Florida, Christmas Lights, and Yard oh my!

I woke up today with an intense desire to go to Florida. I have no idea why but its been consuming me all day! I was there a couple of years ago and didn't think there was anything that amazing about it, so I don't know why all of a sudden I just HAVE to go. Seriously, I have been looking up flights and hotels all morning. Realistically we have zero time for such a trip so I'm sure nothing will come of it.
Also, this weekend as we were taking down the Christmas lights (don't laugh, we KNOW that its February. Seriously people, we have NO free time) I realized that our front yard is in bad need of some sprucing up. It doesn't help that 2 of our neighbors have totally re-done their yards. Ours is looking pretty shabby in comparison. The people that we bought the house from planted a few things right before they put the house on the market and all of the plants have either died in the freezes or have grown into big monstrous things.

This weekend (in our free *har har* time) I want to rip out all the plants, extend the lawn, trim the tree, and put pavers under the windows and in front of the porch. Then Jerad can build some window boxes and I'll get some pretty pots to go in front of the porch. Any other ideas?

This is what the house looked like when we first bought it:
And this is it now (1 year 5 months later):
It was getting dark in these pics and half the Christmas lights are still up, but you can get the idea. This is the front of the house and I would like to remove all these plants and get pavers that match the walkway to put in front of the porch and a few rows under the windows:

This is the side fence that we will be replacing later this year with either a white, taller fence, or a stone fence. This is where I would like roses or some other plants:
I am thinking something like this for the window boxes, but with legs and stained a reddish color:

I need something simple that we can keep up with.
Then something like this in front of the porch on the new pavers:

Once the rains stop (and we come up with about $4000) we are tearing out the fence and replacing it. I was thinking we could plant roses in front of it?
These are other types of plants I like and will (supposedly) grow well in our area:






Any tips or suggestions would be greatly welcomed. Thanks!

Edit: After a few emails I'd just like to clarify that that little fence is not going to cost $4000, there is that fence and a big fence that goes all the way around our backyard, plus the rental house. Plus we need to build a retaining wall. Hope that clears it up:)

2 date nights in one week?

Yesterday was Sunday and Jerad had to work. Bummer. That is usually our ONE day together a week where we try to not do any chores, homework, or work. But, such is life. I'm still fighting off being sick so I slept in a little then since I had some energy, I went on one of those cleaning binges... you know, the ones where you move out the furniture and clean the base boards and scrub the air conditioner vents. That sort of thing.

Side tangent; why doesn't anyone ever drop by to visit when the house is clean and I am presentable? Nooo.... its only the days that I call in sick and lay on the couch and there are dishes everywhere. Plan better people.

Anyways, once the house was clean I had pretty much nothing to do all day so I played with the dogs and read some more of the book Beth let me borrow.
Man, I am LOVING this book, this is going to have to be a whole other post. Jerad got back around 7 and I hadn't really made any move towards making dinner so he whisked me away all the way to:



Anyone who has EVER eaten their gluttonous cheese cake knows exactly why it deserves a blog. Mmmmm.

Rosie The Riveter

So, when Jerad begged me to take welding with him, I was pretty apprehensive. Welding? Me??? Last Saturday was our 2nd welding lab. I was already in a bad mood cause we had a welding exam right before and I know I missed a few of the questions. Then we had our shop/lab. We had two projects to complete in 4 hours.

The first HOUR AND A HALF of the shop was terrible. I couldn't get any of my welds right and I was just really inconsistent. I told Jerad that I wanted to quit and between working, babysitting, and this saturday welding class I had no time to study for my core classes that I, you know, need to graduate. He told me I should talk to the teacher first.

It turns out that because I am such a shortie, the welding booths are too tall for me so it makes everything really awkward. And the electrode holder I was using was apparently the heaviest one in the class.

So, once the teacher set me up my own special SHORT bench to weld on and found me a light electrode holder everything went great! I actually weld better than most of the guys in the class. Haha who knew?

I am now the only girl; left in the class. we started with four and they have dropped like flies. So now I feel this sort of pressure to show that yes, females can weld too. I doubt I'll be building any trailers soon but at least I am holding my own.

Reason #155 reasons I hate Mondays

Enough said.

Date Night... Stephy Style

On The Door:
Inside The Door:

Idiot.

In trying to update my layout, I somehow erased everything and defaulted to... well, to the default I guess. Annoying.

How can a few little hairs hurt so much?

"Our therapists wax the delicate skin of the face with the utmost care. We offer tweezing and hot wax for more sensitive skins. Waxing is a highly personal treatment and your comfort and satisfaction are of the highest priority to us."

Why do I buy into this crap time and time again? Waxing HURTS. And you don't get used to it over time. One of my friends has her face, arms and legs waxed. My friend Dom even has the. inside. of. her. nose. waxed. I just walk into a salon and my skin starts turning red and burning and my eyes start watering. Then they take you into a little room that is supposed to be peaceful but really they are just trying to get you secluded enough the other customer's can't hear you cry. Waxing may be for some people, I'm going to boycott. This can be the new me:
Cousin It, from the Adams Family... get it?!? Okay, I'm a dork, pretend you didn't read it. And as much as it hurts and I whine (and turn red, and get puffy, and cry tears) I guess I will keep going back because I do love the results and there is no way I am patient enough to use tweezers. I'd rather just shave off my eyebrows and draw them on... you all know some classy person that does this. Okay, End rant, gotta stop writing so I can make it to my torture apt.

Playing Hooky

So, I have been feeling pretty crummy for awhile now... ever since before the snow trip actually. Yesterday I was sitting at my desk coughing and sniffling and then it hit me: why am I here? Its not like I'm proving anything to anyone by suffering through this, its doctor time! I left work around noon and had the BEST time killing time until my appointment. First I hit Goodwill and got this cute dress and cardigan for Valentines day... for about $6:

It has really cute detailing on the bottom







I also found this cute 80's-esque shirt for like $2:
front:





back:



And this big leather purse and wide belt:






Then I hit Target and found all these tights on sale for: $.98!!! And this cute purse on clearance for like 7 bucks:






After that I went to the doctor. After waiting in the lobby for AN HOUR AND A HALF I finally got taken to an exam room to be tortured. The doctor took some of those really long cue tips and dipped them in this (horrible, evil, burning) solution and stuck each one about 5 inches up my nose. No joke. I was ready to feel them rubbing on my brain. Then he asked if I wanted a pic on my camera phone. Ooh funny, did they teach that in medical school??? He sent me home with this:








And said something about Hay Fever and Sinusitus. Um, I seriously doubt I have Hay fever but maybe the antibiotics will kill whatever it is I do have. Everyone else at my work has bronchitus so I'm guessing I caught that.

For dinner we had a hamburger and fries substitute... aka Organic pulled lean bbq pork and green beans





It was delicious! I cooked the pork in a croc pot the day before with just onions, pepper, and bbq sauce, then pulled it apart and cooked for one more hour. We had wheat panini rolls from TJ's that I buttered and sprinked a little garlic salt and and broiled till they turned to garlic bread. On one side I put the pulled pork and a little mozarella cheese, and on the other a bit more bbq sauce then toasted in the broiler for another minute or so:





While that was happening I heated up about a tablespoon of peanut oil in a wok and then threw washed green beans into it and sprinkled pepper, a tiny bit of sea salt, and dill on them. After about 30 seconds I put in about 1/3 water and a lid and let it sizzle for a minute or so then turned off the heat.





The result was crunchy, yummy green beans that even Jerad admitted were almost as good as if we had had fries. So, super yummy dinner in seriously under 10 minutes.

Then it was off to Government, or Political Science as they are calling it now. More homework oh goodie.

A New Me.

Yesterday I was looking in the mirror at my skin and became kind of horrified. In all my busyness, I've just kind of let things go. There are bumps. There are blotches. There is dryness. EWE!!! Not pretty. I texted my best friend Tina and asked what I should do. She has this radiant, airbrushed skin so I thought she would know about some wonderful million dollar product line that would help me. What does she use?Seriously??? They were like $5... TOGETHER at Target! She said that she just does that once a day, and uses cold water to wash her face. Also that I needed to make sure I was drinking TONS of water.

I know I need to drink more water... besides helping my skin it will probably help me not get sick as much. I am really excited about my new little face regime and hope to be seeing results soon. Then I thought as long as my face was going to be getting all gorgeous, my teeth might want a little boost so I picked up some new paste as well.
I was going to post some before pics... but on second thought I don't want to scare you:)

America Update

Although I still maintain that I was not in the wrong this time I do still have these extreme feelings of guilt whenever we do fight, so I wanted to cover all bases.

My attempt at an apology:

************************************************************

Dear Jerad,
My sweet, caring, loving boyfriend. I love you. I'm sorry for all the time's I put "me first" instead of giving to you. I'm sorry for all the times you make me dinPublish Postner, or get me water, or run to the store for something that I've forgotten and I don't even think to thank you. You are so great, and I don't know how I ever did anything good enough to deserve you.

I'm sorry about our stupid America fight last night. Who the heck cares if its old or new? not me. I'm sorry that if our fight was about something besides America I was too dense to see it. I'm sorry if sometimes I seem opinionated and stubborn and too unapproachable for you to talk to me about any doubts you might be having.

I hope you understand how much i love you and all i want is for you to be happy. I hope you know you don't always have to be the rock in our relationship and its okay for you to be vulnerable too.

If you ever want to take my place of being the fragile one thats absolutely fine with me. You can lay on the couch and ooh and ahh over your headache and how you feel sick to your tummy. And I will make YOU soup and sourdough toast and offer to run to the store (in the rain, in my pj's) and get YOUR favorite brand of ginger ale and get YOU a cool wash cloth and slowly rub my hands in gentle circles on your back until everything feels better. Maybe instead of a bubble bath and cosmo magazine, it could be a bubble bath and your pilot magazines and garth brooks instead of counting crows.

I love our busy lives together. I love how even though our days are soo full we can still have the energy to lay in bed and talk about our days at night. I am so proud of you and everything you do to provide for us. Lets just make sure that even with all our busyness we take the time to talk about issues before they turn into fights about "America" because I am too tired at the end of the day to decode the deeper meaning in those kind of arguments.

love you baby,
steph
**************************************************************

My reward for such apology? When I overcooked the broccoli and squash into something that basically resembled mush and burned the bread he ate it ALL and pretended not to notice. After we got back from school he cleaned the whole kitchen and ran the dishwasher and took care of all the pets. Then it was snuggle time...

One, Two, Three, FIGHT!!!

Last night was one of "those nights." Before I explain, let me preface by saying that Jerad and I don't fight much. Seriously! we are both big "talkers" so normally we just work through little things before they become big. The exception is usually when I am just super emotional for no apparent reason (I am THE PMS poster-child) and blow things out of proportion. Even then, I understand that I am the one being ridiculous. My ex was not a talker. He was a leave-the-room-later-pretend-it-never-happened-er. He was also a go-to-bed-angry-and-it-will-magically-work-itself-out-while-we-are-sleeping (er). This caused lots of problems. I don't feel like an issue is dealt with until it is discussed, the root of the problem is identified, we figure out how to prevent it in the future, and both get out everything we need to say. THEN I can go to bed happy and put it out of my mind. Early on in Jerad and my relationship, we decided that this method worked very well for us and would hopefully prevent fighting the same fight over and over. We also decided that we would never go to bed angry. This has resulted in about 3 sleepless nights over a 2 year time period where we literally talk ALL night but things always work themselves out. Then there was last night.

We got back from class at about 10:30 and were putting the dogs and cats in their various sleeping places and getting ourselves ready for bed. I made the comment "it is so weird to me how the US is so 'new' compared to other civilizations?"

his answer: "not really."

me: "I just mean, compared to say England, the Inca's, the Mayans, Egypt, we are just so new." I was basically just thinking out loud.

He then reminded me that the Indians were here before us for thousands of years.

"I know, but when I think of the settlers, I always think it was sooo long ago. Its only been a little over 200 years. Thats crazy to me!"

Again, just sharing a little THOUGHT I had.

He then starts telling me all about yeah but we came from England blah blah blah. WTF, are we seriously going to argue about this?

So I started saying stuff like WHAT I MEANT WAS the US is not like England where we have really old buildings and all this HISTORY. 200 years is just "new" to me.

This was not something I wanted to talk about. I was just voicing a little though and thinking he was going to say something like "yeah." and that would be it.

Then he just kept going on and on about England so I pointed out that you really can't compare our culture with England because the whole reason people came to America was for a CHANGE. You know, different form of Government, different religious views... Ahem, new way of life.

And.he.just.kept.arguing.

So I sarcastically said something like "whoa, I had no idea you felt so strongly. you're right, we are pretty much the oldest civilization ever... total opposite of new... i really don't care, we need to be awake in like 7 hours lets just go to bed."

Obviously, this pissed him off and opened a whole new can of worms. Before I knew it the conversation turned to him talking about how we had COMPLETELY different views on everything important.

me: like what?

him: everything that is important.

me: like?

him: just values, our whole belief system. you know, everything important.

me (calmly): I can tell this is really important to you and I am just trying to understand. can you give me an example.

him: stuff like how to raise kids.

me: what do we disagree on?

him: like if we have a daughter, when she can do stuff like wear makeup and date.

me: well, I think that something that one girl might be ready for at 13, another might not be till 17 and those kind of decisions should be based on the child, not some pre-set age we decide on before said child is even conceived. what do you think?

him: well, that is pretty much what I think. bad example. nevermind.

me: what are these other differences that are clearly driving you crazy?

him: like our religious beliefs.

me: what do I believe that is so different????

him: well, I can't think of anything off the top of my head.

It went on like this for a LONG TIME. me asking questions, him having no answer but insisting how we had these life altering fundamental differences. Damn you America and your newness, why did you have to bug my thoughts??? At some point during this I had gotten into bed and he was still getting ready and I kind of spread myself across the entire bed, clearly leaving no room for him and hoping he would get the hint and sleep in the guest room or ask me to move over giving me the chance to say "I don't want to sleep in the same room as you while you are being ridiculous." Immature I know but you know, "when in Rome..." or apparently "When in America..." Instead he just got into bed laying on like the bottom corner with his feet hanging off and pretended not to notice. Okkkkkaaaaaaaay.

Our pointless conversation went on... and on... and on... and on....andonandonandon. He said we liked different kinds of foods (even if this were true I would hardly call it a MAJOR difference in our velief system).... I asked him what meals I made in the last month he didn't like... he said he liked all of them.... until it got to the point where he said "I just dont think we should get married when we have these huge differences to work out." and I exasperatedly asked "what differences are you talking about, you still haven't told me one?!?!?" Then I asked if he was just getting cold feet and was using this as an excuse, and to please explain to me what was going on. He told me that that wasn't it at all, he loved me to death and wanted to be with me..... he just wanted to work through all these (undefined...imaginary...(litterally unexplainable) problems first.

I was actually really proud of myself, I never lost my temper, never raised my voice, just kept TRYING to ask probing questions. I was so calm in fact that I fell asleep. It was like 12:30AM by this point giving me a short 5 hours to sleep. This morning we woke up, everything was great, got ready kissed each other goodbye.... and never spoke of it again.

What do I do? I think I am going to chalk this one up to momentary lapse of sanity on his part... or maybe he just felt the need to argue? Who knows. I guess until I hear some issue that we can actually work on I will just forgive-and-forget.

The Plot Thickens

So, Jerad just called me at work and told me to leave early for V-day because we were going somewhere where we needed to dress up, is about a 45 min drive, includes dinner, and I was going to love it. Hmm, I am really tempted to check the NewTimes and Trib and see if I can figure out what it is but I will be patient and see.

You might think that it's just a holiday and I'm a little obsessed... and you would be right. I start looking forward to valentine's in about September. To be fair, I am like that about most holidays but the feelings seem to intensify about V-day. Who knows... pretty excited though!

Valentine's Day

Jerad is notorious for waiting until the last possible second to shop for presents. I believe last Christmas he bought my presents on CHRISTMAS EVE. I am one of those people who is all about "its the thought that counts." So, holding out as long as possible then grabbing the first things that catch your eye is not THOUGHTFUL to me. I am also HUGE on cards. I like cards at least on major occasions that have lots of heartfelt sentiments in them.

I always tell Jerad that my dream gift would be to wake up to a homemade breakfast in bed with a little flower and a sweet card then take a drive to the coast and walk and talk and end with a picnic lunch or dinner. Sounds great right? And its cheap and easy to do, yet requires thought and planning.

Well, for our 2 year anniversary (and Christmas for that matter) he waited till the last minute and also forgot the card. So, Valentine's Day has been looming as the "day of redemption." Currently all of our friends are getting engaged so its been really hard. We talk about getting married ALL THE TIME. We have stuff planned out, have checked into pricing for the different things/places that we want and even made a guest list. And when I saw "we" that is really what I mean, its not just me pushing for this. So, for awhile now I have been teasing him that he needs to get me an engagement ring for Valentine's, and if he doesn't, he better get me something so fabulous that I don't even care.

He asked me to print out pics of the kind of rings that I like so he is on the right track. I put together this list of TONS of rings from plain and simple, to huge and diamond clad. I told him that I don't care that much and would even love a ring with a light pink saphire for the center stone. These however, were my two fav rings:




Then yesterday he started talking alot about how we really need to get a laptop. Which is true. We only have only one computer and it is a big problem when we both have papers to write.... then he reminded me how Dell has PINK laptops. Yesterday he was on the computer for a long time researching them. He also was looking at the pink SONY and the apple ibook but we decided all I would really be using it for is my music and pictures then papers for school so I don't need anything very fancy.

So, even though there will be no "question popping," I might be getting this bad boy which would would be a pretty amazing gift!


I guess I should upgrade from the pair of v-day boxers I got him.... just kidding. I am actually stoked with his present. Kinda want it for myself and I know he is going to be really surprised and thrilled to death! Well, only ten days from today to find out...