Procrastination creates a productive day

Have you ever had to do a task that you just kept putting off and putting off, finding a multitude of other (often less-important) things to do instead? Other things, all of which under normal circumstances would be the same things that you would be putting off in order to do some even less important task? Well...guess who's been-there & done-that today? You guessed it! ME!

The day started with G & I sleeping in. He got up & before long, left to go watch a hockey game with his friend & I started cleaning the house. I vacuumed all of the carpets, then I vacuumed all of the baseboards. I did 2 loads of laundry & cleaned the hardwood floors. I organized my closet & got rid of a small bag of stuff. I talked to my mom online & made myself grilled cheese & tomato soup for lunch...I pretty much did it all (ok, so even my procrastination couldn't make me work out...but I digress)...

That is except for working on my job applications. I'm just having the hardest time getting started on these. It is SUCH a huge undertaking with everything that you have to do now. Everyone is going to online applications, even for teaching jobs & it's so tedious to fill out all of their forms (forms that are nearly identical to ones that I already have filled out and saved on my computer, but are not in the same format, so they must be re-typed/submitted). It goes on and on for pages upon pages of references, test scores, awards & organization memberships, essays, short-answer questions, prior experiences, grades/GPA, etc, etc, etc. And that's not even including the 3 federal & state clearances I'm required to apply for & submit, plus the medical exam. After today, I am remembering precisely why I procrastinated so long last year, and that by the time I got around to starting them, I gave up because it was too late to get hired for a teaching job anyway!

Let's hope I can stick with it this time. I got one site's applications done in its entirety today & hopefully I'll get to work on the other one tomorrow...after my boss told me yesterday that she "didn't have anything to do" so she sat at her desk and facebooked for an hour, I knew it was time to start looking for another job. I mean, is it just me, or are those the kind of things that as a supervisor, you just don't do...or if you do, you at least don't tell your employees (who make under $10/hour) about it...Maybe that was my motivation.

Sharing Christmas

My friend Megan is sponsoring a Sharing Christmas "event" on her blog! I hope you can participate, too!

Welcome to our new home! This is the Christmas card that we sent out to family & friends.

As you can see, we didn't do much outside, but some simple lighted pine garlands & I also have a Christmas candle light in each of the front windows. It looks really pretty all lit up at night. Maybe I'll add a picture of that later.

Let me preface this post by saying that this is a very new house & I can't stand the whiteness of it all, but what can I do? We won't be painting until next fall due to waiting out nail pops & such...so with that in mind, please take a look around!

Here is our foyer. Above the door are the cute little snowman corner huggers. So cute!

Walking further in, you will see the closet & basement doors. The closet door is one of my favorite things because it has the advent wreath that my mom made from needle-point when I was little. My brother and I would each take turns putting up a piece each day in December. I always had my favorites like the ballerina, the gingerbread girl & the little orphan Annie doll, while my brother liked the cat, the soldier & the gingerbread boy. Santa was ALWAYS saved to be put up on Christmas Eve and baby Jesus on Christmas day. This is one tradition that will definitely stick around for us.

As we continue through the house, we come to the living room. This is where our tree is. Decorating the tree has always been one of my favorite parts of Christmastime. The tree tells such a story for us, as we don't really have any decorations that aren't near and dear. They are all either ones that we made growing up, were given to us by our parents year-by-year growing up, or were made for me by my grandparents (my grandfather cuts them out of wood & my grandmother paints them). We also have a few that have been given to us by students, but we have to be kind of selective with those since we tend to get smaller trees and the near-and-dear ornaments always get top billing. Can you tell the trunk isn't perfectly centered in this tree? Look how off the tree-skirt looks?!
Beside the tree is our games cabinet where I display the Christmas cards. In our old house, I used to tape them to the basement door, which was right inside the doorway. I loved that set-up and have been struggling to find a new place to display them in this house. It's amazing how new and different everything seems trying to put the same Christmas items up in the new places. I guess that's just a testament to how much of creatures of habit we really are.
And don't you just love the little snowman guy hanging on the handle? He's an old-timey pull-toy. When you pull his string, he seems to say "It's Christmas! YAY!"

Now, we come to the entertainment center in the living room. This is where we keep our stockings (look closely, you can see the one for our kitty, too) and the first of my many nativity sets. This set is the Lenox China Jewels set & my MIL started giving me pieces when Gregg and I first got married. She has been continually adding to the set each Christmas & I have to admit that it is one of my most prized possessions.

Isn't it beautiful?

Also in the living room, we have another of my nativity sets. The kids at our Christmas party last week really enjoyed playing with this one. It's made of fimo or sculpey clay & I think it is so cute! Beside the nativity, you can also see the infamous Christmas tree football. G & his sister spent many a Christmas throwing the poor quilted tree around the house in perfectly-practiced spiral tosses. When we got married, G's aunt made one for him & he was so excited (really, much more excited than any grown man should be for a fabric and stuffing tree!)

As we make our way over into the kitchen, I don't have many decorations to share, but I do have four more nativity sets in this area. Two are on the kitchen/breakfast nook window sill, one is on my onion/potato bin, and the other is a magnetic set on the refrigerator. The big kids (ahem) at the party had a great time playing with these. I'll have to do a followup post later so you can see how the shepherd and a palm tree became playing pieces in a rousing round of Loaded Questions, Adult Version...
And finally, we come to my favorite part of the decorations, the dining room (aka the snowman room). As I mentioned earlier, it was quite an interesting experience this year, trying to find a new place for decorations that had already had their places in our old home for the past 3 Christmases. As I began putting things out, I realized that with all of my snowman decorations, they would all go nicely in the dining room. So, here they are!


Yet another advent calendar - this one is similar to one that G used with his sisters growing up.




I hope you enjoyed the little tour through our home! Please have a happy & safe Christmas! I'll try to make another post with pics from last weekend's Christmas party, too!

busy busy busy

This house has sure been keeping us busy, let me tell you! G & I decided that we did more in this house in two days this weekend than we did in four years at the other house (minus painting, of course!)! We hung curtains, paintings, pictures and mirrors. We unpacked tons of boxes and have enough of the garage cleared out to park a car in there. We hope to have the other side cleared out by the weekend so that both cars will fit! We dismantled all of the boxes that we have unpacked (probably about 50+) and took them back over to G's parents' barn for when his sister moves in a little over a month (wedding bells are ringing soon!).

So why don't you come on in and let me give you a (picture) tour!!!??

First, you walk in the foyer (oh look at the dirty floors! My parents are coming this weekend and I refuse to sweep or mop until the last minute since we're constantly moving stuff through there)...


















To the left of the foyer is G's messy office--oops did I really say that?? Ok, yes, I did - but I hate cords, wires and such just HANGING there - we need a solution to that ASAP!


















To the right of the foyer as you walk in is the dining room! You can see the lovely painting made by G's late grandmother, which we received from his grandfather as a wedding gift. We have to wait a year to paint because of nail pops, but when we get the chance, this room will be a nice, pale blue with blue and brown curtains.




































Next, we come to the living room. We got curtains for this room, but we have to wait for them to be hemmed since I couldn't find the right length. As per the advice of a co-worker of G's, we are going to paint the far-wall (opposite the sofa, where the TV is) a maroony-red color (which will stretch over to the breakfast nook) and then the rest of the walls either a pale, pale gold or a pale beige.



































Now comes the breakfast nook area - sorry this picture is so horribly blurry. I don't know why it did that.


















And now, the kitchen. It's a bit messy here (sorry), but you get the idea. It's definitely one of my favorite places in the house. In fact, I cooked some great meals (meatloaf and chicken parm) here over the weekend!



































Now, let's go upstairs, ok? Here is half of our lovely staircase!
























Here is my messy crafting room (as you can see, I just started setting this up late last night).


















And finally, the master bedroom, closet & bathroom! In the first picture, at the foot of the bed, you can see the beautiful hope chest that my grandparents made us for a wedding gift. My mom made us the quilt on the bed as a wedding gift! Don't we just have such crafty family members?? I think that gene skipped over me :(

And I don't know what's going on with the crazy shadows on the wall in the 2nd bathroom pic! I tried to re-take the pic 4 times and it still turned out that way! Sorry!























































































I spared showing you the pics of the other two bathrooms, the basement, the garage, and the 2 guest bedrooms They kind of all start looking the same, right? Maybe I'll post pics once we get the beds all set up, etc! I hope you enjoyed the tour of our home! Hopefully many of you can come visit soon!

moving...ugh

Moving is stressful...please bear with me...I am promising a blog post next week and maybe some pictures! Thanks for hanging in there!

Oh yeah, and for a fertility update, let's just say that even after 3 years, that nasty hope-bug bit me once again. AF was a week late (I've never had a cycle longer than 31 days) and I had had some mid-cycle spotting, so I decided to test the other day...BFN - what did I expect anyway? How silly of me! :( Still waiting on AF - CD37 - I am terrified that she's on her way out for good and I'm slipping into early menopause - please pray!

(almost) Wordless Wednesday

I'll try to update more later this week, but for now...here's what you get!

Our Home Sweet Home!


















And the new homeowners with their keys (terrible pic of me, sorry!)!

A few more house pics...

...from our quick visit yesterday. Would it be too much to do red in the kitchen? I really really want a red room...and all of my kitchen stuff is apples...

House & other odds & ends

Things have continued to be busy around here. G had a day off of school this week, so we took the opportunity to go to the furniture store and buy stuff...lots of stuff...probably too much stuff in this crazy economy, but they were giving us free financing until 2013, so we figured we couldn't pass up the opportunity. After we bought the furniture, we went to the insurance agent's place and signed paperwork to get our homeowner's insurance all lined up. We have to make lots of calls this week to get our electric in order, as well as the cable. We're still not sure yet what will happen with our internet situation, since we've heard that they don't offer DSL in the area...that's going to be a real bummer if we have to go back to dial-up since we don't want to pay for cable internet (too much $$$). We're probably going to go out some night this week to pick up paint swatches and try to figure out what we want to do there. I have general ideas of what colors I want everywhere. Just nothing concrete. I want a pale green-blue in our bathroom, the same gold we had in our old bedroom for our new one, light gray in G's office, a tan in the living room/breakfast nook, a nice red in the kitchen (if we can pull it off) and a light blue in the dining room. I just have a hard time picking the actual shade.

And now, some pictures...I will be adding more actual pics of the house as soon as G uploads them.

Here are the pieces to our dining room set. We bought the table/chairs & the side-board. G's mom & dad might be getting the china cabinet for us for our Christmas present.