At least someone is enjoying the snow!

Some pictures

I took this picture a couple weeks ago, can you tell what it is?
Spot was laying there surveying the world as he usually does when it started raining. When I went out to get him, this is what I saw and I thought it was kind of cool.

Daisy and Spot were hiding from the vacuum yesterday. I left it running so I could quick grab the camera. Don't they look like a yin-yang (if only spot had a white nose)?

We had a lovely snow this afternoon:
30 seconds later:

Projects

Its tough being home all day every day, wanting to update and decorate our house when our budget is a little tighter and we shouldn't be buying any new things right now. The obvious answer is for me to get a job. Instead, I've been doing this:




First the night stand. The story that I've heard is that Mom M. and/or Oma found it at a garage sale for cheap many years ago and gave it to Scott with the suggestion of refinishing it. Well the refinishing never happened and it got dusty and stained (maybe it was stained before - I don't know). Anyway, it wasn't so pretty and definitely did not fit in with the awesome new paint and fabulous duvet that Scott just loves (not!). So we found some minwax and borrowed Mom and Dad M.'s belt sander and on a nice Saturday I sanded and stained away.
I forgot to take a before picture but here's a during - this was actually the second coat which was done on election day. I also did a plant stand that I've had for awhile to match it.

Sitting on that old night stand was a white lamp. I don't know the story behind it, and it wasn't particularly ugly, just a little boring. So I taped off some stripes and found "Prowler Purple" spray paint at the hobby shop and sprayed to my hearts content. Seriously it took about 12 coats.


I love it! Our bedroom looks much more adult and less college apartment, although the new carpet will help even more. No word on when that will happen but I think soon. Again with the tight budget and holidays and all.... But the carpet needs to come before Jan. 4th when who knows how many women will be coming over for Jen's baby shower. We'll need to use the basement to fit everyone and the carpet down there is NOT presentable. But Scott has done a lot of work already towards making our basement livable (I guess I should take pictures of his work too but later) so the carpet should follow soon.

The latest projects have been a long time coming. One is a design that has been floating around my head for a couple years, and the other is a design that Scott and I came up with a couple weeks ago. I don't own a lot of jewelry (I swear that's not a hint, Scott...) but what I do have has been just sitting out on my dresser due to a lack of somewhere to put it. I didn't want a large or fancy box since there isn't that much and I'm just not really a fancy person. And of course being who I am, there was also a lot of random other stuff sitting out on my dresser.


Here's box 1:


And box 2 - this one's my favorite!


Scott wishes he had one...
So here's my dresser now:

Much better. I'm not sure what to do this week... Any suggestions?

Cara introduced me to the Pioneer Woman a while ago for photography info, and since then I've also loved reading her cooking/recipes. Even tried two of them the other night (fabulous!). Anyway, there was a post today that I wanted to share. I'm not posting for the plea to sponsor (although I am all for that), but his discussion of faith and perspective. Read it!

Entertainment

Spot has a special prance in his jump off the steps that we love to laugh at. He was a little tired out already here, I'll have to get a better clip someday right when we start playing.

And I just have to post this - here is a shot of how much Scott and I (ok, Scott - but I did help bag) raked up on Saturday...




Here are a few pictures of the yard taken today...

I didn't point the camera up, but there are still leaves up there!!

Scott here again. So, the last couple of weeks saw Laura and I go to AA to watch UofM lose to Toledo. That was not good, so no pics will be posted. :) It still was a fun time, though, and we got to see Laura's friends Joyce and Sarah!

This past weekend we watched the State/UofM game at Jeff & Jerilynn's.... Again, not good, so no pics. ;)

Sunday, we were able to to to Westend CRC to witness the baptisms of our nieces Jennalyn and Lydia.

That about covers the last few weeks. Laura continues to go stir crazy waiting for something to happen. Her tentative plan is to now go back to school for her LPN, followed by an RN. But, that wouldn't start until January, so until then she has been/will be "puttering" around the house. Although her latest thing is to be an answer person for ChaCha.

Well, that is about it for now....

New and Exciting

The most exciting thing in recent events: Scott finally gave in and let us buy a freezer! That doesn't really sound that exciting but we got a fabulous deal and now we don't have to be afraid of opening the door on the freezer in the kitchen without everything spilling out. And I have a place to put all of the baked goods. We went apple picking so I've made apple brownies, apple bread, apple scones, apple crisp.... It gives me something to do during the day. Today I'm trying apple muffins.
I also made a very exciting discovery. Spaghetti squash! I saw Rachael Ray make it a couple weeks ago, then saw one in the produce dept so I bought it. We tried it last night and it was so good! And it makes a ton! Scott maybe doesn't love it quite as much as me, but he's a good sport about trying new things (haha, like he has a choice). :)
So I guess that sums up my life of not working - I spend it in the kitchen. My jeans are getting a little tight. :)

Vacation

First of all, a belated congrats to Jeremy and Marilee on their new baby girls, Jennalyn and Lydia. Scott and I like that we don't have to fight over who gets to hold the baby. :)

Well since I have all the vacation time in the world right now and Scott had a few days left, we decided to head up north for a few days of camping last week. We spent Wednesday night at Wilderness State Park, which was VERY COLD! Thursday we went up to Tahquamenon falls and explored a little bit and camped there that night. Friday we went to Pictured Rocks and found out that dogs are really not welcome there. So we did what we could with them, and then on Saturday we left them in the car for awhile to do a hike. Then we headed to Indian Lake and the Big Spring. That was pretty cool. And another cold night! Sunday was a long drive home. I wish we took a picture of the car because it was packed like a puzzle to fit everything and still leave room for us and the dogs. I had just enough room in the front for my feet. :)

We have tons of pictures but here are just a few:
Edit: The rest are at flickr

We used the small backpacking tent and our air mattress filled the entire thing! But at least it fit...

At Tahquamenon falls

Spot decided to dig a small hole. He kept laying in it but it only fit about a third of his body.

A family pic

Changes

Scott and I are laughing because it feels like we moved. I packed up a ton of stuff during my week off, and now I have to unpack it all - it just happens to be right back where it was. :)
I moved to Ann Arbor and worked at a fabulous new job for a whole 6 days. NSF was great and I LOVED the job. However I slept only a couple hours a night the whole first week just because I was stressed. I don't think either of us thought it would be so hard for Scott to find a good job there. But even if he did, I think he really wanted to stay at GE. Either way, he was going to have to commute, or we were both going to have to commute from Lansing, we were going to have to finish up our house to try and sell it, and we both agreed that we wanted to continue attending Brookside and our small group, and eventually raise our kids in Grand Rapids. So after a miserable week missing Scott, and a great weekend (getting lots of sleep) with him, and another sleepless night before having to drive back to Ann Arbor and go back to work on Tuesday, I decided it just wasn't going to work. A job isn't worth all of that. So I did drive in to NSF Tuesday morning but I was pretty certain by the time I got there what I was going to do. I felt bad, especially since they wanted me to stay another couple weeks but at that point I just wanted to go home. I finished up the day Tuesday and we "parted on good terms".
So now I'm struggling a bit with not working, and knowing I'm never going to get a good job like that in my actual field again. I need to find a job but its hard to find motivation to apply to jobs that don't sound so interesting. I know something will pop up eventually though. And in the meantime I get to unpack. And Scott has reluctantly given me the go-ahead to start decorating this house a little (ie putting up pictures, etc) since it looks like we won't be going anywhere for a while.

More Busy-ness

We actually got a weekend to ourselves a couple weeks ago, but all the other weekends have been pretty busy. We got to go to Ryan and Mary's reception at the Frederik Meijer Botanical gardens in July. I don't have any pictures of them so here's us instead. :)




The following week was Jenny and Thom's wedding (Jenny is Scott's cousin). It was a fun time at the reception as you can see from the ladies on the dancefloor.




That weekend we spent at the Shack in White Cloud. The whole family got together to celebrate Grandpa and Grandma's 55th wedding anniversary. We went out on paddleboats, played with goats, horses, and a weird cow, played shuffleboard, ping pong, and board games, and ate banana splits at 8:30 every night!




Last weekend we went camping with Dave and Michelle near Higgins Lake. Camping is never very clean, but with Spot and Mia along we got extra dirty (so did they). The dogs got to go swimming and Spot has finally seemed to conquer his fear of the cable after many hours being tied to a tree. Daisy spent the weekend at the kennel - not worth trying to deal with her around other dogs! They both slept for a couple days after.




So its been fun. The next couple weeks are going to be a little crazy but I'll get into that later. A lot is changing. :)