Happy New Year!!

I'm a total fan of fresh outlooks, fresh starts and fresh beginnings. So, it's really not a surprise that New Years is one of my favorite holidays. The beginning of a new year gives an opportunity to help become a better person (although you really could do this at any point in the year.. but follow me on this). It is cool to see what all went on good or bad in the past year and having a renewed hope about the upcoming year. 

In 2011, Travis and I moved to our first place as a 'married' couple. (We were living together already when we were engaged and lived in the same spot after we were married.) We took a great vacation to Bend in the summer and visited my California family in the fall. Needless to say we definitely want to head back for another trip! I got promoted at my job and have been welcoming the challenges and responsibilities my new position has in store for me. We found a church to call our 'home' and have a few goals of becoming more involved at Solid Rock and focusing more on our faith too. We also taught August and Weger how to dance! Just kidding, but it'd be pretty cool right? : )

For 2012 I want to take better care of myself. Overall, I eat fairly healthy but need to keep up on the work out train and be nicer to myself (I think some will understand that we tend to be our own worst critic when it comes to our bodies). 

I want to get set in some great habits not only for myself but with Travis too. I want to learn how to cook some great healthy meals for us. Yes, this means I need to get my booty in the kitchen and use a pot and pan every now and then! : )

I want to continue to kick our financial debts to the curb! We have made progress in 2011, but I think we can do even better in 2012. Plus after paying off those debts, that money will get set aside for our future house purchase!

Reading. I love this and miss doing this. I have a book on my nightstand that I'm 3/4 of the way through and still haven't touched it in probably 3 or 4 weeks. I also have borrowed the whole Hunger Games series (thanks Teresa!) to get in on what that series is all about. Plus, I'm totally stoked to use my Powell's gift card to purchase a new book I've been eyeing.

I want to enhance my personal prayer and devotion time. Making time for this daily and getting involved with our church will be super helpful in this. I want to get to know Jesus and have conversations daily with him. : )

And of course, I want to keep steady on weekly date nights with Travis. We are fairly consistent with this, but we should try some new restaurants, check out movies or take a dance class (I totally want to take him with me to a salsa class!). I love spending time with my husband, and making that quality time together without phones, computers and tv is definitely important.  ; )

Cheers to 2011 and Welcome 2012! Lets see what you have in store for all of us!

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and yours! We just got back the other day from our Christmas in southern Oregon with the Waltz family. Travis and I had our personal Christmas on Friday the 23rd with take out Olive Garden and opening gifts. I am absolutely loving the special and super thoughtful presents he gave me. He is quite the husband! <3

We drove down on Christmas Eve to Medford and did presents with the nieces and nephew that night and with Travis's siblings on Christmas morning before heading out to his Grandma's to have a big Christmas lunch. After some basketball watching, visiting friends and eating too much we played the game In A Pickle with some family. The day after Christmas we went to a surprise breakfast birthday event for Travis's Grandpa and left afterwards to make our way to Portland. Good family quality time, but it went by super fast and I think both T and myself will definitely enjoy sleeping in this weekend. I did not take nearly enough photos, but here a snippet of our Christmas. Bonus: you will see 3 fabulous reasons I love being an Aunt as well.. 

opening presents!!

Dad-in-law, Kevin (Travis's brother) & my funny boo.

My niece Carmen and I. She is so darling and quite the smart cookie. I may have to make a special drive down to take her to Beauty and the Beast in 3-D. Because you know, she would love to do that and yes I totally would love to see it in 3-D!

The other niece of my eye, lovely Leandra. Her baby blues and giggles get me every time! I've also successfully taught her to make an "O" the for Oregon Ducks too. :)

My nephew Emmanuel. He is getting so tall and approaching middle school in a few years! He too is quite the cutie pie and has quite the one-liners.

Hopefully this weekend I will have a couple posts ready to upload on here.. 

but after I've slept in of course. :)

Ideal versus Real

Sitting cozy on the chaise with a big fleece blanket wrapped around me. This is me winding down from the day in the evenings. And you know what? I wouldn't change it. As I have transitioned into a new position at work, I find that I am using a lot more energy than before in my job in the office (and burning more calories!). It's interesting to me how one change to your day to day routine can totally affect the rest of your day. Don't get me wrong - I enjoy what I do, it is just interesting to see how my day to day activities are changed since my new switch. And it's a good change! I wonder what it would be like if we had kids and how that would change the mix as well! Just means I gotta manage my time a bit better.. let me explain with a visual. 

My-Ideal-Amazing-Having-Everything-Work-Out-Day

5:30am: wake up

6am: after a small snack - hitting the gym for 45 minutes

7am: shower

7:20am: breakfast and dressed

7:40am: leave for work

8a-12p: work

12p-1p: lunch hour - eat the lunch that I packed from home.

1p-5p: work

5:20p: wash a load of clothes

5:30p: help prep dinner + follow up on load of clothes.

6p-6:30p: dinner with Trav <3

6:30p-8p: lounge, tv, blog

8p: make lunch for next day

8:15p: some cleaning (dishes, straightening up things)

8:45p-9:30p: Bible time + reading

9:30-9:45p: get ready for bed

10p: lights out!

Yeah, um that whole wake up at 5:30 and gym before 7am will probably never happen unless I have this sudden amazing surge of energy at 5:30 in the morning. No way Jose. I so prefer our cozy, snuggly and warm bed in the wee hours of the mornings. But in my ideal world I would definitely be at the gym to start my day and get that part out of the way. After the work day would pass I would still be energized to throw in some laundry and (gasp!) help cook dinner. I'm far blessed to have a man that enjoys cooking and loves making good dinners for us. On second thought, maybe I wouldn't change that part.. ; ) I would love to have more time to get involved in The Word and do some type of a Bible study. This I feel is definitely one thing that I could involve myself in daily and I need to work on this for sure. I think it would be fair to say that a few of these things would not happen each and every day but again - this is my Ideal. I enjoy a good routine. I have no idea how my parents (mom especially) worked 40 hours a week, kept up on laundry, cooked dinners and made sure we had all our needs met. 

Moving along though, this is more how my day goes..

6:30am: first alarm goes off..

6:50am: second alarm goes off.. hit snooze.

7am: alarm off again - turn off and wake up.

7a-7:10a: wash face, browse internet and think about what's going on for the day.

7:15a: get dressed 

7:20-7:30a: instant oatmeal and news

7:40a: leave for work

8a-12p: work

12p-1p: lunch hour - run out to grab something (subway or grocery store)

1-5p: work

5:20p: home! change to cozy clothes and chat with my love.

6p-6:30p: dinner with Trav (something he cooked)

7p: shower

7:30p: tv, lounge

9p: get ready for bed

10p: lights out!

I can be hard on myself, but I see the current day to day as less productive on the home front. Chores and cleaning that were easy to get done before tend to get pushed to the end of the week or just happen at half-pace. Though we keep a fairly clean and polished home, sometimes I wish I could keep it 'House Beautiful' all the time. I treasure the evening time to lounge and relax with my guy since it's our time in the day to be together (Travis leaves for work before I wake up). So to me, I'd rather leave the vacuuming to Saturday to sit and relax with T on the couch for a little bit.

I still find myself in the mindset of "what did I accomplish today? what could have gone better?" But in the end it is about how you spent your day and with whom. Life is too short to fixate on the to-do's of the day and what didn't happen. I need to remind myself of this and to spend my 'free' time doing things that will enrich my day to day more and not necessarily result in making a mental check mark on a list that repeats itself each week. You know what I mean??

And with that, it's time to snuggle up with the kitties and lounge because you know what? That is what is important to me in the moment. And that is what should matter most.

6 more months until summer time!

Whoa nelly!

I absolutely love this image and quote from Curly Girl Designs. It's my wall paper on my work computer and it makes me smile every time I sit down. Speaking of which, work has been going well so far but can make it hard for me to wind down (I'm quite active all day long in my new job) and do some blogging lately. My goal for probably the last 8 days has been to take some time to sit and blog about how life is, what's going on and just all things life. : )

But to help move that process along, I'll just let you in on a few goings on as of late in our little abode.

1. My mom was here last weekend which was super fun! We took her to California Pizza Kitchen, The Nutcracker (love that ballet!!), church, had some home made spinach lasagna, brunch and saw Breaking Dawn. My mom is so great - she even got in the kitchen with Travis to do some cooking. I truly hope to one day be just half the mother/wife/sister/daughter that she is.

2. I have done zero - zero! - shopping so far for the holidays. Pretty sure if I had a little button labeled "start to panic" I would have pushed it this morning. Oh - and we haven't done anything towards our photo Christmas card yet.. maybe a New Year's card this year instead??

3. Travis was super sick with food poisoning the other night. : (  Needless to say it was awful. I felt so bad for him and am thankful that he is doing much better now. 

3. My work is teaching me a great lesson on Trust lately. I will elaborate more on it in a future post.. I am letting the thoughts percolate a bit, but it has been such an amazing life lesson for me.

4. Travis and I did some investigating online of Portland homes for sale the other evening. It was fun playing "house hunters" for an evening seeking out neighborhoods we like and dreaming up what we'd like our future home to have. It feels like owning a home could actually be a reality! : )

5. I'm craving a vacation right now. I'm hoping that in February we can take a weekend away and stay in the mountains or something. I've never been skiing or snowboarding.. I know I know.. I live down the way from Mt. Hood and have lived in Oregon all my life - but I blame it on the fact that I'm from a beach family (which I would never change!). But now, I really would love to go and stay in a cabin or lodge and try out surfing on a snowy mountain and be away from computers, cell phones, traffic, etc. Doesn't that sound good?

6. I want to make some peppermint bark this weekend. It's so yummy and tastes like Christmas. If Christmas had a taste it would be peppermint bark. Yes. I believe that.

7. One of my favorite ladies who I talked of in a previous post is now our neighbor! Carla lives across the way and I love that we can hang out and catch up. Which reminds me, I need to make her "welcome to the neighborhood" cookies this weekend. ;)


What about you ?? Are you excited for the holidays but feel way behind on your to do list like me? Any favorite holiday recipes you'd like to share? I'm in a baking mode and would love your input!

Old Window, New Life!

At work, we have Christmas music on all day long in our arts room and I am loving it! Today some of the windows got decorated and more decor to come. I love that I get to celebrate the holidays with family, friends and in my work life too.

Back at home Trav and I have finished up some of our garlands, glass hurricane bowls with ornaments and reindeer setting. (I love decorating with reindeer adornments at Christmas time.) Remember how we decided to forgo the traditional Christmas tree and decorate with our natural branches and ornament/pine cone arrangement ?? Well we still wanted to have a way to display a few of our favorite ornaments. As I was doing my often-frequent occasional browse on Pinterest, I found this image..

It also just so happens that back on our summer vacation in Bend we checked out a fun antique market area in Sisters, Oregon. After a brief negotiation this beauty was ours for a small price. 

I have a thing for old window frames and window panes. I think they are their own art piece by themselves. On our honeymoon in the San Juan Islands we picked up a good size 4 paned white window that had chipping paint, wood in need of serious sanding and spotty glass marks. But we were instantly infatuated with the idea of the cool art work possibility it had. Travis spent an afternoon making it all pretty and now it sits above our dining area on the wall in a gorgeous pearly white color. 

But back to ol' red there. We didn't know where it would go or how we would utilize it but we loved the idea of having another old window in our home. After some light cleaning on it (the chipping red paint didn't look quite like our other piece did) and having it sit next to the couch, we decided about 2 weeks ago it was time to give it a fresh look for the holidays.

We picked out 12 of our favorite ornaments so that we could hang 2 per window pane spot. Below you can see how Travis drilled beginning holes along the top to put small white hooks in the frame to hold the ornaments. 

The top row of ornaments left to right: a ferry boat with Orcas Island painted on it (our Honeymoon Destination), a W (our last name initial), 2 heart ornaments from West Elm that I picked up last year - the proceeds went to art employees in Haiti, a Gingerbread man from my mom, the fun hawaiian tee shirt and sunshine (from our trip to Florida a few years ago). 

 The bottom row left to right: a gorgeous sunshine in a glass piece of artwork from my mom to me, Batman (if you know my husband - you know why this is important, wink), Weger's ornament (yes we know that doesn't look like him, but we need to get his photo in that little frame), August's ornament, Christmas tree and grocery bag ornament both from Seattle's Pike Place. We bought those the weekend we got engaged there and we've both worked in the grocery industry too! :)

Here is our fun ornament arrangement on our wall, sorry for the lighting.. (you work with what you have in apartment life)

Some ornaments got rearranged to hang facing forward and not to the side and for a little mix up variety too. We placed our little "Merry Christmas" door post up there too because .. well we just felt like it. :)

Whatcha think??? We love it and I am glad that we still got to display some of our favorite ornaments despite us not having a tree this year. And yes Mom I still have all my penguin and polar bear ornaments. :)  I know she'll read this and wonder .. but no worries they are just hibernating this winter.. 

Anyway - that got weird.. so that's our latest Pinterest inspired creation for the holidays. What type of things have inspired your creativity lately? On the search for anything in particular and having a hard time? Let us know and maybe we can help channel the inner handyman/woman in you and find some cool inspiration!

Snarky + Sparkly

 Wow - what a week friends! I have been itchin' to blog all week long but as you'll see reading below, life sorta got in the way.. in a good way. :)

Snarky: British slang. testy or irritable; short; find fault with.

1. I haven't done a good job keeping up on my snarky/sparkly lists! The 2nd one got deleted (c'mon.. aren't iPhones supposed to be 'smart'?) and I didn't get to do a 3rd one with the holidays.. because who wants to be snarky when you have lots of food, close family and decorating to get to!  

2. Our little 4 legged ones have been trying to take down the Christmas decorations.. I am certain our neighbor that lives below us could name both our cats and know exactly what they're doing depending on our voices. And hear them running at midnight in their nightly game of chase.

3. Moments this week when I felt less than confident in my abilities at work.

 

4. Husband and I both got sick this week.. eesh. It's hard to keep up with groceries, making meals, laundry and keeping our place tidy when both of us are sneezy kleenex messes.

5. Missing out on the art show over at one of our day programs because of reason #4.

6. Pretty sure our Comcast bill just gets higher and higher each month.. thinking about cancelling the cable for a while - we don't need it and it could save some extra cash!

7. Still haven't seen Breaking Dawn yet.. but, my husband (yes my husband) has asked me a couple times if I wanted to go and see it and the timing didn't work out at the time.

Sparkly: to be brilliant, lively, or vivacious.

1. I got promoted! A few weeks ago I was approached by my boss's boss (the big cheese) and she talked to me about an open position and that she wanted to recommend me for it. After giving it thought and weighing options, I took it! This happened a few weeks ago, but I got to flex my yes-I-can-do-this muscles this week as my first week in my new position. 

2. We started decorating our home for the holidays. Love it!! I can't wait to do more and share with you the other fun holiday DIY activities we've been working on!

3. The fact that our apartment actually gets and stays warm after running the heaters. Last year in our old place we'd be all bundled up and wrapping the electric blanket around us. Needless to say, our old place was pretty and wonderful but it was waaay drafty and the windows were not super solid. We are so thankful for a lovely home and double paned windows. It's the little things.

4. Feeling totally at home with our church. What an incredible community!! It feels amazing each weekend to be among so many young couples and families who want to really impact the community and do big things this coming year too!

5. Knowing that my mom is coming to stay with us next weekend for a fun Portland stay. We are going to see The Nutcracker, church, somewhere super delicious for dinner and hopefully a Papa Haydn's dessert somewhere in there too!

Trav and me with my mom in Florida getting ready to parasail together!

6. Our little city of Fairview has their tree lighting tomorrow night. I love that we live just outside of Portland in a town that is okay to walk around in the evening, has a farmer's market during the week and many block parties in the summer time.

7. Kicking off some serious Christmas movie watching this weekend. Since we'll likely be homebound (snarky #4) I'm thinking of a Love Actually + Christmas Vacation + White Christmas movie blast. :)

How's your holiday season going? What's your favorite part? Any fun gatherings or events that happen in your town/city that make it unique?

Cheers to the weekend!