Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Wiener dogs on Wednesday

Not a Wiener...but in honor of squeak toy lovers...










All the time
So here's my number...

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Thats SO YHL...

Was driving through Matt and Gioia's neighborhood the other day and saw this...
Looks like somebody else reads younghouselove too!!! (or maybe they just like yellow?)

Friday, September 21, 2012

Pinterest motivational challenge 1

Finally!!

As I mentioned in my last post, my friend Michelle and I started this "Pinterest motivational challenge," waaaaay back in March. We both were kind of in a rut and needed to start DOING some of the projects we loved so much!

The first project was supposed to be a melted crayon picture. You know, the ones with the hair dryer that are all over the 'net right now, that look so easy? Yeah not so much!

I'm still not done with mine, and I'm not thrilled with the way it's going, so it may never make it to the blog, but Michelle is awesome and did hers and even mailed it to me from Wisconsin...still didn't get me motivated, ha ha.

The second project involves drawing on white paper or canvas with a white crayon, and then painting over it with watercolors. There are some BEAUTIFUL examples on pinterest.

These are from pinterest and what we used for inspiration:

I'm not that great at drawing to tell you the truth. And the water colors had me all mixed up. I couldn't get the colors I wanted, and they kept mixing when I didn't want them to. I'd LOVE to know how they got that beautiful magenta color on the left.

Here is Michelle's, I love how something so simple can be so sweet and unique! It would look just perfect sitting in a bathroom, on your desk at work or on top of a kid's dresser, just to remind them that you love them :) It's a 2x2 canvas sitting on a teeny tiny little easel! Sooo cute! I think she got both items at Michael's. She's so thrifty too...she didn't want to buy watercolors for just one little project, so she used watered down food coloring!! (I got mine at Walmart for $1 during the back to school sale, and then gave them to Aron and Jason.)

And here is mine...TOTALLY different direction than Michelle's (which is why I love this challenge...being 900 miles away from each other and not seeing it until the finished product lead to BIG surprises! LOVE it!)
Not so much for kiddos ;) I just drew a sugar skull (after about 500 tries, finally got one I liked,) on a piece of white card stock and painted over it with purple, blue and red. The 5x7 canvas frame is from Archiver's.

Now that the first one is done...I can't WAIT to do the next one!!

Pin me!

If you are a DIY'er or a crafter, I'm sure you have already been sucked into the world of Pinterest. A happy little site FULL of crafts, recipes, DIY ideas for your home, outfit ideas, etc etc etc.

These days, if I'm looking for something, I can usually find it on there. For example...my sister, Erin, mentioned seeing a bib style necklace made completely of safety pins in a magazine, but she couldn't remember which one. She tried to find a picture of it by googling, and had no luck. She mentioned it to me, and in 3.2 seconds, I had 30 different safety pin necklaces up on pinterest for her to choose from! This was the prettiest one we found, and the one she is going to try and make:
Another GREAT use for pinterest is the recipes!!! My other sister, Hannah, is a vegetarian and has some lactose intolerance issues. Her boyfriend, Joshie my bad...Joshua ;) has Celiac disease and must be on a gluten free diet. Inviting them over for dinner can be almost impossible sometimes. Pinterest allows me to search for recipes that meet everyones needs, and taste good too (most of the time!)

So...WAY back in March, my good friend Michelle decided that we needed to get MOTIVATED and use our talents more often, instead of just looking at all these awesome ideas on pinterest! She created the "Emily and Michelle get motivated challenge!"

The way that it was supposed to work was that every 2 weeks one of us would pick a project off of pinterest, then both of us would do it, then post pictures to facebook for the other to see (she lives in Wisconsin, and I'm in Virginia...it's a lot harder for us to craft together than it was when I was in Chi-town!)
You can read about when we FIRST started the challenge here...yeah, in March.

Well, props to Michelle, she picked 2 projects and got them done. Me? Well....
(crickets)

Anyway.

My next post will have my FIRST completed pinterest motivational challenge project! And it only took me six months to buy the materials, do the project, and write a post!



Wednesday, September 19, 2012

So what!



So I've recently discovered Shannon, over at Life after I "Dew," at the recommendation of my friend, Kate...and she cracks me up. I know that I usually do Weiner dogs on Wednesdays, but I thought I would switch it up and do "So what Wednesday," along with Shannon today!
So, without further ado.
SO WHAT if...

[I don't get into The Voice, American Idol, Dancing with the stars, Survivor]
[The only reason I get up and go to work every morning is because of my patients, I love them. Well, most of them]
[I have a huge tattoo on my back, its not your back, so get over it]
[I do the bare minimum of laundry required to get me through each week, so the pile keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. I hate laundry]
[I ate pop tarts for dinner tonight]
[I picked at Jackson's cradle cap the other day, I know you aren't supposed to...but I did, I had to, I couldn't help myself]
[I didn't really like 50 shades of Gray...I think Christian Gray is an asshole and a control freak]
[My biological clock, so to speak, ticks so loud sometimes and sometimes I feel like I could wait another 10 years or so to have a kid!]
[Sometimes I tell my patients that they can't talk during their testing...which is not true, but I just don't want to listen to them]
[I work 4 days a week and it exhausts me, 4 days on my feet, busting my ass...but its still only 4 days...]
[I have more underwear and socks than any human being need...this keeps me from having to do laundry too often (see above)]
[My best friend is a guy, he is married and has 3 kids. We often hang out with the kids, and without his wife, and people love spreading rumors, I find it hilarious]
[I can't wait for snow]
[I'm happiest with a paintbrush, marker, or needle and thread in my hand]
[I'd rather hang out with Oscar than a lot of people I know]
[I don't like sushi, and I'm never going to]
[I'm terrified of the dentist]
[I have a mad crush on our FedEx delivery guy]
Thats it for now. So what!

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Its pretty well known to anyone that hangs around me in person that I'm obsessed really into all  of the awesome projects and tips that John and Sherry have to share over at YoungHouseLove.com

(I'm always like "Oh, That rug is from Pottery Barn, I saw it on YHL," or "I should really spray paint this yellow, like Sherry did, on YHL.")

I have referenced them a few times on here,  (most recently here when I talked about getting Hannah the same Ram bust that Sherry had) but not NEARLY enough for you guys to know how much I enjoy reading every day and how it is one of the few DIY blogs out there that actually makes me LOL.

Anyway, John and Sherry have been working on a book, and it will be available on November 6th. It is available for preorder at amazon, if can't wait...like me. It's my early Christmas present to myself.

(If you can't click on my either of my link's above, you can go directly to Younghouselove.com, or try searching for their book called:
Young House Love:243 Ways to paint, craft, update & show your home some love.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Guess what time it is?

Are YOU ready for some football?
No, Oscar hasn't turned red on you...that's my Lyla girl...I miss her, she stayed in chi-town after the split. She was much more open to being dressed up than Oscar :P

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Dirty Thirty

No, not me...not yet! Getting close though!

One of my best middle/high school  friends (and the first of us to turn the big 3-0) had a birthday, and I had to mail him something, since he lives far away. Patrick has always had a quirky, dry sense of humor (and so do I, so he could make me belly laugh, one person who can actually make me LOL during a facebook conversation!)...so I knew that a simple "Hey, Happy 30th, here's a card and something stupid that you will never use!" would be totally lame for him! 

I knew I needed to put a little thought and effort into it to try and either:
a) make him laugh
b) stump him as to what the heck the gift was all about?
c) tie everything into being 30, and being an attorney for a busy place where the clients are numerous and thankless(which is all interesting, fun, and frustrating at the same time!)...or
d) all of the above!

So, I came up with the idea to fill a box with items that came in a quantity of 30. Everything from paper party napkins to Dora the Explorer stickers. It took some time and patience...and an afternoon of getting a trailer hitch installed on my car, in a shopping center next to a Target, lol.

It was painful at first, it seemed like NOTHING came in packs of 30, as my mom and I roamed the aisles. But once we started finding things, it was kinda fun! It took about two hours for me to find everything below, and then I got one or two of the items at the Dollar Tree...so I would suggest that if you want to try something like this, so it when you have some time to kill and NOT when you have kids to pick up, a screaming baby in your cart, or a dentist appointment in the next 15 minutes!

After I had all my treasures...I circled the 30 on each of them, put them in a box with a handmade card, and sent them on their way to Pennsylvania!

Patrick is one of the smartest people I know, and even with his law degree, he couldn't figure out what in the WORLD, I had sent him this big box of crap for! His best guess was "a birthday party at a children's hospital?"
 I finally gave in and explained, and he thought it was pretty funny, and thanked me for the cleaning wipes, because he needed to clean his kitchen that night....typical Patrick :)

This could easily be adjusted for a 50th or 25th bday, something like that. My grandpa just turned 85...wish I had thought about it then, he would have enjoyed it! Or how about an anniversary? 25th wedding anniversary gifts are supposed to be silver...maybe try and find things in packages of 25 AND that are silver? My parent's next big anniversary will be their 40th, and thats ruby...maybe I should start NOW on trying to find things in packages of 40 that are all red!
I wouldn't suggest trying to do it for a  37th shindig though, it might be REALLY difficult!

Happy Friday!
Emily















Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Weiner dogs on Wednesday

This will be my first Weiner dogs on Wednesday post with out the man himself pictured in it =(
Poor guy...actually he doesn't mind a bit! More play time and less of me-making-him-sit-still-for-the-camera time.

Christmas is coming, people. It's already the middle of September. It seems like it was just February and Oscar and I were moving back home to Virginia! Time to start planning gifts, menus, decorations, cards, and the tree!

Did I mention that Oscar has his own tree? I've never taken a picture of it for some reason, but I will this year. It started because when he was a baby, I bought a little doxie ornament, and then a lady at church bought me a set of four, really cute crocheted dachshund ornaments that Crate and Barrel had out that year, and then a co worker got me one, and then it just went crazy from there. The dog ended up with around 20 ornaments on his first Christmas when he was six months old, so I got him a little tree.

Now, for the last two years we had red dachshund ornaments on the tree as well, and he shared with Lyla, but this year, its back to being just HIS tree, and I will mail all of those ornaments back to Kurt's mom...because I'm a nice person and I know that she will appreciate them since they have Lyla living with them now. Only black or silver dapple doxies this year, on the tree...I promised him ;)

So? What does this have to do with Weiner dogs on Wednesday? I came up with a cute Christmas card idea that I'm pretty sure we will be using this year. (We being Oscar and I...)


The JOY is a card stock overlay that was purchased from a store in Elmhurst, IL, called Creative Cuts and Crafts. It is intended for Iris folding. It comes in a package of 5 with Bazzil (shiny paper) cards and envelopes for around $5-6. I REALLY miss having them around.They had amazing products including iris folding patterns and pre-cut cards, would do custom cut scrapbook pages or cards, and held some awesome classes in their store.

The Dachshund stamp was purchased from Doxie Stamps, they can be found at cowtownstamps.com. I just stamped him on a small piece of white card stock and taped it onto the back of the JOY piece, making sure not to cover any of the 'J' or the 'Y.'

The 'Merry Christmas' stamp is from Hobby Lobby, another store I miss from Chicago. There is one in Fredericksburg, but that's an hour away, I used to have one less than a mile from my office. Dangerous? Yes!  I stamped that on there with silver ink.

I haven't done anything on the inside yet. I may put a picture of the Osc man and myself, or I might print a little greeting or Bible verse off of the computer, haven't decided.

 I have 3 packages of these from Creative cuts and crafts, and I then I have a light box and a craft knife to try and make them myself.

I've gotten 2 Christmas gifts already too. Just because they were on sale, and seemed to be a really good deal.

Has anyone else given any thought to Christmas yet?

Monday, September 10, 2012

One month.

It's been a month now since my Ma passed away. Sometimes it feels like it was yesterday, and sometimes it feels like it was a year ago. It's a very strange feeling. Part of it is because of her Alzheimer's.
 She has been slipping away from us for so long, it's hard to remember when the last time she was actually 100% with us. And even then, she was very forgetful, often repeating herself, I wonder how long she had been fighting this disease within her own mind, before we were able to pick up on it.
I've been able to talk about it more and more as the days go on. I love my job for that reason, I meet so many people, and being the medical field, you meet people who have dealt with things like this, who are going through it, or who have a loved one with it.

Here is an amazing picture of my grandparents, that I've had sitting in my room for probably 20 years, in every room I've had, including my dorm room. It was taken just outside their first home. You can't see the white picket fence, but no lie...there is one in the rest of the pic =)
The look so happy, and she is so beautiful, and he is so handsome, and looks just like my dad!
And this is them at my wedding, the day before their 58th wedding anniversary. They would have been married 61 years this October.
I miss her like crazy.
Seriously, longest and shortest month of my life.