New Floors

Um, so did I mention that we've been doing a little work around our house? And by "we" I mean Jerrod... I'm no good at these kinds of things. And if 7 1/2 years of marriage have taught me anything, it's that when a man is working on projects around the house, it's best to stay out of the way. Don't ask what's wrong. Don't try to help unless asked. Just go about your merry little way. It causes much less marital conflict this way.

Our latest project (see, I said "our" again - the only help I gave was picking stuff out!) has been putting new hardwood floors in our bedroom. It's this gorgeous Brazilian Teak that we got at Lumber Liquidators for $2.99 a foot, which is wood flooring talk for dirt cheap. It is an extremely hard wood, which also means that it's extremely hard to put together. Needless to say, my husband was not a happy camper for a few days. And neither was I after sleeping in our guest bed for 5 or 6 nights. So, my apologies to all our guests - I didn't realize that bed wasn't so comfy. I think I'm gonna have to get a foam thingy for the top. Of course everytime I say this, my friends tell me that I don't really want my guests to stay that long anyway...

Anyway, here are the pics of the new floor, minus the baseboards, which have yet to go in. I painted that wall purple right before the floors went in. It still needs another coat, but at least it's close. Sorry for the poor picture quality. I may need another camera soon. And I really should take pics in the daytime instead of at night!

And he even did the closet! Yes, this is my closet. I know you're jealous. This is half the reason we bought the house. And if you think it looks big in the pictures you should see it in real life. Before the shelves and stuff went in, my MIL told me I could use it for a nursery...

Fall Fashion is Fun!

Okay, so I haven't posted in forever, so I promise this will be a good one. If you only get to read one post this season, this is the one you don't want to miss! :) I learned a lot on this subject, so I think this counts for Jo-Lynn's carnival over at Musings of a Housewife.

For those who don't know me, I love clothes. I love fashion. I L-O-V-E shopping!!! And I decided that since I don't really "need" any more clothes, I am only going to shop for the latest fashions. Of course, I had to research these first. So, I'll save everyone else the trouble, and just tell you right now what I discovered is "in" for fall/winter 2009/2010. (Please check out all the links - very cute stuff!)

• Capes. I'm pretty sure this is something that only looks good on people who are tall and thin since it has no structure and doesn't define a waist, to quote Stacy and Clinton. A coat with a nice neckline might be a nice compromise, however.
  
• Plaid, plaid, plaid, and more plaid. I just LOVE this coat. I just couldn't justify the cost, however, for something that would only be in style one winter, so I got this one instead. I couldn't find it online at Target, but that's where I purchased it. Here's the plain black version.



• Leather. Please stick to jackets and accessories for this one. Unless you are named Fergie and sing with the Black Eyes Peas, leather pants are a big no-no!


• Black is back, baby! And dark gray. And navy. And all combinations of dark neutrals, aparently. This is one trend I can get behind. Especially when it looks this good.


• Chartreuse. Can anyone really wear this color? Maybe that's why I had trouble finding pictures.



• Hot pink. I love bright colors. I realized however that I now have nothing to wear for fall, since I don't own much pink. How tragic for me that now I have to do more shopping...

• Jewel tones. Gorgeous. And very flattering for almost everybody. Oh, and I got this great purse at Target. I keep thinking it's pink. My friends say it's purple (and so does the webiste, but I swear it's not this dark in person). Either way, it's a keeper. I just bought these shoes to go with it! And I love, love, love this necklace. I'm having a very talented friend make a similar one for me.
• Thigh-high boots. Why, oh why would anyone do this? This is just a tragedy for all mankind. I have another name for these boots, but I can't even say it without offending a lot of people. For the more modest and, ahem, "normal" consumer, I'd stick with some knee high boots. They go great with pants or skirts and will be usable for years to come. And since black and leather are in this season, this is what I'd stick with in the boot department. I like these myself...


• Sheer or lace garments. Or accessories. Check out these cute shoes.


• Fur. Um, no. Maybe in small amounts and only the fake kind.


• Sparkles, sequins, jewels, and metallics. And not just for night. In small amounts (and paired with appropriate work attire), they are good for day as well. You can start with an accessory or be a little more brave and go with this gold skirt.


• One-shoulder garments. This shirt from Old Navy is an inexpensive way to play with that trend.


• Boyfriend jeans. I bought this pair pictured here from Old Navy this weekend for a mere $19. I'm not sure about wearing them rolled up like this (what shoes do you wear?), but they are very cute uncuffed as well.


• The 80's. Wasn't this decade bad enough the first time around? But no, shoulder pads and boyfriend blazers are back. But if you can actually remember the 80's the first time around, you are probably too old to be wearing any of this!

So, that's what's out there. Time to go shopping, ladies!

100 Things About Me

So, since this is my 100th post, I thought I'd steal an idea from Wendy and post 100 things about me.

1. My middle name is Geniece.
2. I'm 31.
3. I'm 5', 5".
4. My natural hair color is brown (and much darker than it used to be).
5. My eyes used to be blue, but now are more gray than anything.
6. I'm a Registered Dietitian.
7. I work 3 days a week (currently Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday).
8. I live in Idaho but work in Oregon.
9. I LOVE to sleep in late.
10. I'm not a morning person.
11. I bought a new alarm clock that wakes you up to nature sounds to try to help motivate me to get up earlier. (I won't set the regular alarm clock, since I hate the sound.)
12. I love giraffes.
13. I hate ketchup - yuck!
14. And eggplant. And NO I don't need to try it fixed the way that you love. Everyone always says this, and I've had it fixed every way you can imagine, and it's still terrible. Kind of like a soggy mushroom.
15. I like carrots in anything, but I hate them by themselves - cooked or raw. They make me want to puke.
16. I'm always late for everything - only by 5 or 10 minutes, but I just can't seem to break this habit.
17. I hate exercise. I can't figure out why people do it on purpose.
18. Conversely, I've been trying to exercise more.
19. When I was little, I had a doll that I carried around with me everywhere called Yellow Baby (yes, she's wearing yellow and has yellow hair - so original I know, but I was 2).
20. I still have my Yellow Baby.
21. My dog Bear chewed all the fingers off of one hand of my Yellow Baby before we got him trained not to chew things.
22. Yes, I freaked out and chased Bear around the house with the doll, beating him with it when I found out. (No worries, I promise it's a soft doll!)
23. They make doll hospitals that can fix doll hands for a mere $95 (probably 10 times what the doll cost originally).
24. I have been married for 7 years.
25. I have 2 dogs and a cat (Bear, Brenna, and Carmy).
26. I only got to name one of the 3 pets. The other 2 already had names when I got them.
27. I want kids (2 or 3 of them).
28. My husband and I have been trying to have kids for almost 2 1/2 years.
29. A few other jobs I have had: receptionist,
30. office clerk,
31. waitress,
32. fast food worker,
33. babysitter,
34. nanny, and
35. house cleaner.
36. I grew up in Northern California, just north of Sacramento.
37. My family moved to Colorado when I was in high school.
38. I have also lived in: San Diego and
39. New Hampshire.
40. I attended 3 colleges.
41. I had to do 2 semesters of an internship after I graduated from college.
42. This means that (including the internship) I spent a total of 7 years in school.
43. I took a few years off in the middle of college and one year off after high school.
44. I graduated from the University of New Hampshire.
45. I have owned 4 cars in my lifetime so far.
46. I am taking karate 2 days a week (when I can actually get up the motivation to go).
47. I currently have a gold belt in Shudokan karate.
48. This still doesn't mean I can kick your butt, but I might try! :)
49. I am a quilter.
50. I would love to sew more, but I'm afraid to go in my sewing room - it's a mess!
51. I make my own cards (most of the time).
52. I used to paint, but haven't done that in forever.
53. I like to scrapbook.
54. I'm a little behind on my scrapbooking - like still in 2oo4.
55. I love to read.
56. I started reading when I was 3. Seriously. The first thing I read? The Bible.
57. I am really good at starting books, but really bad at finishing them.
58. At any given time I probably have at least 8 books that I'm in the process of reading.
59. When I get lost in a book, I can tune out anything.
60. I can tune out anything anyway. After working in a hospital with phones ringing and call lights going off all day (that I don't have to deal with), I don't even hear beeping sounds.
61. Therefore, my husband usually has to tell me to take something out of the microwave.
62. I love ice cream.
63. I hate that it's not a "health food".
64. I hate water. Why does it have to taste so much like, well, water???
65. I watch WAY too much TV.
66. My favorite shows are: American Idol,
67. Fringe,
68. So You Think You Can Dance,
69. Biggest Loser,
70. and What Not to Wear.
71. Can you tell I like reality TV?
72. I love grammar.
73. When I was in high school, I had to edit my father's college papers for grammatical errors.
74. I'm clumsy, and that's an understatement.
75. I once ran into a sliding glass door and left a face/hand print.
76. Lack of coordination runs in the family.
77. I'm a little OCD about cleaning my house.
78. My house is really messy compared to those in my family.
79. OCD must run in the other side of my family!
80. My dogs never puke on the hard floor - only on carpet. Why is that? Do they think that it hides it better?
81. I hate carpet. I want to rip it all up and put in hardwood.
82. Speaking of which, we are getting ready to redo the floors in 2 rooms of our house - the living room and master bedroom.
83. I don't cook.
84. I CAN cook, contrary to the opinion of my family members, I just don't like to. My husband enjoys it, so I let him have the pleasure.
85. Fall is my favorite season,
86. but I like snow too.
87. Spring is nice,
88. but you can take summer and stick in where the sun don't shine!
89. I love color.
90. My favorite color is purple.
91. No white walls in this house.
92. Amazingly there are no purple walls in my house (brown, taupe, burgandy, red, yellow, blue, bright green, but no purple), but I want to paint one purple...
93. I love to decorate and design things and pick things out for the house.
94. I constantly have about a million projects that I want to do around the house.
95. I'm not as interesting or funny in person as I am online.
96. But I spend a LOT of time online, so maybe that's just a hiding part of my personality.
97. I have some great friends that I either stictly keep in touch with via online methods or that I've met online. My husband totally doesn't get it.
98. I used to love camping but the older I get the more I hate the idea of sleeping in something less comfy than my bed and not having a shower and a toilet.
99. I have maybe the best husband EVER! I'm such a lucky girl.
100. I had a really hard time thinking of 100 things to type. What does this say about me?

Who's next???

Meme Time

Okay, so I decided it was time for another meme. Since I'm actually going to be at the cabin all weekend (with no internet access - tragedy I know), I decided to do last week's meme from Sunday Stealing. This meme came from Because Life is a Blessing.

Sunday Stealing: The Alpha Meme

My roommate and I once: snuck into the hottub area at the Marriott, okay we actually did that a LOT in college

Never in my life have I: gone skinny-dipping

High school was: awful - I never wanna go back there!

When I’m nervous: I get a big knot in my stomach

My hair: is short for summer. Time to grow it out again.

When I was 5: I was in kindergarten. Does anyone really remember anything from age 5?

When I turn my head left: I see the pile of hardwood flooring in the living room that is going to be installed in our bedroom next week.

I should be: cleaning the house.

By this time next year: I want to be pregnant!!!

My favorite aunt is: Kathy or Bruna.

I have a hard time understanding: people who abuse/neglect children.

You know I like you if: I make fun of you.

My ideal breakfast is: french toast. But cereal will do!

If you visit my home town: Don't blink or you'll miss it!

If you spend the night at my house: I'll probably try to pass one of the dogs off on you, so I don't have to sleep with ALL the pets on the bed for once.

The animal I would like to see flying besides birds: Hippos. I mean, come on - wouldn't that be histerical?

I shouldn’t have been: mean to my foster siblings.

Last night I: watched the season finale of So You Think You Can Dance.

A better name for me would be: Emily

I’ve been told I look like: someone else that they know - but never anyone famous.

If I could have any car, it would be: a Mustang GT.

Fertility Update

I guess it's been awhile since I've mentioned what's going on in the fertility department, so I thought I'd post a quick update. This last month was really hard. The mass amount of drugs was enough to make me nuts. Then the egg actually fertilized but didn't "stick". We met with the doctor to review our options. Due to the extreme expense of the fertility drugs (since it takes a LOT more to make me ovulate multiple eggs than the average patient), he suggested that it would be more cost effective to go straight to IVF. Besides the fact that IVF has a 60% success rate versus a 20% success rate with IUI. They are also participating in a study currently and have slots for a few more patients, which would help with some of the costs of the treatment. I had a tough decision to make. I finally decided that it doesn't matter about the cost, we need to wait a few months for my sanity! So, a few months or so from now we will probably go ahead with IVF. In the meantime, we are on pause. I'll keep you posted as I know more.

Seattle Vacation

Okay, so I suck and haven't posted in a week or so. Sometimes I just get out of the groove. In fact I just finally caught up on my blog reading. I only had to read the last 6 days or so... If I didn't get to read your post, I appologize now. I had to skip through some!

Last weekend, however, we went to Seattle for a little vacation. I said I was going to post all about it and actually wrote it last week but didn't get to edit it or add pictures, so FINALLY here it is! (Please excuse the poor photo quality. Most are from the phone.)

We left early Friday morning from Jerrod's parents house. (We stayed the night after a b-day dinner for my MIL). The drive was okay, but started a little late, since Jerrod went on an errand with his dad first. Then when he got back, I was online, so he proceeded to give me a hard time and push me out the door. (See where this is going?) We stopped for lunch in Tri-Cities at Jerrod's favorite brewery, Ice Harbor. The brewer was in, so I got to meet him finally. Jerrod talks about him all the time. Lunch was tasty. But we needed to make a detour so Jerrod could "borrow" Wi-Fi to send an email for work. It was at this point that I realized there was no way we were going to have time to meet my aunt and uncle for dinner and then get to drinks with friends at 8:00. I had no idea Bremerton was another hour from Seattle and that it involved taking a ferry. Silly me. So this required a frantic phone call to my friend and texts with my aunt to determine that we would skip dinner. So much for having a good plan, huh? Don't worry, this vacation was not horrible, just a little stressful the first day! But this part did cause an argument to ensue with the hubby. Then we decided that we were on vacation and needed to stop that nonsense. The rest went fairly well.

We ended up in Seattle at 5:00. On a Friday. On a day with a Mariner's game. Traffic anyone? It took half an hour to go about a mile. But once we parked it was nice. Jerrod took me to The Pike Pub while we waited til it was time to meet Jenn and Joe. Here's a pic of Joe, Jenn, and me:

They arrived around 8:00, and we had a lovely seafood dinner at Ivar's and then drinks at a bar near the ferry, so we would be sure to get our car on in time! We took the last ferry across to Bremerton (the drunk boat as a friend calls it) which left at 12:50 in the A.M. hours. We hit the hotel and hit the hay.

Saturday morning we woke up and met my Aunt Bruna, my Uncle Tim, my cousin Stephanie, and her husband Jeff for breakfast in Silverdale (and mimosas of course). Then the guys drove to pick up Steph and Jeff's dog from the kennel (which took WAY longer than expected due to traffic), while we helped decorate for a wedding reception, which is the reason my aunt and uncle were in town in the first place. Then we hit the whaling festival craft booths. Here is me in the beer garden at the festival:

The guys got back just in time to get ready for the wedding. Jerrod and I drove to Bainbridge to meet up with his friend Dave from work and his wife Veronica. They had plans and left us with an excellent recommendation of a nice restaurant for dinner. We had a lovely time at dinner then ran to Albertson's and Wal-Mart, so Jerrod could pick up fishing supplies and a fishing license. We got back to Dave and Veronica's shortly before they did and had a few spare minutes to hang out before bed. They were gracious enough to offer up their guest room for us, which was very comfy.

Jerrod and Dave went out in the ocean fishing the next morning (which involved getting up at 5-something). Another guy they work with took them out on his boat. They only caught 1 fish (a pink salmon), but I think they had fun. I didn't get a picture of the fish, but here is Jerrod helping to fix the fish dinner: I slept in until 10:30! Now, that's vacation! I hadn't gotten enough sleep all week, so it was lovely to sleep some. I got up and had a chance to check my email, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter before hopping in the shower. My family brought me coffee and away we went to lunch while Jerrod napped. The restaurant was right on the marina, so me, Steph, and Bruna had to pose for a quick picture:We went back to visit with Jerrod for a few minutes (and try some of his beer). Then they hopped a ferry. Steph and I had a few minutes to shop before the ferry took off, and then I continued to shop without her. I found the best store. It's called Bath Junkie, and you can pick your own product, mix up your own scent from the tons of bottles of scented oil they have available, and pick your own color. Then they mix the product for you, right there in the store! I'm in love! I made some pumpkin, ginger, clove, nutmeg body scrub and some lemon verbena, sweet magnolia body spray. Yummy stuff. The website can show more locations, or you can order online. http://www.bathjunkie.com/

Sunday night, Dave and Veronica had a BBQ. We got to meet some of their friends and just hang out. Oh, and did I mention that Dave and Veronica's little girl is just the cutest little thing. She's 2 and has this adorable curly blond hair, and she's just a sweetie-pie. Anyway, after the BBQ it was time for bed. Monday morning we hopped up and were on our way. I got to meet my bloggy friend Wendy for the first time at a Krispy Kreme in Tacoma. It was great to get to see her face-to-face. And by the way Wendy, my hubby asked how you finally ended up in Washington, and I don't think I know the answer - do tell!

Also, if any of my bloggy friends make their way to the Boise area, please let me know. I'd love to see you. I'll keep you posted on any upcoming vacations I may have planned in your areas as well.

That pretty much sums things up. Kinda long for a summary, huh? The drive home was uneventful but LONG... Why does it always take so much longer to get home from a vacation than it took to get there?

I Wish I Knew Why...

... I can't sleep. It's 3AM (more or less), and I'm wide awake! Too much Diet Coke while hanging out tonight perhaps? Or just the fact that I can't get my brain to shut of, as usual? AGH! I'm gonna regret this in the morning. Usually if I stay in bed I fall asleep eventually. But sometimes I can't stand it any longer, and I get up. Then I'm up WAY too long (longer than if I'd just stayed there and waited it out). But at least in this case it's more productive! :) Hope everyone else slept well and had nice dreams!!!