Gwen

I'm an auntie again!

Adorable-Nephew-Brayden joined us today... our own little Easter miracle :)

I can't wait until I have a chance to meet this little guy! Isn't he adorable? The perfect addition to a wonderful Easter. We're so glad to have him in our family.

What have I been up to?

I knew it had been a while since I last posted, but when I looked at the date I figured I'd better get something up here before so much time goes by that I don't want to try and get caught up!

First up, last month I went down to NYC to meet up with Angela and some of her friends for a trip to the Renegade Craft Fair. Super fun! Hot, though. We finished it up with some delicious Chinese food in Flushing. Yum.

Next up, I'm still tangling... a few more of the projects I've worked on over the last few weeks.

I was going to fill in all of the hexagons on that last one, but I liked the look and the vote on Instagram was unanimous to keep some spaces empty. So there it is!

I also went down to DC to see my family over the 4th. Many photos to edit... I'm feeling good that I got them off of my camera! We went to the pancake breakfast and parade at the church, played in the water at home, took Eraleigh to see Despicable Me 2 for her 5th birthday, grilled and had fireworks, a day at King's Dominion, and then just relaxing at my parents' house. It was a much needed break and so good to see everyone.

Then most recently, our Mixed Media Meet-up at the Papercraft Clubhouse was learning to use the Melting Pot. This was my favorite project - we took patterned tissue, stained it, and then dipped it in UTEE (ultra-thick embossing enamel) to make these really cool leaf embellishments. I need to make more!

Then this last week, I took a day off and Angela came up so we could go to ConnectiCon in Hartford. We felt a little old, and a bit out of place (I didn't really notice, though...) but we were there to see Brandon Sanderson (fellow BYU Alum! We were there at the same time, actually.) We got to meet him at his booth doing autographs and again that evening at a Q&A (we may have been in the front row. Nerds!) We also browsed the shopping floor and some of the different rooms to see what they had. Needless to say, the people watching was fabulous! We spent the entire day trying to guess who people were dressed up as. We didn't recognize very many costumes - lots of anime and game characters. But still fun.

Here's me with Brandon Sanderson - I got to wear a mist cloak too (goes with his Mistborn series of books, which is seriously brilliant.)

The day was lots of fun, and inspired me to finally read the last book in the Wheel of Time series, which Brandon finished writing. I just finished it today - I couldn't stop reading. It was excellent but at the same time, I'm finally glad to have reached the ending! 14 books, most over 800 pages. Good stuff. But now I can move on to read the rest of Brandon's books - several of which I already own and are sitting in that to-read pile. And since it's so hot lately, reading is about all I have the energy to do after work, so I'm starting to make a dent in said pile!

Anyway, that's what's been up... and now I'm off to bed!

The Calm Before the Storm

I've found something I don't like about living in Connecticut. Sitting here on an abnormally quiet Sunday evening, worrying... stressing... trying to stave off anxiety attacks over the coming hurricane. Most of the shoreline was evacuated today which is kind of scary. I'm far enough from the actual shore that I should be okay, but that's only a partial relief. I'm sitting here, constantly worrying over whether or not I took this seriously enough. Do I have enough water? Enough food? Should I have bought more batteries or a generator or something? I probably should have refreshed the stuff in my 72-hour kit. I'm high enough that I shouldn't have to worry about flooding, but there are only so many places where I can park my car, and none of them is particularly safe. I had to settle for not parking directly under the giant maple where I usually park, and hopefully out of the way of as many trees as possible. I pulled some loose branches out of the way and picked up some junk from around the yard and stowed it in the basement, but did I leave any other potential missiles sitting out overlooked? Should I have tried to put my trashcan in the basement?

I'm managing to worry about every.possible.thing. Twenty-seven times. each.

I have a blistering headache and my stomach is in knots. I'm a pretty independent person, but this is one time when being on my own really blows. But it will be okay. Although I've never been this close to the water before, it's not my first hurricane. Unfortunately the memory of the winds slamming into the house and making me afraid the windows were going to give way at any moment isn't helping. lol.

My attempt at blogging as a distraction? Fail. Heh.

Well, since I'm here anyway, and since I haven't been around for a while, I thought I'd share a few things from the last week or so while I still have power.

Last weekend, I hopped on the train late Friday afternoon for a quick trip down to New York City to meet Mom and Nicole. Nicole wanted to come up and see some shows as her birthday present, but we couldn't get a time that would work closer to the actual date, so we planned this as a last minute trip. I had a terrible time getting into the city, but finally made it, got to the hotel near Grand Central, and managed to catch a cab to Times Square in time to catch a little dinner.

The view from our hotel while I was waiting for a cab:

And then our birthday desserts at the restaurant after I finally found them...

As we walked through the square on the way to the theater, we had a little treat! The Naked Cowboy!

Mom wanted us to go in for a photo, but this was good enough for me!

Then, onto our show for the evening - we saw Mary Poppins, which was really quite wonderful.

After the show we walked a bit until we could catch a cab, then went back to the hotel and just crashed!

Saturday morning we slept in, then got up and called and managed to get tickets to Newsies. Woohoo! We also enjoyed the view of the Empire State Building from our room:

So since we didn't have to go stand in line at the half-price ticket booth, we went over to the restaurants at Grand Central and had lunch at Juniors. They had good reviews on my Foodspotting app, plus Rick swears their cheesecake is the best. I had a salad, but we shared a slice of cheesecake and it was indeed delicious.

Then, off to the theater for our matinee!

After the show, we went back and picked up mom's car and they dropped me at Grand Central before heading out to drive back home. While I was at the train station, I stopped in at the Apple store to see if I could get an appointment at the Genius bar to fix my iPod. Both my iPod and my Kindle crapped out while I was home in Virginia at the beginning of the month. I'd replaced the Kindle, and as it turned out, I had to replace the iPod too. But doing it at the Genius bar saved me a lot over buying a new one (and of course, it died after my Apple Care expired!) so I was all set and grabbed the train back to New Haven. It was a super fast trip, but it was fun - good to see mom and Nicole, and we saw two really awesome shows. I can't really say which I liked more - they were both outstanding!

In other news, I bought myself a new toy this last week. It wasn't intended to be a birthday present to myself, but it works out that way, which is probably going to be a good thing considering that my birthday will probaby be, quite literally, a wash out this year. (Ha!)

I'd had my old 30" TV since... well, a long time. lol. Like 18 years! So I decided it was finally time to get a new one. Craig and Ryan went with me on Tuesday and we had lunch at Chipotle (Ryan's favorite) and then went to Costco to get the TV. I had narrowed it down to a few choices, and they helped me make the final decision, then we loaded this bad boy into Ryan's truck. After work Tuesday they all came over and brought it in and installed it while I made a thank-you dinner - braised short ribs and creamy parmesan-garlic polenta with yummy appetizers and stuff. It was delicious, and the TV is awesome. I'm absolutely loving it! Of course, I had to get a blu-ray to match... I feel like I'm finally out of the technology dark ages. It's lovely.

And today was Adorable-Niece-Aubrey's 2nd birthday. We had a terrible time getting my Skyped in for the party (interference from the storm killing the signal?) but finally I switched to FaceTime and that worked great... in time for me to see her devouring her cake and opening my present - I got her a hoppy ball thing that she can bounce on. She's still a little too short for it, but loves having someone set her on it and help her bounce. She had quite the birthday, and it was fun to see and chat with everyone.

The kids always love seeing me on the video, and this time William got in on it too. They were all trying to give me kisses on the screen... so adorable. What did we do before technology got this advanced? I love how it makes it easier for our family to stay close no matter where we are.

Well, that's about it. Other than that, I've been doing laundry and cooking things to have that I can eat cold... trying to get as ready as I can for the storm. So now that I'm done with this, I think I'll go back to trying to keep myself from panicking. Hopefully everything will be okay and we'll all be safe and sound two days from now!

All moved in!

I've actually been moved in for a week, but things have been kind of busy so I just haven't had time to sit down and blog!

First of all, I love it here. Love it. I love my job, love my house, love the town, love the people. It's one of those times where it's so obvious that this was the right thing in the right place at the right time that it's kind of ridiculous. I'm very happy to be here, and thrilled to be working again. I've actually enjoyed it so much that I've been in the office BEFORE 9AM, every.single.day. And if you know me, you're probably still picking your jaw up off the floor.

My mom and dad have been here this weekend, and we've been having fun playing. I've been showing them around the town and trying out some of the great restaurants here in town. We did some shopping, I got a MUCH needed haircut, and we put some finishing touches on the house.

A few pictures from the last three weeks...

I completely forgot to take pictures of the moving truck after they got here, but it's pretty much the reverse of this:

Then Sunday night after the movers left, I went over to Mindy and Darren's for a little farewell dinner with the Peanuts. It was great to see everyone again one last time before I took off. Not that we won't see each other again at some point!

Monday I took another load of stuff to DI, turned in my equipment at Comcast, got some car snacks and gased up the car, and then Melody came over and saved my bacon by helping me get everything cleaned so I could turn in my apartment keys the next morning. Then that night I went to her house and we had some farewell snacks and fun with her family plus Tim and Dustin.

And then Tuesday morning I was off! I drove by myself with a packed car and my iPod and GPS and I was off. I stopped in Kearney, Nebraska the first night and then just outside of Toledo, Ohio the second night. I got to Branford at about 5pm on Thursday evening and picked up my keys at the real estate agency and then got to the house and unloaded the car. At that point I was just exhausted and set up my air mattress and crashed.

I spent a few days picking up necessities and figuring out where things are, and doing a lot of reading.

The last time I posted were the pictures I took while I was waiting for the movers to get here on Sunday... they ended up coming late because of a morning job that took longer than planned and then bad traffic on 95. Then it took several hours to unload and they didn't finish until about 9pm, so I didn't really get started unpacking that night. And then Monday, I started my new job.

Did I mention I love my new job? I do. I've been there two weeks now and it's been awesome. I have plenty to do, I'm getting looped in and up to speed and all that pretty fast, and the people are just great. Of course, the people are the main reason I turned down my other opportunities and took this one. And I'm excited that it's turning out even better than I had hoped.

I kept unpacking in the evenings after work, and then did a big push last weekend to get pretty close to finished. I did a few last things last Monday and then I was pretty much done!

(I hauled ALL of the boxes and paper down to the basement of the house on Tuesday, and it was quite a job. They won't last in the humidity here so I'm going to have to list them on Craig's List, but at least they're out of the house for now!)

A few of the rooms as I was finishing...

(You see a lot of fans around because the house doesn't have A/C - which it really only needs about 2 months of the year. Next summer I might get a few window units or something. We'll see.)

And of course, the all important scrapbook room!

This room is easily twice the size of my scrap attic, and I can't believe I fit it all in there! Of course, in here I have one entire wall that I can't use because it's full of closets (which hold the stuff from my guest room closet - the guest room here doesn't have one, as well as my coat closet). And I also tried to keep things from covering the windows, so it's more spread out instead of using vertical space. But I love it - the yellow walls and wood floors are awesome. And since the master bedroom didn't have cable hookups, I put the 2nd TV in here so I can watch the Food Network and hockey games while I work - I think this will work great!

So I had Wednesday night where I just relaxed and relished being done with the unpacking. Then Thursday night, we had a work Happy Hour at a place near our office where the eCommerce team headed for some after work drinks and snacks.

I started with straight-up water on the rocks, but eventually switched to virgin frozen peach margharitas which were pretty tasty. We ordered apps (it was Mexican) and then desserts (it was also unhealthy). After a few hours there, a group of us broke off and went to a different bar close to the water (funny enough, it was the singles who stuck it out - everyone else went home to their families). So me, my boss Craig, our analyst Ryan, and Cassi who was down working in the office for a few days (she normally telecommutes from MA) went to the bar where I switched to Shirley Temples. Lots of grenadine... yum! Part of the fun with this group is that I've fallen in with some fellow foodies who also happen to be super fun to hang out with. I'm slowly being shown all the great places to eat with the promise of many more opportunities to sample the local cuisine and entertainment scene. I can't wait!

Friday my boss "made" us all leave early for the holiday weekend, so I went home to get the house picked up and to get some of the moving dust out of the way before my parents came. They got here for dinner and I took them to one of the places I've tried for dinner and we also drove along the water. We did more shopping, eating and sight seeing on Saturday, went to church at my new ward on Sunday, and today we did more shopping to get curtain rods and a few sets of drapes for the house. Because of the way the windows are here (old and slightly slanted plus not being allowed to drill into them) I had to get tension rods for all the windows. And with lots more windows, I needed more drapes. So we hit Target, Ikea and Walmart and got what I needed between those. Then my mom and I busted out the sewing machine and measuring tape and got to work.

We hung everything up first to see what we needed to cut off, then I did the measuring and cutting and mom did the sewing. As she finished hemming, I got them ironed and hung.

And my dad, well he did this:

(can't say I blame him!)

I've now got drapes up in all but two of the rooms - the front two rooms I'm waiting on until the contractor comes to replace the windows this week. Mostly because there's a wasps nest in one of the guest room windows, and I only want to move things once in the scrapbook room. But the other rooms look great! So now it's finally really feeling like home. Still a little weird / new, but it's a lot homier now. I love it and I can't wait to have people over! Next up: wide screen HD TV (WAY overdue... I'm still using the huge 30" Sony I bought in college!) and maybe a BBQ and some patio furniture for my porch. We could do some serious game-day partying here! But we'll see when I get to it... I have time :)

Whew! Well, there's my huge catch-up post. I'm going to try and do a little Project Life catch-up as well. I might not do all 4 weeks individually, but I'll pull something together to cover the last month. It's been crazy, but kind of awesome too. And now, I'm off to finish up a few things and then hit the sack so I can be up bright and early for work in the morning.

Later!

First birthday mini scrapbook

Yup... Adorable-Nephew-William turned one last month and there were so many cute pictures from his party that I decided to make a little mini album with them.

I've had this album for a year or two... waiting for the perfect project. It's a Doodlebug 4x8 chipboard album and I love that the pages are white. I decided to leave them that way and make it clean and colorful.

I used lots of different papers and tapes - I had a few sheets of an old KI Memories birthday line that I loved. I also thought those Basic Grey Woolies were fun with this - I used one for that big circle along with some Jolee's candle stickers.

William is in a car and truck phase, so Rick and Erin made him this super cute construction cake with lots of trucks on it - it was the theme for his party and it turned out really fun!

So to go with the construction / truck theme, I downloaded a few designs for my Cameo and used them througout the album. I love how they turned out!

I wasn't there in person, but I was Skyped in for the party and it was fun to watch him open all of his gifts... William is such a cutie!

His word lately is "wow!" and there were several during the party - especially for his little car ramp tower thingy that he loved.

More trucks... I had to have a few for when he got his new truck push and ride!

I really like the tall photos that I used in this book - it worked great! It also made the book pretty fast and easy to put together.

I printed out all the photos and then went through and adhered them in the album. Then I went through again and added patterned paper around the photos. Because of the way I did it, I didn't have to lift up photos or anything (and on the few where the photos are on top, I just did the paper first and added the photos).

Then I went through again and added the journaling (mostly taken from Erin's blog) and then added washi tape, stickers, and other little bits.

This was a fun and fast project, and a great momento of William's first birthday. Hopefully someday he'll love looking through this :)

Back from Tahoe!

Okay, so I've actually been back a few days, just busy. There are big changes coming around here... it's going to be quite a challenge if things work out the way I think they will. Cryptic, I know. But hopefully I can share everything soon.

In the meantime, I just got back from my family reunion at Lake Tahoe. It was so fun to see everyone! I need to put photos into an album to share, but for now, here's my finished Scrapbook on the Road. I picked out 48 favorite pictures and had them printed as 5x7s and then used a coupon I had for Persnickety Prints and got a bunch of Instagram prints done (which I loved!)

Here's the cover - I used a Heidi Swapp memory album from a few years ago - the pages are 5x7 and it's a smallish 3-ring binder. I used a lot of the pages that came with it and added some of my own.

And here are the inside pages... there are a lot (and I didn't even take pictures of all of the pages that are just photos or just journaling), so I'm using the thumbnail gallery below. Enjoy!

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Now I've got to get caught up on my Project Life. Hopefully I can knock that out soon... I hate not being caught up! But, life comes first, and I've got a lot going on right now so we'll see. If I don't? No biggie, right?