Veteran's Day

The weather is just beautiful today. I have the day off (would anyway because I don't work Mondays) but so does Jeff. We went out for lunch at OCB (yes, probably a mistake) and now he is napping while I surf around the internet and catch up on things.

Last night I started working with my Sculpey clay again. Last year I made a bunch of magnets and this year I want to make some unusual pendants and some actual mini-sculptures that I can attach to canvases or have freestanding - stuff that is more art pieces than just kitsch. I also have been thinking a lot about ways to combine doing that with both painting and photography to create completely mixed media pieces.

Friday night I hosted a potluck for my grad group. It turned out great! Jeff rented an eight-foot table that we set up in the living room and with some centerpieces and candles it looked really pretty. The food everyone brought really meshed well together and was yummy and we had a good time.

Saturday we went to Jeff's aunt and uncle's 50th wedding anniversary party at the Rosemount Community Center. There were about 125-150 people there and the food was served buffet style. They had a "head table" with the honored couple and their attendants from when they got married sitting at it and it was very cute. They had a table of photos set up from their wedding and they were so interesting and gorgeous - very 1950s. A country band called the Dakota Ramblers played and even though that kind of music is not my style, they sounded pretty good. We didn't feel like dancing much but we still had fun.

Hallowmas!

We had a pretty mellow Halloween. Work was quiet. I didn't win anything in the Bake Sale Rafffle at work and that made me mad. I really wanted to win either the cat or dog basket and got nothing. I bought two little pumpkins at lunchtime and took my car to the carwash after work. It was so filthy they had to run it through the wash twice. It's nice now though. After that I went to meet Jeff at Junior's Grill in Eagan for dinner. After that we came home and spent time with Abe. He was very silly last night and it was nice. I think all the Halloween stuff going on outside was exciting and he knew there were trick or treaters out there. I love my silly happy dog.

Today I went to lunch with my Dad at Leeann Chin. He brought me some organic eggs and I was able to stash them in my mini fridge at work. I'm so glad I got it! It's nice to be able to keep things cold in my office instead of having to share an overcrammed fridge with the neighboring department. I finished my initial cataloguing work on the WWII interviews going to processing so that was a good job done. It took me longer than I thought it would but it was worth it because I caught a couple of errors and was able to fix them. Hopefully I caught them all. Tonight I just came home and ate a salad (which Sweetie was inordinately interested in, literally balancing on my right arm to get closer to it - I don't know why because I know she would never eat it) and surfed around on the internet a little. I'm started to get interested in crafting again and I want to make some bracelets and other things as gifts for the holidays. I'll need to start now so I have time to make everything. Between doing that and thank you and Christmas cards and New Year's party invites I will have a lot on my plate!

Flipping Out

I love tv. I even like reality shows. I've totally gotten sucked into The Biggest Loser this season but that is pretty much my only reality fix at the moment. I watched more reality tv last summer and my favorite show by far was Flipping Out.

It was an awesome reality show for the following reasons:

1. Main character (Jeff Lewis) looks like an alien.
2. Jeff Lewis has OCD and is basically insane, yet he is very aware of his faults and is totally honest about them...but it still doesn't change his behavior whatsoever.
3. He has super cute pets that are loved and spoiled rotten.
4. He has funny people working for him including an assistant who bugs her eyes out all the time and looks like Elaine on Seinfeld.
5. Lots of expensive house remodeling transformations going on and lots of spending and negotiating = fun viewing.
6. Much drama resulting from problems with those transformations and money stress and problems negotiating.
7. Pretty houses and pleasant California settings.

As someone who was getting obsessive over wedding planning last summer, it was very therapeutic for me to watch Jeff Lewis freak out over onions in his sandwich and obsessively move a coffee table an inch to make it perfect. His way of expressing himself was consistently funny. Some of my favorite quotes: "Basically what I'm saying is: I don't want to party like it's my birthday, I want to sell my house." "If you fax that to me, I'm going to write 'F.U.' on it and then outline my middle finger on it and then I'm going to fax it right back." From his detailed scripts for answering the phone("It's a great day at Jeff Lewis' office...") to punishing his assistants for the most minor of infractions, watching Jeff Lewis' insanity was a good time and it made me laugh like crazy.

Nothing I'm watching these days is nearly as funny so that is part of why I miss it so much. They are supposed to be doing a second season of it so there might be more next year. Oh, I hope, hope, hope so. That show was reality tv gold!

Happy Wednesday

We opened our KitchenAid mixer last night. It is an impressive piece of machinery and I can't believe it's ours - I feel like it doesn't really belong to us. But it does - thanks Mom! Jeff is less impressed as he got to use one all the time back when he worked in Faribault and had to use it while cooking for work on a semi-regular basis but I am a little bit scared of it. I flipped through the recipe book last night while we were watching "Bones" and I want to try the mint candy recipe in there first as it looks quite tasty and might be fun to do. I need to get some candy molds though, which might be a good idea anyway as I can use them as magnet molds, too. I really need to make a bunch of magnets to sell this winter and also hopefully next summer at the car shows next door.

I really want to get into this cooking thing before I sink back into the inertia of takeout for almost every dinner. We got all these cool kitchen toys and need to put them to work! I also want to host a kick-ass dinner party soon.

Minimoon

We just got back from our little minimoon to Duluth. We had a great time and finally relaxed and got lots of rest after all of the wedding craziness. Jeff unfortunately had an injured foot which kept us from going on the Glensheen tour or doing any other walking stuff, but we drove up along the lake shore and visited Aero Stitch (where Jeff tried on motorcycle clothes) and got to go out to lunch at a little Chinese restaurant yesterday. I found a little green toy frog on the ground like it was just waiting for me and I knew it was a sign that our marriage is going to be awesome. How did I know, you ask? Frogs are super lucky and I just knew.

I went swimming in the morning while Jeff was at Urgent Care and then we had lunch and drove all over. We got pretty tired by late afternoon, so after a supernap and pizza ordered in from Pizza Luce and episodes of Bones and House, we went downstairs and swam and sat in the jacuzzi. It was very much fun. Today the sun was out and after a big breakfast of pancakes and steak and eggs we headed back home (with a drive back and forth along the Bong bridge first). We stopped and picked up some of our wedding camera photos and then scooted home where we greeted our very happy kitty and opened a couple of presents that had arrived while we were gone (yellow towels and a pretty crystal photo frame) and reorganized and weeded our utensils drawers. Then we went and got appetizers for dinner at Moose Country and used some of our wedding money to fill in some items on our registry at Herbergers. Shopping is so fun. We cased out Williams Sonoma too. It certainly won't be hard to spend our gift certificates there the next time we go. It is just so nice to replace our nasty old stuff that we got from who knows where and which is probably 40 years old with new. No more broken spoons in our drawers! It makes me feel like we are really starting a new chapter in our lives and are really grownups now. Even though I am an old lady, I am still pretty immature in my head and don't feel very grown up.

I MNOT

I love my new initials. I am now getting called Mnot (pronounced "am not!") quite a bit and I think it's going to last. I got frustrated last night with the reception site but today I feel better. I vented a little bit and now I'm able to look at the happy things that happened and everything and feel much better. My wedding was a wonderful day and my ceremony was pretty much perfect. There were a few issues with the reception and timing, but overall it was so much fun. I can't wait to see pictures of everything to help spark my memories of the day and now that it is starting to sink in I am really happy about it and am so happy to be married.

My first post!

This is my new blog that I'm starting as a newly married lady! It will be all about things that I am interested in and doing.