Wednesday, November 26, 2008

fit for a king

when i was talking to my dad about arranging pickup for the dinette set i also told him i was cruising craigslist for a king-sized bed. (with our new basement addition aaron and i decided to upgrade our bed to a king and move our current queen to the new guest room.)

"how bout as a christmas gift we get you guys a bed?"

"sure!" as far as mattresses go, i think i'd rather have new than used. so it was really a no brainer.

in anticipation of our new bed, i've been scouring ebay for new bedding. trying to stay a little gender neutral for aaron's sake. i did find this set which somewhat resembles the green bathroom color. too girly? well it's too late, i won a set and just received it. i'm really happy with my purchase and will probably start decorating our bedroom soon. be on the lookout!

my mom and dad should be here in a couple of hours. better get back to cleaning house, pulling the turkey out of the freezer and starting some chili for tonight. happy thanksgiving everybody!!

Monday, November 24, 2008

happy birthday, brother!

doing what big sisters do best. embarrassing the crap out of ya! happy birthday brian!

desperately seeking susan

to celebrate their 1000th blog post, the girls over at loopyrocket are giving away free goodies for the next three weeks. this week's jen's (super blogger girl's) week. and her fantastic prize package includes a gift card to my shop! she actually did a "susan" themed package where you win the minimates above too. yep, they are "desperately seeking susan" mates! too funny!! so head on over there to enter and win! and check out the rest of their blog. sometimes i wonder where and and how they find the things they do.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

look out below

friday we got a pretty good snowfall. about 3 inches, which is about 3 inches more than we got last year. unfortunately, the ground is still warm so anywhere the sun hit, the snow has pretty much disappeared. this is the weekend we usually put up christmas lights. (don't worry, we don't turn them on til after thanksgiving) well since the sun barely hits the front of the house, i really didn't think aaron would brave the sloped, snow-covered roof. imagine my surprise when he asked if i'd hold the ladder for him this afternoon. i guess he had looked at the extended forecast and figured today would be the best day to get it done.

he arms himself with a snow shovel and broom and gets to work. sweeps as much snow off as he can but it's still pretty slick. he ends up laying flat on his stomach to put up most of the lights. he's about a third of the way done and while i'm adjusting the extension cords, i hear a swooooooooooooosh. i look over and he's standing on the ground. "did you do that on purpose?" i ask.

"heck no! i started sliding and couldn't stop!!"

"are you okay?"

"yeah, but my adrenaline is really pumping now!"

luckily it was on the sloped side that had about a 8 ft. drop and flat. unlike the other side that would have been 15 ft. and downhill. to my surprise, he got back up there and finished the job. we decided replacing bulbs could wait til after thanksgiving. hopefully the weather will cooperate by then.

on another note, i made my first craigslist purchase this weekend. since my parents are heading down here on wednesday for thanksgiving, i decided to check out the listings around the baltimore area for a table and chair set. (since we got the basement done, we moved aaron's office downstairs and now the furnishings upstairs are pretty sparse.) there were about 20x more listings there then we have around here. and i did manage to find a reasonably priced set that my dad was able to pick up yesterday. he even got it for less than what the guy was asking. awesome. i'll take a pic when it gets here. the guy had already taken down the listing before i had a chance to grab the photo. man, if i lived in an urban area, my house would be fully furnished by now.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

shot through the heart

well, not exactly, more like abdomen.

this evening i started my lupron injections. it was quick and painless. i let aaron do it since he's the "expert" at administering drugs.

this is exactly how it went down tonight. aaron got home from work, did tae bo, called his patients, took a shower, gave me the shot and then we both went to the app. state basketball game. so here i was, anticipating the worse all day and it was over and done with in a matter of seconds. so, yeah, it was sorta a let down but i guess i really can't complain.

i'll be on lupron for the next week and a half. what does lupron do? basically it prevents your body from ovulating naturally. next will be the stimms.

and so begins our journey.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

packaging material

a couple of months ago i got a package from super blogger girl (aka jen). she had decided to craft me up a little something-something on a whim. when it arrived, what i found was a box full of awesomeness, not to mention the box itself. a fully crafted exterior with lots of sweet miniatures inside. (i can't get enough little food minis.)

she also included some little toys her company makes, japanese lipgloss, a few crafting supplies and a fertility charm. (hopefully said charm will come in handy in the upcoming weeks!) i was going to post my score when i received it but decided to wait til i was completely done crafting with the material she packaged the crafted box in. old t-shirts.

yesterday i mailed off what i made. she sent 5 old tees and i was able to repurpose four of them for baby diego.

i actually did redo all five, but decided the shorts i made would be way too small for the little guy. (now bosco is sporting a pair of black undies.) i think everything is pretty self explanatory. onesie, bib, hat and blankie. i was quite surprised at how well everything turned out. my only complaint that made reconstructing difficult: the weights of some of the tees. a few were made of that paper-thin t-shirt material that is extremely hard to work with. i was able to pull it off and am pretty happy with the results. now we'll see if they're actually viable clothing when diego models them in a few months!

Sunday, November 16, 2008

pseudo celeb spotting

while we were waiting at the airport to return from jamaica aaron had his first pseudo celeb spotting. about 15 minutes before we were supposed to board the plane, i decided to visit the bathroom. upon my return aaron informs me he just saw that guy from that cooking show walk by. what? who?

"you know, that guy with the crazy hair on that show you watch."

"top chef? richard? from last season?"

"i don't know his name or what season, just that he had the crazy hair."

of course, since aaron probably watched about 10 minutes of the show in passing, i thought for sure he was mistaken. and since we were about to board our plane, i didn't have a chance to chase him down to verify. (somewhat stalkerish i know) well, come to find out aaron was right. i found richard's blog and he was, in fact, doing a red stripe event in kingston the weekend we left. i'll give props to aaron for being a little more observant than i thought. but i guarantee, he wouldn't have known who he was if it wasn't for the hair.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

everyting irie

monday was a long day for us. we left the house at 6:30a to make our 9:35a flight from charlotte. when we got up to check in at the airport the steward started freaking out. "you're supposed to be here an hour before the flight leaves" it's 8:37. "your names don't match" the name on my ticket didn't match the name on my passport. yep, i forgot to change my maiden to my married. please don't tell me this vacation is gonna end before it even begins. luckily his supervisor got everything under control and they ended up changing my ticket to my maiden name. after all that, we ended up having to rush through security and jet down to the gate where they were already boarding. have i mentioned that i haven't eaten anything yet? i buy a muffin, granola bar and a bottle of juice for $9 at the newsstand right next to the gate. outrageous, i know! we board. it's about a 3 hour flight. come to find out u.s. airways doesn't have anything complimentary. sodas $2, no peanuts, no inflight entertainment, nothing. did i forget to mention we had to pay $15 a bag at check-in? let's just say we won't be flying with them anytime soon. we get to jamaica around 12:30p, collect our luggage and head towards the couples waiting area. by now, we're both starving. aaron has a red stripe, i have a ting and we wait for our shuttle ride to the resort. it's about 1.5 hour car ride to the resort. i'm absolutely starving and have the beginnings of a migraine when we arrive. we check-in and make a bee line to the grill. ahhhh, the best jerk chicken we've ever had. mmmmmmmm. afterwards, i'm in dire need of a nap to quash the headache. aaron heads straight for the bar. we pretty much stayed in the room the rest of the evening and both were asleep by 10. which is way early for me.

tuesday we got up early to an overcast sky. we decided today we'd just chill on the beach. aaron read, i dozed and we both sipped cocktails all afternoon. seriously, time seems to not move at all in jamaica. i'm thinking it's gotta be around 3p and it's only noon. we grab some lunch and head back to the beach. i didn't realize how hard it is for aaron to relax. "you wanna do this, you wanna do that?" uh, no. i don't want to do anything. i thought we'd agreed we weren't gonna do a thing today just chill. "oh, yeah." he continues reading his book, we people watch and that's pretty much how we spent the rest of the day. that night we got all dolled up for our anniversary dinner at feathers, the hoity-toity restaurant on the resort. all in all it was a good day.

wednesday we went horseback riding a few miles from the resort. this activity is not a resort related one so you have to pay extra to do it. last time we did the canopy tour/zipline this time we rode. it's the first time i'd ever been on a horse and we both had a good time. with this ride, you rode into the mountains and then along a beach. about a two hour ride. the sun did pop out briefly at the end. we did get to swim with the horses. we were actually horizontal with the horse for a bit. it was so cool. unfortunately one of our guides was taking the photos and they turned out a bit blurry side. at least we did get some documentation. afterwards we went back to the resort, ate lunch and headed for the beach again. we signed up to snorkel the next day and for the catamaran on friday. another day down.

thursday we woke up to rain. looked up the forecast to see what the rest of the day was gonna look like. 60% chance all day. bummer. we decided not to go snorkeling, which we later regretted and spent the rest of the day under overcast skies. drinking, lounging and playing horseshoes and bocci ball. set up snorkeling for the next day and ate at the thai restaurant, lemongrass that night.

friday, overcast again. notice a trend and have you noticed no blue sky in any of our photos? but on this particular morning the waves are crashing on the beach. this is great for aaron. as soon as we lay our towels down, he's off into the water. bodysurfing. he pretty much goes non-stop for about an hour and he's about the only one that can do it. after a while, i joined him but didn't have much luck. it's easier for me to use a boogie board, but the resort didn't have any. i guess they don't get much in the way of wave action too often. i did manage to catch one good wave on my own and pretty much rode it all the way in. i did notice all the watersports crafts were not seaside and the only boat anchored was the scuba one. i look over at the activities flag and it's red which means no water sports today. this includes snorkeling and the catamaran ride we had scheduled. kinda sucked but we made the best of it. the big shipwrecked beach party they had scheduled for that evening was moved indoors. we ate dinner, enjoyed a reggae band trio and had a martini before turning in that night.

on our final morning aaron decided to go for a run along the beach. he'd been doing it every other morning since we'd been there. a few minutes later he was back in the room. no run? no beach to run along! what? apparently overnight the waves were huge and everything had been pushed/moved up to the building line. it was really weird to see. sidewalks were covered with sand, tiki huts blown over, tree roots exposed. we walked along the shore to breakfast and it just started to pour. all of this bad weather...compliments of hurricane paloma or the residuals from her. after breakfast we just sat up on a balcony and watched the waves crash. it was pretty cool to see. we ended up staying there til we had to go back to the airport. we both had a good time despite the weather. last time we went, i don't think we had a single cloud in the sky and we were there twice as long. hopefully it was a fluke and next time, yes next time, it'll be much better!!

Monday, November 10, 2008

everyting crisp

we're back. thought i'd share some photos of our trip. unlike last time the weather didn't quite cooperate with us. it was still in the 80's and humid but pretty much overcast and rainy the whole time. despite the weather, we both had a great time. i'll post some separate photos with explanations on how we spent our time tomorrow. i'm a little wiped today cleaning house and doing mounds of laundry.

Sunday, November 02, 2008

jamaica bound

tomorrow morning we leave for jamaica. i can't believe by tomorrow afternoon we'll be lounging on the beach. yay! so my prediction came true thanks to aaron! what an awesome husband i have! not sure if i'll blog while we're down there, probably just journal. i may pop in for a brief update. happy 2nd anniversary to the westphals!

baseball booties

i've done a few pairs of cloth baby shoes over the past few months. i am finally getting comfortable making them. i found a tutorial here. looks easy enough? i think the most difficult part of making the shoes is cutting out all the fabric and interfacing. although it doesn't look it, there are 12 separate pieces involved in making these little buggers. here are a pair of baseball themed ones i was requested to make. they turned out better than i expected and super cute! i think aaron wished his feet were 20x smaller!