What a great weekend

It has taken me forever to post this but hot damn,  I have some wonderful family. Just look at them! Just look!

The gauntlet of the weekend? Kyle and I rewarded with a slice at D'Bronx. Lou arrives and we have lunch at LP's house and games with the kiddos. We have a dinner out at Michael Smith for restaurant week which was delicious. Cocktails at the bar at Grunauer, Wunderbar,  also delicious, finished the night with a Kinect Dance Central dance off. Football and Chili on Sunday followed by an amazing Action Packed Quote-Along of Ferris Bueller at The Alamo.

So much great in one weekend.



This is what we do when we are not having awesome house guests. We are hiding from the cold mainly. Except for yesterday when it was 75. Then we took a walk and had a cone. Today it will snow...KC you have some issues but we love you anyway.


A ton of our favorite people are coming soon so expect a big ol friends weekend post.

Party on.

 What is there to say about January? 

Two birthdays happen in January, my wonderful Dad and my wonderful BB. 

Unfortunately, with my Dad in the AU, we will not be getting to celebrate with him. Hopefully we will instead get to webchat. And hopefully we will get to make the trek ourselves soon (!!!), but more news on that later.

We did get to celebrate with BB in our usual fashion: game playing and noshing and brunches wahoo. 

We also dressed up for the first time in a long time. We were DJs for a night and you'd have to see my twitter to really get the full effect.

 Finally, here is what January is really like. Rather than the "fantastic parade of food and beer" one reviewer commented, my life is really more of a hermitage right now:) 

This is purposeful and I gotta say, it is going super well. It involves working out at home instead of making any sort of trek in the freezing weather. It involves watching The West Wing while K plays Skyrim. It involves a lot of cooking things like Roasted Cauliflower or Red Lentil-Pumpkin soup. It involves wearing the Pikachu suit to keep warm.

I'm pretty glad we made January for nothing, fun things are better that way:) We are pumped for LH to come this weekend and KC is making a fine event of the weather just for her. Here is to hanging with the niece and nephew, and KC restaurant week, and more evangelizing The Alamo. 

P.S. In keeping with my P.S. theme I've had going, I think I might try to open up a bit more on here. I know some really cool women that aren't afraid to write real things on their blogs. And I've read some very cool blogs that say very little real things. I'd like to start crossing that line every once in a while. Bear with me everyone and we'll see when exactly I get the courage up for it. Life really is awesome, but it is also real.

Did you know I'm a pot full of crazy? Probably by now. But for all the crazy, I totally came up with something that works. Ok, so sometimes I'm pretty controlling and definitely whiny, but honestly I just want to help my awesome Husband succeed. He says he can't remember there is something in the fridge, and he hates it when I'm mad so TA DA. This thing really does work.

 Also, I've totally been back to cooking from my Cooking Light all the time in the pilgrimage to help our budgets and our waists. Yay for the winter of hermitage, I'm getting really attached to it. 

Lets talk about how this is hard and not just cheery wonderfulness. 

For one, this is what the kitchen looks like most nights, and then someone has to clean it up. Ugh.

Second, eating healthy, for me, means I'm so hungry I'm mad at least a couple times a day. One of these times is right when I get home from work. Unfortunately, it is a perfect storm of bad because this is also when my ever-loving husband is just waking up from his nap (don't judge, he goes to work at 3:00 a.m. and stays up at night so that he can see me). He CANNOT function for about 30 minutes after waking up, unlike me, and unlike me he is not starving. Hence I just wanna MOVE AND COOK AND GET THINGS DONE. And he just wants me to be quieter and stop turning on the light and to be able to figure out if I'm actually mad at him or something else entirely.

We soldier on everybody, in the hopes that someday I will be one of those magic people who doesn't get ravenously hungry 6 times a day or that our schedules will change or that we won't care about this daily thing because we love each other way mucho. 

It is the last one.

Ok, so this blog has never been very interesting. It is about to get just as much not interesting...

I want to talk about crafts now. I am neither good at crafts nor very creative. I originally did not at all jump on the Pinterest bandwagon but recently, I just can't help myself. I like to do things on the cheap and learn how to paint so here we go house.

So the big cryptic thing that was going on was that I was up for a job that was in a different city. I didn't get it (sad face) because someone else already lived out there and was also up for it. Such is the corporate life. No matter, that just means that we can finally be ok with that fact that we will be staying in the house we are living in for a while. 

That makes me want to do stuff to it! Our house is kind of wildly different in that some rooms are very dark (living room) and some rooms are bright (kitchen). I'd like the whole house to be brighter. I am not a neon, lots of colors kind of person but there are many people I would like to slowly emulate on style and mostly their stuff is bright and they aren't afraid of colors like I am. 

Here are some things I need fixing and my own small list. I'd like for all you crafty people I know to offer up some suggestions as well:) 

Living Room: I want to paint/possibly mod podge the cheap TV stand we bought. There are several tutorials on how to paint particle board/laminate online so I pinned some of those. 

 It looks like this.   And needs to be helped.

(Here is my adorable husband modeling our living room for you)

I also want to redo all our black picture frames to something brighter and lighter.  I have no idea what to do with them.

I'm seriously considering doing this upholstery project on our coffee table...but I also like our coffee table and K isn't wild about it because that is kind of a cool arty coffee table we bought at Good JuJu.

Also, where do I get cool pillows that don't cost a billion dollars or that I could make without a sewing machine?

Kitchen: I bought a bunch of black and chrome accessories when Kyle and I first moved in together. I have no idea why other than to guess that they were always the cheapest things. I want to possibly replace my knife block with a stripe, and do paint on the lids and chalkboard paint on the sides of our chrome and glass canisters. 

Bathroom: You can make shelves, out of baskets. Cool! Also...our bathroom is tiny. 

I will do this anywhere I can find an excuse to, because it is cool and it fulfills things about owning a house that renting can't.

P.S. Thing I'm loving right now is the fact that all my friends that don't get to see enough are also in to blogging. Ya'll I am going to make another confession, I freaking love reading blogs. I am sort of an internet lurker but you can bet I'm reading your stuff and loving it.

Our actual New Year was pretty boring, but we liked it that way. Why? Because we had been partying it up over the holidays with all these people. What fun to see everyone in KC again! There were board games, and food and festivities.

 

 Beer Kitchen is always on the menu. K was very happy about this and I am very happy that I managed to not order either a burger or fries (small goals ppl). Also, look at BM!

 AP no more, this is AM and I:)

 And K gets to once again order the biggest thing on the menu at The Gaf. 

 The first, and only, duck face picture. The best girl for the job, Kloo. I figured since that was a thing this year, it was our last chance to do the IT thing for 2012:) 

K got to see his nerdy friends once again. While they all managed to not really LAN, which was highly appreciated by wives and girlfriends alike, I think they had enough nerdy interaction to last them at least a little while.