Thank You, Snowmageddon!

I just got the best phone call! (Well, the best 2 phone calls actually...the school calls us with their automated system, yet makes the staff use the phone chain as well. It's silly, if you ask me, to do both! We all feel awkward calling each other after getting the automated phone call 10 minutes earlier. I digress...) We officially do not have school tomorrow, thanks to round two of "Snowmageddon 2010." It's coming down like crazy out there! And we already have close to two feet on the ground from the weekend. There are already piles of snow surrounding parking lots that are easily taller than my 5'2 body. So, quite frankly, I don't know what we are going to do with the 6-12 inches we are going to get tonight and tomorrow. This is the most snow I can remember getting in a long time!

I have a few things to take care of on my snow day tomorrow, but after I finish those, I plan on spending the day reading and watching movies :-) I'm going to FINALLY finish "The Shack." I started it a month ago, and then stopped in the middle, read three books, and finally feel ready to finish it. I do this a lot, because there are just way too many books that I want to read, and I can't read just one at a time.

Yesterday I finished "His Needs, Her Needs." It was an EXCELLENT book. I think I may have liked this one even more than "Love and Respect." It is very straightforward, and tells it like it is. It talks about the 5 needs most important to men and to women. It was a very easy read, and so interesting! I learned so much!

Over the weekend I had so much fun watching a few movies while we were snowed in! I finished "Doubt," which turned out to be really good. However, the ending was a little ambiguous. And that really gets to me. I hate movies that don't have a definite resolution at the end, because I just want to know what really happened! It really made me think, though, and I liked that about it. Later I watched "Penelope." It was the cutest movie I've seen in a really long time! The sets and costumes were very whimsical, colorful, and beautiful. I loved it! And the story was just too adorable. You should watch it if you've never seen it. And finally, I watched "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist." This one was just kind of "eh" to me. Not good, not bad. And there was one part that was so gross I felt nauseous. I probably wouldn't watch that one again. (I know, I watched a LOT of movies. But it just felt like the right thing to do since we were snowed in ;-))

Tomorrow I think I'll try to watch "The Ramen Girl" and maybe "Rachel Getting Married." Have you seen either of these? I'm hoping they're good! Instant Netflix has become my new time-waster :-P

Well I think it's time to take a HOT shower since I just can't seem to warm up, and get ready to watch The Duggars! Seriously, who else just can't get enough of this family??

I thought I'd leave with a picture I took yesterday...the picture doesn't do it justice. It literally took my breath away yesterday on my way to work. Every branch on every tree the whole way there was completely covered in sparkly snow. BEAUTIFUL!

Super Bowl Party

Last night Luke and I had a little Super Bowl party. We just invited a few people, mostly family. It was fun! None of us really cared too much who won, and I loved that it was just a fun night, and not too serious or intense :-) There was a LOT of good food. Like, almost too much. I almost didn't have enough room for it all! (This picture was taken when a lot of it was already gone :-P)
When the game got boring, we had fun torturing Ellie with a laser pen. We seriously did this for the whole first half of the game, until she got so tired she could barely stand up. It was so funny! I had to take a video. Ignore Luke calling her a dummy :-P We love Ellie, and she's such a sweetheart, and a cuddler. But she's not very bright :-P Gabby is much smarter, but very, very mean. If only we could combine their good traits, we'd have the perfect cat ;-)

Anyway, here she is, frantically trying to catch the little red dot. Sadly, she will never succeed :-P Unfortunately in the video, you can't really see the little red dot from the laser pen. But it's still funny!

It was a fun night, and now we can officially say we've had our first party in our new living room upstairs :-) (JC and Luke look a little creepy in those pictures :-P)

Now I'm ready to head downstairs to watch "The Bachelor" in the bedroom so I don't have to subject Luke to it :-P I'm so into it this season! Mostly because I really like Jake. I hope he chooses Tenley! After that I think I'm going to flush ice down the toilet and wear my pjs backwards to ensure a snow day this week ;-) We had a 2 hour delay this morning because the roads were still a little bad from the blizzard over the weekend. And we're supposed to get 6-9 more inches tomorrow and Wednesday, plus it will be windy and there will be a lot of drifting of the 15 or so inches we already have. So I highly doubt that I will be going in on Wednesday! (knock on wood!!)

Happy Monday!

The Big Living Room Reveal!!

Today is the day: the day that we completely finished our new living room in the attic! I thought some nice before and after pictures are in order for today :-) When we first moved in, Luke turned the big attic room into an Ohio State room. It was just going to be a "hang out" room. But this year, Luke decided that he'd rather turn the Ohio State room into a living room. I couldn't have been more thrilled!

Okay, you are about to see 3 sets of photos: Before we moved in, Ohio State man-cave stage, and new living room!

Here is the stairway before we moved in:
Here it is all decked out in Ohio State gear: gray walls and black trim...complete with Ohio State stickers and movie posters.
And now for the big reveal...the current stairway. Loving it! What a change! New railing, new paint, new carpet.
We ARE painting the trim around the windows white in the spring when it warms up and we can take the plastic off of them :-P

Here is a picture of the stairs leading up
And a close up of the new railing that Luke made. Definitely better than the old one which was falling apart. It certainly wasn't too safe!
And here's the picture my sister drew for Luke and I the Christmas after we got married, hanging on the wall as you walk up the stairs.

For this next angle, I don't have an original from when we bought the house, but here it is in it's OSU glory. Brightest walls I've ever seen.
And here we are now. I just love the color! It's a lot more calming then before. We got a new (to us...it's actually a hand-me-down) TV stand. And the old striped door is now a crisp white. Also, notice the horrendous fluorescent lighting has been replaced with much softer lighting.
Love this little area. I like adding little birds around the house because I love the whole metaphor of a home being a nest :-)

Next is the view of the wall opposite the stairs when we bought the house. Don't you just love the brown trim and two different kinds of carpet??Here is in its OSU days...look at all the sports paraphernalia!
And here it is in its current state. I guess I didn't get a picture from quite the same angle, so this is really only half of the wall. But I still think it's a major step up!
Here is the back wall when we first moved in
Ohio State Stage...eww (this was taken earlier than the other OSU room pics...so it's even worse than the other ones):And now! Not quite the same angle, but you get the idea. And again, we're painting the trim around the windows white in the spring when the plastic comes down!
Here is a close up of the wall where I put this beautiful "peace" sign. I think it looks great on the blue wall!
And that's it, the full reveal :-) I am absolutely in LOVE with the new room! The dim lighting and lighter paint color just give it such a calming feel. And I'm loving the new carpet! It's cozy, and Luke and I haven't spent much time anywhere else since the carpet was installed on Wednesday :-) I had to laugh tonight when I realized that literally EVERY SINGLE piece of furniture in this room was donated to us. Except for the little black tables and the blu-ray shelf. So it's still a little mismatched, but that's okay! maybe someday we'll get a nice sectional sofa and a beautiful coffee table and some nice end tables. But for now this is great :-)

I hope everyone had a great weekend! I know I did! And the roads are still pretty terrible from the snowstorm this weekend, so I have a 2 hour delay tomorrow which may turn into a snow day! I'm pretty pumped to sleep in a little bit, or have the whole day off :-)

Come back tomorrow to hear about our Super Bowl party and to see a really funny video of my little Ellie :-)

Playing in the Snow!!

Last night the snow just got crazy. A lot worse than I was expecting! JC, who had been playing basketball at the church with Luke and some guys, ended up just spending the night at our house because there was no way he would have been able to drive to his house. Luckily, Luke and I just live right down the street from the church. So he stayed in the newly carpeted attic.

Today when the snowstorm was finally finished, the three of us headed to Luke's parents house to play in the snow :-) Luke's sister and her husband and their two dogs came too. I can't even remember the last time I went sled riding, and it was SO MUCH FUN!!!!

We started out making some paths with the four-wheeler. What a blast!
Here are Luke and JC
And then I got a turn to ride
It wasn't long before the whole thing was caked in snow
And it only got stuck once! :-P
Once the paths were made, we went sled riding! The snow was so deep, (easily up to my knees, and up to my waist in some places where it had drifted) we had to go down the hill four or five times before it was packed down enough, but after that it was really fun!! Then Luke and JC would take turns taking people back up the hill on the four-wheeler. It worked out pretty well :-)
The dogs really enjoyed it! Caly is a Great Dane, so she had no trouble walking in the snow. But poor Charlie got pretty much swallowed by the snow. He was so cute! His body would disappear under the snow, and then he would leap up, and jump up and down in it...so cute! I wish I would have gotten a video!
Luke loved running around with Caly :-)
It was just an overall beautiful day, and I got some great pictures!
Luke's mom made some delicious cookies and hot cocoa...yum! It warmed us right up :-)
Now I'm making potato soup for dinner (my favorite!!) And we're going to settle in upstairs and watch the Cavs game and a movie! This is one of the best days I can remember in a long time :-)

The Weather Oustide is Frightful

We are in the middle of a little bit of a blizzard right now. It started at about 3:00 this afternoon, and is supposed to continue for about 24 hours. We may get as many as 10 inches of snow. As sad as I am to say that this blizzard was wasted on the weekend, ensuring that we will not get a snow day out of it, I can't be mad for long. Just look how beautiful it is!
Luckily I was able to rush to the grocery store right after work, and consequently have nowhere that I have to be until tomorrow evening. I love being able to enjoy the snow from inside my cozy house! Especially now that the new living room in the attic is just about finished (Luke is planning on finishing the railing soon since our Super Bowl party is on Sunday, so I will be posting "after" pictures soon!!)

Luke and I did venture out for a little while tonight to chill out and eat some pizza with some family at my grandparents' house. Luckily they live very close-by, so we didn't have to drive in the snow for more than a few minutes. That's where I took the pictures since Luke and I don't have so much as one tree on our tiny little property.

Luke is at the church right now playing basketball, which is always his Friday evening activity every week. I'm upstairs with some comfy sweats on. I have the space heater running right beside me, and I'm underneath the heavy afghan that Luke's mom made us. I'm about to go downstairs and make some of my favorite dark chocolate hot chocolate. And then the kitties and I are going to cuddle on the couch all night and watch some more movies from my Netflix Instant Queue. So far, of the movies in my instant queue, I'm been able to watch through "Sunshine Cleaning," (great movie!) "Supersize Me," (I'm never eating McDonalds again...) and half of "Doubt." I fell asleep through the second half. I'll probably watch the rest of "Doubt" tonight, and then I'm not sure what else. It's between "Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist," "The Ramen Girl," "Penelope," and "Rachel Getting Married." It's such a hard decision! This whole Instant Netflix thing has become increasingly addictive. I'm thinking that I'll probably settle on "Penelope," it looks very interesting, and I'm intrigued.

Anyway, I think I'm going to love this weekend :-) I told Luke that as much as I love this, I just can't wait until the day that we live in our dream house. It will be in the middle of nowhere, and we'll have huge windows and a fireplace. So we can enjoy the beautiful blizzards with a beautiful view :-) And we can all cuddle together and drink hot chocolate and watch a movie with a fire burning. With our 3 or 4 children, of course (Luke says 3, I say 4. I figure one of us will change our minds once we actually start having them! lol) It will be perfect, and I just can't wait!

Well, I'm off to do some unwinding. This is just what I need after a long week at work!! Enjoy your Friday evening!

Decorator's OCD??

I definitely have some little quirks. I joke that I have OCD. For example, one of my students the other day asked me why I touch the wall by the door every time I leave my classroom. I don't know why I do this, I just do. I have a weird thing about symmetry and 90 degree angles. Everything on my desk at work is either parallel or perpendicular to the edges. Sometimes I perform simple tasks in a really inconvenient way, because it bothers me if I don't do it in a certain way.

Now, do I really have OCD? No, of course not. I think we all have these little quirks that make us unique :-) However, when it comes to decorating my home, I believe that I may have a touch of decorator's OCD :-P

For example, Luke bought new Christmas lights for our tree this year. I didn't like them. Not at all. It bothered me so much, it was all I could think about. The frustration brought me to tears. Finally I told him the truth. We took all the lights off, went out to town to buy some new lights, and re-decorated the tree.

Another time, when we moved in, we painted the kitchen walls a green color. We then bought green tile to put on the backsplash. The greens didn't match. They didn't completely clash, but they didn't match. It was driving me crazy. My mom knew this, brought the tile to Home Depot so they would match the color, and repainted the walls. All while I was at work one day. Ahhh, it was the best surprise EVER!!! I don't think I could have lived with the 2 different shades of green. Thanks, Mom!!

Today our carpet FINALLY came!! Here is a little peak: (I don't want to show the whole room until it's all decorated and ready :-))I love the carpet! I walked in and just smiled and smiled because I was so glad we finally had some great carpet in the attic! That is until I turned around and noticed one small detail:
They had carpeted the little shelf area that comes out by the stairway. Sigh. This is just not good (And the picture doesn't make it look as bad is it really is). This area used to look like this:

I painted it white, and although it's a little rough-looking, I thought it would have been so adorable as a little shelf. I think it was absolutely pointless for them to carpet it, and it would look really dumb if I used it as a shelf now. Grrr, I wish I had been here to stop them. It's all I can think about, and I can't enjoy the look of the rest of the room. See what I mean? Decorator's OCD. It's absolutely driving me mad.

I think I inherited this trait from my mother. She called to see how it looked earlier. I told her the carpet was great except for that one little detail. She completely understood what I meant and agreed with me without even seeing it yet!

I really wish I was not this way, but I'm afraid the carpet in that area is going to have to go. My mom says it will be easy to fix. Luke does not agree, but he's not the one who will be having a slight panic attack every time he walks in the room due to those few little square feet.

Okay, so I'm slightly kidding here. But it is bugging me, and I can't wait to embark on "Project: Remove Carpet!" Oh gosh, I hope Luke can learn to cope with my nitpicky-ness when it comes to decorating. I think we are slowly learning that I need to be present when all major projects are being done to our house. Because Luke doesn't care about this stuff at all. It will save us a lot of time and energy if I'm there to help make these types of decisions.

Wow, I sound so bad right now! My dad tells me I'm a snob when it comes to stuff like this. But it's my house, I have to live in it, and I want it to look nice! It's funny that I worry about little details like that, yet have an absolutely impossible time keeping my house clean. It makes no sense.

Don't get me wrong, though, I'm SUPER pumped about the new carpet in general!!! LOVE IT! It's a perfect match :-)

Do you have decorator's OCD??

Project Highlights

I don't know if any of you have checked out my Project 365 blog, (if you haven't, click on the link in my sidebar :-)) But I thought today I'd post some highlights from January. It's been a lot of fun so far. Although since January was a somewhat boring month, I feel like I ran out of ideas. Hopefully February will be a little more interesting!

We rang in month with a New Year's Day party/Ohio State Rose Bowl game. They won, and it was fun!
This is my favorite picture from the month. I learned the basics of the violin, and am slowly but surely improving.
Enjoyed my first snow day of the year!
Did some cooking (I love taking pictures of food! Not quite as much as I love eating it.)

Also ate some delicious food with awesome people!
Luke got a new drumset
And my pets were cute :-)

And, that was the first month of Project 365 in a nutshell! I am hoping February is a little more interesting ;-) Hopefully Valentines Day festivities will provide some great material!