it's pretty awesome, i think, that i still stop almost every night and wonder if all of this could truly be my life.  it's usually after we're done watching tv or doing other stuff in the basement and i'm making my way upstairs to the bedroom.  i usually stop and stare at the stairs and think "holy crap.  i have stairs.  and i have a house.  and it's awesome."  and when i'm out doing errands with andy on the weekends, i still stop and think "holy crap.  i have a boyfriend. and he loves me".  (he is no longer my boyfriend but is, in fact, my husband...i am still not used to that yet). 
yes, it is amazing to me that i have the life that i'd always thought was out of my reach.  but that's not really what i'm impressed with.  what i am most impressed with is that i am in the moment & mindful enough to actually stop and think and be grateful.  i can honestly say that this is one of the first times in my entire life when i've been able to do that.  usually i'm complaining about how annoying things are and how many curve balls life has thrown my way.  it was a rough few years back at the beginning of my adulthood, but all of the hard work and patience has finally paid off.  and lately life has been pretty darn good to me.  i'm recognizing it now, and i hope that i will remember this feeling when the next wave of stress/anxiety/negativity comes my way. 
now that life has settled down a bit for me (yippee! the wedding is over!), i'm thinking more about house projects i'd like to do.  i'm definitely not going to be doing any major renovations any time soon since the house is in pretty good shape and i'm not exactly "handy". 
i've been working on a photo wall for a while now.  i bought a ton of frames from ikea when i first moved into my house, and i just went back to supplement my collection a couple of weeks ago.  so far i'm loving my choices - all white frames with some pictures from the wedding (we will haven't gotten back our professional photos yet...), a couple of pictures of my niece/nephews, and a few different pieces of art work that i created (inspired by finds on pinterest).  i haven't put anything on the walls yet, partly because i have to buy the hanging wire stuff (the placement of the hook by ikea is a bit awkward) and partly because i'm not sure if i want to paint my lower level first. 
because i always love when they do lists over on younghouselove, here is my list of different things i am hoping to accomplish around the house this summer:
- paint red "accent wall" in the living room.  i'm thinking subtle greyish blue.
- paint entire downstairs (main level is my territory, basement is andy's)
- paint stair railing?
- hang photo wall
- find or build bookcases/storage for huge empty wall in living room
- clean out "office"/extra bedroom.  take some stuff up to the attic, donate everything else to gw
- find another bedside table for upstairs guest bedroom at gw and give it a makeover
- find another bedside table for downstairs guest bedroom
- find or make a desk for an "office". i'm sort of considering using the upstairs guest bedroom closet as a small, makeshift office
- organize all of my crafting supplies
- purge all of my old clothing and send it to gw
- go through basement closet and get rid of old stuff that we never use any more

okay, that list is long enough for now.  i'm not sure how much i'll get done this weekend - my mom is in town and i'll feel guilty if i'm dragging her to home depot thirty times in one day (why is it that i never get everything i need when i go to home depot?  i always forget at least one thing...so ridiculous).

i'm off to see wicked tonight with some friends.  i'm not usually the going-out-in-the-middle-of-the-week type, but i'm trying to come out of my shell more and take advantage of living in an awesome city at an awesome time in my life.  anyway, it should be fun.  and a little bit of culture never killed anyone.

christmas preparations

i love christmas.  always have.  i love decorating the house and i love baking cookies.  it's the one time of year when i feel like i can fly my martha stewart flag high and show my face in the craft store without feeling like i'm forty years too young to be thrilled about yarn.

i was sick last week.  so sick, in fact, that my christmas preparations were in real danger of never even happening.  there is so little time between thanksgiving and christmas.  those few weeks are critical if you want to pull off the perfect christmas.  and for some reason, this year i was determined that it would be close to, if not perfect.  probably a continuation of the whole buying the house and wanting it to be absolutely perfect the moment i moved in thing.

anyway, last saturday when i finally started feeling at least a little bit better, i felt so behind on everything that it was overwhelming and i almost just said screw it, i'll wait 'til next year to have a perfect christmas.  i even thought that i would forgo the cookie baking thing (if you know me, you would know that i live for christmas cookie baking.  this was a big deal).  i have no idea what it was that lit the spark in me, but one minute i was relaxing on the nap couch and the next minute i was yanking the christmas tree box out of the storage closet.  i even had andy help me bring it upstairs.

andy is somewhat of a reluctant christmas celebrator.  it's not that he doesn't like christmas, it's that he doesn't like the setting up of christmas trees and the sending of christmas cards and all the work that goes into christmas.  he basically complained the entire time we were setting up the tree...."why are we even bothering to do this when we're leaving [for my parents] in ten days?"..."why are you bothering to set up a tree when we have a kitten who messes with everything?"  i tried telling myself that it was just him being a boy and that all the christmas preparation is part of what makes it special, dammit.



after we set up our christmas tree with colored lights, i went to town on the mantel.  i was inspired by this mantel i saw at crate & barrel:

now that i've linked it i'm embarrassed to show a picture of my mantel because mine looks pretty pathetic compared to this.  but what the heck.  you only live once.





note: i did not leave the stockings up for long because god forbid i have anything dangling in the way of curious kittens in my house.

once i had finished my tree and my mantel, i added a wreath to our front door and voila! it was christmas.

later that evening, i was sitting downstairs on the nap couch with andy watching real housewives of BH and working on another craft project when we heard a loud crash and the scamper of little feet.  we ran up the stairs and i stuck my head around the corner, then immediately tried to draw back so that andy wouldn't be able to see into the living room.  despite my efforts at pushing him down the stairs, andy came up beside me and said "well, that was worth it".  someone had knocked over the tree onto the hardwood floors, which shattered the ornaments i had put on that side and also broke the stand of the tree.  so that was it for the short life of our 2010 christmas tree.  it was fun while it lasted.



decorating the house got me in the mood for baking cookies.  a post dedicated to cookie baking is coming soon.

our thing

a few weeks months (because it takes me forever to finish a blog post, apparently) ago,  i needed to get my car inspected (since it was embarrassingly illegally overdue), and since there were still two feet of snow on the ground (remember the great blizzard of '09?  and then '10?) we decided to make it our "trip of the day", if you will.  we dropped the civic off at the car place and headed over to one of the fine arlington county libraries.  he serached out a few detective novels (he has read all of the pattersons, grishams, and theotherguywhoican'trememberrightnows) and i gathered some photography books.  i managed to score a chair next to the window and sat turning the pages and drooling over talented photos until andy was ready to leave.  it felt so good to get out, and it sort of felt like i was participating in the elusive thing they call "the community".
in the weeks since, we've loosely made it our habit. i'll be the first to admit that he is more likely to go than me (shocking because i'm more the bookworm type - or so i thought) and sometimes i find it hard to muster up the strength to walk all that way if the weather is not 72 degrees and sunny.  we've also added breakfast/coffee to the mix, and occasionally a stop at cvs. 
i've always wanted a routine.  i didn't want to force it upon anyone, because i'm not sure at what age people start adopting routines (i've always been all too eager to grow up).  i always just hoped that one day i would be one of those happy people who does things like go to the library and get coffee on weekend mornings.
and while sometimes i let my laziness get the best of me, on the mornings that i do drag myself out of bed and put clothes on before 10 a.m, i'm glad that i'm finally at least a little closer to having a normal life.