clever design

I love this too.


I love cable and rod systems. We have them all over our office but for graphics and signage. I think this is super cute!

Thanks to Favorite Things for finding it first and sharing!

One of my wake up in the middle of the night genius ideas has been to find an old vintage pistachio or red refrigerator door (or two or three) and have it/them inset into a kids bedroom wall or into a daycare wall so you can hang all of their artwork on the fridge door!

Ava, Las Vegas & Blessings from Curses

Today was nothing short of the awfulness that was this weekend. I have however, decided that today, and hopefully from now on, I am going to take the high road.

The morning started poorly since my night was one that resembled nothing like a legitimate source of rest. I tossed and turned all night knowing that I would have to deal with a client meeting today that was on a less than desirable topic. The first two and half hours at the office were jam-packed as I was on the phone with 30 different people and up and down the stairs to pick up prints. I was bombarded by a local company on a conference call that should not have taken place and was overly surprised at how well I handled myself when all I wanted to do was jump through the phone and punch the girl that called me pretending to need something else. (I had my chance to later as she had to bring me some fabrics, but refrained. I could see the receptionist and all of my bosses finding a local furniture dealer lying on the floor of the lobby and knowing that I was the only one with enough guts to sack her.) The meeting went as well as a bad meeting could go and more errands and work are to be done to ensure a better outcome at our next meeting. I had to leave after that for a doctor's appointment to review the blood work and information my OBGYN had gathered at my last appointment. I scarfed down a Braum's cheeseburger with fries and a coke in the 15 minutes I had to spare (sitting in the parking garage at the hospital) to get to my appointment. This was all after a song came on the radio in the Braum's parking lot that made me burst out into sobs. I was sure people were staring at me, but I couldn't stop myself from crying and I don't think I would have if I could.

My doctors appointment lasted the inevitable 2 hours (which should never be the case, but with this doctor it always seem to be) and decided at 4:30, when my appointment was done, it was time to call it quits and to head home.

I became an aunt today! Ava Rose Ryckbost was born today and weighed 7 lbs and 1 ounce. Hopefully I will have some photos soon. I'll be up there in approximately two weeks and will get to meet her in person. The idea of being an aunt is growing on me.

So until I have photos, I leave myself with positive affirmation that my life is going to get better, hopefully tonight or tomorrow, but if not, soon.

"Nothing good comes easily. You have to lose things you thought you loved, give up things you thought you needed. You have to get over yourself, beyond your past, out from under the weight of your future. The good stuff never comes when things are easy. It comes when things are all heavily weighted down like moving trucks. It comes just when you think it never will, like a shimmering Las Vegas rising up out of the dry desert, sparkling and humming with energy, a blessing that rose up out of a bone-dry, dusty curse." Shuana Niequest, Cold Tangerines.

frick

Yesterday, I am sorry to say, was a horrible day. Mainly because I was out-of-control irritable and moody. Our house that needed and needs to be cleaned so desperately sent me into horrible fits of sobbing and nothing my sweet husband did would help. No matter how hard he tried, I made him suffer, which I am not bragging about. It is incredibly embarrassing to even think about and I don't know why he didn't hop in the car yesterday and drive away forever. I was horrid.

The house is dirty and not necessarily because we are slobs but because our cats are and I do not have enough energy at the end of every day to vacuum the corners of the hall where their hair seems to accumulate. It's been too long since we have mopped and dusted and washed windows and yesterday was so overwhelming. Instead of just trying to clean what needed to be done, all I wanted to do was fix all of the problems with our house. There is no quarter round in our office people! Just unfinished baseboard and I couldn't stand it. Every time I got close enough to sweep around it, I broke out into sobs again thinking about how trashy it looked. And then I would look up and see the ceiling drooping and the tears would keep pouring. I hated our house yesterday. There was more to do than not and I wanted to pack everything up and leave. All I could see were the imperfections, which are still glaring at me today, and I wanted nothing to do with this house. I am hoping this phase will pass as I can't afford to take care of everything I want to. Leaving this post still frustrated.

con·fi·dence

One of the comments I found on an old (Xanga) post from a high school acquantance was "How do you always seem to have so much confidence?" I remember thinking about that statement when she wrote it but have not stopped thinking about it this time around after re-reading it.

She's right. I do have an insane amount of confidence and my thinking about her question has started to make me ask even more questions about my spunk. Why am I so confident or why am I so good at giving off the appearance that I am? Where did it come from or from whom did it come from? I'm not always confident, there are plenty of things out there that terrify me. My mom says that from an early age I learned how to handle situations better than other kids and I was always a step ahead. I watched, I learned and then I went for it. She agrees that there were certain things I never was good at but that for the most part, I was more confident than not. I have, from a very early age, liked being a leader. I think I got these characteristics from her (my mom) even though she would argue with me about this subject. She's said many times before that I amaze her with my drive and even one time I believe she used the words "I can't believe you had the kahonas (her more pleasant word for balls) to say that!" I think I learned to be this way from her, but maybe I've just stepped it up a notch or perfected it. The first story that pops into my head about my mother's confidence (and there are many more, but this is my favorite) was one that involved saving my brother.

For as many times as my mom actually tried to kill my brother (and I'm not speaking metephorically or symbolically here, she really did have a couple of close calls) this time, she saved him. We were at my great-uncle Billy's farm in California and my brother had gotten into the goat pin (where Billy told him he would be fine) and this goat went balistic. He was not having this ten year old boy interupting his afternoon and went to check him out and got Keith backed into a corner between the barn and another shed. My brother started to get a little scared because the goat wouldn't let him move and then his slight fear turned into shear panic and the goat knew it. He started charging Keith with everything he had and my mom hoped over that fence, ran straight at the goat, grabbed it by the horns and yelled at it like it was one of her children. The goat started getting upset that my mom had it by its horns but she refused to let it go until Keith ran past her and climbed over the fence. Maternal instinct to protect her child? Yes, bit it was more than that for me. At that age, I knew my mom would take care of us but the maternal thing hadn't really resonated with me yet. All I saw was how brave and confident she was and I learned from it.

I think that over the years I've become more confident with every passing accomplishment. I was so terrified during my first interior design presentation my freshman year, but leaving that presentation with an A and all the compliments someone could receive, I now rock at presentations. It took a lot of practice and I have gotten better each time I do one, but they don't scare me anymore. I know my stuff and I am not afraid of my client (no matter who they are). I love being told that I am good at things. And everytime I am told that I am good at something, I add a little bar to my confidence level.

I've been told I even walk forceful. Not heavy, not stomping, but foreceful, purposeful. I like that I walk like that. It means I am going somewhere to do something with a purpose. I am ok with being sure of myself and of what I am, what I do and where I am going in life. I like that people see how confident I am. I want to make a noise in this world and I want people to miss it when it isnt there.

I could propably write another 15 paragraphs on this topic but I'll end on this one. I graduated with 400+ students from high school and I was not the valedictorian and I was not in the top ten and that was not my place to shine. I graduated with 200+ students from college and again, not the valedictorian or top ten. My place to shine is every day life. Not those big milestone events, I just make it to those and get through them like everyone else. But the way I feel everyday and the places I plan to end at, those are my moments to shine and I plan to.

Favorite Things - Passion Tea Lemonade

What I wouldn't do for one of these right now. I typically don't like buying coffee at Starbucks as coffee is something that I am fully capable of creating myself. But this little beauty, I can't make and therefore have no problem shelling out four dollars for. Mmmm Passion Shaken Iced Tea Lemonade (sweetened of course). Now if only they didn't have a crappy business model last year when they proceeded to close the newly opened one across the street from my office.

Last night we picked up the dry cleaning (from the ghetto), gorged ourselves on Taco Bueno (which will always be one of my favorite things, no matter how great of a cook I become) and then got ourselves to the grocery store to pick up some last minute ingredients for the week. I needed to bake magic bars for the United Way bake sale and prepare dinner for this evening all while getting the house picked up so that it could be cleaned thouroughly. My mom and brother are incredibly allergic to our home (i.e. cats) and any hair in the house just kills both of them. So I had a lot to do. Instead of making progress, we hit the gas in reverse as hard as possible. I wanted to purge instead of clean and so the one room that had been completely clean is now covered in all sorts of things from the office. What a mess. I will need the whole weekend to get everything in good shape.

At the end of the night, even though there was still stuff strewn all over the room, I plopped down on the futon and re-read my post about blogging and Xanga, and it made me want to pull up the old site and start perusing my old posts. I giggled at some, rolled my eyes at others and had a few of those cringe moments. I was so close to getting all the way through the posts (three months left) when I realized it was 11:30 and I needed to go to bed in order to get up for work. So tonight, I'll be reivewing the first three months, copying what I love and then probably finding the deactivation button. I forgot that even though there would be sweet memories in there and things that would make my heart flutter, there would also be things that would hurt and that I would want to get rid of. So I am editing my history a little bit, keeping the things I love and deleting the things I don't.

For the love of blogging.

My love of blogging started just a few short months before I started college. At OC, every student is given a laptop (and by given, I mean, they have upped your tuition enough that they can provide you a laptop). They started the program probably eight years (or more) ago with IBM ThinkPads and my freshman year they changed to Dell Inspirons. And of course, the year after I graduated they started MacBooks with a free iPhone.

Ok, back to my love of blogging. I got my laptop from OC right after I graduated from high school and had it for the entire summer leading up to the beginning of my college career. By providing thousands of students in a small area with laptops, you are encouraging marketing. What I mean by that is, one student finds a cool website or a funny video and literally within 30 minutes the entire campus has seen the same website/video. I saw it happen a thousand times. The first craze was Xanga. Ah, Xanga. Everyone and their pet fish had a Xanga at OC including myself (minus the pet fish part).

I had never liked writing before Xanga came along. Term papers, essays, all of those pretentious forms of writing are such a burden to me and I can hyperventilate myself into getting the best help from my husband on them. How do you think I got through Comm III? Having a mini freak out in the dining room the night before a paper was due, and my big brave husband came to the rescue, that’s how. The idea that writing must have a structure terrifies me. Opening paragraphs, thesis statements, closing arguments, they all make me want to jump off of a bridge. But you give me a notebook, or a letter or a blog to write with and I can produce stuff that (sometimes) makes for great reading. I won’t toot my own horn too much; I put the word sometimes in there for your benefit. So Xanga was a relief for me. I could write about whatever I wanted to write about and I could change from past tense to present tense in one sentence without getting an F. I loved writing on Xanga.

I met my husband on Xanga. I don’t know how many people know that, but we met because we were blogging. Sort of weird? Yes. The fact that we are married isn’t weird (because we are perfect for each other) but the idea of how we met is weird. I would have never imagined in a thousand years that I would have met the person I was going to spend the rest of my life with by writing about the “unknown gravy boats of death” that were being served in the cafeteria and that he would live 1,000 miles away from me. For that reason alone, blogging and Xanga have their own little corner in my heart. I, to this day, still have not deactivated my Xanga account even though I have not written on it since before we were married. A) Its sentimental and all of our stories and things that were happening when we met are on there and B) I am a little too lazy to dig through the website to try and figure out where the deactivation information is.

I didn’t realize how much I missed blogging until I started this one. I wanted to (and sometimes still have the desire to) post nine or ten time a day. I had (and have) so many things to write about but i've refrained. I love coming up with things to write about and finding photos to post even if my husband is one of three people who reads it (and he hears it all and sees it all anyways).

faux finishing is a beeeeep

Apparently you can paint linoleum flooring. Now in two weeks I may have a different opinion on the whole matter but as of today, it is doable and looks good. We painted a base coat yesterday and I couldn't say that I loved it but it wasn't any worse than the original linoleum that was down. We decided it was a little flat and that we would faux finish it with the darker color we used in the kitchen and office a few years ago. Bad idea. Bad, bad idea. After a few choice expletives we got the floor blended and we both like the color but I refuse to look at it again until it has dried. My arms are quivering from the pressure I had to put on the rollers to do the blending and the sheer thought that it might look awful is enough to keep me at bay for a little bit. I'll post pictures when we've decided we're finished with it.

UPDATE: It looked awful and blotchy, so we painted over it again.

On a completely unrelated note, our cherry lambic sorbet turned out great but is not as pretty of a color as the photo or the real thing in the store. May have been my cherries but I may just add some red food coloring next time.

#73 - Old Fashioned Picnic

The plan was to go out for our picnic this evening for dinner but it feels like it is 900 degrees in Oklahoma today. So we decided to go for lunch since it would be cooler at that point in the day. So we packed up our basket after church and headed to a park and had a great lunch. We had our blanket, a basket and a pie so I'm calling this one done.

Big Truck Tacos and Julie & Julia

We started the morning by waking up on our own time. Well, the cats' time actually. They are very fat and love to eat and at 6:30 in the morning at that. So after they were fed and we drifted back to sleep, then we woke up on our own time. After a few minutes of stretching and getting dressed we left the house in search of breakfast. It was a beautiful morning. It was the temperature I wished it would have stayed all day but alas, 20 degrees later, I am sitting in the television room dreading the fact that I picked a meal we have to prepare outside on the grill. Back to breakfast. We walked the two blocks it takes us to get to the newest restaurant in our neck of the woods, Big Truck Tacos.


As for the name, the owners went to LA to buy a truck to serve tacos out of around town and decided to also open a restaurant to compliment their new truck/food business. Great idea. This is now one of our many favorite local restaurants (yes, after one trip I am willing to include it) and it will probably get more of our business than Iguana, due to location. The breakfast tacos were delicious and I can't wait to try dinner there soon.


After breakfast we took the short trip home and immediately jumped in the car to go look for garage sales. We came upon two very sad looking sales and decided to just keep going. We made our way up north and caught an early showing of Julie & Julia as I had planned. Adorable. I really liked the movie not only for the food but for the back story line. I felt like it accurately portrayed so many things about life and marriage and perception. I, like Urban Grace, also loved the set design. I love seeing sets that have had a lot of thought and design put into them. I have always thought it would be interesting to be a movie set designer. So again, cute movie, go see it if you like chick flicks.

Paul then suggested we go looking for an old fashioned picnic basket (and I suggested a new vase for my future plans of marking things off of my list). We found both and are now planning for our old fashioned picnic to occur tomorrow night for dinner. Planning for it has been fun and I can't wait to have another picnic. It's nice to be away from the TV, phones and all of our other modern day distractions. We are spending the evening watching bad television, grilling steak on the trusty Weber and cleaning/prepping the bathroom floor for the floor paint it is about to receive tomorrow afternoon.

these are a few of my favorite things...

I am sorry to admit it sometimes but I love stuff.

One of my favorite blogs is My Favorite Things. They have some of the coolest things on their site and I spent a good hour last night perusing their old posts. I will admit, I shamelessly stole their idea for a title and tag line for the compilation cook book I am putting together. I've titled it, "our FAVORITE things," with a tag reading, "bright copper kettles...". It's super cute - trust me. Or don't, I'll just post photos later to prove it.

I guess the reason I hate admitting the fact that I love stuff is because I also hate clutter and junk. We currently have too much stuff. I would love to purge our home more but I love a lot of the things we have and I still want more! I regularly purge rooms in our home to get rid of unnecessary clutter but seem to fill the space quickly. Whether its kitchen gadgets, books, home accents, clothes, accessories, it doesn't matter. I just love it all. So, I'm going to intermittently share my favorite things.

Today's favorite item you ask?! Well my co-worker Libby was looking at this site today and I quickly got excited about all their gorgeous products! I don't need coasters, a tray or a paper weight but would seriously consider buying these.



Makes me want to go back to Holland and buy the cottage we stayed at last August on Lake Mac. I am sure he has sold it by now, but I would "J Crew" the hell out of it if it was mine. I am thinking about getting some address labels though.