My Valentine

I know I recently wrote an entry all about the special dude in my life, but today I thought I’d reflect back on our Valentine’s Days that we have spent together in the past.  This will mark our 5th V-day together, though the first one we spent together was not really us celebrating the holiday, so much as it was me tricking him to come out with me and him tricking me into thinking I was buying our drinks all night, when really he was.

I’ll elaborate…  Eddie and I went on our first date on February 12, 2008.  He didn’t want our first date to be ON V-day, because then what if it’s awkward, we don’t get along as well as we did on our friendship interview, or whatever.  There would be these expectations because it was this romantic holiday… so, we went out a couple days before.  Our date went well, and if my memory serves me correctly, Valentine’s Day was on a Friday that year.  I texted him after work and casually said that I was going out for a drink after work, and if he’d like to join me, he was more than welcome.  I knew he’d come.  He liked me:)  Sure enough, after finding his way to the bar after bad directions on my part (I’ve lived in this area my whole life, but apparently I didn’t know that the street I “thought” the bar was one, was actually a block to the west… so he was standing on this vacant corner, calling me, thinking I was tricking him!), he and I spent the evening together flirting, playing pool, and having a few drinks… that I thought were being put in my tab.  At the end of the night, when I went to close my tab, the only drink on there was the original one I’d purchased before he got there.  Tricky, that boy.  About a week after that V-day date, we became an official couple.

Not officially a Valentine's Day image, but this is our first picture together, about a week after V-day 2008.

 

The next year brought us falling madly in love, Eddie’s romantic proposal on Navy Pier in Chicago (in the freeeeezing cold!), and our first Valentine’s Day as an official couple in 2009.  Eddie got us reservations at the same restaurant we had our first date at the year before, and we had a delicious Italian meal.  Before dinner though, I had created a scavenger hunt for him through my apartment to find all his Valentine’s Day goodies… my clues even rhymed.  I was pretty badass.  After dinner we went to a local cupcake place and got some cupcakes for the road, then went back to my apartment to enjoy them, along with the makeshift cannolis I had tried to make.  They weren’t good, but Eddie pretended like they were.  I also got a dozen Gerbera Daisies–my fave.

 

Valentine's Day 2009 before dinner at Biaggi's.

 

2010 brought our first married Valentine’s Day!  We were fortunate enough to get to go away for a weekend to celebrate!  I ended up having the Friday and Monday surrounding V-day off as holidays for work (Thank you Abe Lincoln & all Presidents everywhere!).  We drove down to Gatlinburg, TN for the weekend.  The drive down wasn’t bad–about an 8 hour drive, but weather was pretty good until we got there.  When we got there, there was snow, but not bad snow by Illinois standards… however, in Gatlinburg apparently there are not snow plows and salt trucks like we’re used to up here!  Roads and sidewalks were soooo slick, and unfortunately because of the weather we weren’t able to drive through the Smokies because all the mountain roads were closed!  We still managed to have a great time though!  We ate at Bubba Gump, the Hard Rock Cafe, went to Ripley’s and the aquarium, and also took a giant cable-car-type ski lift up one of the mountains to this ski lodge/resort place.  Once we were there, we had the option of taking a regular 2-person ski lift farther up the mountain… dangling over terrifying pits that would likely take your life if you fell… I was TERRIFIED to ride one of these things.  It took probably 30 minutes of convincing on Eddie’s part to convince me to jump on the ski lift (while hoping that it doesn’t knock me off the ledge into one of the scary pits of doom).  Finally I got on… and practically hyperventillated all the way to the top of the mountain!

Valentine's Weekend 2010--My look of terror after jumping on the ski lift! Nothing says romance like the possibility of falling to your death!

 

Last year for Valentine’s Day, Eddie got us reservations at a top-secret location.  He made me put a blindfold on as he drove through the streets of town, turning unnecessarily, trying to throw me off.  I have an excellent sense of direction though (just ask him about the time we went hiking at Kickapoo… that’s all I’m sayin’), and knew exactly where we were before I even took the blindfold off!  It was still a surprise though, and a tasty dinner to boot!

 

2011 Mystery V-day Dinner!

 

This year Eddie and I are staying home for Valentine’s Day!  Eddie’s making what is sure to be a super tasty dinner, and I’m in charge of dessert.  We both made gifts for each other, though I’m sure my Pinterest-inspired gift will not be nearly as cool as the gift he’s been constructing in the garage for days… all I know is that it involves wood, glass, mirror, white paint, and pink glitter… the possibilities are endless!  It’s sure to be a nice night in, celebrating the ones we love the most! 

 

Valentine’s Day Swap!

I had the pleasure of participating in a Valentine’s Day Swap via my pal Meg’s blog!  She and two other ladies hosted the swap:

I ended up getting paired up with two lovely ladies instead of the traditional one partner–but it was OK, I enjoyed getting to shop for twice the goodies!  My first partner was Rachel.  She sent me some really great goodies, pictured below!  I got a great bright pink makeup bag (my favorite color), along with a new eyeliner (much needed), some MAC eyelashes, and a gorgeous pair of earrings!  I have been known to be picky about my jewelry, but these are earrings I would have totally picked out myself!  I love them!  She also included a heart-shaped Reese’s peanut butter cup, but I ate that sucker up!

My second partner was Mrs. Monologues!  She sent me some great Valentine’s Day goodies too, but unfortunately one of my items didn’t make it in one piece!  Super bummed about that, because it looked like a super cute pink heart V-day mug–accidents happen though!  The other items arrived perfectly in tact though!  She got me a super cute pair of pink heart socks (not pictured cuz they’re in the laundry!), along with some holiday cookie cutters (perfect, because I love to bake!), and these great V-day pencils!  Some of the pencils have little owls on them, and I totally love owls!!!

I hope you ladies also had fun and enjoyed your goodies!  I had fun picking them out, and I hope to get to do swaps again in the future!

Dogzilla

We are fortunate to have a fairly large back yard for our girls to run and play in.  Our neighbors across the street also own the vacant lot next door to ours, and the wife runs an in-home daycare.  Oftentimes the kids will play in the vacant lot on the swingset or just run around being goofy kids.  Usually when the dogs are out, they will venture up to the fence to say hello.  I guess one day, one of the kids must have lost their naked Barbie in the exchange…  because Dora found one.

She looks so triumphant!

 

 

2012 Goals Progress (1 of 12)

I’ve been diligently working on my 101 in 1001 up there for a couple years now.  However, this year I decided I’d also have a list of goals for the year, on top of the 101 I’m already working on.  I jotted down 10 things I’d like to accomplish, and I plan to review them monthly to see where I’ve come with them, as well as remind myself what more I need to do to complete them!

1.  Send 12 letters via snail mail (In Progress: 1 of 12)

2.  Read at least 1/2 of my “to-be-read” (TBR) list (In Progress: 4 of 25)

3.  Create a family blog  (Complete!)

4.  Get 50 followers to new blog (In Progress: 8/25  There are 8 of you!  Wahoooo!  Sidenote: subscribe!)

5.  Write in new blog 50 times this year (In Progress: 6/50)

6.  Earn $100 in amazon giftcards via swagbucks this year ($0/100 so far)

7.  Give 10 handmade gifts (In Progress: 1/10)

8.  Complete Pinterest 12 in 2012 board (In Progress: 1/12)

9.  Set up guest room (No Progress)

10.  Use nook to rent library books at least once/month (In Progress: 1/12)

Meet the Fam

Eddie and I don’t have kids yet, but we do have a houseful!  We’ve got three cats, which I had before we met, then less than a month after getting married, we decided we wanted a puppy.  For the next 6 months, I wanted to give her back.  But now, I’m glad I didn’t!  Almost a year ago, we also happened to adopt a second dog, though we didn’t initially have plans to.  Sometimes you pick them, sometimes they pick you.  I’m proud to say that all five of our animals are shelter pets (nothing against those who don’t adopt shelter pets, but for me, that’s where it’s at!).  So, this is our big happy family.

Five and a half years ago, I had just gotten my first “grown up” apartment, and I was determined to get cats!  Our local shelter has a BOGO type of deal with adult cats, to encourage people to adopt adults.  Everyone wants a cute kitten, but sadly adult cats get looked over a lot.  So, I went probably half a dozen times, making sure I was getting cats that were a good fit for me. 

This cat was always laying on a bright pink blanket when I went, and loved to be petted.  I knew she was for sure one of my two!

My pretty girl, or PG for short!

 I also would always be approached by a gorgeous (but slightly overweight!) gray tabby.  He would jump on me and let me pet him every single time I was there.  Long story short, I ended up coming home with a cat that looked identical to that cat, but his personality was just the opposite.  This cat is a cranky old man, but I love him.

Every once in awhile he'll jump up on your lap and accept a few pets... before biting you and running away.

About a year later, I was working as a case manager for adults with developmental disabilities.  Sadly, one of my clients passed away suddenly, and I took on the task of finding a home for her two shelter cats–a cute cuddly kitten, and an adult cat with vertigo.  The kitten was easy to find a home for, but Sam was kind of a special-needs kitty, and I decided to take him in.

 

He's dizzy from time to time, but super loving!

 

Although the cats didn’t quite like it when we first brought a dog (and then another!) into the house, they (mostly) got used to it.

 

The first dog we got was a 12 week old puppy–a coonhound & shepherd mix.  Two smart breeds.  Too bad Dora didn’t get the smarts…

Dora has also developed epilepsy, so we now have two special needs animals, but with meds, she stays seizure-free and goofy as can be!

Our little Lucy is Dora’s total opposite… she’s small, not nearly as feisty, and kind of afraid to have fun (and she hates toys!), but somehow she and Dora make their friendship work.  I can’t remember what our house was like without her spunk!

 

Lucy is a huge smiler, I love it!

 

It’s a whole lotta legs going on in our house, but we make it work.  There isn’t anything like smooches and snuggles from furry family members (my husband included)!

 

Best friends!

 

 

January, in Photos

As part of my 101 in 1001, I want to complete a Project 365.  For those unfamiliar with the project, the goal is that you take one picture per day, for a year.  At the end, you’ve got a year of your life, documented in photos!  I decided to start this on my birthday last September, so instead of a calendar year, my project documents my 28th year of life.  I guess technically it’s a Project 366, what with this being a leap year and all!  I’m a little over 1/3 done with the project, and each month here on out, I’ll document that month’s pictures. 

 

The Mister

Nearly 4 years ago I went on what I called a “Friendship Interview”.  I had just gotten out of a bad relationship and was looking to find some new friends.  I was pretty isolated in my previous relationship and most of my time was spent holed up in the apartment with my ex.  After we broke things off, I found myself lonely and without many friends.  Thus, the friendship interview.  This was back when myspace was still a “thing”, and so I searched on there for young people around my age in my area.  I’ve always gotten along better with guys, so I messaged a couple of guys that looked like we might share some interests, and I thought maybe it would be a few new people to hang out with. 

Eddie was one of those people.  We emailed back and forth for a few days, then he asked me to get coffee at a local diner.  The few friends I did talk to referred to this as a date, but I insisted it wasn’t… I was simply meeting someone to determine if I wanted to be friends with them or not… FRIENDSHIP INTERVIEW! 

 

Well, turns out the interview went well… a year and a half later, we were married. 

 

It sounds so cheesy and cliche to say, but my husband truly is my best friend.  In fact, he’s the best friend I’ve ever had (except for my mom, she always trumps all… sorry, dude!).  Sure, we have our disagreements from time to time, like any relationship or friendship would, but the good times are primarily where things are at. 

Our relationship and our marriage hasn’t always been cake–it’s hard work sometimes to deal with all the punches life throws, but we’ve been blessed to have been able to find our complementing partner in crime.  We work well together because we do what we can to make the other happy and we’re a damn good team! (Or maybe it’s because I’m bossy and he’s cooperative, I’m not sure!)

 

 

 

Happy Hooker

Quite a few years ago I decided I wanted to learn how to crochet.  I was maybe 16 years old and thought it would be a good hobby to pick up.  I grabbed a couple books from the library (this was before people really went to youtube to learn how to do any and every thing!), got some yarn and a hook, and tried to learn.  Turns out, I created my own technique, which is not in fact how one actually crochets, but I was able to make scarves, nonetheless.  Though they weren’t very pretty.  A few years after that, one of my aunts was visiting and she taught me the correct way to crochet… it was much easier (and prettier!) to do it that way!  For years I only made scarves and only knew about 2 stitches.  Then I decided it was time to branch out, and I made an effort to learn how to read patterns and actually make things that were not only useful, but gorgeous!  Why I waited so long to learn, I have no idea!  I made baby blankets for friends, hats, scarves, bags, even little stuffed animals! 

Here and there I considered also learning how to knit.  I would give it a try from time to time, but I just couldn’t figure it out… it seemed so much harder than crocheting.  With crochet, you only have to worry about one hook and one loop at a time… knitting, you have to hold on to two things, and there’s way more loops!  Last fall though, I decided I would take a class and finally learn how to knit!  It was a 5-week course, for 2 hours each week, and sure enough, I was finally able to learn some basics! 

^My vey first-ever knitting project!

^We also learned how to cable, which was really neat (and not really hard!)

There’s no denying that knit items are beautiful, they definately are… but they just take SO much longer than crochet does, to me!

I’ve been working on this darn thing for several weeks (I’m farther along than this now, but not anywhere near being done!)  Again, definately very pretty, but so time consuming!  Crochet, on the other hand, I feel like I can get beautiful results in a much shorter amount of time!  Yesterday, for example, I pumped out this beauty in just a few hours:

I’ll probably still knit from time to time, but I’ve decided that crochet is really just more my thing!

Things My Mother Taught Me (Vol 1)

Last April I lost my sweet mom.  I use that expression, but really, I dislike it greatly.  I didn’t “lose” her.  It’s not like she went missing, she died.  And just because she died doesn’t mean that I “lost” pieces of her.  I see her every day, in some way, even though it’s not in physical form.  Every day something will happen, or I’ll see something, or something will cross my mind, and I’m transported back to a time when I did that very thing with my mom, or maybe it’s something I would have called to tell her about, but most often, I’m doing something that she proudly taught me how to do. 

I’ve been thinking about items for this series for a few days, but reading a friend’s blog yesterday gave me the extra push to get it going.  I met this friend my freshmen year of high school, when I foolishly thought that being in the marching band would be fun (long practices in 100 degree heat in the summertime… NOT FUN…  Additionally, we wore something called “Cat Suits”.  THOSE ARE NEVER FUN.)  She keeps a blog about what her life is like now that she has a son.  I appreciate her honest words, and I find myself chuckling at a lot of the stories.  But yesterday’s blog post was one that didn’t make me chuckle, it made me cry.  But not in a bad way.  You can read her entry here: http://ukcavill.blogspot.com/2012/01/magic-of-words.html

She wrote to her son about the importance of books and what they’ve meant to her her whole life.  She also said that long after she’s gone from this world, if he reads some of her favorites, he will find her between the pages.  I thought that was such a beautiful statement, and so true.

I’ve been working on a 101 in 1001 list for a little while now (I will link to this at the top of the blog, eventually!), and since I’ve been working on that, I haven’t made additional goals for each new year.  This year, however, I decided I was going to work on about a dozen other goals in addition to my 101 list.  At the top of that list was to read again.  I wouldn’t say that I ever stopped reading, but in the last 10 years or so, I’ve significantly gotten away from it.

Growing up, my mom read to me before I could even speak.  I had shelves and shelves of books growing up–heck, we had a whole room in our house that we called “The Library” because it was wall to wall bookshelves!  Books were a huge love of my mom’s and something that she passed down to me as well.  When we would take achievement tests in school I always tested above and beyond my classmates, and when we had school reading requirements for at-home reading, I always far-exceeded them.  I loved to read!  I can remember many a snow day from school when my mom and I would each sit in a recliner in our family room and read our own chapter books.  We would “race” to see who would finish their chapter first (I usually won–funny, kids chapters are usually smaller than grown-up chapters!).  As I got older and we had Accelerated Reader (AR) requirements, I always blew the requirements out of the water.  We usually had to read roughly 2 books a quarter… and I would read those two in less than a week.  I had so many AR points that probably the whole class could have borrowed mine to meet their requirement! 

I also started collecting my own books as I got older.  I would always get some new ones for Christmas and birthdays, but once I had my own apartment in college, I was hitting up as many used book sales as possible!  $3 for 30+ books?  Yes please!  I envisioned having my own home one day where I, too, would fill the walls with bookshelves and have my own library!  Despite owning gobs and gobs of books, I was not reading them with the vigor I once was… college and my social life took up a lot of my time, and my books got pushed aside.  I still kept a lengthy “to-be-read” list, with high hopes that one day I’d put a dent in it.  A college friend keeps a book blog of the MANY books she reads, and I get a lot of my TBR list from her book reviews (you can find her online at http://heatherlo.wordpress.com/ )

I didn’t realize it until after reading that blog yesterday, but I think I want to return to reading as a way to keep my mom close to my heart.  Just like Kim told her son he would find her between the pages of her favorite books, I imagine that I, too, will find my mom among the pages of the books I read.  Like I said, I didn’t “lose” her when she died, I find little pieces of her all over the place, and while those little pieces will never fill the gaping hole in my heart, they do work to stitch up the hole, slowly, a little bit at a time. 

New Year, New Blog

I’ve been a half-assed blogger for several years now… in fact I kept an “online diary” starting over 12 years ago, before they were even called BLOGS.  It was neat to write my thoughts out anonymously and be able to share them with other anonymous people on the site and get feedback.  I’m actually still friends today with one of the very first people I met on a diary site way back in the 20th century!  But of course as times change, sites change, and I’ve jumped from site to site.  I still appreciate the sense of community that diary sites have, and I’ve made some good friends from those places… but I’ve also branched outside of them and created blogs for the whole world to have a peek at if they choose.  I was pretty consistent in keeping up a weight-loss blog for several years that detailed my struggles and triumphs with the scale.  I posted recipes, progress pictures, etc, and it was great meeting others that were also going through some of the same things.  I eventually became bored with that blog though, and felt like I was only sharing a small portion of who I was with my readership.  My whole life wasn’t weight watchers and exercise, but my whole blog was.  I’ve not blogged there in quite some time, and I think I’ll just let it collect dust on the internet until I get around to deleting it and its’ contents. 

So that brings me to here.  One of my goals for this year was to start a new blog, one that detailed more about my life, hobbies, interests, etc.  A place where I can update friends and family about what’s going on in our household, as well as a place where I can keep in touch with long-time online friends.  I wanted a place where I could post goofy pictures of ourselves or our pets, blog about some of my craft projects (and obsession with Pinterest!), and just do whatever it is I wanted to do, without feeling restricted to only post on weight-loss stuff.  There may be some of that here too, but it will just be one of the layers that I peel away and share about on here.

When I was trying to think of a blog name, nothing automatically came to mind.  My last blog had a catchy little rhyming name that was appropriate for the type of blog it was, but I couldn’t think of anything right away for this place.  I was brainstorming with my husband the other day, while curled up in my big comfy chair with our two dogs, and I first suggested “24 legs”, because that is how many legs are actually in our household (with 2 dogs, 3 cats, and 2 humans, it adds up!).  He didn’t really go for that, so my next suggestion was “3 b*tches in a chair”, since that was obviously the next route to go down… again, vetoed.  So, I came up with this one on my own, without seeking his approval.  One of my life’s principals–don’t ask, because then you can’t be told no.  (So, mister, this is the blog, hope you like it!  I think it’s better than the 3 b*tches in a chair idea anyway!)