back from the lull!

enjoy these belated valentines day images... jeff's chain is counting down the days to our wedding

hi self, welcome back to the blog!

for those of you who have missed me, i can promise i have not been blowing off blogging for no good reason.  family guy reruns are a very good reason thank you very much.  well, at least they are when you've actually been stretched thin with too much to do.  so what have we been up to lately?

things are changing a lot around my workplace and as a result i have a significantly greater workload.  high hopes this won't keep me from blogging too much in the future, but a reasonably demanding job is actually quite a time suck.

planning a wedding is a task and a half.  particularly while planning on being a bridesmaid in two weddings, a guest at three more, planning an international vacay, and existing as the point of contact for everyone who is planning parties related to these weddings.

also somewhere in there we're fitting in a cross country move and related job hunt.  which honestly is becoming more of a stress reliever than stress producer given michigan's cruel persistence of mega-freezing temperatures.  science has confirmed it:  michigan's winter 2014 officially sucks the most.

on the plus side:  i finally replaced my battery charger for my DSLR so with any luck there might be more pictures coming to pretty this place up.  i'm going to do my best to keep pre-blogging when i can to try and spread the fun out over several posts for y'all.

now re-reading this it's occurred to me... not much is new (well my boss is new, but she's great).  i hate when people bemoan how busy they are, so let's call it a day.

xoxoxo

PS like the heart garland on our mantle?  it's easy to make - check out my post here.

all kinds of count downs

photos are from the week before last when we ventured out into the cold for roughly seven minutes before our ears started to freeze.

chugging on to february and it's still cold.  i've found a lot of freedom from frustration by no longer allowing myself to feel entitled to doing things.  is that sad?  probably.  whatever, it makes the serendipitous moments of entertainment all the more enjoyable for now.  besides, in-climate weather apparently cut the chicago murder rate in half briefly.  frosty silver lining?

the groundhog saw his shadow in pennsylvania a couple days ago, which in these parts usually signifies roughly 12 more weeks of winter. still, when "leaving the house for reasons other than sustainable income and survival nourishment" is a rare treat, and when you find yourself saying "goodness me, eighteen degrees has never felt so warm," you start to look for light at the end of the tunnel.

having perfected the art of making chili, and having knitted enough things to start googling carpel tunnel syndrome, i'm thinking it might be time to make an excess of decorative paper count-down chains.  we've got so much (matrimony) to look forward to, and hey, all the trees look dead already!  when life hands you frozen lemons make kindergarten crafts (and a supplementary lemon drop will probably take the edge off too).

so how much paper are we going to need?  hmmm... let's make a list of the biggies:

sarah's bachelorette party in san diego: 87 days

paige's wedding in iron mountain:  95 days

sarah's wedding in ann arbor:  137 days

[insert ambiguous number here to signify our move]

our wedding in gull lake:  221 days

our honeymoon in greece: 224 days

hope everyone else has fun on the horizon!

i heart seasonal decor

winter has really been getting to me this year.  i am pretty sure i could eliminate snow from the rest of my life and feel no remorse.  the other morning when heading to work my car had a frozen lock.  after busting through the passenger side door and shimmying my way over to the driver's seat i opened my driver's side door from the inside.  this ended up being a big mistake as the latch became frozen inside the door and i had to drive about halfway to work holding the door shut until the car had warmed up enough to loosen the latch.

*frown*

so, in an effort to cheer myself up yesterday, i decided to pack away the big wooden glitter snowflakes i had hanging in the front window and make something cute for valentine's day.  heart garlands seem to be all the rage on pinterest so i thought i'd make one of my own.  it definitely makes the front room cuter, but i'm still waiting for it to melt the ice outside.

(cardstock hearts painted red with acrylic.   smaller cardstock hearts hot glued in the middle with sharpie letters.  strung together with white thread.)