OCD Confessions Sunday

I may or may not have used Jake's super turbo high-powered shop vac to vacuum both sets of stairs today. And it may or may not have been the highlight of my day to see all the gross nastiness come up.

Resolutions...

I made one resolution for 2011 - to stop worrying so much about the future and live in the present. I want to just relax and enjoy the wonderful things that are in my life right now! I found this quote recently and it's my mantra for the New Year!

source

What I've been up to...

I have a lot to update on from the last 6 months, so I think a bullet list is in order!

** We celebrated our 1 year anniversary in September and went to Berkeley Springs, WVA for a long weekend. Sort of random, but we had the best time. We rented a little cabin in the woods, brought our dog and just relaxed. We went on several hikes, played board games, took naps and the best part - got amazing couple massages for our anniversary! Berkeley Springs is known for their spas and hot springs, so we actually got a mineralsprings bath (where you sit in a huge tub of the hot, healing spring water), followed by 1 hour massages. HEAVEN!Us on one of the hikes - Spencer didn't want to cooperate for the picture!Our cabin - I spent ALOT of time in the screened in porch reading and napping!

The top layer of anniversary wedding cake after we ate it all weekend - so yummy!

** My "new" job is going great! I really love it - it such a nice change of pace and having weekends back is incredible. I love the company I'm working for and there's a lot of room for growth, which is always nice. I work M-F from 8am to 4pm and I can honestly say that the lifestyle change to basically have my life back was totally worth any fear that I had over money. I'm making pretty much exactly the same as I was at my old job, so it's not even an issue.

** The house projects! The big project from the fall was a new roof. Not very exciting at all, but very necessary since our roof was 23 years old and in bad shape. Probably the most boring money we've ever spent, but it gives us piece of mind at night when we listen to rain or snow and don't have to worry about leaks! Other house projects in the pipeline - the kitchen!! We've changed our plan for the kitchen and of course, made it into a much bigger project. We were going to just paint cabinets, get new counters, etc. Well now, we're looking at gutting everything, new flooring, new cabinets, counters, lighting, etc. We're still in the very early stages and working on our budget, but we're hoping to have it complete in 2011!

** 2011 is the year that I turn the big 3-0. AHHHHH - seriously, how did this happen?? It's not until October, but I'm seriously already starting to freak out a little bit. BUT I decided that I want to go away someplace tropical for my birthday, so I can feel a little bit better about getting older by sipping a fruity drink poolside. We decided on Puerto Rico!! We just booked our hotel for the long weekend and we started looking at flights. Any recommendations would be highly recommended! We're staying near old San Juan for 5 nights in a resort right on the beach! I want to leave like tomorrow!!

** I've become obsessed with working out. Not going to lie, summer and fall last year were sort of a lazy point in my life and it started to add up. I was in the married life rut of eating out and eating too much. So right around Thanksgiving, I decided to just suck it up and start working out again. It took a while to get into it, but I'm finally addicted and pretty much go to the gym every day. I've even started switching it up with classes and different workouts. I became completely OBSESSED with Bikram yoga (hot yoga) this fall and did it every day for like 3 months. Unfortunately, I can't fit it into my budget in the long term, but I still go sometimes. J and I both got into spinning recently, and go weekly. I'm still in my old standby of running and I'm contemplating signing up for some races this spring.

** Our dog is still doing well - she's 3 now and still has the energy of a puppy! We had a trainer come to the house for a few sessions of behavior work and it really helped! It was like the Dog Whisperer and she definitely trained us more than the dog. ha!

Alright, this post just got super long! Just a few little updates in to what we've been doing the last few months - I have a few more fun updates soon!!

6 month hiatus over?

Is anyone still reading this? Probably not. I really didn't mean to not write anything for 6 months, it just sort of happened. Life got super busy with my new job (that I've now been at for 8 months! craziness!), house projects (new roof! living/dining room completely decorated!) and trips (Florida for a wedding! West Virginia for our anniversary! OBX beach trip for New Years Eve!)

Anyways, I'm venturing back into blogging for 2011! I have a lot of catching up to do, but 2010 was a fabulous year and I'm sure 2011 will be even better. I can't believe we've been married for almost a year and a half - it's seriously flown by. And I'm not a newlywed anymore!!

So if anyone is still reading, welcome back. I will be back soon with updates and fun stuff. And I will be getting better at reading/commenting on other blogs as well!

I'm an Aunt!

My "nephew" Will was born Wednesday morning (12:47am) and I'm totally in love with him! My BFF K and her husband B are already amazing parents. It was a long labor (15 hours!) followed by about 2.5 hours of pushing, before they realized this boy did not want to come on his own. So unfortunately, K had to have a c-section. However, the real reason for the c-section -- he's HUGE!!! 10.7 pounds! And 21.6" long! So he's basically 11 pounds and 22 inches- not sure if anyone would be able to give birth normally to a baby that big! We were all in shock when her husband came down to the hospital lobby to tell us. He's already wearing 3 month clothes!

K's brother in law is a fantastic photographer and was able to take tons of pictures right after he was born when we were all able to see him for the first time (at 3am!) Onto the pics...

Look at those lips!!

Loooong legs and loooong toes!

Wrapped in a towel after his first bath - I love this one cause I think he looks like a little eskimo!

K is recovering well and they get to come home from the hospital tomorrow. Of course, I've visited them every day since he was born because I'm a stalker. I just can't look at him enough - and he's already starting to change so much every day!

He's about 12 hours old here - love his squishy face! Can you tell he already loves his favorite aunt?

Funniest picture ever - J and I went over Thursday evening and J held him (and was super nervous about it) - Will woke up and gave J this look like "who are you??"

I'm not going to lie, he is definitely giving me baby fever! Ahhhh!

Fun News!

A while back (probably in like March), my photographer from the wedding emailed me, and she told me that an editor from Brides Maryland magazine had found my wedding pictures on her website and wanted to feature us as a "Real Wedding" in their Fall/Winter 2010 issue. She wanted to know if I was interested - umm did she even think she really needed to ask???? A few weeks after that, the editor contacted me and sent me a 15 page (no joke!) questionnaire about our wedding and had me fill it out. Seriously, I have never written so much about anything in my life. They wanted every detail from planning and the wedding, complete vendor list, etc. It was quite intense and took me several days to finish.

Well I'm excited to announce that the magazine is now on newstands!! And we have a 2 page spread, complete with about 12 pictures and an article that they wrote from my questionnaire all about our wedding. It's pretty surreal to see yourself in a magazine - J and I were in grocery store like a week after it came out and I went over and grabbed it, opened it and we both stood there cracking up. They mailed me two issues, and you know I went and bought several more copies. ha! The article actually went in both Brides Maryland and Brides Washington DC, so it's available all over MD, DC and Northern VA if anyone in those areas wants to check it out.

Onto the pictures! (these are very poorly scanned copies, so you can't really read the article at all, but the pictures came out pretty good)

The cover

The first page - it was interesting to see which pictures they decided to use. Love that they used the school bus one!

The 2nd page - I was so excited that they featured my place cards...the only DIY project we had at the wedding! ha!

So that's my exciting news for the week. J thinks I'm crazy, but I'm seriously considering having the pages framed and hang them either in our room or my walk in closet. Is that weird? haha!

Awards!

So even though I've been a horrible blogger recently, I did receive two awards from two fun blogs!

Ms. Attitude left me the Blog with Substance Award:

And The Young Southern Prep left me the Versatile Blogger Award:

Thank you so much ladies, your blogs are super cute and I love reading them!

I'm supposed to list 7 random things about myself...

1. I can't go to sleep at night until our kitchen is completely spotless. I wipe down all the counters and use my swiffer vacuum on our tile floors to get every last speck of dirt up. Yes, it's a problem and yes I do need help, but even my husband has learned to accept this crazy OCD behavior.

2. I have a very good sense of direction and rarely get lost. However, I do still have a GPS in my car at all times, just in case.

3. Even though I'm still 1.5 years away, the thought of turning 30 makes me sick to my stomach. I have a serious age issue and I cannot handle getting older. I'm pretty sure I'm going to take off the entire week of work leading up to my 30th birthday and not get out of bed.

4. My favorite time of day is when J and I take our puppy dog for a long morning walk together. Typically during the week this is 6:00am, which is a bit rough, but I still love spending time together catching up and talking.

5. My first car was a burgundy Volvo Sedan that I LOVED. That car has so many memories and I drove it from 16 until my senior year of college, until the headgasket blew and it died. I miss that car so much - I wish I still had it.

6. We are growing 4 tomato plants in our backyard and after months of waiting, we will finally be picking delicious red tomatoes this weekend. I'm so excited! Here's our tomatoes when they were still green:

7. I'm loving my new job more and more every day. Not only am I'm totally obsessed with my hours, the job itself is so much fun! I feel like I'm really getting into it and I'm so excited to start new projects and be successful.

Happy Almost Friday!