New Profile

Well we saw 2 more apartments last night. Both in nice neighborhoods in Manhattan. Both totally wrong for us. We have an appointment in Queens tonight with a broker so we will see how it goes.

My friend and co-worker Suzan is working to develop and design a new web page for the lab so yesterday she set up a little photo studio and took everyone's picture. She did an awesome job with them in photoshop. The webpage is far from finished but I forced her to hand over my pictures so I could use them here.

My new profile photo:

Here was the other photo she got:

They are practically Glamour Shots! Plus in the second there was a garbage can next to my head (photos were all taken in the lab) and she artfully blurred it out in photoshop. Everyone looked amazing in their photos when she finished with them. Everyone will want to work here with the "pretty people" when they see our web page. Now I just need her to do my Christmas card for next year! Here she is:

Best Birthday Ever

We didn't look at a single apartment last weekend (not much on the market). Instead we focussed on cleaning out our current apartment. We are only about 50% done but it felt so good to toss stuff. We worked systematically through each room, each cabinet, each shelf and evaluated every item together. Did we use it, did we love it, did we need it, did we have more than one. We both encouraged the other to really be honest about what should stay and what should go. We tried on every article of clothing we owned. Here is an example:Two dresses I have been holding on to for years. Why? I don't know. I never intended to wear them again. So instead I tried them on for kicks and then tossed them in a bag. One of the best parts of the decluttering weekend was remembering the stories behind some of the stuff. That is why we keep the stuff, to remind us of things. Well, take a picture and write down the story! The black dress was purchased for a New Year's Party organized and heavily attended by the BSF Young Adults class in Seattle. My best friend Katie and I went. I was having a really hard time finding a formal dress. Katie and I tried on this same black dress (she found it first and she looked great in it!) and she wanted to get it but I liked it too and I wasn't having any luck so she let me get the dress. Such a good friend! I loved that dress that night! The other dress was the Maid of Honor dress I wore to Katie's wedding, and I felt gorgeous in it that day. Both were way too small for me now! Now hopefully they aren't too out of style to bless someone else.

Here are just some of the bags of stuff we decided to get rid of. The whole area under the table was full and a lot had already been taken downstairs. Some garbage, some recycling and lots to take to the GoodWill. I wish I had taken some before and after shots, especially of the desk. Yikes that was crammed full of junk and now looks so neat and tidy. Now we need to tackle the kitchen, Hall Closet, craft and music areas! Is it weird that I thought this was the most fun way to spend a weekend?

Birthday Blogger!

I don't usually blog on the weekends so this is my official Birthday post. This Sunday I turn 31 years old. Where did the time go? It seems like just yesterday I was planning the big 3-0 party.

Tonight we are having a small scale celebration. Greg got us tickets for Shakespeare in the Park tonight (Romeo and Juliet) and we are meeting some friends for a low-key dinner before hand. I am actually really swamped at work today so I hope I can get out of here on time to make it to the restaurant.

Then this weekend we are trying to get some appointments set up to look at more apartments. Not the way I would like to spend my Birthday but I would like a nice new place to live in my 31st year so it is a must.

I snapped this photo while sitting at my desk today so I would have something to post. Not bad for a self portrait right?! And mom, notice the earrings!

So I leave you with this:

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31 Things I Love (in no particular order)

1. My husband Greg

2. iPod Video and watching TV on the train

3. KI Memories scrapbook products (just placed an order yesterday!)

4. Chewy Runts and Chewy Gobstoppers Candy

5. Caffeine Free Diet Coke

6. Driving in the car on a sunny day with the radio blaring

7. New clothes from H&M

8. Naps in the mid-afternoon!

9. Homemade Pizzas warm from the oven

10. Aussie Licorice (did I mention I love candy!)

11. Long tank tops from Down East Basics

12. Hot Showers even in the summer

13. Manis and Pedis

14. Discovering a cool new blog and then reading all the archives

15. Throwing things out and decluttering

16. Getting into the Scrapbooking zone

17. Talking to myself

18. Finding shoes in my size that are cute (11 is a tough size!)

19. Remembering something totally random at the perfect moment

20. Getting my teeth cleaned at the dentist

21. The Office on NBC

22. Snuggling with Greg on the couch

23. The moment when I am just drifting off to sleep

24. When my house is really clean

25. Opening the mail, especially if there are packages

26. Margaritas, preferably frozen with no salt

27. Being at home all day

28. Seeing friends and family after a long absence

29. Getting into a made bed

30. Making up new silly lyrics to songs and annoying Greg

31. Anything miniature sized!

Wow, I could go on and on but I will have to wait until my 32nd Birthday!

Busy little blogger

We sent the last 2 evenings in Queens looking at apartments. We came REALLY close last night to finding a place only to decide that it was going to be a little too difficult of a commute for Greg. To bad too because it was 2 blocks from the Beer Garden and fairly spacious. The commute of course wasn't the only problem with it but it was by far the best apartment we have seen so far. It gives me hope that there are good places out there, we just have to keep searching. Each place we look at helps us know a little better what we want and need.

Work has been a little bit hellish this week so I don't have much else to report on right now. More later!

Scrapbook Update

Well I finally finished the theme album for my co-worker Karen who recently moved to Maine. The album has 40 single pages (20 double page layouts) so here is just a sampling to give you an idea of the design.

The title page. The whole album featured Urban Chic paper by Basic Grey, brads and paper flowers. The majority of the pages look like this. A main photo with catchy title and then a photo collage on that theme opposite. This one is about Campus life and shows photos from the building, lab and park.There were 3 layouts like this that feature people. Faces from her 6 years in the lab. We have a lot of people come through this place each year. Post-docs, techs, and lots of students.

Then in between the collage pages I would stick these layouts that feature individual people and their well wishes/sentiments for Karen.Some layouts featured parties or events. This one shows our trip to New Orleans. A bunch of us girls from work went. Other layouts show lab clean-up days, happy hours, baby showers, bachellorette parties and birthday parties. We have a lot of fun in this lab!Near the end of the album I made this layout. I raided her desk one day while she was out and pasted in a few of the items she had stuck up in her work space. The last page is this one where I listed lots of random memories of work. Just little blurbs to jog her memory and make her laugh.

Overall it was a really easy album to make. I did all the photo collages in Adobe Elements and had them printed out 8x8 at scrapbookpictures.com then just slid them in. The last shot is my planning day where I laid all the blank pages out and planned the order of everything. Now I just need to get it in the mail to Maine!

Flat Tire

On the way to church last night we got a flat tire just as we had come off the freeway and made our way across the bridge into Manhattan. I of course couldn't do much to help Greg except watch. That is until I remembered that I had my camera. This first shot is of the area where we pulled off. It is a small median area where the road splits. A lot of people were cutting across the median area pretty close to the car. Crazy NYC drivers!

Here is Greg removing the flat. He was really annoyed that I was taking his photo. Poor guy. It was really humid out and at one point he had to lay on the ground to position the jack.
This is our 2nd flat since moving here and both times they happened around the same place. There was no major incident just rough roads in general. Today Greg is out buying 4 brand new tires. Hopefully they will last a while!

Scrapbook Update

My June Kit arrived from Jenni Bowlin Studios. Unfortunately I haven't even touched the May kit. I haven't been doing any scrapbooking in a while. I barely managed to crank out a Father's Day Card for my dad and the scrapbook for my co-worker is still sitting here 95% done.

Here is the kit. Pastel purples and greens. The things I am most excited to use are the damask flower sticker from Heidi Swap and the Heidi Swap Ghost Flowers (I've never used her ghosts before so I will have to do some research and figure out how). I read that Heidi Swap is going to start her own monthly kit club so I may have to join that one instead since I love all her stuff.

As far as weekend plans I don't know if I will get any scrapping done. I am going to Renegade on Saturday and then may be meeting with our broker to look at apartments all afternoon. Maybe on Sunday I will try and get one small project done. Sometimes just a minor accomplishment is all it takes to get the juices flowing again and get me revved up to scrap during the week. I need to move my scrap table to the living room so I can watch all my new favorite shows while I scrap. Hell's Kitchen, So you think you can dance, and Last comic standing to name a few. Why are summer reality shows so much better than what's on during the rest of the year?

More Crafts!

This weekend is the Renegade Craft Fair in Brooklyn. It happens twice a year in Dec and June. This year they will be having 200 vendars. I have been to it 3 times and can tell you that is it really cool. NYC doesn't have many honest to goodness craft fairs and this is the real deal. It is pretty sweet so if you are local and want to meet up let me know. I won't be missing out on some hipster homemade crafts! They have a vendar list so you can even pre-shop!

Craft Club

Last Saturday I attended another craft club. This time we learned how to make dishcloth aprons with Peh. She actually made us HAND SEW them. I haven't hand sewed anything in years. But it only took about 15 min to do the stitching and these babies were done. Super easy but super cute. I have been wearing mine all week in the kitchen. Thanks Peh and thanks to Kelly for letting us meet at her house and feeding us a yummy lunch.

The rest of the weekend was spent looking at apartments and listings with our new broker and friend Joann. She is trying to convince us to buy an apartment so now we are going through the motions to see if that is even possible. So much stress!Greg had his final class all day yesterday so now he is officially done. He has to deal with all the administrative crap now to file for graduation and get his thesis credits counted. Hopefully it will go smoothly. Of course he still wants to write a paper to get his thesis results published but that is an added bonus and shouldn't be too hard.

Thursday

The apartment we saw last night was not for us. It was next to the Hell's Gate Bridge and much too small. It was a convertible 2 but they were calling it a 2 bedroom apartment. I hate that! Anyway, the hunt continues.

Another thing we did last weekend was visit this:

It is a modular home that was built during a design contest. Designed to be used in Africa. I don't know much about it (the boys, Greg and John were more into it than I) except that it is being auctioned off at Christie's and it is set up here in Queens for public viewing. The architect is pretty famous. Maybe Greg will enlighten us in comments. It was rainy when we went but it was interesting to see. I think this home is bigger than my apartment! You can see some of the restoration when you look at the support leg in the foreground compared to its partner.

I can't believe...

...it has been a week since I blogged last. I have been having really bad allergies and migraines lately so it seems when I have some free time I feel too lousy to post. Here are some updates:

• We are working on our housing issue. In fact Greg and I have an appointment to look at a place in Astoria tonight. It sounds promising but I have learned never to get my hopes up when it comes to NYC real estate.


• I am 95% done with the gift album for my co-worker and will try to photograph it this week. Otherwise I have done no scrapbooking in almost 2 weeks.

Last weekend Greg and I spent some quality time together. On Saturday we ventured over to Connecticut to visit the Barnum Museum. It explores the life of P.T. Barnum (from the circus). It was a very small museum but was interesting and fun to check out. I took a whole ton of photos and then noticed on our way out a sign saying "no photography please". Oops! Anyway, here are some shots:

The highlights:

Barnum really came to fame with roaming sideshows and saloon appearances. The museum actually didn't talk that much about the circus which came very late in his life.

Barnum struck it rich promoted a "little person" named Tom Thum and promoting Jenny Lind the famous singer.

The top floor of the museum featured a hand carved scale model of a circus. It filled almost half the floor.

Barnum also claimed to have a mermaid, a mummy, and a 160 year old woman in his company. The woman ended up being only 88 when she died, the mermaid was a monkey body on a fish tail, but the mummy turned out to be authentic. Barnum also featured Siamese twins, bearded ladies, skinny men, and all the other "regular" side show type attractions but Tom Thumb was his most famous.

The photos above from the upper left:

-Greg with Tom Thumb image to show his scale.

-The mummy

-The scale model of the circus from above on a catwalk

-Circus items

-A circus buggy

-An elephant replica (Barnum featured a baby elephant long before he started the circus. He used to use the elephant to plow his fields near the train track so train passengers would want to come and check out his show).

-The Barnum Institute from the outside.

-Greg next to Tom Thumbs carriage.

After the museum we enjoyed a mediocre lunch at Taco Loco. The LOCO thing is that they were voted best Mexican food and best margaritas in town. The people of Fairview need to get a clue!