2015 Year in Review

By far, hands down, no contest – this was our busiest year ever.  But also our best one to date!

January 

We kicked off the year in Nebraska at my oldest nephews wedding.  It was so nice to spend that special day with them and to watch them get married.  We also spent some nice quality time with family!  We brought Hannah along with us and she did great.

February

We got Abby in February.  It was a quick decision on our part, and while I don’t ever recommend making quick decisions ESPECIALLY when animals are involved, I do have to say that this one worked out great.  Abby is the most lovable, attentive, playful little dog that I’ve ever met.  We love her to pieces.

March

We held a garage sale in March at my mother-in-law’s house.  Not our biggest one yet, but it was still successful!

We also lost our old, sweet kitty Masami.  She was 19.

April

April marked our 5-year anniversary!  We had a great anniversary and a nice dinner at The Melting Pot. 

We also had our Circuit Assembly plus our Memorial.

May

May was filled with last minute plans for our trip, including a shopping trip to Santa Fe.

June

June was a blur, but a great blur!  We left for England, Belgium and France

July

We kicked off July still in Europe (Belgium) and attended the Special Convention there.  It was amazing!

When we got back we learned that we got a new host congregation for our French group.

August

August was a little calmer than the previous months, thank goodness!  Watson began his service dog training.  We also started losing weight!!

September 

Our annual Fantasy Football draft was held in September.  I decided not to play this year, but I helped out at the draft.

I also spent some time getting my house in order!

And….I had dental surgery which was no fun.  I’m glad it’s over!

And……husband started a new job.  He spent a week in Denver for training and we got him all moved into his office downtown.

October

October was great.  My mom and dad visited and we went to Balloon Fiesta.  The weather was PERFECT!  We had fun just spending time together, going to flea markets, and eating of course. 

We had our English Circuit Assembly.

At the end of October my mother-in-law and I took a trip to Los Angeles.  We played tourists for the first two days, and then attended the French Circuit Assembly.

November – My newest nephew Connor was born.  Hubby and I also went to San Diego again (including Disneyland and a football game!).  I also had another dental procedure done.  Ugh.  I am so over the dentist!

December – December was probably our calmest month out of the entire year.  It was nice! 

Here's a little summary:

New pets:  1 (Abby)

New family members: 2 (nephew - Connor & niece-in-law - Emily)

Travels:

Nebraska (Lincoln, Omaha)

Iowa (Council Bluffs)

California (Mira Loma, Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Hollywood, San Diego, Pacific Beach, Del Mar, Coronado & Anaheim)

England (London)

France (Paris, Cormeilles, Versailles)

Belgium (Ghent, Brussels, Bruges, Flobecq, Loppem)

2016 should be a bit calmer as far as travel.  I plan to take a trip to Nebraska to visit my family and meet my newest nephew.  And we might go to South America to visit friends that moved there a couple of years ago.  But that’s it (so far, ha ha).

Cord Control

You've seen charging stations before, right?  You know, the cute little boxes that charge your phones, tablets, etc. and keep cords neatly corralled and out of sight?  They are adorable and a great idea in theory, but they just never worked for me.  I had one of those cute little boxes once and it was fine for my phone but it didn't work for my tablet and I ended up always yanking the cords through that tiny hole and then I would get frustrated every night while trying to plug my stuff in and I just got mad and gave it to Goodwill.

I don't have a lot of patience.

So for the past few months, I've been living with this mess next to my side of the bed:

How awful is that?!?

There had to be a better way.  I looked on Pinterest and all that came up was box like charging stations and I knew that just wasn't going to work for me.  I wanted to have easy access of all of the cords.

So I came up with something else involving Command Strips (of course....I LOVE Command Strips!).

I just used the standard velcro strips for this project.  I attached two of them to the side of my power strip:

Then I stuck my power strip to the backside of my night table (about 6 inches from the top):

Then I plugged my lamp in, and also my iPad charger and my phone charger and wove the cords through the little black cord file that I got at Target years ago.

And....that's it!  Done!  My cords are now tucked away behind the night table and they should stay that way since the power strip is off the floor (no sliding around).  And I have full access to my cords.  No more frustration!

Much better:

Target Deal(s) of the Week

Today I ran to Target to check to see if they had any 'after holiday' deals.  Usually all of their gift sets are on clearance and you can find some great things!

I went looking specifically for 'body' type gift sets.  The desert is incredibly dry in the winter and I've used up a lot of my lotions and lip balms this year.  Time to get more!

All of the gift sets at Target were 30% off.  Now, these gift sets are usually a good deal, even at their regular price.

The Olay gift set was normally 9.99.  The Savannah Bee gift set was normally 12.99.  And the EOS gift set was normally 7.99.  Total?  30.97.

But at 30% off, they came down to $21.68.  Plus, I used my Target red card, bringing it down to $20.60.  AND I had a $5 gift card to use.

So I got all of this for $15.60.  Not bad, considering the deodorant is typically $8 and the body wash is $4.  

So if you're in need of some bath and body products, head to Target!  Now, if I had waited a few more days they probably would have been discounted even more, but they also may have been gone.  The pickings were slim enough as it was.  

p.s. - the Olay gift pack came with $35 worth of coupons!!

A Tale of Two Paintings

One of the things we always like to buy when we go on trips is artwork.  It doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive, we just have to love it.   

When we went to Europe, we were walking around the 18^th district (Montmartre), which is known as the artsy-fartsy district.  Meaning…the local Parisian artists set up shop in the streets there and sell their work.  It’s also the District that contains the Sacre Coeur, the famous stairs that are in practically every  movie based in Paris, and the steep streets.  

We walked all around, and we stopped twice at this one particular artist’s booth.  We really liked his work as an impressionist.  So we picked out which painting we liked the best and he wrapped it up for us.

But I think the best part of the whole experience was that he didn’t speak any English.  So we had a nice (somewhat choppy) conversation with him in French.  We asked what the painting was (his imagination or an actual place).  He told us that he lives in Normandy so all of his paintings are scenes from Normandy.  Then we asked him if he preferred Normandy or Paris.  He said he prefers Normandy to live, but Paris for work.  Ha ha.  Which makes sense.  He can sell way more paintings to tourists in Paris than he can in Normandy.  He said he comes to Paris every weekend to sell his work.

He was a very nice older gentleman.  He had this crazy white/grey hair that was very….untamed.  And round glasses.

Anyways….we got the painting home safely and then took it to the frame store to get framed.  It was painted on a wrapped canvas, so technically we didn’t NEED a frame for it (wrapped canvas is wrapped around a wood frame of some sort), but we wanted it to stand out a bit more.  So we chose a gold-brushed frame with a blue matting to bring out the blue in the painting.  We hung it in the dining room.  I love it!

The next painting we bought was last week in California.  It’s a very different type of painting.

It’s Chunk!  From the Goonies.  Doing the Truffle Shuffle.

This just goes to show you are varied our tastes are.  On one wall we have a painting of Normandy done by a French artist.  And on the same wall (the other side in the hallway) we have a kid from an 80’s movie lifting his shirt up and shaking his belly. 

I love both paintings.  One makes me think back of that day in Paris walking around the cobblestone streets, listening to the local musicians play in the square, walking hand in hand with husband and just breathing in Paris. 

And the other makes me think of the pizza place in downtown San Diego where I would burst out laughing about every 5 minutes, each time I would look at Chunk, a character from one of my favorite movies as a kid.

And that is a tale of two paintings.

DIY Starfish Art

Ever since we returned from San Diego a couple of weeks ago, there has been a 'Seaport Village Shell Co.' bag sitting in our guest bedroom.  When we were there, I purchased 5 starfish.  I had no clue what I wanted to do with them, but knew I wanted to display them somehow.

But starfish are tricky...you can't really put them in a jar or stack them.  So I decided I wanted to hang them.

I went to Target tonight in search of a frame.  At first I picked out a shadowbox, but then came across this memo board that I liked MUCH better:

It has a sand colored fabric background, which was perfect.

I then unwrapped my starfish:

I first thought about using my hot glue gun to adhere the starfish to the fabric.  But me plus hot glue guns do not work well together.  Plus I didn't want the glue to squish out the sides.

So I decided on Command Strips:

Both my husband and I have a strong love for Command products for hanging items.  They are sooooo strong and will not ruin your walls.  So I gathered the ones we had and then I started cutting them down to size.

I then adhered a thin Command strip to each leg of each starfish.  I then positioned my stars how I wanted them within the frame.  Then one by one, I peeled off the backing on each of them and stuck down each starfish onto the fabric.  It worked great!  The picture below is the best one that really shows the true colors of the starfish.

And now here is the finished product after my hubby hung it up in our hall bathroom:

I love how it turned out!  I was a little worried about the bottom left star...it definitely stands out the most and I had to scrape some of the pokey stuff (technical term there) from the back side of it to get the Command strips to stick.  But....so far, so good.

This project only took me about 20 minutes.  The memo board was $24.99 at Target and the starfish were $14 total from San Diego.  Not too bad!!!

And that is my DIY project for the year ha ha.

Black Friday

And the annual black Friday tradition continues!  This year was a blast as usual. My friend and I headed out right after our meeting around 9:15.  Our first stop was Target.

I had a list:

Blankets

Sheets

Sweaters

DVDs

Fitbit Charge HR

Slippers

I got EVERYTHING on my list!

Here's what I got at Target--

Three fuzzy blankets.  We use these in place of comforters on our bed.  Normally they are $35 - $40 each.  On Black Friday they were $17 each.  I got one king size and two queens.

Towels.  These were not on my list, but I couldn't pass them up at $2 a pop:

Fitbit Charge HR.  The band on my old Fitbit Charge was broken so I haven't been able to wear it for a while. I decided it was time for an upgrade AND it was a doorbuster so I got a great deal.

A mini popcorn maker.  This also wasn't on my list.  But it was only $10.  And I love popcorn, but not the chemicals in the microwave popcorn.  So I thought I'd give this one a try.

And some DVDs.  Target always has tons of DVDs on sale on Black Friday.

After Target, we went to Kohl's.  Kohl's was new for us this year!  My friend had some Kohl's cash she wanted to use.  But I ended up getting a couple things too.  These Deerfoam slippers are normally $30, but they were on sale for $10.

I also got two sweaters (the blue one and purplish one in the pic) for $10 each (normally $25) and some fuzzy socks:

And then we went to Walmart.  I only got sheets at Walmart, but they were on my list!

850 thread count sheets for $25!!!  What a deal!

And then we drove through Del Taco to recharge with caffeine and burritos.  Because....it's tradition!!

And lastly, we stopped at Old Navy.  The entire store was 50% off!

I got another sweater (the one on the bottom of the pile in the pic above), a scarf, some earrings and some hair ties.

I also got my mother-in-law some slippers (Kohl's), gloves and a scarf and a pair of earrings (Old Navy), some fuzzy socks (Kohl's) and a set of sheets (Walmart).  I always get her a set of sheets each year, but the other stuff was a surprise.  She was so happy!

And I got my husband a video game, some Xbox live and PS4 cards, some pajama pants (Kohl's), and a scarf and a sweater (Old Navy).

It was another successful year!  I did go $93 over budget though, oops.  We had budgeted for Black Friday for a while (using YNAB of course!), but I did go over a bit.  Oh well.  It happens!

I say this every year, but for my friend and I, Black Friday isn't about the 'stuff'. Sure, it's great to get a good deal, but we go because it's the one time a year that we get to hang out just the two of us.  We spend more time in the car talking then we do in the stores!  It's just so much fun.  The deals we get on stuff is just a nice bonus.  :)  

Time to start saving for the next Black Friday!  :)