Spring

Spring is here!

We're lucky enough to be having an early and wonderful spring. I've been enjoying this weather quite a bit.

So have our cats:

I love catching them together whenever I have a chance. They are loving the warmer weather and days we have the windows open so they can get some fresh outside smells!

I have also completed another decopage project that is fun and springy!

I love ducks, not as much as penguins of course, but I do like ducks. I thought this was fun for spring. I even did the backside as well.

I used pastel paper and ducky themed wrapping paper on a simple circle ornament picked up at the dollar store! It now hangs in my bathroom as I thought it was a nice appropriate place to put it!

My current work in progress is an actual penguin - he is almost done and I'll post pics of him soon.

This upcoming weekend we're planning to get a start on some of those fun outdoor chores including cleaning out the garage and starting our spring yardwork.

I even don't mind the spring rain that we're going to have today and tomorrow! Can't have fresh green grass and flowers without it.

Welcome spring, welcome. We hope you are here to stay!

Who rocks the most?

So Nate and I are avid music fans and we have a pretty eclectic selection at home. Over a year ago we bought Apple's Airport Express so we could simply stream our music directly from our main "music server" computer.

We love our variety, but of course, as all music fans know, you always want more! It doesn't help that our radio station of choice introduces us to all sorts of new and interesting artists and gets us hooked on their material.

The problem in the past has been by the time we get a gift card for iTunes, or save up a little money to go visit a music shop, we can't remember what we want. Nate came up with a solution to that problem. He owns the website www.rocksthemost.com He has yet to decide what to do with this website (and for the longest time it just had the words "Who rocks the most, I rocks the most" on it as placeholder) and had simply purchased it for the name (what can I say, it's a nerd thing I think). But now, if one were to visit that website, you would see our music wishlist.

Yes I know we could just create a Word document or even handwritten list, but this is more fun. And it sort of fits the "rocks the most" name. I give him points for creativity if nothing else!

Time for another update type post!

Thought I'd do a "what's new with us" post since I haven't in quite awhile.

So, here are the highlights:

- Our walking and jogging is going pretty well. I was pleased and shocked to get through the required three minutes and then some this morning! I guess I am improving as we go!

- Nate is getting to start working more with the server side of IT which is a great step for him, it will give him more experience. The downside is it's alot of evening/night work, last night was a good example, he was tied up from 7:30 to 9:30. The plus side is the more he gets into it the more he should be able to work remotely and still watch TV with me at night and that sort of thing as he works.

- I am moving at work once again. To an office. With four walls, a door and a window! I recently took on the job of making the security badges for HR so I needed a larger space to keep the equipment. While it is an office, it's not terribly much larger than my cube, but I'm not complaining. I am very excited about this move.

- Praise Project is taking a little break through Holy Week and the Easter season, so my parents and I decided to join up with the St. Williams choir to at least sing for the Holy Week services. I have to say, nice people, but man, the music is boring. Also, I was shuffled over to be an alto, which is a bit odd since I have sung soprano for well, as long as I've been singing. I guess I should look at it like a new and interesting challenge...or something like that.

- Nate and I booked a week long getaway to Itasca in May. I am so looking forward to a week away even if it'll pinch us just a bit financially. Thank goodness for tax refunds!

- Speaking of tax refunds we hope to finally replace our dishwasher in the near future. It died in October and while I did not grow up with a dishwasher, I loved having one when we moved into this house. I have sorely missed it, especially if we've had company!

That is about it! I am proud of us for our exercise efforts so far and am very happy that Spring appears to be here to stay!

Twelve

Twelve Years gone by...

Still discovering new things about each other

and in the world around us

Still walking together on this path called life

Still having fun with one another


Still totally and completely in love.

Twelve years gone by since those famous words uttered by Nate "do you want to be a thing?"

My answer is, was and always will be "Yes, I will be a thing with you"

And this "Thing" has been the best "Thing" ever. And I know it always will be.

Happy twelve years of "togetherness" to one half of of the best thing ever.

Photos by Jes Lee Photography

Walk to run

So in our quest to get in shape and exercise more, I have somehow let Nate talk me into doing a program with him called "Walk to Run". Yeah you heard me right. Walk to RUN. This girl is going to attempt to start running.

Stop laughing, I'm serious.

I've made it pretty clear before that I'm not crazy about the idea of running, but this program eases you into it. We do alot of walking in the beginning in fact. Some days you only walk. And I want to help Nate stay motivated so I figured the best way to do it was try to do it with him. I figure if we get into it and it doesn't work out so well I can stop or just do walking with him. But I think it would be neat to try to get into jogging a bit.

The program is 12 weeks long and as I said before, starts out really simple. Yesterday for example we walked for 15 minutes and that was it. Today we walked for five, jogged for one and walked for another five. And that was enough to start!

We'll see how this goes. Along with our pushups and situps I may end up with abs of steel.

You're laughing again aren't you? That's ok, so am I! My main goal simply is better health, that's all. Anything else would be icing on the cake.

A finished decopauge project

I can finally share some pictures of my first finished decopauge project. Well, the first one that turned out and that I'm really proud of anyway. This is a plaque I made for my friend from college Justine, who is expecting her first baby next month. I know Justine reads the blog sometimes so I couldn't share the photos until I had given her the gift at her shower a week ago.

We found some adorable wrapping paper with Sesame Street characters on it. Then we took and covered a round plaque with pastel colored printer paper. On top of that we decopauged cut outs of the characters and the words Twinkle Twinkle Little Star that is also part of the wrapping paper. We finished it off with some decorative ribbon around the edge and to hang it up with!

I think the finished project is quite adorable! I sure hope Justine likes it too!

My current projects are a small box I'm covering with flowers - let me tell you, it gets hard on the eyes after awhile and a penguin that I'm covering with black and white wrapping paper we found. It's been fun to be crafty so far!

Getting in shape

So Nate and I are making an effort to get in shape. I have been pretty good about regular exercise for awhile now, but really wanted to work on strength training. Nate just really wants to get back into exercise all together. So, we're helping each other.

Over the weekend Nate got himself some fancy new tennis shoes. They are really nice and will work whether he is doing walking or jogging. A friend of his also has a watch that he's selling Nate that helps keep track of steps, miles, laps, etc. As the weather continues to improve it will be easier to get outside and get into walking or even jogging. I am also hoping to start biking more again too.

For strength training we've taken a couple of different challenges. We found an online program called "One Hundred Pushups" that first of all teaches you how to do them correctly and then gets you into a program where you do so many sets every other day or so working your way up to eventually being able to do one hundred. Right now I'm up to seven, ha ha. There's a similar program for situps so we've started that one as well. One day we do the push ups, the next we do the sit ups. It's intense, but it seems to be making me stronger!

I am happy that we're working on this together and can help each other out. I look forward to when we can get outside and go for walks in the evenings! I think we're getting close to that point!