2009 on rewind

This really was a great year, and a great way to end the decade. Some of the great highlights of 2009:
-Valentines Day. I'm a spoiled girl that is for sure. Went to dinner at Flemings Steakhouse, Terry put in last order for Lobster but then Bill Clinton put in his order so Terry got the shaft, rushing through dinner to get to Stubb's to go see Citizen Cope.
-SXSW 2009: Em/Linds style. Emily flying in on a Wednesday to San Antonio, out too late, up too early, boat tour, drive up to Austin, drink at Fado's, snap decision to go to La Zona Rosa for Tori Amos, all day Shenanigans Friday, Rachel Ray party with Terry, Em and I in frilly dresses going into a bar where everyone is a biker in black leather and biker grear to see Scorpion Child which Terry LOVED.
-Austin. Music(Adele, Sugarland, Billy Currington, Bob Shneider, Erin McCarley, Aaron Wright, Matt Nathanson, Jacks Mannequin, Scorpion Child, Tori Amos, the Spazmatics), the Memories (Katie's Booze Cruise, Jet Skiing with Mom, all the nights downtown, Happy Hours at Chuys and McCormick and Schmidts, Billy's drives down from Dallas, Dakota, Biz visits from Michigan).
-Graduating from Johns Hopkins with a Masters in Biotechnology. Beyond stressed out in the days leading up to it, thought Terry was going to be done with me, not sleeping for 2 days then passing out while waiting to pick him up at the airport and making him wait over an hour while my phone was on vibrate, getting my diploma, having Mom and Terry there with me, Mom so proud made me proud, driving to Rockville to celebrate with all my closest friends, Terry turning 35 at midnight, driving to Ocean City for the night, crab feast, sun tans, up to see family, seeing how much all the girls grew.
-One of my favorite days of 2009 wasn't even planned. Babysat Dakota in the morning, called up my girlfriend Katie, scheduled jet skis for an hour on Lake Travis, hung out at Carlos and Charlies, Terry and Jake met up, saw Scorpion Child and Stain'd, all day was spur of the moment, living in the moment, and was so memorable.
-Next stop: St. Louis. Having to say goodbye to good friends and a great city in Austin, packing and packing and packing, driving up alone a week before Terry for two interviews at Wash. U. School of Medicine, interviewing on a Tuesday, getting an offer on that Thursday, accepting the job with the crazy boss which turned out to be one of the best decisions I've made in a long time, starting the job that following Monday, living in the duplex and feeling suffocated, starting to explore the city, Cardinals baseball games, going up the Arch, excited for the new adventures here in 2010.
-Buying our first home. The multitude of houses to view before we decided on "the one". The nerves, the anticipation, the happy tears, driving in downtown Belleville looking at other homes and getting the call that the house was ours, stopping at the closest bar for a celebratory drink and not being able to find that bar since, move-in day, slowly and surely making the house our Home.
-Mrs. Lauren Neimeyer. One of my roommates from college tied the knot, flew into Baltimore the morning of the wedding, Allison picked me up and we went scouting for her gift, met up with Ray, long and glorious nap in the hotel room, two hearts became one, pre-game room, beautiful reception, reminiscing, after-party room, taking 500 bobby-pins out of Chars hair, Allison snoring all night long, crying pulling up to the airport.
-Our trip to Napa in October. Meeting all the interesting people at the wine tasting our first night, adventuring into Napa Valley, so many laughs, so many smiles, our night out with Newman and his dad in San Fran, our night at the Intercontinental in San Fran, the Eagles/Raiders game in Oakland, Spengers fishmarket in Berkeley, more wineries. All so beautiful, so many cherished memories.
-Mr. and Mrs. David Taylor. One of my best friends got married this winter. Flew in the morning of the wedding, met up with Em, lunch with Em and Rebs, rushing to get to the church on time, David so happy, meeting up with Eric and Julia and Audrey before reception, helping Keith with his groomsmen speech, listening to him butcher it, crying during Drews speech about the 4M's, Dancing, Cheers, After-party, Jake Biz and Brian, Quality Time with David, Terry being an incredible boyfriend, not wanting the night to end.
-Susan's Annual Christmas Party. Always such a great event but this year even better. Was so good about trying to surprise everyone up until the last week when I broke to the brothers. Still got to surprise Kristin and the girls which was so worth it, spending time getting to know Chloe, getting excited talking about Jeff coming to help us with the house, Terry drinking a little too much at the party but letting loose with the family and showing them even more reasons why I love him so much, Terry making a wonderful meal for the Lincoln crew, spending all day with the girls Sunday. I really have the best family anyone could ask for.
-All the other little memories. Late night phone calls, constant reminders of how lucky I am to have my friends and family in my life, Jenna's conversation with Terry asking him if we will get married like Mommy and Daddy, having a great job that is rewarding and motivating, being in love and having daily reminders of how fortunate I am to have him, the 4-month (and counting) kitchen project, nights for dinner at North in Austin, opening a great bottle of wine on Saturday Steak Nights, Em visiting St. Louis and Belle-vegas and Oktoberfest, weekend in Chicago with Billy and Jordan with Cubs tickets 8 rows behind home plate and partying with Pete Wentz, Ashlee Simpson and Plain White T's, Bulldogs football game in Champaign IL with Billy and Jordan coming to visit, all of my mom's visits (good or bad) all over the country to spend time with us, and thousands I'm not mentioning.

Here's to a new year filled with happiness and hopefulness, smiles and cheerful tears, friendships to fill the heart, family to fill the soul, and most of all, I hope there is always love.

Oh Dining Room, Oh Dining Room, How lovely are your colors

Hope that you all have a wonderful Christmas! Lots of pictures in this post of what we did over the long Christmas weekend. It's still not 100% but it's certainly a 180 from what it was as of last Wednesday.

Here's how it was when we were looking at the house:

Yes my friends, that is aqua blue....in the dining room. And the picture doesn't truly do it justice because you dont see the blue flowery curtains on the window in this picture. So first step was to prime that awful color goodbye. I tried taking the picture from the same place in the dining room rather than shots of different places in the room. Note to those of you who have not had the luxury of priming....do not get it on your skin. It does NOT come off like regular paint.

Bye Bye Blue!!!

Next, we put up the blue tape for where the chair rail is going to go. On DIY Network, it told us that is goes roughly 1/3 of the way up the wall. We set it just a little higher than 1/3 bc we're painting to two different drastic colors on each side. We started with the light tan on top.

The one thing that is already driving us nuts, and it's one of those things that no one else will notice but we always will, is that we really like how the color looks in the daylight....not so much when it's dim. You can kind of see a difference between the picture above (taken at night) and the next picture (during the day). At night, there's almost a yellow tint in it.

So after the top was completed (unfortunately I had to do 2 coats), I started on the bottom, which is called Tree Bark. Terry took a picture of me hard at work :-)

I ripped the tape off this morning, so the next picture, you can get a sense of what it will really look like once Terry puts up the white chair rail. You can definitely see the color difference on the top between the previous picture (taken Sunday night) and the next picture (taken this morning).

One more room (almost) completed! Yay!!!

Favorite Christmas Songs

I found this online and just had to put it up. I know that many of you may not put this one on your Top 10 list of christmas songs, but personnaly my christmas is not complete without it. Thankfully the song isn't indicative of our true feelings at Christmas (Terry loves hanging lights, my "in-laws" are fantastic and incredibly missed this year, I love sending our Christmas cards, we found our Christmas Tree a week before Thanksgiving for $15, etc.) but by the 9th thing at Christmas, I am laughing hysterically when it gets to the screaming kid and the guy putting up the lights.




The song that makes me cry every year. I can hear any other artist sing it and I'm fine, but Celine's voice does it to me.



Last but not least, gotta have this one every year! Was more fitting last year, but it's still one of my favorites!




So, I hope your Christmas isn't too much of a pain, that you have a night that is quite divine, and here's wishing you a Merry Christmas from the bottom of my heart!

MYLY,
Lindsey

All I want for Christmas is .... a free (and skilled) painter, carpenter, electrician, interior designer, and demolition crew.

That isn't too much to ask for right?!

While all of you will be celebrating the holidays with family and friends, cozily unwrapping presents by the Christmas Tree with your Hot Chocolate (or Hot Toddy's) in hand, Terry and I will be tearing into the house. We opted not to spend money on big gifts so that we could spend more money on things we want for the house. Stockings are the only thing that we are doing, so that will be fun! Right now the mantle has 8 stockings on it, and I finally have everything for his 4.
Our Christmas isn't going to be as wonderful as Christmases past. We are all alone this year, no going to visit anyone, or anyone coming to visit us, so it's going to be very strange. I already told Terry that Christmas music is going to be playing all day, and you can all imagine how excited he was at the thought of that. I think his response was, "Please don't do that to me". Ha. Our Christmas is however going to be filled with lots of fun and prepping around the house. This past Sunday I primed the dining room, so no more awful blue, it is just currently in a stark white state. My plan on Christmas morning is to have the dining room painted and have the curtains up by nightfall. We decided to do the room in two colors, the top half above the chair rail will be a cream tone (the color is called ponytail), and the bottom half a dark brown (can't remember the name right off hand but a cross of mocha and dark chocolate). Fingers crossed it looks good with the curtains we had in the living room in Round Rock.
Then, the weekend is going to be the never-ending continuation of working on the Kitchen cabinets. The ones that are done really are beautiful, but had I known this whole process was going to take this long, I think I may have opted for new cabinet doors over re-facing and re-staining them ourselves. I don't have any pictures right now, but I'll put them in soon. I'm not sure if Demo'ing one of the bathrooms is on the to-do list this weekend, but that's another possibility. Also, the weekend is going to be filled with cleaning up and organizing for the upcoming brigade of friends and family coming to visit in January. Braga will be here Dec. 30th-Jan 4th, Jeff will be here Jan 8th-11th, and Allison will be here Jan 15th-18th. So, yah, the cabinets are probably not going to be finished until March. Only 6 months since Terry started them....no biggie.

What's on your Christmas list? And more importantly, have you been naughty or nice this year?

MYLY,
Lindsey

happiness = homemade cookies = weight gain ≠ happiness

I dont like the math involved in the title, but man is it accurate.


Last night, after working a 9 hour day, I came home to make cookies for my boss and our real estate agent. Most of you know the baking fiasco during Thanksgiving with my mom, but needless to say there were leftover supplies, one of those being Reese's Peanut Butter Chips. I made the recipe on the back of the bag for Chewy Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies (link provided). The Devil....straight up! It yields 4 1/2 dozen and I had to have found "flaws" in at least 6 and therefore had to eat them to get rid of them. New favorite cookie hands down. I am a chocolate chip cookie-monster, and I made those and white chocolate chip and didn't even touch those 5 batches.

Yes, I'm going to go to the gym after work, but it's bad that I know while I am there, all I am going to be thinking about is getting home to eat more of those cookies. Agh!

Not sure where to even begin....so I'll start here

Only a few of you will even know about this blog-ness monster I've decided to start, so I figure that the first post may as well get it all out there and it will be improved upon in posts to follow.

My reasoning behind this blog is that there are quite a few of you that I just dont keep in touch with as much as I wish that I could. This in no way is a New-Years Resolution, frankly I think those are a waste of time and they start the year off with failure because lets be real...who really achieves their New Years Resolutions?! This is just my little way of hopefully keeping my close friends in-the-know of my life, which is exactly where I want them. So, I think this is a good list to start with:
Goal 1: Keep updates on home improvements. I've been awful about telling people all the improvements we are doing to the house, so this can be the perfect place to track the changes. It's a continuous work in progress, but it's all new to us and it's getting better and better by the day. Hopefully pictures will be included, fingers crossed that I can figure out how to do that on here.
Goal 2: What is semi-new and needs some serious improving is my waistline. Well I guess in actuality its not my wasteline but rather my thunder thighs and "apple-bottom" booty that have taken on their own life-force. I need a place to gripe, make fun, and motivate my pear-shaped self to get it together. Your comments will be expected during these posts. :-)
Goal 3: See St. Louis. Strangely enough, since we bought the house I have definitely become a homebody. Or it may be that I'm a homebody because I have not made any friends here. Either way, I want to take in this city with all that it has to offer. Luckily, January is a jam-packed month of people coming in to visit, and there are many promises of more visits in the coming months, so hopefully there will be posts of Saint Louieee.
Goal 4: In the past year or so, I have definitely become a bookworm. These posts will obviously be more spread out, but just wanting to keep an account of what I'm reading and my thoughts about it after its completion.

Ok, there's my plan. Things may be added (vacations, big events) or deleted (my weight improvements or lack there-of may have to be put in the closet), but there is definitely not material lacking for these 4 goals.

lets talk soon,
MYLY (Miss you, Love you)