It's Done!!

Finally, Jay and I have completed our china cabinet.  It has doors, shelves, a base, sides--everything it needs to be done!!  And, all our china is inside already.  I'm so happy to have it done, even though putting it together was a pain in the butt.

Before we got the cabinet together, however, we spent Saturday driving to Huntsville, unpacking furniture in an apartment in Huntsville, and then drove home.  It was quite a long, hot day, but we helped a friend with her new apartment, so it's all good.  It did remind me, though, that I'm not going to keep "Professional Movers" on my backup list if teaching doesn't work out. 

Short post today, but that's what's up.  Enjoy your day!

So far...

This week Jay and I had tickets to see three Rangers games, but we gave our tickets for tonight's game to Jay's parents.  We've had fun going to the games, but tonight we're going to have dinner and hang out with some friends who are moving to New York tomorrow.  It's definitely hard to see them and their kids leave.

We got the doors to our china storage cabinet thingy yesterday!  They look pretty darn good!!  I'd love to post pictures, but it's still empty and will remain empty until we get legs for it.  The way it is right now, the bottom door scrapes the carpet when it opens, so it's hard to open and will eventually damage the door and/or carpet.  I think we might head up to Ikea (again) tonight to get the legs before we go over for dinner and whatnot.

School started this week, too--yesterday, actually.  I have two classes Thursday and four on Tuesday, so I've only been to the two classes for Thursday.  Next week there's a meeting for all the education majors who've been placed in the Irving ISD.  Supposedly, we'll find out exactly where we do PDS I and who our mentor teachers are and what all is going on with that.  After that meeting, we're supposedly clear to contact our mentor teachers and set up our schedules for when we'd like to and can come in to do our observing.  I keep saying "supposedly" and the likes because I don't fully trust that we'll actually find out all this information.  We've been promised many things and haven't had much delivered, so I'm wary of the whole process.  We'll see, won't we?

So, that's the update for now.  Have a fabulous day!

Yikes!

It appears I'm not very good at this whole blogging thing; it's been...[counting on the calendar]... almost a week since the last update.

So what's happened in this past week?  My car hit 50,000 miles after nearly four years of ownership, and I received my new registration sticker, so it's been an important week for Irma.  Oh, and Irma is my car, by the way.

Also, Jay and I got our wedding pictures back!!!  Our 6,000+ pictures came back on six discs, and we've been building a photo album ever since.  I'm not very creative, so it's a pretty basic album, but I think it's turning out well so far.  The hardest part has been sorting through so many pictures!  And since there were like five cameras that the photographers used, the pictures are organized by file name, not in chronological order, so I went through and organized them chronologically rather than alphabetically; thank goodness for organization.

Here's a shot of some of our wedding party

This week, I also got a new laptop!  I'm writing this new post on my brand new Toshiba, Eugenia.  (By the way, I name non-human things... in case you've not yet figured that out.)  It has lots of bells and whistles that impressed the checkout guy.  Awesome.  Oh, and the graphics for The Sims 3 ARE FANTASTIC!!!!  I love The Sims 3 and the game looks amazing on this computer... something about a dedicated graphics card.  :)

Wouldn't you love to wear this?

Let's see, what else happened?  We met Jay's parents and sister for dinner on Friday, where we also saw the Red Bull Art of Can.  Dinner was great and the company was fantastic.  Also, if you've never seen the Art of Can, hurry your butt up to get there because some of the things people can with metal cans is unbelievable.  Of course, I can barely draw stick figures, so I think everything is really amazing.  But I think even artistic people would be/are impressed by several of these works.

We went to Trivia Tuesday as usual, and this time Nick came with us!  The only con I see to playing Trivia is that we play in a smokey bar, which smells up our clothing and shoes and hair and skin and purses (Jay and Nick and the other guys, of course, don't use purses, but you get the point), which is starting to smell up my car!!  Poor, poor Irma.  I guess some Fabreeze or something similar is in order soon.  Maybe I'll get my car washed/detailed this week on my last partial week off school.

Oh yeah!  I FOUND OUT WHERE I'M STUDENT TEACHING!!  I finally got fed up with my contact at UNT and his constant "I don't have any information that I haven't already given you," so I went to the Irving ISD building myself and talked to people in charge there.  Not only did I find out that I've been placed at Bowie Middle School in an 8th Grade Reading class, but I found out that my mentor teacher is the 2010-2011 teacher of the year.  Awesome, right?  I'm very excited to get it started, and we have an informational meeting at UNT on August 31.  After that meeting, we can contact our teachers and then start our PDS (Professional Development School) work.  VERY READY for that to happen.

So, now I'm home alone as Jay's at work, so I guess I'll do something slightly more productive than writing this blog.  As in every house, there's always laundry to do, and I'm sure I can find something else that needs work around here.

Have a fantastic day, everyone, and good luck on upcoming school work if you have any!  If you don't have any upcoming school work, then please know that I envy you.  :)

Furniture & A Recipe

It's been an exhausting search for the right china storage, but we're finished!!  Sort of.  We've been looking for something low (around 41") with glass doors that we could put under the pass-through; that's been difficult because most glass doors are on a hutch, which is the top portion of the china storage, which is too tall for putting under the bar.  We found low-lying furniture, though... we just didn't want to pay out the nose for it, especially since we don't have a permanent dining room table and would eventually like our table to match our china storage. 

The solution to our storage problem!

Knowing all that, we moved our furniture around so that we could use something tall and narrow.  Have you tried looking for a narrow china cabinet?  It's not the easiest thing in the world to find.  At all.  We found linen-holding furniture, but that stuff isn't deep enough.  We found media-organizing furniture, but that's definitely not deep enough.  Finally, we found this great cabinet at Ikea.  It was perfect!  Glass doors, not too wide, not too tall, it even has drawers so we don't have to display everything in the cabinet. 


So we trekked all the way to Ikea in Frisco, found the cabinet we were looking for, found where to find it once we got downstairs, and then we thought to measure it in real life instead of just trusting the measurements on the description.  How fortunate--and frustrating--for us!  The cabinet, though it's definitely deep enough according to the written specifications, they gave the outside dimensions, and the inside isn't deep enough to hold our plates.  So we had to start our search over.  Again.

Not wanting to have wasted a trip to Ikea, we continued to look there at their multiple storage options.  We found the BESTÅ system and measured it and designed it and planned it and priced it.  Perfect!  We have creative say in what the front looks like, and we planned it out to hold our china and some kitchen appliances, displaying the china and hiding the appliances.  :)   

What our cabinet will look like...sort of.  :)

We had a hard time finding the bin and aisle numbers for some of the pieces, but we eventually found them!  Yay!  It's real!  We have a solution!!  Then, we went down into the warehouse part place thingy to find all our pieces.  OH NO!  They're out of our doors!!  Curses.  We asked, and the doors should arrive back in stock in 7-10 days.  So, we bought the pieces we could and took them home, and we'll go back at a later (and soon??) date to pick up our doors.  When the pieces are all delivered, our cabinet will look (roughly) like this picture on the right.  I had to put the picture together using paint, and I'm not exceptionally skilled at that.  Yeah, I could have/should have used photoshop, but I don't have that program on my computer; Jay has it on his Mac, but I'm not crazy about Macs and I've never used PhotoShop anyway.  So I cut and pasted.  And when we have all the pieces, I'll post a picture of what it looks like in real life with our plates and stuff inside.  It's gonna be awesome!

So, that's all over with (almost) and I am very relieved.  I'm ready to have my dining room look like a dining room (thanks, Mom, for agreeing to let us put our bikes at your house so we can get them out of my dining room!!  You rock!!).

Oh, that reminds me, if anyone knows any affordable way to store our bikes outside that will protect them from the elements, we'd happily take your thoughts.

We're All Legal & Such

This week has been another busy week for the Shive family.  (I LOVE saying that--the Shive Family!!)  In fact, I don't know that I remember everything we did.

I know we did was join up our checking accounts; that's right, we now have joint checking.  It's very grown up feeling, and I was probably much happier to sign a billion bank papers than anyone else ever was (unless that other person was getting money; we didn't get any money, but I was still very excited!).  I got to eat lunch with some lovely ladies this week, and we had the weirdest waitressing experience in the history of the world... I'm fairly certain of that.  Jay & I celebrated our month-aversary by going to Trivia Tuesday on the actual day, then going to dinner and a movie on Wednesday.  Our meal was delicious (Yummy Eggroll is an appropriate name for the restaurant, as it turns out), but the movie was... something else.

We saw Dinner for Schmucks because we thought that such a great cast could only lead to great comedy.  That's partly true.  Parts of the movie were very funny and had me laughing out loud and rolling my eyes; if I wasn't laughing, though, I just wanted to leave the theater.  The movie has an uncomfortable and awkward feeling to it, so it was kind of weird and irritating to sit through.  I guess it just has/had too many situations that I would have handled much differently.  Not a movie I plan to buy, but we had a good night regardless.

Jay and I have also been watching Mad Men via NetFlix, and we're still not sure what to think about it yet.  There are parts that are intriguing, and parts that just confuse the crap out of us.  It's been on for a while, though, so it can't be all bad, right?  At the same time, however, LOST was on for a long time and I never could get in on that show....  Either way, we're only a few episodes in to the first season, so we still have lots more to go.

Tonight, something exciting happened!  Jay and I bought the rest of our china--at a HUGE discount!  It was already 50% off, but we're in our "Completion Stage" of registering, so we got an additional 20% off the sale price, and then another 15% off because I used my Macy's Visa Card!!  SO MUCH SAVINGS!!  WOO!

Additionally, I made some chocolate-peanut butter cupcakes--completely from scratch.  Well, I didn't mill the flower and all that jazz, but I didn't just rip open a box and stir in eggs.  They smell super good, but they're for tomorrow, so we won't find out if they're actually good until then.  Patience, as I've mentioned, is sometimes hard for me.  Which reminds me: we were supposed to hear about student teaching today, and we heard nothing.  Guess I'll be making phone calls and appearances to and at the College of Education on Monday.  Faaantastic.

:)  In the meantime, Jay & I have a busy and fun-filled weekend ahead of us.  So, goodnight and thanks for reading!

Month-aversary!!!

It's official--we've been married for exactly one month!!  It's been fun and we've learned things about each other, and we're growing together in our relationship.  Our apartment is finally looking like a home, and we (I) posted the pictures to prove it.  :)

Could this be our new china storage?

Currently, we're searching for a piece of furniture to store our china in.  We're picky, and cheap, so that's making our search more difficult.  So if ever you're out and you find a buffet table with glass doors and no hutch that's at or under $200, please let one of us know!  We've found this one here, and we both like it, but we're kind of iffy about the green color; at the same time, however, the green color would match our living room very well.  So we don't know.

We tried to go to the bank and get our accounts joined today, but we waited for like thirty minutes before we learned that we were going to have to come back another day because the client already in the only banker's office was going to take too long.  So, we have an appointment for tomorrow.

And now we've got to get ready for trivia!  It is Tuesday, after all.  I think tomorrow that we're going to more formally celebrate our month-aversary  :D  Have a great night, everyone!

Hooray for the Weekend!

This week has been pretty full, and we're both happy it's the weekend.  We went to my parents' house Wednesday for some homemade Heart Attack on a Plate (the name we have affectionately given to one of my mom's chicken dishes) and I made homemade biscuits; it was a great meal.  Then, we saw Despicable Me, which was awesome! 

We had dinner with friends last night, and are now waiting on my parents to get here so we can take them out to dinner as a (small small small) token of thanks for everything they did for our wedding.


Earlier in the week, our wedding photographer emailed me to say that he'd send us a disc of our wedding pictures.  I'VE BEEN CHECKING THE MAILBOX TWICE A DAY COMPULSIVELY AND WE STILL DON'T HAVE THE DISC!!!  We got a link to see them online, but I can't print them or save them or do anything with them except scroll through.  Let me tell you, waiting is not my best quality or skill or ability or... anything positive.  But I'm trying.



Our apartment cleanup is coming along pretty well.  We have a bunch of empty picture frames lying around, though... BECAUSE OUR PICTURE DISC ISN'T HERE YET!!  *Breathe*  So, the waiting game continues.

Trivia Tuesday

Last night, Jay and I joined some of our friends at Cool Beans in Denton to play trivia.  We do this every week in hopes of winning some bar cash; it's free to play and it offers the potential to win free money?  How could we not play?  Anyway, the team we were on ended up winning first place, which also won us $50.  Nothing better than drinking for free... and showing off your smarts; well, the other team members showed off their smarts.  I'm usually just there for the company.  :D

I didn't get to add myself to the lease yesterday because the office wasn't open by the time I had to leave the apartment, so I'll add that to the list of things I want to/need to do today.

Our First Post!

Well, we've been married for just over three weeks (twenty-three days, if you really want to know), and it's pretty awesome.  Having blog envy, I've decided to start my own.  Jay & I will try and keep this updated to include what's going on in our lives and all the adventures of marriage.  Enjoy the read!

Today, I went to do some of the *scoff* fun stuff that goes along with getting married: new driver's license, new social security card and new mailing address.  When I got the the DMV, the line was in the waiting area, around the corner and down the hall; the person in front of me loudly talked on his cell phone and the woman behind me smelled terrible and brought three young children and their toys with her.  Even though the system went down twice while I was there, it only took about an hour...but that might be because a bunch of people left the line both times they announced the system was down.  Either way, I escaped without losing too much of my life and after having a two-year-old grab and hold on to my leg because he thought I was his mother (he was shocked to look up and discover his err in thinking) only once.  I was afraid the social security administration building would be packed--and it was.  I don't know what the SSA is doing, but they're doing it much better than the DMV is doing it because I was only there for about twenty minutes, and it didn't cost me a dime.  :)

After all that, I also--and perhaps the most exciting part!!--I turned in my keys, parking pass and gate key to my Denton apartment!!  Tomorrow I turn in my paperwork to be added to the lease at the apartment where Jay and I already live in Coppell and then I'll officially, and legally, be moved in with my husband.  :) It's so exciting to actually get to say that!

Hopefully, this is the first of many (hopefully interesting??) posts and a great and long and happy marriage!