pin it

If you haven't gotten onto Pinterest yet - and you're female - you're really missing out. I'm so pissed this hadn't been invented when I was getting married, because instead I was forced to painstakingly make a powerpoint of all the pictures I loved to show my wedding planner. (I think I terrified her).

NOW though, you could just send someone a link to your Pinterest page! And you totally wouldn't be a creeper! All my friends currently planning weddings have a page and it's so fun to see what their style is like and what vibe they're going for. Without being a creeper.

I wasn't even sure that I'd be able to find anything to warrant making a page, but once you start poking around, it's totally addicting. A few of us are planning a baby shower for Jackie and it's been so easy to share our ideas and thoughts without emailing a bunch of pictures. (Jackie don't peek!!!) Then you start to realize you can easily fall down the rabbit hole and end up with a page for cool hairstyles, sweet vacation spots, delicious recipes, dream kitchens...or if you're me, a page on "wrapping." (Special insight: I've recently developed a fantasy of one day being known as that girl that always give beautiful wrapped gifts. What can I say, some people strive for greatness!)

Anyway, if you're on there, friend me so we can stalk each other's styles :) Maybe I'll repay you with a fantastically beautifully wrapped present someday!

2011, out!

I hate to move into a new year without figuring out what exactly I did with myself during the last year, and 2011 will go down in the books as The Blur, because I can hardly remember what I did with the last 12 months besides work! Considering this time last year I was unemployed and now I'm happy and confident in my job, I guess all that time at the office was worth it. I truly love my company and feel like I've landed in a place and position where I can really make something of myself...maybe even a [hold your breath] career. But all work and no play makes everyone cranky, so clearly there were some other things that helped keep 2011 interesting:

Weddings! It wouldn't be a complete year without a host of weddings, starting with my Mom, Sally, Jason, Ashley, Jessica (Chi friend), Mary Ella (Chi friend), and ending with a celebration for Keely. We had such a blast at these events and are already counting down to 2012's invitations...Rachel (TX), Shay (IL), Kim (IL), and Zack (CO)...and maybe more to come!

Babies! Some of my very best friends are starting to get pregnant and have babies, which means I'm learning all about crazy smells, bodily functions, and hormones. Del, Alyson, and Mary Jane all were blessed with babies in 2011 and Jackie is up next in February - hopefully on my birthday, as planned ;)

Visitors! Brian and I were racking our brains to figure out where in the world our summertime went, and then we remembered - an epic influx of visitors! All in all, we spent our weekends with 13 friends from college and Texas. Showing people around was such a great way for me to fall in love with this city and be reminded of all the great friendships we've made in other places.

Most of the remaining time was spent hosting parties at our apartment, playing tennis, watching a sick amount of TV, and as mentioned, working. In 2012 I'd love to see "volunteering," "local sightseeing," "church," "an overseas trip," "intramural sports," and "concerts" pop up on this list a little more often. After running through everything that 2011 had to offer, it's clear that the people in our lives are the ones who fill our time and make us happy. Thanks so much to everyone who shared a chat, drink, court, seat, bed, table, meal, and trip with me/us this year!

not too shabby

Our Christmas travels started off with a wonderful experience on American Airlines...yes, I actually said that. We were set for a 10:30 am flight and they announced they were oversold. I love a good oversell opportunity! Usually I've got somewhere to be so it's not really an option, but this time the next flight was only 2 hours later (and our initial flight was delayed anyway so we waited even less than planned). Let the good times roll: we got 2 $300 vouchers; then we discovered our next flight had been upgraded to a 777, which is much bigger than usual (always a better option than some BS express plane or something); then we got to our new seats...right smack dab in business class. Which maybe wouldn't have mattered if it weren't for the giant plane, which meant these seats were AMAZING! Seat 11E had a smattering of awesome things about it - a fully adjustable seat that could recline all the way to be completely horizontal - a personal tv - a great selection of free movies and tv shows - personal remotes - and a coat hook (it's the little things!).

I'd like to add 11E to my list of "Things That Make Me Giggle," because the amount of joy I took from perfectly arranging my seat, Bloody Mary in hand, while watching Horrible Bosses next to Brian on my first day of vacation was pretty unreal. Thanks American!

Since arriving, we've enjoyed a chilly Texas Christmas, with lots of good food (QUESO!), holiday parties, QT with Keely & James, and a haircut for Brian (this was key for people not thinking he's a child molester). We'll have a big meal tomorrow and then Colorado here we come!

Hope you guys have a great holiday as well. Merry Christmas from all the animals!

fried aliens

Slash, onion rings - our Tuesday night homemade experiment tonight. Delish! But creepy looking, huh?

bells will ring

It's the most wonderful time of the year! For realsies! Although I'd like to register an official complaint to whoever decided to cram all this greatness into one month (and right on the heels of T-day, clearly the rival Best Day Ever)...

Jackie's Bah Humbug post actually kicked my butt into gear last week, since we have no excuses for not getting our Christmas party started :) I got our tree up, did almost all of our shopping, and queued up my seasonal Pandora stations - yahtzee!

Day 1

Tree: friend or foe?

Day 3

Tree = friend

Best friend

Michigan Ave is a beautiful on the walk home every day from work, with lights on all the trees and these great (smaller) decorated planters in front of the shops. Then last week we got our first real accumulation of snow - the latest one in history what this means for the long-term winter forecast, I don't even want to know. Anyway Christmas has officially kicked off and here's some of the greatness that December has in store:

*Work holiday outing + secret santas + smaller team party that night at a karaoke bar = me making some inappropriate song choices
*12 days off from work. Santa is a Saint!
*A bout of warmer weather with a Texas Christmas (bring on the tamales!)
*Celebrating Keely and James' wedding in the Fort (more to come on this I'm sure!!!)
*An amazing last-minute trip to go skiing...
*...in Colorado...
*...with Amy & Matt!

Clearly all those last points deserved their own asteriks. I have been majorly suppressing my travel bug because I knew we weren't going to be able to take a trip until next spring (I'd actually cancelled two trips already). Actually this exact day last year was the last time we went skiing in Wisconsin - it's been too long! Then the seas parted and through some major finagling with PTO, vouchers, discounts, schedules etc., a Christmas miracle came true! I absolutely love the mountains, love skiing, and love Amy and Matt...obviously you see the need for all the asteriks.

Bring it on, December!

still gobblin'

Over a week after Thanksgiving and we're STILL working on our leftovers! Once again, our very delicious meal was courtesy of Brian (with some respectable prepwork on my part) - I continue to be amazed by his ability to do things like brine and stuff a turkey, while my greatest accomplishment was designing a dough turkey:

As I referenced in my last post, this year had a lovely twist with our visitors, John, June, & Megan all the way from Tejas! They spent all week in Chi, joined us for Thanksgiving, and then Mego stayed through the weekend. Although this was a slightly less competitive holiday than last year's, I think it was to everyone's benefit :) The actual day was great, and beyond that we got in some good QT, lots of exploring, and a couple of delicious meals. Oh and a pickle ornament. Megan went ahead and bought that as a souvenir.

Here are a few shots from the weekend:

my first trip to Navy Pier with the McAdams clan

the ferris wheel yielded some awesome views of the city

then on Turkey Day...where all the magic happened!

my favorite spread of the year!

So John started asking us ridiculously subjective, arbitrary questions throughout the day like "POP QUIZ: What's the greatest band of all time?" etc. etc. The best one was:

"POP QUIZ: If Brian wants to take a nap after lunch, who else wants to take a nap?"

"You do?"

"That's right. You aced it."

ha.

Beginning to soak in the Christmas cheer at the Christkindl market downtown. Key notable in this photo - there were 39 other cabins like the one behind us, which Brian BUILT over the course of a few weeks. The man cooks and builds. Applause please!

Another great Thanksgiving gets checked off!

the grind

Ugh, I would love nothing more than to have more time to blog lately, but work is SUCH a grind right now! I'm in the middle of a massive project that's 2 months down and 2 months to go, and every week is the same three-step process:

1. Monday and Tuesday I go hardcore.

2. Wednesday and Thursday I've lost 50% brainpower.

3. By the time Friday rolls around, I'm basically a functioning vegetable, so I try to block work out over the weekend to recharge, only to realize that HEY-O it's Monday again and now my work is backed up so I need to play catch-up in the form of #1.

Don't get me wrong, I remember very vividly being unemployed a year ago, and this beats that ten-fold although I could really brush up on my tennis. But man...I'm just mentally destroyed when I get home. Case in point - I can only tolerate mouth-breathing TV shows because my tiny pea brain is too shriveled to comprehend anything beyond "Cabs are here!" and "Next, on the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills..."

This particular weekend has been even worse because I just had to keep plowing through after a crazy exhausting week. However, I think I'm not the only one who's happy to be working from my couch...


Happy Sunday! Here's hoping that everyone has some fun Thanksgiving plans coming up this week. We are staying here and will be hosting the MCADAMS family live in Chicago!!!!!!!!! We always cook a full-blown meal and rarely have other people to help us take it down, so it'll be fun to get to share it with one of our favorite fams. Not to mention the fact that Megan's never been to Chi and they'll be here all week, so we'll get to do a little staycation sight-seeing as well - the Christmas decorations are up around town and it's beautiful - so excited!