10 things I put on in the morning before leaving the house

After seeing myself tagged on Jenny's blog about this, and since I seem to have some time to get to my blog tonight, I thought I would humor myself and the rest of you out there reading this!

So, here it goes...

The 10 Things I put on in the morning before leaving the house:

1. Face moisturizer!

2. A black hair binder on my right wrist
(haha I have done the same thing as you Jenny, for a long long time!)

3. My watch on my left wrist:

4. Deodorant (sometimes the brand changes):5. Some sort of big obnoxious ring on my right index finger:

6. My wedding ring (though this never really ever comes off!)
(Shown here is just the engagement ring)


7. Some necklace (lately Teddy has stayed on a number of days without coming off):


(no photo available)

8. Perfume ( I switch between 3 scents right now...)

Karmala, Mark-Jewel & DKNY Red Delicious


9. Lotion (scent changing):


10. Eyeliner (color also changes between black, brown, green, blue, purple..)



So, in a nutshell, those are the things that I get on before leaving the house! Colors/smells etc. change on a daily basis, or what fun would that be?!

Freelance Avenue

Today I got the go-ahead from my client to press onward and finish freelance project #2 for her! So I finished that tonight (Gift Certificates for grads whom she knows and will be attending parties for. The certificates I then put into frames that she had bought and the rest I placed in nice red envelopes). That should be the end of my projects for her for a little while.

Then, I got an email from a family friend who wants me to help -freelance design- an entire identity package, complete with website layout! I am really excited to get going on this one! It is going to be a lot of fun, and working with her should be a blast! The only downside is the fact that they live pretty far away - Victoria, MN. But she said that she was more than willing to come up here so that I could work on my computer. I could always use my worklaptop some weekends if need be :) yay for Macbook Pros!

This short week has been a really nice change of pace; although my days have been getting a bit messed-up! Tomorrow I am the only one from my team who will be in the office. My boss and co-worker are not going to be in, they both took vacation. I actually tried to take the day off, but settled for leaving a little early.

Tomorrow, the reason for my early deployment from the office, is that I am going to be guest lecturing at Cooper High School in two of Derick's classes of seniors in sort of a "what to expect in college" from two former RAs...that should be interesting. Derick has a pretty funny book that he got while we were in school called The Naked Roommate: And 107 other issues you might run into in college.

Other than that, I have a sample sale at work that my mom, mom's friend from work, her sister and a couple of my friends are going to Saturday morning. Derick is going to go up to my parent's lake place to take an inventory of the new 19' bass fishing boat he just got last weekend, so that means that I won't probably see him for most of the weekend...that boy and fishing...He did buy me my first baitcaster though, which I am excited to try out, get to be like the pros...heh heh...maybe not.

Midwest Gamers United (the website that Derick is starting up) has a go-live date of June 1. That is kind of exciting, as I have been helping design the logo and the layout of the website as far as theme goes. I did purchase a book through Amazon that will help me re-learn Dreamweaver and Flash. Flash is all new to me though. I have never done anything with that in the past at all, so I am excited to learn something new!

Well, I am off to help plan my "lesson plan" with Derick, so we have some idea of what we are going to be talking to them about tomorrow!

Later,
L

A Well-balanced Memorial Day weekend

Well, what a great weekend!

It was really great! Nice and long and a good mix of things got done!

Friday night, Derick and I both deemed "relaxation night," since we both hadn't gotten much time to just hang out with each other and relax all week. So we did just that.

Saturday, Derick, Tucker and I spent the day at my parent's lake place in Amery, WI on King Lake. Derick helped my dad put in the dock and help with a couple sprinkler heads around the cabin. I set up our tent that was a wedding shower gift for the first time, just to air it out. I also went with my mom to see my grandma in the nursing home. How sad nursing homes are. I really admire the patience that the people that work there have. And just not being sad and depressed all the time!

My parents bought theirlake property just after I graduated high school in 2003 and have been slowly working on building a cabin on the property. Tucker had a BLAST running around all day, in the mud and the lake. He was so exhausted he slept almost the whole way home! Derick also got to go see a 19 foot bass boat that someone had listed for sale on Craig's List. He and my dad worked out a deal where my dad put forth the finances for the boat, and Derick and his cousin will work it off on some weekends this summer!

Sunday we had another day of relaxing and cleaning. We went shopping without actually buying anything. Derick bought boat wash, but I think that was pretty much it! We watched the movie Seven Pounds. It was pretty sad at the ending, but both Derick and I had the basic plot of the movie figured out right away. I cleaned my car-inside and out. Tucker was very adamant about trying to get back IN my car after I got all his hair OUT of it! Derick cleaned out some of the garage. Next project, is the closet in the guest bedroom/office/crap shoot of a room!

Today, I tried to clean a little more, but our vacuum cleaner kinda clunked out, so that put an end to that! Later Paul, Jenny and Roman came over for a big dinner and then the dog park! It was fun to see and catch up with them. Tucker is asleep on the floor right now he is so tired out from the busy, fun weekend!

Now, just a shorter week at work!

Nine Lives

Ok, so my Grandpa is no longer in the hospital, but a care facility in Crystal, MN. I swear, that man has MORE than nine lives! One of the last things that I heard while he was in the hospital, was that my Grandma bought a hamburger, fries and a shake. She started to drink the shake, figuring that he would not want anything, as that has been the trend almost the entire time he has been in the hospital. But when my Grandma offered the burger to him, he ate it all, the fries and the milkshake! When he got to the milkshake, he asked my Grandma, "Where's the rest?!" I thought that was pretty funny!

I have come to the realization that I am much like my dad's side of the family- Dad and Grandma in the fact that I cannot seem to sit still on the weekends. I get so antsy that I have to be doing somthing! Today I was doing laundry, went grocery shopping, baked cookies, watered all my plants, printed more invitations for my client, printed and framed a couple photos, cleaned the office, organized the office, and was not contemplating on altering all my mom's pants, playing video games, or reading the 2nd Twilight book. Oh the possibilities! (See what I mean about not sitting still?! I can hardly type up a blog!)

I think that one nice thing about living in a townhouse, or a smaller space is that I have been almost constantly going through things and getting rid of things. I feel SO good when I get rid of things! I did that in the office today. Derick had about four boxes of papers and stuff to go through in there, so I pulled out one big tote and dumped it ALL into one of them! Got rid of the boxes and will tell him later, this is your task for the next week, empty the junk box! I find it fascinating (and annoying) that guys as a whole do not seem to notice or care when their living space becomes cluttered, dusty, dirty or unorganized. Ugh!

On a different note, Derick took me into Gander Mountain the other day and I found a couple fishing poles - yes friends, fishing poles, that I actually liked. One of them was a "Lady Angler." I liked that it was really made smaller to fit a girl's hands. The only downside was that there was light pink all over the thing and the reel...ugh. I might just have to deal though because I really liked the way it felt. It was even a baitcaster, which Derick was going to teach me to use this summer. But I don't know if that will be happening either, as Larry ripped all Derick's stuff out of the boat, pretty much saying that no, he may NOT borrow the boat for a couple months this summer.

Here is a little background on that one though: Larry has lent the boat to Derick for the past countless summers. Derick has put time and money into maintaining the boat, but Larry sometimes goes above and beyond, and gets/does things to the boat in the off-season. Now, it is Larry's boat, but he usually has not expressed an interest, nor actually gone fishing in the boat much in the past. But something must just have set him off about it this year, and he went on a little rampage, taking out all of Derick's stuff that was left in the boat (nothing much) and gave it to Joe to give back to him.

That is pretty sad because Derick LOVES, I mean LOVES to go fishing in the summer time! He was really looking forward to going with me and Paul and my Dad and Tucker this summer, but that might have to be put on hold for the summer. Derick was even looking at boats on Craigslist. There is NO way that we could possibly afford to get one right now, even though I know that will be his next bigger purchase!

So, I guess we'll just have to see what else happens this summer!

Derick has been applying to more and more teaching jobs, realizing that he may be able to teach more Physical Science as well as Biology/Earth Science. That is a really good thing, now all we need is an interview and hopefully a job to come out of it! Then we would be sitting pretty well!

This economy just sucks the life out of everyone. Boo.

Alright, well I think I am going to figure out my next action!
-L

It's a Small World After All

This weekend I had a thought that I should go into gardening or Botany. I really like plants, gardening and growing things. Add to this the fact that I get literally giddy when I walk into the garden centers of stores (Target and Lowes this weekend). I bought another long flower box, (this sets the count at three long ones now) one large and three smaller transitional plastic pots to plant some new “wildflower” seeds that I got from the dollar spot at Target (yeah I know, I am skeptical about them too…) to see if anything would actually happen with them.
Good news it looks like for my bean plants that I almost killed off, I saw some new buds on them yesterday in the beautiful weather, so I think that they might come back! The pea plants did not seem to be too phased by that bout of cold weather when I just got too excited and antsy and put the majority of my plants outside. Looking back, probably not the smartest move, but oh well.
I repotted a few plants that needed bigger pots – A small plant that my dad gave me for Valentine’s day was actually split into three mini plants, all of which are doing really well now that they have been separated! I also got my mom some Gerbera Daisies and potted them for her and put some ribbon around the pot. I got her a nicer plastic one so that if and when they die, she can keep the pot and reuse it. I really love Gerbera daisies. They are so pretty!
I think that when Derick and I do finally decide to move into an actual house, I want to make a greenhouse and have all sorts of cool plants in there. I think that would be a great hobby for me! Now all I need to do is look into learning more about them. Wouldn’t it be cool to create a whole new breed of Gerbera Daisy?! Ok, ok, now I am starting to sound like my husband…

This weekend, I also did some finishing touches to our house (I know, it should really be “finished” by now, but there always seems to be things to do or improve upon in a house!) I went to Target and bought some bathroom rugs for the downstairs bathroom, since Tucker decided that he did NOT like the one that was in there (sorry Adrienne and AJ, your wedding gift lasted us only 7 months!). I also got a couple more for the upstairs bathroom. My toes really enjoyed them this morning as the rest of the house was fairly chilly this morning.

I also tried the Papa Murphy’s pizza place by our house for the first time. I went in there and got their Taco pizza (really yummy) and a Hawaiian. The girl that made mine was really nice and friendly. She looked at my T-shirt (I was wearing the past summer’s Camp Needlepoint shirt) and commented…”Camp Needlepoint…that is a camp for diabetic kids, right?” I said yes, and then she said that one of her friends went to go there but she passed away recently. I did not hesitate, and asked if it was Alyssa. She said yes, and I told her that I knew her quite well and that I had been her counselor a couple of years ago. Nice bonding moment. I am also more and more aware after chance happenings like that, that the world is quite a small place.
Speaking of camp, I need to see if I can counsel at all this summer. I think that I might be able to inbetween VMUs for the first week, so that would be really fun ☺ I might just save my vacation and take a couple long weekends with Derick to WI or up to Bemidji we have been talking about going up there and hanging out. Jeremy mentioned that he is going to be up there through the end of the month, so it would be fun to go while he is still up there so that we still know someone up there!

On a bit of a sadder note, my Grandpa has been in the hospital off and on for a little while now. His heart is giving out. It is only functioning at 5%. To make matters worse, he fell and broke his leg about a week ago and has been at North Memorial since then. His kidneys have beginning to shut down as well, so they had to take him off some of his medication. So things are not looking well for him. My uncle Don, who lives in North Carolina even flew up the other day, so that never is a good sign. I went to visit him and got him to smile. But other than that, he didn’t even stay awake to talk much, and when he did, it was pretty slurred. It is so sad to see people like that. I guess all we can do is pray for my family – my Grandma especially. She has been having a really hard time with everything. She almost started to cry when she saw that I came to visit at the hospital.

I really like living in MN when it is spring time, because here, you can really appreciate the changing of the seasons! The warmer weather that is coming has made me very thankful! So thankful that today for work, I pulled out a skirt to wear! YAY! Also, this week is the last week of “fall hours.” Next week we are on summer hours. We work more during the week, but then we get to leave at 12:30 on Fridays! Whoo hoo! I love those days! Also, now that the weather is nicer, that means that Tucker gets to go on longer and more frequent walks. I am also hopeful that we can bring him to a dog park close by us as well! I want to see what he does. He is pretty content just to play Frisbee in the open fields behind out house, but I think for his sake and ours, it would be good for him to interact with more dogs!

Alright, I think that is a long enough update for now!
Enjoy!
-L