Catching up

Well, my blog went on vacation at the same time I did, but here's a recap of the last couple of weeks.

I managed to take off more time at Christmas than I ever have. I drove home on the 23rd and stayed through New Year's. On my way to Tennessee I got to see some friends and caught up with a few there, but the trip was mostly about family.

Our Christmas was a little different than usual as we did things in shifts. There was only about an hour where all my siblings and I were in the house at once, but since I was in town the whole time I got good time with everyone. We spread out opening presents over a couple of days, making Christmas last a little bit longer.

Of course to me, the best part was spending time with my 1-year-old niece. She entertained us all for three days. Most of the time, we could just sit around and watch her. She has so much personality and is so smart (I know I'm biased but still).

One of the things you can very clearly her say is "It's good." This comes out as a statement but sometimes as a question about something.

She has a December birthday like me, and I spent a lot of time debating what I could give her for Christmas that would still be fun for her in six months since she was on present overload. I convinced my brother and sister to go in with me on this:

She was very cautious about it at first, but she ended up loving it. Of course my favorite thing is her looking out to her people, like a queen:

And here are a few other pictures I got of her with my real camera, not the iPhone:

She looks so much like my sister here.

Sitting next to the sign for the toy store my mom owned.

 Liking the big slide

I love her in this coat and bonnet. My sisters and I all wore something very similar when we were little.

Work, dreams, house renovations

It's a random collection of stuff today.

If I go to the gym today, I will finish week 7 of the couch to 5K program, which in the almost year since I started it has now changed its name to Run 5K. I am writing this down in hopes it will be accountability for doing it.

I caught an error in percent vs. percentage points in a story on Monday night. Before I spent two years at my job editing financial news, I never would have caught it. Now I not only catch the error, but I get to teach future copy editors to catch that error.

I'm designing pages this week, nothing very exciting, but I'm remembering the challenges of making everything fit just right.

Points two and three remind me that every job and role I've had is important to what I'm doing now. I realize this sounds like a Rascal Flatts song, though maybe only to me since this week I bought tickets to see them in January.

I posted this on Facebook, but I have to share more of the story. I was at home on Tuesday because I'm working nights this week, and there was a knock on my door. There was a guy standing there, and he asked me (1) when I moved into the house and (2) when I was moving out. Apparently, he has had his eye on this house for four years. He gave his number to the last tenants for them to call him when they moved out. Obviously, they didn't, which I'm grateful for. Anyway he told he'd come back in July since my lease is up in August. It is a wonderful house and one of a handful of rentals in this neighborhood, which is the best in town if I you're asking me, but I don't think it would have occurred to me to go knocking on the door to try and rent it. He also said he wanted to rent it and then convince the owner to sell it to him. I was thinking, "You and me both."

Continuing on that point, I have no idea what happens for me after August, and most days I'm really comfortable with that. But in the event I stayed here, I would continue to rent this house. And though I doubt I'd (1) convince my landlord to sell and (2) actually stay here long enough to make it worth the investment, on a daily basis I think about what I would do to it if I owned it. Just this week, I was debating what color I could paint the bathroom (it's currently yellow) that would still look OK with the blue tile or if I'd have to take the tile out. I've already decided on painting the cabinets an off-white or cream and changing the hardware on them, and then painting the kitchen a nice sage green after taking down the wallpaper in the kitchen for this house I'll probably never own! This is another area where pinterest isn't helping.

I had a dream the other night I went on a date (shocking!), and my entire family and current boss were all at the same place. I also woke up that morning to check to see if my car was in my driveway because in my dream it was stolen.

The pictures from my brother's wedding were posted this week, and it's making me dislike my recent haircut even more. In other words, my hair looked great in those photos, and I'm hating it now that it's short again. I guess you only luck out once with getting your hair cut at the mall.

Two things old and two things new

So I made a few minor additions to my apartment decor that I wanted to blog about, and then I decided I wanted to post a couple of my favorite things already in my apartment that I don't think I've posted on here before. So first the older things.

Most of my furniture was either stolen from my parents house or purchased from Kmart or Big Lots. I think I've accumulated some great pieces, and I don't think the things I bought look as cheap as they were. But last January I decided I wanted a chair for my apartment. I saw a couple I liked online, but wasn't finding much at my usual shopping places. And I had also decided I wanted something a little bit different to add some character.

I ended up at a furniture store in town and after much debate special ordered a chair to get the fabric I wanted. I felt like this was my first real piece of furniture because I didn't walk out the door with it that day and I didn't have to put it together. I agonized over this chair so much, but was so happy with how it turned out. I just hope I like it in my next home.

Onto another favorite piece of furniture. My maternal grandmother had a display case in her apartment that I remember seeing every time we visited. She kept various knick knacks, all breakable, in it. I don't think she ever changed anything in it, but I always loved to examine (with my eyes only!) what she had in it. When we moved her to an assisted living place when I was in high school, I asked that my parents keep the case until I could have it for my own apartment.

So several years later, I moved it to Georgia with me. In its original form, it was green, the kind of green that looks good in my grandmother's apartment with her other older, traditional furniture. But this green would have stood out against my white walls, beige carpet and dark wood furniture. Red was my "accent" color for the living room -- if your first apartment can have much of a decor, much less an "accent" color when you can't paint or even remove the wallpaper. But anyway, I picked out a red from Home Depot and started to work on this piece. I had to sand it and sand it some more before I could actually paint and then paint another coat. All of which took several months, fortunately I had a small porch where I could hide my project.

But I did finally finish and get to put it in my apartment. I didn't have a lot of knick knacks to display in it the way my grandmother did, but I had another gift from her. Every year for Christmas she would give my siblings and I a set of matching decorative plates. After she died three years ago, we split them up and all got one from each set. When I was younger, it was hard to act excited about getting a plate for Christmas. But now I love that I have all these plates to remind me of my grandmother and the way she loved beautiful things. The case is in my bedroom now, but it's still something you see when you come to my apartment.

OK, on to the new additions. When I was hosting people this fall for Bible study and other stuff, I wanted a way to have more seating. I thought floor pillows would be a good plan, but I couldn't find any I liked and I wasn't really willing to spend the money on the ones I kind of liked. But now I have a sewing machine, and I can make things like floor pillows. I found the fabric and the pillow forms on sale, and it was really quick to make them. I think they are going to hang out on my cedar chest when not in use to stop using that as my clutter-zone (of course now I'm in need of something to organize the clutter I moved). But I haven't decided if I like them flat or standing up. Thoughts?

Last thing (I didn't realize this post was going to become so long), my mom has a good friend who is an artist and every year paints scenes from our small town for a calendar. For Christmas, my mom got an original framed for each of us.

I had to show it to you before I could tell you about it. But if you look close, I'm the blonde-headed one with a bow and a blue dress. My mom's friend painted this from a picture taken at an annual craft fair in my hometown when I was much younger. It took me several weeks to actually put the nail in the wall to hang it, but I love it, especially that there is a story to it.

Tis the season

To blog about Christmas decorations, or so it seems. And since I have nothing else to write about, it seemed like a good plan.

Christmas tree lights were always a big deal in my family. There were never enough on the tree (even though it looked like it was on fire looking through the window), they were the wrong color, they didn't have the flower bulbs and on and on. My dad would spend at least a full day putting lights on the tree (it was fake, by the way), and then we had boxes and boxes of ornaments to put on which stretched out for a week. 

So when I had my first apartment, I bought a pre-lit tree from Wal-Mart to avoid the light fiasco. I picked up a box of plain colored ball ornaments, and then hijacked some of my childhood ornaments to add. I put it up and decorated it after work one night last week in less than two hours. I will note that my parents have given up the lights drama as well and purchased a large, pre-lit tree that has enough lights to satisfy everyone. 

What added to our ornament collection was that every year, my parents gave my siblings and I each an ornament that represented something we had done that year. I have a lot of soccer player ornaments:

But there's also the angel from when I was in a church play:

And here's my newest ornament that was a birthday gift from a good friend, that really does represent the last year:

When I got the tree up, it looked very bare on the bottom, so I started wrapping presents that same night, which seemed ridiculous but for some reason very logical to me. (And now, I am also very close to being done with shopping and wrapping.)

In my old apartment I had a mantle, and I bought the greenery for that. But no mantle in this apartment, so I added this to the top of my bookshelf.

One year I had three nativity scenes in my apartment. It seems that was a bit of overkill. So I've settled on this one for now:

Since I live by myself, I always struggle to justify pulling all this stuff out and putting it up just for me. But I always do and am so glad that I do because I love sitting by the light of the Christmas tree during December.

Easter weekend

Easter is one of those holidays that can be hard to go home for, but it's one of my favorites to be there for. I never made it back home for Easter during college, but once I graduated and moved closer to home I started going back for Easter even when it meant driving in after work on Saturday night or working from my parents' house on Easter. 

I figured it would be a stretch now that I'm further from home, but when I found out my office was closed for Good Friday, I decided to take off two extra days and drive home for the weekend. It was a long trip, but totally worth it to start off Easter Sunday with this:

(Photo courtesy of my sister)

And I have to say the rest of the weekend was pretty great as well. I got to see family I don't see very often, have dinner with a friend from high school, hang out with my brother and sister, and enjoy some wonderful time outside in the gorgeous weather biking and hiking.

I also got to indulge in Sonic a few times, one of the things I've missed since moving. It also made 16 hours in the car a little more bearable.

My mom also provided some inspiration in the kitchen with the amazing meals she served all weekend, including Panera's Broccoli Cheese Soup, Pioneer Woman's Mashed Potatoes and my favorite broccoli casserole, all of which I intend to make sometime soon.


I'm exhausted from the road trip today and need to work on getting my life at home back in order. At least I only have four work days this week!