Life as WE know it...

Friday, December 31, 2010

Here's to the bright New Year, and a fond farewell to the old...

2010 has definitely been a life changing year, as I've reflected back over the past 12 months it is hard to believe how much has changed in such a short amount of time. In the spirit of New Year's Eve here are some of my favorite moments from the past year:

JANUARY: Here's to the baby that has changed the lives of everyone in my family for the better. His coming in the world started our year off right. Watching him grow has definitely been one of the highlights of our year. Read about his birth here.

Jake and I also got our first child...before we were married or even engaged (SHHH!) and my how he's grown. We got him when he was a little baby that I could hold like one and now he's a 65 pound toddler dog and we love him so much!

MARCH: Jake gave me some bling and asked me to marry him (read about that here). I asked him if he was serious and then said YES.

MAY: Engagement pictures! My best friend from high school took these for us and she did a fantastic job if I do say so myself!

JUNE: ROAD TRIP! We made our way up to NYC and Boston!

AND...

Our first wedding shower!

JULY: Trip to Washington, D.C. for Justin and Ashley's wedding.

Changing of the Guard Ceremony

and a trip to the beach with my family...

September: Temple!

OCTOBER: Love and Marriage...More pics here.

Cruise...

I was a slacker and didn't take pictures during Thanksgiving or Christmas, I was a little busy soaking up time of relaxation and family, but rest assured they are always on the list of best moments of this year.

I am looking so forward to this upcoming year...who knows what it may bring...another puppy? a baby (cough cough...just kidding!)? finishing painting my house...graduating!!! Anyway, I look forward to sharing it with all of you!

Happy New Year!!!

Thursday, December 30, 2010

I'm a perfectionist...but I'm not perfect...

Let me let you in on a little secret...there are quiet a few things that bother me, I guess they can be considered pet peeves. For example, I HATE being late...Jake, however, doesn't mind being late at all. This often leads to an irritated wife on Sunday mornings when I'm walking out the door to the car so we can get to church before the opening hymn and Jake is still standing in the kitchen, with his tie and shoes untied, buttering toast.

I'm bothered when the living room isn't vacuumed. It is such a simple task and it makes all the difference in the world in how clean the entire room looks. However, I don't often find myself with enough time in each day to make sure that this task gets done.

I'm bothered when there is a pile of dirty laundry in the laundry room. However, this is often the case.

I'm bothered when the sink is full of dirty dishes. However, I don't do the dishes each night after dinner.

I'm bothered when people take pictures of themselves in a mirror and post them all over their different social networking sites. I can't say I've never taken a picture of myself though.

I'm bothered when people's shopping carts aren't put into the giant shopping cart stalls in the middle of the parking lot and are left instead to roll into parking spots that I turn my car to park into, only to find that they've been taken. However, I can't say that every time I've ever been shopping I've put my cart back into that same giant stall.

Ok, you get the picture. There is one thing that bothers me more than all of these things, if you can believe that. I'm so bothered when people don't proofread the things that they post. Spelling doesn't bother me as much as when someone uses two words in one sentence that mean the same thing. Or when someone uses words that just don't make any sense in the way in which they are being used. That being said...today as I was watching reruns of Grey's Anatomy in the middle of the day (one of the joys of Christmas vacation) I get a text message from Jake that listed the mistakes and necessary corrections for yesterday's blog post. Ironic?...I think so.

In the words of Pen Densham, "there are no perfect men in this world, only perfect intentions"

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Easy A...

If you have not seen the movie Easy A...YOU SHOULD!
I wasn't very hyped about it when I saw the preview for it or while it was in theaters, but tonight husband and I had a date night which consisted of Applebees-paid for with a giftcard Christmas presant (Thank you in-laws!) and movie rental...I know, I know-SOOO romantic.

After completely stuffing my face with a club sandwich, french fries and a triple chocolate meltdown (It is as good as it sounds) we went to the Family Video. I don't know why Jake still takes me to places like the video rental store, because it takes me two days to decide what to rent. I walk down every aisle, I pick up movies we've seen a thousand times, I pick up movies that we own, I look at new releases, I want them all but at the same time don't think any of them sound right for the mood I'm in...EVER! I roam and roam and then usually out of no where a beam of light illuminates one dvd that has escaped my attention and I hear music from my life's sound track and know without a shadow of a doubt that that is the movie we are renting that night. Anyway, no such luck tonight. I remembered seeing a commercial for Easy A just the other day advertising that it was coming out this week, so I thought, what the heck? One free rental coupon later, it is going into our dvd player.

I had absolutely no expectations for this movie, but Husband and I laughed and laughed. I thought Olive's parents where the funniest part, and found myself hoping that Jake and I will one day be as funny of parents as hers were. I will warn you, the language in some parts was hard to listen to because the repetition of a certain few words, but overall I'm so happy we rented it! Emma Stone is now one of my new favs, she's so pretty and so likable. Ohh, and Penn Badgley is so fun to look at for an hour and half too. I would recommend it to everyone, unless of course you are under the age of 13, in that case, take it up with the movie rating people.

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

New Furniture makes me smile...

Jake and I have had our eye on this sa-weet piece of furniture that we saw in Wal*Mart for several months. We wanted it to use as a t.v. stand, however, we haven't had excess funds thus far in our marriage and so we were stuck waiting and "saving" up for it. Then the other night I get a text from hubby saying "How would you feel about coming home to another piece of furniture?" My first reaction to this text message was in my head and it went a little something like this-"we already have sooooooooo much stuff...where are we going to put something else?! I can't believe he brought something else home when all of this other stuff is already in the way and he didn't even ask me!" I simply responded to Jake's text with a quick "umm, i'm not sure..." I never imagined he was going to surprise me with something we have both wanted for months! But lo and behold, I get home and there it is...in bunches of pieces on our living room floor.

So here it is,

The recipe for a new lovely piece of furniture

One willing husband...

A LOT of hardware...

a little of Doc's help...

...and ta-dah, the finished product!

with a touch of Christmas decorations!

formspring.me

Ask me anything http://formspring.me/cstarn10

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

I can see the light...

This semester is almost over and the next three weeks can't go by soon enough! This has by far been my most stressful semester since entering college four and a half years ago. Even more stressful then the year that I transferred schools, or the one where I changed my major TWICE, or the one where I had statistics (which i'm terrible at). I would actually venture to say that this has been more stressful then all of those combined! BUT, it's coming to end very soon, which is something I could not be happier about! All that stand between me and the end is...teaching a 9 hour class to inmates, yes, inmates, preparing this class from scratch, writing a 10 page paper, a two page paper, four finals and two presentations. The light is dim, but it's there.

Jake and I are settled in for the most part, there are still a lot of things that I want to do to the house but that will have to wait for Christmas break because I don't have time to do it right now. I want to paint two rooms, finish hanging things on the wall, organize the laundry room, throw a bunch of stuff away, finally see the laundry room with no laundry actually in it, organize the kitchen cabinets and get all of the scraps from previous projects out of here! Some of my favorite things about living in our cozy little two bedroom, one bathroom house with Jake is that I always feel warm, we have two space heaters, one is more attractive then the other, but a space heater none the less and they give off terrific heat which makes me like the winter a little more. Sometimes I come home and Jake has made me dinner and lit candles, it's so sweet. I like to watch Jake perform little household projects, I especially like when he lifts things to move them out of his way because I can see the muscles in his arms pop out, and I like that we are always laughing at each other and smiling about something, our house is really very warm, and cozy and snuggly. I'll post all of our before and after pics of the house when everything doesn't look like a before anymore.

I miss my family. I haven't seen then in over a month, since we got back from honeymoon, and I don't like to just see them over pictures that my sister posts on facebook. My nephew is getting so big, he's sitting on his toy tractor by himself now, and I don't know when that happened! I need to get home, and soon! Jake and I have decided to go either this Friday night or Saturday morning. It will be nice to see them all again.

I put my two weeks notice in at Target last Wednesday and so that will finally be coming to an end after three and half of years. I couldn't be happier about this. Jake and I decided that I'm not making enough to warrant the half hour drive to Charlotte everyday, which is good, because I hate that drive, especially on Friday nights. Next semester I will only have to go over there three times a week and so I might as well not drive six times if I only have to do it three. I will be looking for something else immediately after the end of this semester and I hope to find something more in the public health field since I will finally be graduating in May and needed to support my sweet husband for the next three years while he finishes school. I would really take a job in any field though, as long as it's not Target!