Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Some pictures of the winter wonderland outside. I have to be honest, I didn't even go outside to take these pictures. It's just too cold and too snowy. haha Chris took these pictures on his lunch break.

I was thinking about going to get groceries until Chris came inside and showed me these pictures of my car.

Notice how the snow has almost gone up over the wheels? Good times.

Dave's Birthday

December 19th was Dave's birthday. Chris and I headed back to Scotia on Thursday and stayed until Wednesday. Here's some pictures of the celebration.


Opening presents and funny cards from all the kids.


Paul and Kara resting up before heading out to their sweater party.

Marena plays it cool behind her laptop.

Mike, ever the animal-lover, carries around Shay, Paul and Kara's boxer.
All dressed up ... and a little scary. (I love Kara in the background of this picture).


Okay ... really scary. haha

Two Blue Walls

Chris and I no longer live in a plain, white-walled apartment. Yay! I picked out a gorgeous light blue color to paint the main wall of our living room and the small wall in our entry way. It looks great in here. In my opinion, a little color on the walls can perk up any room and really improve the atmosphere in there. It's a very calming blue.

Thanks to the hooks my mom sent me, I was able to hang the shelf/coat rack Chris and I picked out at Michaels. We bought it unfinished, so I painted and decoupaged it. Turns out it's a great place to display our growing collection of Christmas cards. :-) It's also so nice not to have to hang our coats over the dining room chairs and clutter that area up even more than it already is.

OOOOOrrrrreeeeeoooooooo

Because I haven't put up any of my crazy cat lady picks in a little while ...

Oreo sure is one chill cat. I think I'd trade lives with him any day. Nothing he has to do but eat and sleep. And when he feels so inclined, he gets to lay on our laps and get pet.

In the first picture, Oreo makes the hike up to the top of a folded up comforter. Exhausted, he decides it's time for a rest.


After the cat nap, Oreo plays with his mouse. Later, he naps again. Then he eats. Then he naps. And so on.


His evenings seem to be the only time he gets a little exercise. This is the time when Chris chases him around the apartment. Oreo's only defense against this is to just play dead, as you seen the picture to the right.

Life = ahhhhhh

Such Creative Whimsy finally has a pretty graphic on our shop's site on Etsy.com. It's just something I made from a picture I took in Jamaica, but at least it's something nice to look at on the site. Only one item for sale in our shop still ... but that'll change soon enough.

Been busy lately trying to get my car officially registered for NY, getting new insurance, figuring out a direction in life, and so on. Basically, I'm discovering that the transition to becoming an adult is hard.

Also, I'm realizing that not taking a GRE at the end of my undergraduate career was a mistake. I recently decided that I'd like to apply to grad school, but I have no test scores to submit. This means that for the next few weeks, I'm going to have to cram like crazy so I can take it and submit my scores before the grad school application deadlines. Fun stuff, right? The lesson here, kids: plan ahead. Cover your bases from the get go.

Oh! I forgot to mention this great online boutique I found. It's called Lavender Hill Studio . If you're looking for awesome mosaic works, this is the place to look. The artist is awesome.

It's beginning to look a lot like ...

Our new tv

Our new flat screen tv finally arrived! It's funny how things never look that big in the store, and then when you get them into your small-to-moderate-sized apartment, you realize that you just purchased a very, very large product. lol It's actually much larger than these pictures seem to make it appear.

But no matter. This thing is awesome!

Such Creative Whimsy

Well, the shop is more or less up. We found this wonderful website called Etsy (www.etsy.com) that is a vendor for buying and selling handmade goods. There are so many original items and interesting artwork up there, we knew this would be a good fit for us for a while.

You can view our shop at http://www.suchcreativewhimsy.etsy.com. It's still under construction, but I'm hoping to have it looking great by the end of the week. And hopefully we'll have a few more of our items up there soon too. All things to come.

You can also fing a little widget on the sidebar of this blog displaying the one item we have up so far. :-) I hope you all enjoy. Go there in a few days to see the fun graphics I come up with to go on the shop page.

Adventures at a Christmas Tree Farm

This past weekend, Chris and I headed up to Hannibal to Beckwith's Christmas Tree Farm. We rode on a wagon pulled by a big red tractor out to the trees, actually crossing over a river ... (over the river and through the woods ...)

Chris and I scoured the farm and picked out the perfect tree. ... Well, it was a little big, but Chris took care of that problem when he cut it down with his trusty hand saw.
They had this neat machine that wrapped the tree up for us so we could take it home.
Our pretty Christmas tree skirt.
The finished product. It'd have to say this is my best first Christmas tree ever. :-)

A Double Wedding Reception

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, my brother and new sister-in law had their wedding reception back in Michigan. The fun part was that it was a joint reception with her sister and sister's new husband. Basically, this was one big reception. lol It was a great night, though. Everyone had a lot of fun and the whole thing went just as smoothly as a "regular" reception. haha

Pictured above from left to right: My brother Adam, his wife Andrea, her sister Emily, and Emily's husband Nick.
Since I was "off-duty" as photographer for the night, all pics here are courtesy of my dad. :-) My only responsibility was to give the toast for Adam and Andrea. I cried through the entire thing. lol Everyone said "good job" to me, but I'm not sure they could even understand what I was saying through the sobs. hahaha Oh well, at least everyone knows it was from the heart.

Souvenirs from Jamaica ... via Michigan

During our visit back to Michigan for Thanksgiving and my brother's reception, my mom gave us the souvenirs she had collected for us in Jamaica. Why she felt she needed to give gifts to people who were down there with her, I have no idea. lol But we certainly appreciated it. The scarf she bought us doubles as an absolutely gorgeous table cloth. It even gave me the motivation to clean off the table and declutter that area. A $2 mail sorter certainly proves it's worth by getting the papers off the table and creating more space.

Here's a detail of the table cloth. Stenciled dolphins remind us of Jamaica even when it's cold outside. The blue color goes perfectly with our pictures of the ocean that we already have hanging on the wall behind the dining table and chairs.

Speaking of the cold, I bought Chris and my very first ornament together. I thought it was very appropriate since this weekend we will be going to buy our first Christmas tree together this weekend. In fact, it will pretty much be my first real tree in 15 or 20 years. We're hoping it doesn't bother my allergies too much. We've read that the white pine is good for people with allergies because it doesn't have a strong scent, so we might try to find one of those. So excited to start getting all sorts of pretty Christmas decorations for our apartment. I already bought a nice felt tree skirt that I'm sure will be perfect for Oreo to take naps on.