On Family

Gingerbread image from here.

I was a grump last night.  What I posted is probably more than a little selfish, but I think it boils down to a couple of things:
1. I need a night out, preferably with a grown-up beverage in my hand.
2. Brad and I need to develop some holiday traditions and lay some groundwork.

I feel that my first point is pretty self-explanatory to anyone under the age of 35 who works.  Now and then, you just need to get out.  Normally, Brad and I are in bed by 9:30 PM.  We work hard throughout the day, eat an early dinner, and try to relax.  We are still settling into married life and have the additional fun of redoing the living room.  We're busy people.  However, that doesn't negate the need to sometimes go out and act our ages.

My second point gets more at my frustration, though I'm not sure frustration is the word I want.  My father is a huge grump and I don't think he'll want to do anything for Christmas this year.  If he does, he'll come over one night for a couple hours and we'll exchange gifts.  Not a big deal.  On Christmas, my mom, sister (family), and brother will come over to our apartment for gifts and dinner.  We are celebrating with Brad's immediate family this Friday, extended maternal family on Christmas Eve, and extended paternal family on New Year's Eve.  All combined, that is a lot of Christmases and not something that I will necessarily want to drag a kid (or two. or three.) around to all December.  I want Brad and I to really talk about what is important to us and what we envision for the future.

I'm trying to be careful here because my mom checks in on this blog now and then, along with some members of Brad's family.  I'm not saying that I don't enjoy getting together with any of my family members (in-law or blood) because I love them and I love hanging out and eating too much food.  There are babies to hold and newlywed cousins to catch up with and all the aunts and uncles and grandparents.  They are wonderful, but we are devoting ourselves to FIVE Christmases, FIVE get-togethers and that is a lot. 

I want my (future) babies to wake up on Christmas in their own beds.  I want them to see their grandparents on or near Christmas.  I adore large family gatherings and would love for our (future) children to grow up running around with cousins and declaring favorite aunts and uncles.  I just don't know if I want all of this in December.

How did you split up holidays?  What new traditions have you put in place?  How do you think it all changes when you add children?

The Weekend (and Monday)

This weekend was jam-packed full of crazy good times.  On Friday, we had a pre-birthday dinner for Brad at his parents' house.  We shot pumpkins (yeah, rifles!), ate tacos, and made cookies with his parents and his sister's family.  Sorry, no pictures of that on my phone.  I'll find one, though.

On Saturday I met my mom and sister to take the nieces out to lunch and then to see trains.  Traffic was a mess because of bridge construction and I had to take the ferry.  At the train exhibit, we looked at trains, looked at plants, and colored pictures.  Then we took the ferry back home. 

It's not really majestic.

Trains! Sunflares! Woot!

My sister and I both like this photo.  That rarely happens.

I included my age so the other kids wouldn't get too hurt that

my picture was way cooler than their pictures.

My mom and I.

My sister and her girls.

After dropping the girls off at their house, I picked up Brad and headed to my dad's house.  We met my brother there and enjoyed a yummy dinner and movie night.  My dad lives by himself and we joke a lot about the amount of expired food that he must keep on his shelves.  Well, he asked me to make brownies after dinner and I did, even though the box read "25SEP2010."  Dad laughed and said that the batter smelled just fine.  We took a picture to document that we were all alive and well 60-90 minutes after consuming them and I'm thankful to say that we're all still OK today.

So good.  So scary.

 Sunday began the great cookie-baking day.  My sister and I met at Mom's with our stand mixers and had dueling mixers for optimal baking efficiency.  Please cue Deliverance music.  Of course, the girls also wanted pictures with Aunt Melanie and I am just narcissistic enough to oblige them.

 We had to include Tigger, too.



My snuggle-bug gives the sweetest kisses.

Yesterday, my darling husband turned 28.  He's old.  For his birthday, he really wanted us to clean up the house and eat Asian Chicken Helper.  I'm happy to report that I fulfilled those wishes for him. He's an odd-bird, but he's mine.

Picture from our honeymoon.

I guess I still owe a recap/pictures from that, don't I?

At the pub after the wedding.



Living Room Update

Wow.  I'm glad I did the "thankful" posts during November or you wouldn't have heard from me at all!

How about an update on the living room?

If you'll remember from my last post about it, Emily (from GoHausGo and a dear friend) had come up with an amazing plan for our living room to take us from "dorm room chic" to "we're married and grown-up."

As a reminder, here was our "Before."

Photo credit to Brad, who emailed it to Emily for our plan.

The image originally appeared on her blog, linked above.

Pretty boring, huh?  I'd had that orange couch a couple of years (thank you, Urban Outfitters) because I'd grown disgusted with boring white walls.  I needed color.  In a previous apartment, I had that couch, a green rug, and a six-foot plywood buffalo "shadow" hanging on the wall.  I'm a bit of an odd bird.

Our first step from Emily's plan was to paint.  We taped up bits of paint to the walls and hemmed and hawed. We both wanted a light gray, but Brad wanted to be sure that it wouldn't look too blue and that it would be light enough that we wouldn't need to prime it before moving out.

We ended up choosing the sample on the left, which is actually a beige color that magically shows up light gray on our walls. Brad invited his parents over for a painting party and breakfast-for-dinner.  I made eggs, the boys got out the painting stuff, and his mom and I went to look at fabric for curtains.

My father-in-law.  I told him this picture would feature

on the blog and I'm not sure he was as excited as I was. 

It's hard to see in the above picture, but if you look by the ladder, you can see the light gray going up on the walls.  It dried a smidge darker than it appears and is such a subtle change, but I love it.  Brad is fond of it, too.

Anyway, after the painting came the couch.  We had factored it in the budget for November, but it certainly didn't hurt that Ikea was running a promotion where you received a gift card for 15% of the purchase price of a sofa when you purchased your sofa.  $900 sofa = $135 gift card towards bedroom furniture, odds and ends, cinnamon rolls, etc.  Done and done.

We invited my brother over for lasagna and wrangled him into helping us put the couch together.  I LOVE assembling furniture. Seriously, if I weren't a school psychologist, I would want to work for Ikea assembling peoples' furniture.



Five humongous boxes containing our new sofa.

Getting all the pieces unloaded.

Poor, poor Karlstad

Tragedy struck when we were unloading the third box.  We noticed that a back support piece was badly damaged (as pictured above).  I quickly called Ikea and they informed me that I just needed to bring in the broken piece and they would hand me a replacement.  I had time the next day and took care of it. Crisis solved!

Men at Work.

The boys did most of the sofa set up while I finished up dinner and it was so lovely to watch it come together!  They assembled as much of it as they could with the one piece being broken.

Enjoying the fruits of their labor.

You can see in the (somewhat creepy) photo above where the other half of the couch is ready to hook on.  It was a little sad looking, but I was so excited that we had at least half of our couch ready to go.  True to my word, I went to Ikea the next day, picked up the piece, and Brad and I finished assembling our couch.  Here's a photo that Emily snapped of us and our amazing ability to sit so far apart from each other.



We can both sleep on the couch without touching

the arms of the couch or each other.

With the couch in place, I went to work on the other items.  I ordered the orange stool from Crate and Barrel (it looks great!) and Mom and I went out for lamps.

Sadly, this is not the lamp I bought.

Here's the lamp I bought.  Mom is holding it up for size

reference as we tried to find a suitable lampshade.

With the lamp purchased, Mom and I made another Ikea run.  I scored our nightstands, a lampshade, curtains, and drinking straws and only spent $20 after using the gift card.  I had plans of painting the lamp orange and either leaving the shade white or painting it a light gray, but Emily let me know yesterday that she has an orange lamp shade for me.  So now, I don't know what to do with the lamp.  The curtains with be striped orange and Mom scored some amazing curtain rods at JoAnn's for 40% off + an additional 25% off.  She rocks.  Brad and I now need to set up our Christmas tree, complete some of these DIY projects, and pick out wedding photos and frames for the wall over the couch.  Oh, and sell the orange couch.  I've had three buyers back out before they even saw it's gorgeousness, but I have a former co-worker who wants it this weekend.  I'm eager to no longer be in the land of couches. 

So, there it is.  What are your thoughts?  Anyone know an amazing place to get unique, cost-effective frames?  I'm thinking a lot of rectangles with a couple ovals thrown in. 

--Melanie

Fun

Fun is waking up at 5:45 AM with a more inflamed throat than yesterday and getting up anyway for work.  Fun is pretending that you didn't just have the worst sleep of your life resulting in the most sore neck/shoulders.

All so you could bring your coffin brownies for food day at work and see your kids that you're scheduled to see.

Boo to growing up.