Saturday, January 30, 2010

a story

once a upon a time, there was a boy and a girl.
they were happily married and loving life.


one night their friends dropped off a tupperware full of
banana chocolate homemade ice cream. the boy and the girl loved
this homemade ice cream so much.
they were happy to have such nice friends.


the tupperware was soon emptied, so the boy washed it.
then the girl got a recipe from a friend and made a
delicious treat. after filling two of her own tupperwares with
the delicious treat, she filled the tupperware that belonged
to their nice friends.
every time the boy and girl thought
about returning the tupperware with the delicious
treat to their nice friends, it was either really cold outside
or they were already in their pajamas.

eventually the girl and boy ate the two tupperwares full of the
delicious treat they saved for themselves. they were sad.
the girl was so sad that one day she ate the
delicious treat in the tupperware waiting to
be returned to their nice friends.


the girl just kept snacking away.

one day the girl told me the recipe for
the delicious treat that she loved.

a delicious treat
boil:
1 cup of sugar
1 cup of karo (light) syrup
1 1/2 cubes of butter

add:
1 tsp of vanilla
3/4 tsp of baking soda
a pinch of salt

mix in a bowl:
a box of rice chex
2 cups of shredded coconut
1 1/2 cups of sliced almonds
(the girl left out the almonds because
she didn't have any at home)

optional:
mix in sprinkles, m&m's, skittles,
peanuts, marshmallows, or
whatever your little heart desires.

pour the sugary mixture over
the cereal mixture and stir until
evenly coated. then eat a ton of
the treat while it is still warm -

it is delicious!

Friday, January 29, 2010

some goals... finally

so its about time that i made some goals for the new year. i couldn't bring myself to do it earlier in the new year, because i hadn't thought about them enough. i didn't want to just throw goals out that i really had no intention of attempting.

here is what i plan to work on this year...


take more pictures.
i realized that i don't take enough pictures... of everyday life, of pretty things, of jeremy and me. it will also help me become a better photographer. you know what they say, "practice makes perfect," or at least better, right? i have a blog in the making that will be dedicated to the "picture a day" challenge to help me with this goal. it shall be revealed... hmmm, sometime soon.


workout.
this one almost didn't make the list, especially when i was contemplating my goals late december/early january. i just didn't want to do it. but then i think of summer and colorful swim suits and i get this drive to look very nice in one. haha. this goal was also prompted by a quote i encountered while reading for my class on sociology of sport: "Socrates met a physically undeveloped youth and promptly rebuked him, '. . . what a disgrace it is for a man to grow old without ever seeing the beauty and the strength of which his body is capable!'" that bold sentence shall be my motivation. i wonder what my body is capable of...


serve others.
i want to help others. i want to do whatever i can to ease others' burdens and see smiles in return. i have decided to go for a more organized approach to help me be diligent in working towards this goal and i am hoping to volunteer the at center for women and children in crisis. i am just waiting for an email back from the guy in charge... maybe a phone call will have to made today instead.


make something once a week.
sometimes school gets me down. i get tired and feel like my brain can't handle anymore theories, exam study guides, and long papers. i have found that if i set time aside to create something (as simple as my heart window) then i am ready to conquer my homework. it is refreshing to create. once a week may be difficult, but hey... goals are designed for us to push ourselves... and i do love to make things.


wear headbands.
this is my fun goal. so it doesn't really matter, but why not? i don't wear headbands very often. i have some... that are kind of cute. but if i were to make some pretty headbands, therefore working on the goal above, then i could totally rock them. i just need to own it, as cousin lindsey would say.

now, my goals are official.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

The Love Month...

is coming! February is so called the "Love Month" because not only is it Valentine's Day, but it is our wedding anniversary! So I decided some decorating was in order. I took down the snowflakes Jeremy and I created back in December and put up...

HEARTS!




Do you love it?? Me too.

Oh, you want your windows to be full of LOVE? Here's how you can do it.

I got the idea from here, but simplified the whole thing. It originally called for sewing, gluing, etc, but I was too impatient to do all the steps.

You need the following:
magazines
card-stock (optional)
scissors
thread/string/yarn
tape

And I know you have all of these in your house.



Get your stack of old magazines and rip out all of the colorful pages. I stuck with red, pink, and purple, but really anything looks perfect. Cut out hearts of different sizes from card-stock for tracing. Trace and then cut the hearts out of the colorful magazine pages while listening to your favorite tunes. I had about 60 hearts total. Figure out how many strings of hearts you will need across your window, for me it was 8. Tape the threads across the top of the windowsill and cut to desired length. Lay out your hearts in a pleasing arrangement, or just put them up randomly. Tape the hearts one by one onto the strings. Keep taping until the hearts are all up. Then admire your festive handiwork!

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

late night drive

we ventured into the frigid cold for a quick ice cream run in our pajamas last night around 10:00. we have obviously decided that it's never too late for ice cream on a school night and we are also grateful for the sonic close by.

i could have driven around all night long with that heater blasting. being in a warm car is one of my favorite places to be when its cold outside. the warm air is just right in your face... i love it.

i also loved the blurry lights along the way.



Saturday, January 23, 2010

date night

last night jeremy and i first headed to dinner at SLABpizza.


the pizza is just how their sign describes it: really big slices of really good pizza.
totally recommend it. they just opened and we are hoping the stay around. go support the little guys. i ordered a slab of bbq chicken and jeremy ordered a slab of cheese (it's his favorite... everytime).




we bought a cookie for a $1.08 (i had just enough pennies to save my sacred quarters for laundry... it was a good night) on the way out after we chatted with the owner Eric, best decision of the night! it was delicious, better than delicious. jeremy was willing to share with me, a little bit- 2 pieces... until he told me i should have gotten my own. hey, i bought it.





then we headed to "the dollar theater where tickets are not a dollar" (i'm not complaing, just observing... i love seeing a movie for $2 a ticket) and we saw 500 Days of Summer. mixed reviews i suppose. it was funny, depressing (from jeremy when i asked him to describe the movie in one word), and innappropriate for children. well, this show makes guys hate girls. it makes girls think about their past relationships that weren't meant to be. i liked it. though i probably won't buy it.


when we got out of the movie, it was a blizzard. not a dangerous one. a fun one. jeremy was so happy that we were finally being pounded with snow after failed predictions from weather.com time and time again (his obsession with the weather reports deserve their very own post). we playfully tossed some snow balls to each other- i totally nailed him in the face... oops. then we slowly warmed up in our car as we headed to our humble abode.


i love friday nights.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Almost done!

I went to the doctor yesterday to figure out what to do with my trusty blood clot.

I wasn't sure how it would all go,

but...

My doctor was confident that we could take me off of the rat poison and that everything would be fine.

It is kind of nerve racking to just stop taking the medicine that saved my life almost a year and a half ago, especially if we aren't going to do an ultrasound to see what my veins are doing. But I have decided it is time to start trusting the doctor, something I haven't done for quite a while (evident in the post after my visit in July).

My left leg still fluctuates from being 1 to 2 centimeters bigger than my right leg, but I have been told from the beginning that my leg would probably be like that for the rest of my life. He didn't want to do an ultrasound on my leg because he said some doctors do them and some doctors don't and he is one of the doctors that doesn't (last July I got an ultrasound because I told him I wanted it). He also told me that usually people that have blood clots are only on anti-coagulants for six months and then they are fine. I have been on the medicine since October of 2008, and I am really ready to be done. We also discussed the "high risk" situations that I will have to be careful of in the future, so I think I am feeling good about all this.

Last night I figured out that if I stop taking rat poison that I will be saving over $30 a month in medical costs- pills and monthly blood work can really add up. It will be nice to have some extra money... maybe we can call it "Katie's Shopping Budget." I like the sound of that!

my pill taking days will soon be over! WOOHOO! I can't wait! There will have to be some sort of celebration for sure. I better start planning one...


Where this whole fiasco started:


me in the Bucharest, Romania hospital- 10.2008
wow... there were some tough days

Monday, January 18, 2010

who knew?


ok... so remember this post?

i was debating whether to stay with side-swept bangs or take the plunge and go with blunt bangs. everyone who voted said go for the blunt bangs. jeremy was a little skeptical of the change, but he is pretty much skeptical of any change, so i cut them (scratch that... i went to a professional and she cut them). i liked them and i thought jeremy did, too (he said they looked good when i asked him).

well, recently jeremy has confessed that he misses my forehead. true story. he just cracks me up. i was also kind of tired of pretending that my forehead didn't exist, so i am on my way to side-swept bangs once again. thanks for the adventure blunt bangs. maybe i can experiment with you again in the future... but for now i shall stay with the trusty side-swept bangs.


who knew my forehead was so attractive?

p.s. i think it is hilarious that i feel the need to blog about my hair.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

this is what we do


Farkle.

me and jeremy play this game all of the time. really, we do... like at least once or twice a night. when i keep score he goes first, when he keeps score i go first. we like it.

you can get it at your nearest target. ok, so maybe it is a colorful cup with six die. but hey, it comes with directions and the scoring guide (in english and spanish). it's only 5 bucks and it will even help you with your math skills.

invest. i say... invest.

(we got ours for christmas... thanks mom and dad.)

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Plans, Plans, Plans

I just recently decided to change the future plans for my education.

Gasp! It's true!

I was going to get my masters in Social Work, until about a week and a half ago.

I have always been interested in therapy and counseling, and my main goal has been to eventually have a private practice of my own. After realizing that I really didn't care to be trained in public policy, adoption, child protective services, etc, which are included in Social Work, I began to look into Marriage and Family Therapy. This field solely focuses on counseling (dream come true!), but in order to apply to the programs I have to take the GRE. Yuck! But I am really excited about this new direction. It will be really good!

So the good news...

After I graduate, I am taking a year off of school! Yay! I will try to find a job somewhat in the counseling field, study for and take the GRE, read books for fun, work-out instead of write papers, and craft (is that really a verb? we will pretend.) instead of cram for tests and finals. If the whole job search doesn't work out, then I will start taking photography seriously, because that would be fun.

Needless to say, I am so excited for a little break.
But have no fear, I will enter the official learning world again in Fall of 2011 if all things go according to "The Plan."

"The Plan" can be complicated. False. It is complicated. It starts with Jeremy graduating in April 2011 (which is why I am taking a year off of school rather than running away to some other school without my sweet husband). Then Jeremy will apply to Dental School and I will apply to MFT Master's programs at the same Universities and hope (and pray) that we both get accepted to the same schools. If not, Jeremy's schooling will take precedent. Kind of sad how that works, but he will be raking in the dough with his career and I will be doing therapy more for my own sanity and of course to better the lives of others. (Don't therapists sometimes need their own therapists, so maybe my future career will actually lead me to insanity.) We really aren't even thinking about this possibility (of us not getting into the same schools), because I am choosing to plan for success! Not failure.

Hopefully, we will both get into the same schools and then we can be drowning in papers and tests, as well as debt at that point, together.


Sunday, January 10, 2010

loving these


my fun tights.
(this is my newest pair)

i don't think jeremy loves them as much as i do, or even likes them for that matter,
but he doesn't hate them. and that's good enough for me.

Friday, January 8, 2010

i am a knitter



i love my cozy new scarf!

it is 5 feet long and it took me just over a week to make. i started knitting over the christmas break (my momma taught me), so YOU can totally make one, too. i already have more yarn for my next project, which will probably be another scarf (but a different pattern and a new color) because they are easy... and so warm! here's a weird thing about knitting. there are two main stitches: a knit and a purl. my scarf involved both of these stitches. so i am not only a knitter, but i am also a purler.

yet they call the skill "knitting"... interesting.


Tuesday, January 5, 2010

new year

there is a new poll on your left to go along with this new year of ours.

have you decided what you will call the new year?

i find myself saying twenty-ten, rather than two thousand and ten. i do think it sounds a little weird, but then again we didn't call 1996 "one thousand nine hundred and ninety six." we just called it "nineteen ninety six." so do we have to wait until the 2100's before we will be okay with just saying the one four-digit number as two two-digit numbers. wow.. i think i'm losing even myself in all of this. i hope this is making sense... but really all i want you to do is vote on my poll.

i am curious...

what will you call the new year?

Saturday, January 2, 2010

ready... break!

it was sure nice to escape our little college town and head to the big city of las vegas for our break. i didn't take very many pictures... we were too busy playing, i guess.




being with my family and jeremy for christmas was so fun. this was our third christmas since we started dating, but our first christmas actually being together. it was a nice change.

we shopped, we watched movies, we slept in, we ate way too many sweets, we celebrated the savior's birth, we got to talk to sam on christmas, we went out to eat, we made santa cookies, we (the girls) knitted, we made abelskivers, we celebrated the new year (on new york time), we played games, we saw sherlock holmes (way good), we danced, etc. etc. etc. it was way too much fun!

now we are home, unpacked, and complete with a restocked fridge. we are ringing in the new year by dropping $700 plus on books for the new semester.
it should be a fun one!