Week of November 18

I don't really have anything great and exciting to say this week.  It has been quite a funky week with only working 3 days and having a 4 day weekend.  With Caleb starting his new job, we weren't able to go to Missouri for Thanksgiving.  Caleb's parents came on Wednesday afternoon and left Thursday afternoon, then my parents came in Saturday morning and left Sunday afternoon.  It was great to still be able to see them despite not being able to travel this holiday.  I didn't fix a Thanksgiving dinner, and looking back I wish I would have, but I really didn't have time to cook much before Thursday.  Instead we went to Ruby Tuesday on Thursday for lunch.  It was definitely a different Thanksgiving, but I'm sure it will be a memorable one.  :-)  As always, I meant to take a pic of us while we were there and then totally forgot. 

On Friday I got my Christmas tree up!  Since we don't have a whole lot of ornaments, I decided last year to decorate our tree with stuff from our wedding since we had a snowflake wedding.  It is still missing a topper and a tree skirt, but maybe someday we'll find a cheap one on clearance after Christmas. 

 

 

However, I did make some new pinterest-inspired ornaments this year.

 



While my parents were here, we introduced them to Orange Leaf!  Mmmmmm!!

So this past week I was showing Caleb this video of one of the guys from the morning show at the tv station I work at who went "undercover" to find the best cup of coffee in Louisville.  If you have any sort of a sense of humor, its pretty funny. Anyway, so I was showing him this video and my computer screen went black.  You could still hear the video but the picture was completely gone.  After several shut downs and restarts and whatnots, it was pretty clear that my computer wasn't going to cooperate.  Fortunately I have a dad who keeps spare computery things on hand and he brought me an extra montior and an external hard drive to see if maybe it was just the screen that went out so I could still get all of my stuff off of my computer.  It worked!! So now I just have this lovely little set up whenever I want to use my computer. 

I'm in the market for a new laptop if anyone has any suggestions.  I don't need a fancy one, just one that will let me do facebook and video chatting and schtuff like that. 

Week of November 11

Caleb had his last class of the semester on Tuesday!  He still has finals, but woo hoo!  It's crazy how fast this semester has gone.  Once this semester is finished he will be half way done with seminary.  HALF WAY!  Didn't we just move here a couple of weeks ago??

Always studying.  :-)

They are building an ice skating rink downtown!  How cool is that?!  Granted, I can't skate to save my life, but I think it's neat that they are building that.

Also, look at the ginormous "Community" tree.  Psh, come on, it's a Christmas tree and always will be.  Get over it.  Either way, it's pretty and smells sooo good!

I had my one and only pumpkin spice latte of the year the other day (seriously, who can afford such expensive coffee??).  Oh my goodness I forgot how good they were.  Also, the Starbucks I went to wasn't doing the buy one get one free deal.  Boo.  However, it was so good that it was almost worth the price.

So the other night I was up late folding laundry and noticed some brighter than normal flashing lights outside.  I didn't think anything of it because the fire trucks had left a few minutes before and I thought they were just getting back.  A few minutes later I noticed that they were still out there.  I peeked out my window and saw this.  At first I kind of freaked out because I thought one of the businesses on our street must have gotten robbed or something.  It turns out they just had a guy pulled over.   (The seal in our window is broken which lets mositure build up and not allow for decent sneaky pictures of police cars while trying to not be seen by them so they dont think I'm suspicious.  But really, wouldn't you be freaked out if you looked out your front window and saw this??)

Here's how I spent a chunk of my weekend.  Cleaning up the room Caleb did all of his woodworking stuff in!  It was a bigger task that I originally planned so I mainly just tackled the closet out there so it could be used for storage.

Here's what I was up against.  This is just the window sill.

Crikeys, right?  I like that he has a room to be able to do that stuff, but it will be nice to be able to go out there and not come back covered in dust from accidently rubbing up against something. 

Anyway, Thanksgiving is this week and since Caleb only gets one day off of work, we are staying here for the holiday and our families are coming to visit us!  Yay!

Week of November 4

Caleb started a new job this week.  His other job quit having work for him to do so he’s now working for UPS.  It will take some adjusting for both of us, but in the end it will work out better for him than his old job.  

This past Saturday I was laying on the couch and started noticing one of my houseplants starting to shake.  That does happen a lot because our apartment tends to shake if the wind blows the right way or if a big truck drives past. (Side note: one time when I still worked early mornings at Target, I came home one morning and turned on the show Numbers. I started dozing off and all of a sudden a bomb went off on the tv right as a big truck drove by.  Talk about special effects!)  But this time it lasted quite a bit longer than normal.  I asked Caleb if we were having an earthquake and he said it was probably just the wind, but the tree next door wasn’t moving enough for winds strong enough to shake the apartment that much.  Turns out, there was a 4.3 magnitude earthquake in eastern Kentucky.  Crazy!  That’s the second earthquake I’ve felt in my life, and hopefully the last.

Saturday I also wanted to do some baking.  I started off making 3 apple crisps from the bags of apples I have in the freezer.  I was looking over the recipe after I had slid all of them into the oven and noticed that I forgot to put flour in the topping.  I’m hoping that it will turn out just fine.  I mean, can you really go wrong with just butter, sugar, and oatmeal?  Then I made some peanut butter blossoms.  You know, those peanut butter cookies with the sugar coating and the Hershey kiss on top?  Well, I pulled them out of the oven and they were as flat as could be.  I called my mom telling her all about my failure and she helped me figure out that only put ¾ cup of flour in instead of 1 ¾.  There I went again forgetting a whole cup of flour.  I guess I was trying to be gluten free or something.  I redeemed myself by successfully making another batch with enough flour except this time I burnt the bottoms of them.   :-(  I considered it a slight victory over my last attempt though.  And they still got gobbled up without much judgment by my small group. 



The picture didn't look blurry in my camera. Sigh.

Sunday morning (I guess technically this one would go in next week’s blog, but, eh, just some bonus material for you) Caleb got to preach at church.  He had to do it for his preaching class, but he still loves to preach any chance he gets.  He’s pretty much my favorite preacher. :)  

Here are some other things I whipped up this week.  I’m trying to figure out how many foods I can make from scratch to cut back on some costs, and because I enjoy doing it (not to mention how many things are healthier for you without all of the preservatives, but I’m not that big of a health nut to dwell on such topics, I’m more of a penny pincher). 

Homemade Hamburger Helper! 

I scored some 50 cent boxes of pasta a couple of weeks ago at Kroger.  I’m almost embarrassed by the amount of pasta we have in our pantry, but hey, cheap pasta.  I found some recipes for homemade hamburger helper and repurposed some old Starbucks Frappuccino bottles thanks to my parental units.   

Homemade Velveeta! (mostly to use in aforementioned homemade hamburger helper) 

 

This stuff is actually pretty easy to make.  You pretty much just turn shredded Colby jack cheese into American cheese using the food processor.  I nibbled on it a bit after it set and it doesn’t taste as creamy as Velveeta, but we are putting it to the test tonight in some cheesy broccoli casserole.  This isn’t much of a cost saver since real cheese is so expensive compared to velveeta, but I think it’s fun to make.  Also, if I could ever score a deal of a big hunk of cheese that I could even shred myself, it would most likely be a money saver.

Oh, and Caleb picked me this flower from a parking lot the other day.  :-)  He's cute.

 

 

That's all.  :-)

 

Week of October 28

It's November!  Christmas is next month!  :-)  I love this time of year, especially when I'm not working retail.  Since 2006 I have worked at Target every year during the holidays other than the year that Caleb and I got married, so I wouldn't really consider that Christmas any less stressful.  Happy Sigh.  Let the stress free festivites begin!

Here's a bit of a summary of our past week.  This might get kind of long.

Sunday:
We tried to hold out for so long, but once the thermostat starts reading less than 65, it's time to turn on the heat.  Don't worry, we changed the temp setting much much lower.  That's just where we had it all summer. 

The angle might be a little off for you to read it.  But basically it says brr.

 

Monday

 

Caleb came to visit me at work to get his absentee balot notarized (we still voted as Missourians, longish story).  Then we went and mailed them.  It was a little windy.  Silly Sandy.

 



You can't see it, but it was really windy, which made it rather chilly.

No, really, it was windy.  I promise I don't always wear my hair like this.

 

 

Tuesday:

Saturday and Sunday I started getting a lot of sensitivity in my tooth that I just got a filling in a few weeks ago. I was nervous that I was going to need a root canal or something. I called my dentist right at 8 am on Monday to try to get in asap and get it checked out since drinking anything was rather painful.  I got a recording saying that they were closed on Monday and if it was an emergency to call the dentist on his cell phone.  I was tempted, but since I didn't get all of my teeth knocked out and bleeding to death or something like that, I figured I could last another day.  I started getting one of my daily headaches on Monday (that I thought may be from my vision even though my prescription barely changed) but then it started hurting in my jaw. Every TMJ pain I could possibly have set in, making it incredibly painful. I came home that night and laid on the bed with heat on my face hoping for some sort of relief.  It turned out that I had a high spot on my filling and it was making my tooth sensitive and throwing off my jaw alignment.  *Sigh of relief*

 

Wednesday:

We had a chili/soup potluck at work and we were supposed to dress up.  No, I am not Aunt Jemima, I'm Rosie the Riveter.

 

Friday:

I took off on Friday just because I could.  Caleb and I went to a thrift shop and bought another $1 game.  Guess how we spent our afternoon?

I also worked on a Christmas present for my favorite almost two year old (I won't mention any names here, you never know, he may be reading this.)  I turned a boring black jacket into this awesomeness.

Also, it has ears on the hood.  :-)  I caught caleb trying on the hood.  I think he wants one too.  

 

Since the end of October has come and gone, that means that Oscar has been with us for a year now.   I decided to take another one of his "look how much he's grown" pictures next to a quarter.  The only problem is that this is what most pictures of him turn out looking like.

 

I took him out and put him in a box so that he couldn't run far.  Only then I had the exact opposite problem with him.  He went completely into his shell and wouldn't show off his pretty face.

So then I put him in his aquarium thinking that maybe he would come out a little bit.  I got his head to come half way out.  This sufficed my wants for a picture....but...











  

I thought some peer pressure might help.

Turns out, it worked.  

I can't show you what happened after this.  But anyway, here's a comparison of how big he is this year compared to last year, and how duller his shell has become.

One last picture. Tonight I was doing some dishes and I started smelling something burning. I went around smelling everything trying to figure out where it was coming from. I found the culprit to be the dishwasher. I opened it up and found this. You know that little flap thingy on the top of Brita water pitchers? Well, this is what ours looks like now. That's what I get for trying to do housework.

Caleb said at least it's one less step when we fill up the pitcher.  :-)