Thursday, November 26, 2015

Thankful 2015

I guess this is just a requisite cheesy Thanksgiving post. I'm writing this on Wednesday to post on Thursday and this morning was a doozy. This seems like a good exercise right now.



I'm (reluctantly) thankful for my job. Beyond the financial resource for us, I'm thankful for the kids I get to see and help grow every day. I'm not going to lie, my job is really, really hard. And there is a lot of the time I don't like it for reasons I won't get into. However, the kids I work with are amazing and I'm glad I'm never bored at work. It's lucky to be in a position to continue to grow and be challenged in my profession.

I'm thankful for our financial situation. We definitely don't make a lot of money but I know we are fortunate to have what we do. And I'm proud that we've made so much progress in our first year of marriage that we're in a much more comfortable place financially than one year ago.

I'm thankful for our new home. I love it so much that I don't even mind my extended commute.

I'm thankful for the cats. They comfort me and make me laugh every day. I think our little home would be kind of sad without them. And I'm thankful that they didn't kill each other when we got Bruce and they now tolerate like each other.

I'm thankful for my family and especially that we live near enough to them to see them on the holidays.

I'm thankful for my husband. He's my best friend and the person I like spending the time with most. I'm thankful that we are able to spend many evenings and weekends together and truly enjoy each other's company. I'm thankful that he's endlessly patient (even when I slam the door because the zipper on my dress broke - possible true Wednesday morning story).

I'm interested to see what good fortune the next year brings us and what I'll be thankful for next year!

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Our Second Home

We hosted Friendsgiving on Friday so when we cleaned up the whole place, I thought it was a great opportunity to finally snap some pictures of our new home. It's come together well and we absolutely LOVE it and the neighborhood. I get kind of emotional when I think about all of the amazing memories we will have here. It was so wonderful to have the space to host 15 friends last night. I can't wait to have family over for Thanksgiving and have many more holidays in this space. Who knows, this might even be the home where we bring home a baby!

Living Room

View walking in the front door

Sunroom


Cody also hopes to put a kegerator/keezer out here

Dining Room

Our new table that I am obsessed with


Bathroom


Kitchen



Bedroom



Second Bedroom

Currently a grooming/gaming room

Requisite dozing cat picture (with second cat photo bombing)





Tuesday, November 24, 2015

First Anniversary Gifts: Paper

For Cody, I made a mosaic of all of our wedding photos and had it printed as a 20"x30" poster. I used a program called Mazaika to make it.



 Cody's gift for me was this menu. He recreated our wedding dinner, down to every detail!




I think it's fun that anniversary gifts can follow a theme and it was cool to see how Cody and I interpreted it for each other. Second anniversary is Cotton!

Monday, November 23, 2015

First Anniversary Celebration

We were lucky to be able to spend the whole weekend celebrating our anniversary!

Friday 11/13

Cody told me he had something planned but wouldn't reveal what. When I finished my workout he even asked me to kill some time at a coffee shop to finish preparations. I came home to candlelight, my favorite wines, music from our favorite movie playing, and an exact replica of our wedding dinner being prepared by Cody!



We had a lovely dinner and watched our favorite movie, When Harry Met Sally.


Saturday 11/14

While our actual anniversary is the 15th, we had our big date planned for Saturday night.

Stop #1 - We drove into downtown St. Paul and walked around Rice Park and past our wedding venue. There was another wedding happening that night, almost 50 degrees warmer than last year!


We went across the street to the St. Paul Hotel where the girls and I got ready on the wedding day and Cody and I stayed that night. We had a cocktail at the St. Paul Grill where we hung out after the wedding.




Stop #2 - Dinner at Heartland in Lowertown St. Paul. 


We had an INCREDIBLE dinner that lasted about three hours.




Stop #3 - We made our way back toward home with the help of Uber and had some final cocktails.



Then back at home I gave Cody his gifts.


Sunday 11/15

We went out for dinner with my parents at Patrick McGovern's, where we had our rehearsal dinner. Then we came home and watched our ceremony and speeches video and had some wedding cake! Our bakery advised against freezing our cake and instead made us a complimentary one this year for our anniversary!


It was an amazing weekend full of love!



Sunday, November 15, 2015

First Anniversary

November 15, 2014, the best day of our lives, was one year ago today. 

Last year this weekend my feeling was of completely overwhelming joy. It was so touching to have so many people come together to support us. The beauty of our surroundings was breath taking. The words people spoke brought tears to my eyes over and over again. My face ached from smiling so much. And I got to say "I do" to the most caring man I have ever met.








This year I feel a sense of deep contentment and security that I thought I felt last year but has deepened tremendously. I love you so much, Cody and I love our life together.


Friday, November 13, 2015

Five Things on Friday 11/13

-one- We moved into our new place on November 1st and have no been able to have our internet hooked up yet. Yesterday we finally had an appointment to have it set up and guess what?! No show. So we are now on day 13 with no internet. I know that this is not an actual problem and that it has actually helped us settle our new home much more quickly but I do feel a little like we've regressed into the dark ages :)

-two- We got our first Blue Apron box yesterday! I used a discount code from NPR and got three meals for $39.95. It's obviously more expensive than if you just grocery shopped yourself but less expensive than going out to eat. They ship all of the ingredients to your door, portioned out, with all of the recipes and you just have to get cooking. I love cooking and this is a way for me to try recipes I wouldn't think of myself. Here's what we got:

Chicken Khao Soi Soup

Lentil Bolognese

Crispy Cod and Spiced Couscous with Acorn Squash


-three- We have a dining room for the first time and we have had so much fun putting it together. I'm going to write a whole post on how we scored an amazing farmhouse table and bench for a totally affordable price. But overstock.com has been great for finding chairs.

We got two of these chairs for the ends of the table for only $155.00


And we got four of these metal chairs for one side for only $75.00! We'll have a wooden bench on the other side of the table.



-four- This week Cody started working part time at a brand new brewery in Minneapolis. He has been studying to become a cicerone (fancy name for a beer expert) and recently passed the first step as a Certified Beer Server. While he's still working full time in politics, this is a really enjoyable thing to do on the side and a great way to earn some extra money for all of our upcoming travels. They opened their doors for the first time on Wednesday and I went in for a beer and to check it out last night. The taproom is amazing and it looks like it will be so much fun!


-five- Sunday is our first anniversary! I can't for a weekend of celebrations!



Linking up here and here for Friday!

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Moving Tips for Lazy People

We moved this last weekend and Cody and I both on several occasions shouted "I hate moving!!" Luckily, we don't plan to do it again any time soon. (Well, last year we weren't planning to move this year so we'll see what happens). Moving can be a great opportunity to get organized and downsize your number of belongings. But I think that's much more necessary if you've been in your home for a long time and have way too many things. We have only been in our place a year and we don't have much stuff. In fact, if we hadn't gotten wedding gifts last fall, we'd have almost nothing. Many of these tips don't work if you're hiring movers. They have rules about how things need to be packed. We rented a UHaul and Cody and his friend Ryan moved everything. We know that once we have a house, doing everything ourselves won't be as feasible. So I guess these are moving tips for cheap people, too.

source


  • Sell as many things as you can. If you sell it you don't have to move it. Better yet, make the buyers pick it up from your place. We sold our giant bookcase, a sound system, and two chairs. We also made a couple hundred bucks! If you're going to buy new things, wait until after you've moved.

  • Minimize the amount of actual packing you have to do. 

  • Leave all of your clothes on the hangers. This can get tricky if they start falling off while moving. So then you can just slip a garbage bag over the clothes and strings around the top of the hanger. We put all of our hanging clothes in my car instead of the truck. But then we could just lift them out, then into the new closets.

  • Leave all of your other clothes in the drawers. They can remove the drawers from the dressers and just carry them into the truck, full of already folded clothes.

  • Pad breakables with clothing to maximize packing space and kill two birds with one stone.

  • Pack spices/other foods in slow cooker or baking pans.

  • Wrap things like picture frames and larger art in blankets and tape it up.

  • Eat all of your food. We put any food we were moving into coolers. But I didn't do any grocery shopping for about 10 days before we moved so that we were forced to finish things.

  • Throw things away. If you can't sell it, chuck it. If you don't you're just going to have to move it again next time when you inevitably don't use it again.

  • One more tip for the cheap people: Don't buy boxes. They're expensive. We've shared some with friends, gotten some from liquor stores, and I've gotten them from work (paper boxes from the copy room). You can also buy and resell moving materials on Craigslist.

We're almost settled in so I can't wait to post some pictures of the new place!

Monday, November 9, 2015

A Little Inspiration

When I'm scrolling through Instagram and I see something that inspires me I always screen shot it. Over time I've collected quite a few so I need to purge my iphone photo library. Here are some of my favorites:


For encouragement:






For inspiration:







On marriage:




On self love:












On principle:







On teaching:




On running:












And just for laughs: