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Election Day

Something Real

Tomorrow, for the first time, I’ll actually get to vote. I can honestly say I’ve been waiting for this moment for years and I’m more than a little bit psyched about it. I spent most of high school campaigning and encouraging everyone around me to go out on election day, and finally I can join them. I will probably wear my “I voted” sticker with much pride tomorrow…and I’ll try not go parading around town with it. Oddly enough, I think election day ties with my birthday in terms of anticipation. Tomorrow I vote, tomorrow I have a voice…and a check box, and tomorrow, I plan to use it.

 

*squeal*

 

Then, I get to watch the returns. 😀 😀 😀 😀

 

 

*/geek/*

Small Adventures

Something Real

Everyone has small problems and adventures, it’s just sort of a fact of life. However, small problems like…the internet being out for the day when your job completely relies on it, make internet outages much more challenging. This month, really has been full of random small adventures – car breakage, SAT’s, flies, realizing we have to register the car, and the whole internet out today thing.
So today, after realizing that the internet was out, we tried to reset it…for 45 minutes. After no success, we called Comcast and  apparently our entire town was out, at least in residential areas. We then realized, that we could register our car before the end of the month, and it was much cheaper than we thought it was going to be(score!). After we got that out of the way, we checked to see if internet came back…and it hadn’t. So thankfully, we live in a town that has several free (or cheap) wifi hotspots. Fortunately, we hadn’t cancelled our AT&T wifi subscription at Starbucks so Alex was able to work there until we decided to hang out at the library with everyone else who had no internet.  (library pic below – we have an awesome library.)
Library
So anyway, tip for anyone who depends on internet like we do: make sure you move somewhere with free (or cheap) wifi available incase yours goes out randomly…for 7 hours….

Apples

Creations Evolution

A few weeks ago, we went apple picking and consequently, we ended up with a ton of apples. So I was trying to figure out something to do with them, and found a cool website that had apple recipes. I didn’t have raisins so I just skipped that part, but the apples turned out great. I took some before and after pictures of my experiment and I might make it again.

I would have posted the recipe (and pictures) sooner, but I was waiting for my new macbook to come in (and steal the pictures from my husband’s iphone). Also, I think the leaves have peaked so I’ll be uploading some fall pictures soon. 🙂

Hopechest tips

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It’s sort of a cultural thing with homeschool girls to start preparing for marriage by building a hopechest. As old fashioned as it sounds it’s actually incredibly useful to have after you’re married. Quite a few friends of mine have been working on theirs for years, I didn’t start mine until I was in a serious relationship –  I didn’t see the use for it until that point. There are advantages to both waiting and starting one before you have a boyfriend. The advantage of starting one early is you’ll have more time to accumulate things you might need or would like to have around that aren’t necessarily practical (or you could save up for small appliances). However, what I liked about waiting was that I could talk with my boyfriend about it (as far as colors and decorations etc go) and then what was in my hopechest was a mix of styles and things that we both appreciated. For example, we wanted to decorate our kitchen with a coffee theme and have red be a central color – so I’d get little coffee towels and things when they were on sale and if he found something with that scheme he could contribute as well ( :D). This made putting together my hopechest more enjoyable for me personally, but I’m just weird like that.
Anyway, I know there are alot of girls out there working on hopechests, so I thought I’d throw out some tips from some of the things I’ve learned:
1.  You will be way ahead if you have a complete kitchen already put away in your hopechest (including small appliances). Kitchen items, even just baking sheets can be really pricey, and it’s nice if you don’t have to deal with stocking a kitchen while you’re moving into your place. Also, having multiple  mixing bowls is a great idea.
—- As a side note, finding a good set of dishtowels (for drying) will save you a headache (and from picking fuzz off your dishes) if you have a place without a dishwasher.
2. Having a nice set of blankets/sheets/linens is also a great thing to have put away (and also pricey otherwise). This is something really fun to pick out together, but also fun to pick out yourself.
3. Irons and Ironing boards are good ideas. I don’t iron much, but living in an apartment without an iron/ironing board makes you appreciate them…and saves money at the coin-op dryer. Clothes will get wrinkled, so I’m throwing irons in here as something I totally didn’t even think about.
4. If you like sewing or plan on doing some sewing, picking up a nice sewing machine when it’s on sale will save you a good bit of money, and you’ll also be able to start practicing. I bought mine  for $50 on Black Friday a year or two ago, and it’s been fantastic.  It’s also faster than hand stitching.
5. Decorations – If you already know what you/& your boyfriend want to do decorating wise keep an eye out for decorations or put some on your wishlist. I wanted to do a retro style dining area, so my grandparents gave me some retro coke items for christmas. Garage sales are good places to pick up random decorative items as well, and sometimes you can find some really great stuff on sale if  you look for it.
6. Keep in mind you can put whatever you don’t have on a registry, but you might not get everything you put on there. Back up plans are good, as well as already having  the essentials.

Chill

Something Real

I woke up this morning with plans to go to the bank and send out my cable bill…..and then  I realized that it’s Columbus day.  I don’t remember ever taking off Columbus day when I was in school, so it’s always come as a surprise – usually when we discovered there wasn’t any mail and spent about 5 minutes realizing, oh, it’s a holiday. Usually it’s  fine, but tomorrow it’s supposed to snow, which makes going out very inconvenient as I haven’t driven in the snow before.  If I do end up going out, it will definitely be an adventure.
It’s supposed to snow tomorrow. I grew up in the south, October is 80’s weather for me. So this is sort of a weird concept for me. Snow in October.
Where’s global warming when you need it? Chilling out?

It Happens To Everyone

Creations Evolution

So yesterday was another first. On Monday the battery light on the car went on, so we called to set up an appointment at the mechanic’s on Tuesday. The earliest we could schedule was today, Thursday – our mechanic is about an hour and a half north of us, in the town my in-laws live in. So, yesterday, at about 3:30 we started getting stuff in the car (we were going to stay over and work on a project with Hannah). Since it was the middle of the afternoon, I was going to drive so Alex could finish working. It started raining right after everything was in the car, so naturally, I turned on the lights and the windshield wipers.
100 yards from my apartment…the raido light started flickering.
A block away, the windshield wipers were going incredibly slowly.
Traffic stopped, and I had to push really hard to make the car move.
Three blocks from home, after the car in front stopped for a pedestrian…my car just…stopped. I tried flooring it, turning it on and off, moving it to park and then to drive again…but it didn’t do anything – and there were people backed up behind me. So, we put the caution lights on, which were really dim and just kinda waited. I didn’t know what to do, we didn’t have a phone book, we didn’t really know who to call – towing, but there’s alot of towing people…and we didn’t know where to tow it to…and I cried. A lot. Thankfully, this guy from NYFD helped us move the car off the road (I can’t push and drive and was having way too much trouble switching gears…apparently, you have to brake instead of pushing on the gas O:)…)
We also finally found AAA’s working number, and thankfully, there was an auto shop 2 miles away. So now, after freaking out most of yesterday (oddly somewhat because I was crying and freaking out) and staying up most of the night (our air mattress bed is still in the car) we’re finally starting to become coherent and waiting for them to call us back and we can (walk to) pick up the car. 🙂
Hopefully they’ll call soon, because I also left my math book in there….(and chocolate). Yesterday, we were very scared and I was all shaky  and most of the night, but looking back, we really were very well taken care of. The NY guy, and the policeman who stayed there till we were towed so people wouldn’t think we were parking (yeah that was, not fun) and the shop being 2 minutes away…and the alternator price not being overly horrible, and we still got a ride back home, so we didn’t have to walk in the freezing air (even Alex was cold). I was too scared yesterday to realize this, but God really did keep us  safe…and I’m not stressed about it anymore.

Scarves

Something Real

In between math and such, I’ve been working on crocheting some scarves. I’d never made one until a few weeks ago when I realized that they were incredibly expensive and I could probably sew one just as well. Yesterday night I finished my 3rd. I think it’s the best one I’ve done so far (sewing wise). So, I thought I’d show it off. The lighting isn’t terribly great so the colors might look a little odd (but it actually does look nice in real life).
On a random math related note – I think I’m figuring algebra out. Three years after high school, but hey.

Brainstorms and Flies in My Kitchen

Creations Evolution

Brainstorms are what happen when your thoughts swirl around until they rain onto paper (or a keyboard). They’re also a nice way to spice up a gloomy weekend. Last fall I discovered that listening to Owl City actually helps me with my brainstorming process. It may seem odd, but it helps me focus and think creatively.  So today when I was trying to figure out how to market a project, that’s what I listened to. Very helpful. 🙂
On a completely unrelated note, earlier this week I discovered these weird tiny little flies hanging around my kitchen. We’ve tried everything we can think of to get rid of them – this morning in desperation I just started spraying bleach at them (hey, I was tired). Anyway, they’re now just sort of flying all over my house and  the trash bag we have in the house we can’t take out yet (apartment dumpster is beyond full). So if anyone knows of a good way to make them leave…that’d be nice.

Addendum

Something Real

Also, I *love* staying home (with my Alex!!!) and being able to make sure it’s clean and lunch is actually put away….and be less stressed.
*happy sigh*
Lunches  that aren’t hotdogs are also a nice benefit.