary words in the necessary order. I didn’t stop to think that they formed a sentence and a somewhat dirty sentence at that. If we’re talking dirty here, my mom knew that every time she got “excited”, in her world, rockets and trees were exploding. And right on sister. I’ve had my fair share of exploding rockets and trees. It’s funny to think that for 15 years, I silently repeated that device in my head never thinking twice about what it meant and at an early age, even if I had, wouldn’t have understood it.

Tulip Time 2010

2010-05-10T21:01:00.000-05:00

Last week Paul and I hit the road for Michigan. This is like the fifth time we've made the 14 hour drive and it's amazing how much of the highway I can remember from Tulsa to Chicago but everything between here and Tulsa and Chicago and Holland seem to escape me.

We were there during Tulip Time this year which was great. I love being there during Tulip Time which is somewhat cheesy and a little strange. Some people love it, some people hate it. Paul and I happen to be the ones who love it.

Three parades, junk food for blocks, a carnival, dutch dancing, miles and miles of tulips planted along the road, wooden shoes outside of every downtown store (people have to take them off to go inside) makes Holland seem like a totally different place. We spent a lot of time with our family and friends and it was amazing for as quick of a trip as it was how rejuvenating it was.

Wednesday night after we arrived we had dinner with Paul's parents and grandmother before heading downtown to watch my sister-in-law, Jenn, dutch dance.

Thursday, we had breakfast at the bakery with Bill and Di before we left Bill and headed to GR to see the Chihuly exhibit at the Frederik Meijer Gardens. It was just as cool as our permanent installation and the install we saw in St. Louis on our honeymoon and the three of us drooled over the pieces for sale in the gift shop. We also went on a trek looking for TOMS so that I could grab a more neutral pair, but it turns out, they aren't as popular in Michigan as they are in Oklahoma. One store within 50 miles of Holland had them and while it was a cool store, they didn't have the size I wanted in the color I needed. Right next door I found something to buy though so my feelings weren't too hurt. We got two glass jars wrapped in black wire to place candles in and hang from a tree in the backyard - they're pretty cool.

We grabbed a corn dog from a street vendor and plopped down with the rest of the family to catch the Thursday parade, where Ava fell asleep in my arms and my heart melted just a tiny bit.

We did a bit of shopping after the parade, met up with some of Paul's old co-workers for a junk food dinner and then met Paul's best friend Jon for some time at New Holland. After which I got myself a funnel cake (Thursday was the day for fried, came from a square box on the side of the street with flashing lights kind of food day) and headed back to the in-laws house to relax. Ladies, Jon is single and needs a good girl. If you're interested, let me know.

Friday we went shopping in downtown Holland, had a family dinner and spent the evening with good friends at the Perton's house, at the Curragh and in the hot tub, where Jon declared this would be the best summer ever. And I have decided that I agree.

(PS: Seeing Paul play with Ava makes my ovaries want to jump out of my body)

Saturday morning, we (Paul, Jon and I) met the Schaaps for breakfast at JP's and then went for a walk and a quick stop to get Ava the Tickle Monster. We spent the afternoon packing, installing a cornice board in the basement bedroom and watching the final Tulip Time parade. We had a quick dinner and we were on the road. Sad to not be in Holland but glad to be home.

The Starfish Foundation

2010-05-04T10:33:00.002-05:00

I'd like you to meet Leinel and Danay.

This is going to be a shameless plug for a charity so if you aren't interested, I'm sorry.

The Starfish Foundation was started by a gentleman by the name of Dennis Cady. The entire Cady family has made such an impact on the life of my family over the last ten years and I think the stuff Dennis works on is fabulous. He is an elder at the church I grew up at and one of his sons (daughter-in-law and grandchildren) go to church with us at Edmond. I got the go ahead from my mom (and Dennis) to write about her kids so here's the plug:

Dennis is working in Haiti now (as well as Indonesia) and is sponsoring an orphanage in Haiti called The Good Samaritan Oprhanage in Fort Liberty. My mom is sponsoring two of the kids at the orphanage (Leinel and Danay).

My mom sent me an email about them a week ago and told me that she picked them because they weren't smiling. I laughed because, how typical is it of my mother to chose unsmiling children when there were thirty four that had great smiles. They made her cry and so those were the two she wanted.

Leinel Jean has no last name and is nine years old. I've already given him our last name. Leinel Jean Ryckbost, a french-haitian dutch boy. Even if my mom and I are the only ones that have a last name for him, I'm glad he has one. That kid has got some mad style too - check out the popped collar. And then there's Danay Love and she is eight years old. I'm not trying to sound like a cheesy, send your money kind of infomercial but that's exactly how I feel.

It's only $80.00 a month to sponsor a kid and it pays for their food, clothing, bedding, etc. Here's the infomercial part again, think about how much you spent this week on anything. We are such an exorberent country. This may be a little nearer and dearer to my heart after my time in the heart of La Romana and being so close to Haiti but I'm excited for Dennis' project and hope he gets all the support he needs.

jr. high humor

2010-05-03T12:17:00.000-05:00

Saturday night I started having some elbow pain so I threw my heating pad on and went to bed which turned out to be the worst idea I had ever had. It was joint paint, not muscle pain and I only made the whole situation worse with the heat. About 20 minutes after heating it, my forearm and hand started to burn and hurt just as badly as my elbow. It was horrible. I finally woke Paul up at 12:30 and made him go to the 24 hour pharmacy with me so that we could get something to make the pain stop.

I'd never had pain like this before so I was googling it on my trusty phone in the car on the way there when I ran across this:

Oh, you read that right. I get that it's talking about tennis balls but at 1:00 in the morning, that was pretty much the funniest thing I had ever read. We giggled like junior high boys for quite a while. The highlighting was added by yours truly in photoshop, ya know for an added effect. I want to know who at http://www.sportsinjuryclinic.net/ was in charge of proof reading that page.

A Derby Party

2010-05-03T08:16:00.003-05:00

In order to keep up with my New New Year's Resolutions, I have to throw some parties and entertain people.

So Saturday night, we did just that!

We celebrated the "greatest two minutes in sports" by throwing a Kentucky Derby party and had so much fun. This was the first time we had people in the house since we had started remodeling the kitchen and we worked up until 45 minutes before their arrival putting everything back together. I was that hostess, ya know, the one still shoving the vacuum cleaner into the hall closet (where we had thrown everything else) and frantically putting on mascara and jewelry while Paul was out picking up last minute food items and the winner's prize. I was glad the first guest to arrive was my friend Tara, who totally understood.

The house was full of red roses, big hats, great "southern" food and drinks with lots of laughter and good stories. I loved it. I love having people in our home. It makes this little building feel more purposeful than just a place where I sleep, eat and dress.

I unfortunately love to host and enjoy my time with people so much that I take very few photos. Which was a bummer because everyone looked so cute and dressed for the occasion and the table of food was to die for.

an early peak at a before and after

2010-05-02T17:04:00.002-05:00

Better after photos need to be taken and edited but here is a quick taste of what has consumed our lives for the last four months:

Like I said in my previous post, we still have two shelves to build for the North wall (above the oven), roman shades to make and install and a book case to find for our cookbooks and a little added storage. There's also some serious staging that needs to occur but this was good enough for our party last night, so it is good enough for a post!

done enough is good enough...for right now

2010-05-02T16:27:00.002-05:00

Well, we've reached a "done enough" point with the kitchen.

There are still two shelves to build, stain and install on the wall with the oven, window coverings to make and a bookcase to find. But we have a usable kitchen that looks like it belongs in this house and that is a fabulous thing.

Instead of writing about everything we did this week, I think I'll just show you some of the highlights in photos.

Paul did yard work...

I put together a new TV stand for the front living room and a rug for the dining room using free tile samples from work and duct tape. I love them both but the fact that the rug was free places it just a little higher.

We painted our very dark red dining room a very gorgeous green. The red color was great, but the woodwork was red, the furniture was red and the room had such a lack of contrast. Not anymore.

Paul got the dishwasher situated into place on Monday night so that our counters could be installed...

which look so unbelievably good.

Paul built custom floating shelves that I stained and then he installed.

And we tiled and grouted a back splash with not a minute to spare, literally.

Here we are again, Paul doing the part I didn't like, and I doing the part he didn't. He would install the mortar, I'd install the tile and the spacers.

And then it was time to start putting everything back together.

marriage bonus

2010-05-02T15:57:00.000-05:00

They do the things you don't like to do...and you can do the things they don't like to do. It's really a sweet deal.

presto chango

2010-05-02T15:55:00.001-05:00

On Saturday I painted our end tables to match the base of our couch. Paul has had these end tables since he bought his condo in Ann Arbor when he started grad school. They've been really great tables and held up to quite a few moves. I didn't want to pay for new tables since we already had some that worked well but they matched the woodwork of the house, not the woodwork of the other living room furniture. So I went back to some old posts from two of my daily DIY bloggers, combined their advice and went for it.

It took me awhile to find a color that I liked and that I thought would work well. The base of our couch is a dark espresso color but when I put dark browns next to it, the wood went black and when I put blacks to it, it went quite brown. So I grabbed out "Black Bean" from my Sherwin Williams box and hoped for the best. It was close enough. I took the color to Home Depot and had them color match it for me in a small tester of Behr's Ultra paint, which I have been thoroughly in love with since I painted the kitchen.

I bought the 8 oz tester of flat paint because I knew I wouldn't need much and it worked great for Jenny's mom's console table.

I then took Young House Love's advice and sanded the tables down, ever so slightly with sandpaper we had left over from another project.

And then I went back to Jenny's post when deciding what to apply the paint with. I used a mini foam roller to apply the paint but YHL, swears by not using a foam roller because they would leave small bubbles but it seems like every other post that is on Little Green Notebook is about a piece of furniture she painted herself and they always turned out great. So I held my breath with the foam roller and was relieved when I didn't get the bubbles but a perfectly smooth finish.

I applied a coat, let it dry and came back and rolled another. After both coats dried, I took a brush and filled in all of the grooves around the legs and the base of the table. The great thing about these tables is that they took the paint really well but the red of the table still gave the paint a good undertone. They don't necessarily have that "cottage painted furniture" thing going on which was what I was trying to avoid in this room.

Last but not least, I applied water based polyurethane (two coats, just like YHL said). I used the polyurethane that they recommended (Minwax's Polycrylic Water Based Clear Gloss finish in semi-gloss) and it worked well for all of the vertical surfaces but I wasn't thrilled with how streaky it made the top of the table. I worked hard to put on an even layer and to brush it on in a way that kept it from leaving marks but had no luck. I am going to try and lightly sand them and then possibly apply one more layer, just to the top with another mini foam roller and see how it turns out. I'm also following the 48 hour rule and letting them sit completely untouched so that I don't get funny nicks or spots (except a 21 year boy sat his hiney down on one Saturday night to which I quickly yelled, "up, up, UP, UP!!!").

I am happy with the way they turned out overall and am happy that all the furniture now looks like it belongs together.

The coffee table that matches these end tables is in our current TV room and had been painted a few years ago black to match the futon and other furniture in the room. It however is in some sore shape and either needs a new coat of paint or needs to be distressed a bit more to make it look like that was the effect we were going for. That however is another project for another....month maybe.

affirming friendship evaluation

2010-04-30T10:39:00.002-05:00

This morning has started with two cups of coffee, office chit chat, my prince charming bringing me a breakfast sandwich (at the office - I'm spoiled rotten) and lots of Thunder wear. None of this has anything to do with this post but sounded like a good introduction. Let's get on with it shall we?

My friend Jodi and I are in tune this week even though we are a thousand miles away from each other. I wrote a post called "busy bees" on Monday, Jodi wrote a post titled "busy bees" on Monday. She wrote a post this morning about waiting for her to digest some stuff and that when she had done so, she'd have lots to blog about. I have been feeling that way all week. And what I've been mulling over (or chewing on, as she calls it) for the last 72 hours has to do with my friends (including Jodi - and now we've come full circle).

Monday night, I had girls bible study/book club and we talked about a chapter out of the book Captivating called "Mothers, Daughters, Sisters". Good chapter, good book. We talked about how imperative it was for women to have other female friends. We spent a lot of time talking about why it was necessary, what characteristics about females made it difficult and easy to have other female friends, etc., etc.
And then the leader of the study had us all start thinking about our friends. We were to think about our dearest, closest, most intimate friends. She wanted us to keep it to a limit of three so that we weren't completely overwhelming our little diagram she had printed out. Then we were supposed to think about our close friends, but not the ones you would call at 2:00 in the morning. These were the friends that you hung out with, that you liked, that you had a good time with, but you wouldn't necessarily spill the beans for every time you saw them. And then you got to throw your acquaintances on top. The nice thing about these groups was that they weren’t set in stone and that we all knew people moved in and out of the groups regularly. But I racked my brain the whole time trying to fit my female friends into those categories. I hated it. I hated categorizing people and evaluating relationships I had never really thought about before.

“I mean how close are we really…” ran through my head a few times along with “what if I put her in my intimate friends group but she doesn’t put me in hers?!”. I didn’t like the evaluation game and I didn’t like where some of my friends were realistically falling. Right towards the end of our discussion it occurred to me – this was not third grade and we were not on a playground deciding who got to wear the other part of our BFF necklaces. We were adults who had friends and it didn’t matter if someone I put in one category put me in theirs. They were still someone I considered myself to be close to and as much as I’d like to know where I would rank in everyone’s little diagrams, why did it matter?

That night one of the girls I had decided probably belonged in that intimate category and if she didn’t yet, I wanted her to, called me to check on me. She had also been in on this discussion and could tell I was having a rough week and that I hadn’t been myself. We talked for a bit on the phone and when I hung up, I made sure her name was in that “intimate friend” category. And then she sent me flowers the next day. I love that girl and she totally locked herself up in that title.

It’s amazing the friendships I have. One of the people I feel the most comfortable telling anything to lives 1,000 miles away and is the wife of one of my husband’s high school friends. One of the others are in my church class and even one is part of my family. One of them has nothing in common with me other than a previous job and I love that I have such a diverse set of friends and that I have people to fit into every category.

I also like a new set of friendships that is making its appearance lately due to some related hardships. I know that sounds like a cheesy support group and maybe that’s what it is but it’s working for me and I hope it’s working for them too.

I don’t know why this topic was such a hard one for me to digest this week. I’ve always had the friendships and I’ve always been grateful for them. I think the title and placement of those relationships was what was eye opening and thought provoking. It allowed me to decide if I liked who it was I was closest to and if those relationships needed to be re-evaluated. It helped me to determine who it was I would go to in a panic or with ridiculous news of nothing with importance. And there’s some comfort in knowing who those people are.

busy bees

2010-04-26T08:07:00.000-05:00

This weekend was undoubtedly the most productive weekend Paul and I have ever had. Ever.

We went to Hobby Lobby, Home Depot (twice), Lowe's (twice) and Target (twice). Paul mowed the yard, trimmed down the insanely overgrown front bushes, weeded the front and side yard and organized the garage. He also started demolishing the treads and risers on the back steps that were rotting and need to be replaced. We put together a new media console for our front living room, moved the television and everything attached to the front room, we painted the living room end tables, painted the back of our front porch swing, hooked up a new outlet and switch for the dishwasher and disposal, made party decorations, attended a wedding, fixed the plaster under a window, hosted a poker night, watched a marathon (cheering on some friends) and painted our dining room.

I hope you skimmed over that last paragraph or you are probably bored out of your mind.

I am exhausted (as I am sure Paul is too) and am having a coke for breakfast. Mmmm, just the kind of week I am looking forward to!

Hope your weekend was productive, or maybe not.

Feliz cumpleaños madre!

2010-04-24T06:00:00.001-05:00

It's my mom's birthday and to follow suit, here are some things I have learned from her so far.

a. how to spell exaggerate (with a hilarious mnemonic device that now seems very dirty)
b. how to be a woman leader in the church
c. how to shave my legs
d. how to be creative (you don't have to buy everything, you can make stuff)
e. that having less stuff can make your life bigger
f. that even an old barn looks good with a little paint on it (it's an inside joke about makeup)
g. how to throw awesome themed parties
h. that sometimes it's best to give everything you have until you can't give anymore and sometimes it's not.
i. that being realistic/practical is sometimes just as important as dreaming big
j. how to have confidence in myself and my abilities

Delicious Randomness

2010-04-22T09:51:00.002-05:00

Well, fattening randomness but delicious all the same.

Paul was out of town for a conference Tuesday and Wednesday so I thought I’d eat my all-time favorite guilty pleasure for dinner Tuesday night.

A Braum’s cheeseburger with fries and a coke.

I mean, we are talking about the epitome of a perfect fast food trinity here.

Is it wrong to use the word “trinity” when referring to something so unhealthy and disgraceful when it is typically used for something incredibly holy? I hope not, because I just did it.

Well, where this story is really going is, I had another delicious “Braum’s trinity” last night for dinner and to top it off, a scoop of bright blue birthday cake flavored ice cream. As much as I haven’t been paying attention to health care reform and am really not largely in favor of how we are going about it, I think it might be a good idea now because I need to go have my body flushed to get rid of the insane amount of caloric intake I have had and if I could do it for as cheap as the hamburger dinner cost me, that would be GREAT.

Needless to say, today, I am disgusted with the way I fit into all of my clothes and have decided it’s time to get back on the wagon. I am not going on a diet because I hate the word. I’m just going to stop eating like I have two weeks to live. Although, the Art Festival is in full swing and Oklahoma City better watch out if I don’t get myself, at the least, a funnel cake. But after that, healthy wholesome eating, for real.

No pictures of the kitchen this post, or the last three for that matter. I should have pictures to share, but I have been so lazy about pulling them off of the camera. I want a camera that takes the photo, doesn’t bother storing it; it just sends it via Wi-Fi directly to my laptop. Yea, that would be great.

Last night, after my second indulgence, I stained a wooden step stool in our kitchen to match our kitchen cabinets and have another coat to apply tonight along with picking up the rug I want for the kitchen at the mall. We’ll also be watching some Thunder/Laker action in between touching up the crown molding and electrical work. Our kitchen is so close to being done I can almost taste it.

Oh! And remember how I was talking about the salt keeper I have wanted since forever ago when I found it in Kansas City with Paul?

Well, it showed up on my front door step last night. It is so pretty and you better believe it has already been filled with salt and waiting to be used. A gift from my book loving sister-in-law who is probably curious to know if I finished the book yet and the answer to that would be, not even close.

quiet your mind

2010-04-19T14:16:00.000-05:00

Last night at church after our class had finished bible hour a few of the girls were talking about worrying. One of them had had an awful night of sleep and had been up half of the night worrying about anything that crossed her mind. I felt awful for her because I've been there and more recently than I would like to admit.

I'm not typically a worrier, I'm uptight, but everyday life doesn't make me worry. Events, new places, things like that tend to make me worry but for the most part, I don't worry about "everything".

I went through a phase right after Paul and I got married where I worried all the time that he was going to die. I made sure I told him every single time he got in a car without me to drive safely. Well I didn't just tell him, I pleaded with him. Every day he went to work before I left for class, I begged him to be cautious all day long. I was terrified something would happen to him. I would call him in the middle of the day and make sure he was still breathing normally. It was a bit much. I don't know why I stopped worrying about it but it sort of went away on it's own. I still want him to be careful and I would still hate it if something happened but the incessant fear has subsided (and thankfully, for both of us I am sure).

What I tend to worry about is the future. And I know what you're going to say, isn't that what all worry is based on? And I would agree with you to a point. But some people worry about things that aren't necessarily even going to happen. For example, my fear that Paul was going to die wasn't based on anything substantial and although there is a chance that it could happen, there is no way of knowing that it will. People worry about things that never materialize like what would happen if...you fill in the blank. It's a waste of worry. All worry is a waste but those things that are so vague are exhausting and wasteful of energy.

I worry about actual events, actual meetings, deadlines, encounters. Things I know that are going to happen, they are on my calendar, they are coming and I have to think about them all the time, every single detail to make sure I know what is going to happen. I am CONSTANTLY thinking in the future. What I am going to do or say in the next five minutes is all that seems to occupy my brain.

We're talking, I'm sitting at my desk working and I am thinking about what I am going to do in the break room fifteen minutes from now sort of thing. While I'm in the break room, I am thinking about my 2:00 meeting and what I am going to do or say during it. And you better believe during that 2:00 meeting I am thinking about what I am going to cook for dinner and what time Paul is going to get home. I never live in the present.

My mom read a book years ago, yes a "self-help" book about this kind of thing. It encouraged her to take five to ten minutes every day and to think about nothing, absolutely nothing except for what is happening right at that very moment. You are not supposed to think about writing a grocery list, or anything about the grocery store at all. You are to sit in a quiet room or space and think about the quiet, think about the chair you are sitting on, think about the bird you hear outside, but don't let your mind go to anything other than what is happening at the present moment. It is the most difficult thing I have ever tried to do. After I do it, I feel better, I realize that living in the present is healthy and that although having a plan is effective and good too, it can be too exhausting.

I tend to only think about the "in the moment" technique when I am a little beyond the point where I think it can help, when I am panicking the night before a meeting or deadline. But you really should try to do it sometime. Five minutes is not hard to find but you will be shocked at how difficult it is to stay on the topic of only the right then. You'll be amazed at what your brain will wonder off too and how quickly you will relate things you need to do to the most simple sounds or thoughts.

I may try to make it a goal to do every day for awhile (at least over the next month when everything is going to be so hectic). I'll let you know how it goes, or I'll forget entirely and you'll just always have to wonder.

can we make taking naps a law?!

2010-04-18T23:02:00.001-05:00

Today I took a nap. I know, I know: Surprise, surprise.

A good nap. A nap that I started at 2:45 and I had planned to be up and moving again by 3:30 pm. I slept until 4:45 and I am not apologizing.

We (and by we I totally mean Paul) had just pulled the sheets off of the bed to throw them in the wash and I didn't want to take a nap on the mattress. Not that there is anything wrong with that, I've done it before, just didn't feel like it today.

So I grabbed a blanket and hit our couch.

I love our couch. It's comfy, but has a good shape and structure to it. It isn't poufy or slouchy (thank goodness) and looks great in our living room but I still enjoy sitting on it and laying on it. We rarely do either because our TV isn't in our front living room (that will not be the case for much longer).

So, like I said, we rarely sit on the couch. So why I was possessed to take a nap there instead of the bed (sheets or no sheets) or the futon is beyond me. Oh and it was such a good nap.

Paul was the one that woke me up and after doing so opened the front door to take a look outside. Our couch sits in the center of our living room and when the front door is open you can look right out into the yard and street. It had stopped raining but was still cool. I was so warm from being under the covers for the last two hours that I laid there and enjoyed the gray sky and chilly breeze sweeping in. Paul left me there like that for a bit, door open, zoned out on the couch.

Everything about my living room seemed perfect at that moment. I thought about the people that lived in this house 96 years ago and how on Sunday afternoon maybe one of them took a nap on their couch with the front door open enjoying the perfect weather. No television, just enjoying that moment, not thinking about what they needed to do or had done, just what was happening right then, right there. I looked around the room at all of the woodwork and the windows and I thought about how cool of a house we have. Not because of anything we have done or have but because of how incredibly talented people were a hundred years ago. I could have laid there all afternoon, hours worth enjoying the chill and the craftsmanship but I had to get up and get moving.

Something seemed so right about my nap on the couch and how I woke up. When I sleep in my bedroom and the TV is the first thing I see after I groggily wake up, I'm never in a good mood. Maybe the living room, couch and open door combination is something that I need to insist happen more often.

loving me some Houzz

2010-04-16T11:19:00.000-05:00

I have, apparently, been living under a very large rock.

Please dont ask me how I didn't know about this website before today because I honestly couldn't tell you.

There are thousands of images, good and large images, of every possible room you could want, fully designed and ready to inspire.

With the amount of time I spend on the internet and my mad google skills (is there really such a thing?) with design related images and information, I am not quite sure how I missed this.

If you're about to take on a project and need some inspiration, welcome to the world of design image crack. I am already a little obsessed.

i have a thing for good fabric...

2010-04-13T21:18:00.000-05:00

I bought a few yards of this Sunbrella fabric almost four years ago when I worked at a local bolt store part time. I loved the colors and always had big dreams to do something really cool with it in my backyard. So I put it in my fabric tub for another day and forgot about it.

It sat in that fabric tub until we went to the Dominican. One of the outdoor restaurants/bars at our resort used this fabric as the upholstery on all of their large scale booths and as the accent pillows on the sofas down the veranda (paired with linen colored cushions and espresso wicker furniture - it looked good). I got so excited about how great it looked (every single time we ate at or walked by the restaurant) that as soon as I got home, I pulled it out of the tub and went to work.

Slowly, went to work that is as real work and other things like the kitchen got in the way. But I made a couple of pillow covers for our front porch swing and am about to tackle cushion covers for the dining chairs we have in the back yard. Lucky for us the fabric looks really great with our umbrella and looks good with the blue of the house (nothing looks good with the green on the house and that's why it's got to go).

So if you're in the market for a good outdoor fabric, Brannon Whisper is a good way to go. I can't find it locally anymore but you can find it here, here or here.

I'm excited for summer this year. Well I am right now. As soon as it hits 108 degrees, I'll be crying for fall but with everything turning green, new flower pots just waiting to be filled and new pillows waiting to be used outside with a good book, I can hardly wait!

Salt = comes to us from Latin sal, which evolved into French sel, Italian sale, Spanish sal, and Romanian sare...

2010-04-13T14:54:00.000-05:00

My current read is Salt.

I know what you are thinking, I'm joking right? Right before we left for our last trip, we made a quick stop at the B&N to snag something for me to read by the pool. Paul picked it up as a joke, teasing me about all of the salt I eat, but after I saw the quote on the front of the book from Anthony Bourdain (actually not shown on the book cover to the left), I knew it could actually be quite good.

My sister-in-law, the one that loves to read, and I were talking about how commodity history has really taken off in the book market lately. People love to know about their stuff. Where it came from, who had it first, who took it from who and what part it played in the history of the world. That's what this book does. It's a Tulipomania (which was also a great commodity book), but for salt.

It's fascinating what you can learn about something you don't even think twice about. I had never pondered where salt came from or why we have so much of it, why it was even called "salt", and what it would be like to live without it. I also forget that it's technically a rock, the only rock that can be consumed.

Paul wasn't really joking when he was talking about how much salt I eat. I love the stuff. In fact we currently have five different types of salt in our kitchen and I'd have more if I had somewhere to put it. I've been eyeing this for quite some time and am just holding out for a birthday or a gift receiving event because really, do I need to spend fifty bucks on something that the current salt box is already doing? And who am I kidding, if a big event comes up and I get a salt box, would I really be as thrilled as I would be if I had gotten jewelry?

And, for my sister-in-law who has probably not gotten over the fact that I am still reading this one book when she has probably put away 15-20, we have cable television and lots of things to do around the house. I'm chipping away at it though, so stop with the judging.

Emily is making a difference - help her out!

2010-04-12T16:47:00.001-05:00

Do me a favor and check out Emily's blog, please and thank you.

We go to church together and she is so incredibly funny and deserves tons of readers anyways but the real reason I'm sending you over there today is because of her post about making a difference. BlogHer and KFC have teamed up in order to make a donation to the Susan G. Komen foundation and for every comment she gets on her post about what people are doing to help make a difference, they will donate a dollar to the cause.

Her aunt has breast cancer and is fighting to be a survivor. How amazing are people that survive? And how amazing is it that in such a short period of time, technology and research have come so far to help them?!

My dad's mom died from having breast cancer when he was in elementary school (in the 60's) and I wonder how much easier it would have been for her to fight and possibly beat the cancer if they knew then what we know now (more on that whole situation to come later). It's all because people haved worked hard (and donated a lot) to help make it easier.

Also, since I've been working on OU's Cancer Institute, I am fascinated by what I have had to learn about modern medicine. Do you even have a clue how fascinating cancer treatment is?!

Really, go read her post and leave a comment. Oh, and buy a pink bucket of KFC. How hard is that?

mossy monograms

2010-04-11T14:29:00.002-05:00

I've always liked moss covered accessories. Accent balls, floral arrangements, topiary pieces and lately, monograms seem to make me smile. I decided Thursday that I wanted a moss covered "R" for our front door for a party we're going to have soon. It would fit the theme nicely. So I got online and did some searching and found multiple places that sold them including a number of sellers on Etsy (like the one seen below).

After looking at quite a few plant covered wood pieces, I decided I could make one. It couldn't be that hard. A wooden letter, some moss, a hot glue gun and ribbon.

I was right, it wasn't that hard. I got the moss, ribbon and letter at Hobby Lobby on my lunch hour and used my trusty hot glue gun to put it all together. I spent $8.00 on the project and for the same sized letter from the cheapest Etsy shop I could find, I would have spent $25.00 plus shipping.

I saved $17.00 on something that I would have bought just for ease. And that would have been an awful reason to buy it too since it was one of the easiest projects I've ever made. It was definitely not hard enough to have to pay someone else to do it for me.

Saving the 17 bucks made me feel good as I ate out for all three meals on Thursday (please understand that was said with shame) and I dropped quite a few hundred on a slab of marble that morning too. I like saying that. I bought a slab of marble.

Side note: This also qualifies for number 93! Slowly chipping away at that one!

Oh yes, yes I did...

2010-04-10T19:20:00.004-05:00

My OCD tendencies took over today, never mind the fact that the labels are kind of crooked.

Can you tell?

I have always hated unorganized spice drawers. How is it that something that smells so good is always so disorderly and junky? None of the bottles match, even when I buy matching bottles. I also seem to always buy something I don't need because they aren't in alphabetical order and I don't take enough time to read every single bottle.

Not anymore. I bought these bottles for a dollar a piece at Bed Bath and Beyond and got myself some order. Turns out they fit 10 per row perfectly, which also makes me happy, because I hate it when they roll around in the drawer.

And then I found some free printable labels from Giver's Log, adjusted the colors in Photoshop so that they would fit our kitchen's new theme a little more appropriately, printed them off, and labeled away.

Too cute right? But not bad cute, good cute.

Side note: They aren't in alphabetical order yet, don't judge me. I'm not finished, I need five more bottles and then we will be in order.

Side note number two: I'm counting this towards my list, #93 ladies and gentlemen!