WOYWW: The One in which I Took Over the Apartment with Wedding and Party Planning

Well, AJ had to go away for training for a week.

So I've taken over the apartment!

The box is has all of my bridesmaids "pop the question" gifts (which I'll share after I give them to the girls!) And the little binder peeking out in the back will be my wedding planner! Hahaha, we just got engaged Friday (you can read how here), but I'm already in full swing wedding planning!

The papers on the couch are for making decorations for my parents' party on Sunday. It is a boardwalk theme, so I am making pinwheels (there is one up at the top left corner) and to make paper bathing suits for a clothesline.

My markers are everywhere (move evidence of the bridesmaids gifts). The embroidery floss is for my second try at baker's twine (last week's try didn't go so well!) and the handwritten page next to the thread is for the first layout in our pre-wedding album!

Well, I'm off to go sneak a peek at everyone else's desks, and you can too, if you head over to Julia's!

A Week in the Life 2011: Thursday

Hi guys,
For the next week or two this will stay at the top of my posts, you can just scroll past it if you've read it already.
As I'm sure many of you have already heard, Google is going to get rid of Google Friend Connect for non-blogger blogs! 
I love all of my followers, and I love being able to follow all of your blogs, so I thought I would share some following options :)
Because I have a blogger blog, I won't be losing Google Friend Connect, but in order to follow a lot of blogs I've been following, I created a Linky Followers account. So, now you can follow using either Google Friend Connect or Linky Followers. 
You can also chose to follow via email, twitter or facebook! All of the buttons for these following options are in the left side bar.
<--- all of the pretty following buttons :)
Now back to our regularly scheduled blogging!


Its Thursday! Oh wait, I mean its Tuesday in the real world, but its Thursday here on my blog!

 The Ikea adventure...

 Doing sort of okay with the journaling today :)

Feeling cute in the elevator :)
Chopping veggies
Making yummy rice
Sauteing the chicken
Yummy chicken from scratch with shaved parmigiana cheese, veggies and rice for dinner!

Mmmm, I think I'm going to make chicken from scratch for dinner tonight! Yay :)

A Week in the Life 2011: Wednesday

Hi guys,
For the next week or two this will stay at the top of my posts, you can just scroll past it if you've read it already.
As I'm sure many of you have already heard, Google is going to get rid of Google Friend Connect for non-blogger blogs! 
I love all of my followers, and I love being able to follow all of your blogs, so I thought I would share some following options :)
Because I have a blogger blog, I won't be losing Google Friend Connect, but in order to follow a lot of blogs I've been following, I created a Linky Followers account. So, now you can follow using either Google Friend Connect or Linky Followers. 
You can also chose to follow via email, twitter or facebook! All of the buttons for these following options are in the left side bar.
<--- all of the pretty following buttons :)
Now back to our regularly scheduled blogging!

Welcome back to another week!I hope everyone had a great weekend! I know AJ and I did - we got engaged this weekend! I shared the story yesterday!

Today, I'm continuing sharing my A Week in the Life album :)

Sleeping :) AJ thinks this picture is creepy
Getting ready to go out for the day, I love this shirt!
Using my GPS to drive all over Chicago
I had to get a TB shot. My arm was all red from it
Walking by a store on a super sunny down in the South Loop
Chicago's Stock Exchange (you know, the one from Ferris Bueller's Day Off!)

I would like to clarify here that the drug test was for a new job teaching in CPS. It was mandatory for all new hires, they didn't just pick me for it! Of course, you could see how that new job worked out here...

 Yeah, not doing great the with journaling at all!

I was so excited to drive past Harpo Studios!
And Racine Ave, because it made me think of the Racine Bells from A League of Their Own, I love that movie!
My friend showed up at trivia with wine in her bag...I forget why, but it was very funny at the time!
Playing trivia at Declans, a Wednesday night tradition over the summer

We finally got Netflix, and I am so excited to start watching Downton Abby!! Does anyone else watch this show? It came highly recommended from Heather, and I'm really looking forward to curling up with the remote and a cup of tea tonight and watching (and looking at wedding stuff online!)

Scavenger Hunt Sunday {2 25 2012}

On Friday, AJ had most of the day off, but he had to run to work for about two hours, and I took the day off.

He asked me to go for a walk by the lake to take pictures of the skyline after he got home from work. But turns out, he didn't actually go to work, and he had a very special question to ask me :)





Crossed

 We crossed Lake Shore Drive to get this picture of the skyline from across the lake.

A Glimpse

I got a glimpse of this duck just as he took off from the water!

Handwritten

I hand wrote our version of Friday. AJ is going to write his this week so I can create a he said/she said scrapbook page about our engagement.
Mine says:
"AJ took the day off on Friday, but he had to go in for two hours (side note: he did not go to work, he went to get my ring). I took the day off too, so when he got back from work, we went for a picture walk along the bulkhead by North Ave. AJ asked me to take his picture in front of the skyline, then he looked at the picture and asked me to take it again. While I was getting ready to take his picture, he took off his gloves and said, "Wait, I think I have something for you." I thought I knew what he had, and my heart skipped a beat. I asked, "What are you doing? Are you doing what I think you are doing?!" He knelt down and said, "Do you remember how I told you I knew I loved you the night we met? Well, I knew something else too. Whill you marry me?" I said yes and AJ and I kissed right next to the lake, with our city skyline watching over us. It was absolutely perfect."

Bliss

Just after we got back from our walk on Friday (because I may have been so dazed that I forgot to take a picture of us by the lake!)

Gray

The sky was very gray, but my engagement ring is very sparkly!!

I hope everyone else had a great weekend as well! I'll be back tomorrow with more A Day in the Life later this week, and a catch up on how that whole make your own bakers twine thing worked out!

A Week in the Life 2011: Tuesday

Hi guys,


For the next week or two this will stay at the top of my posts, you can just scroll past it if you've read it already.


As I'm sure many of you have already heard, Google is going to get rid of Google Friend Connect for non-blogger blogs! 


I love all of my followers, and I love being able to follow all of your blogs, so I thought I would share some following options :)


Because I have a blogger blog, I won't be losing Google Friend Connect, but in order to follow a lot of blogs I've been following, I created a Linky Followers account. So, now you can follow using either Google Friend Connect or Linky Followers. 


You can also chose to follow via email, twitter or facebook! All of the buttons for these following options are in the left side bar.


<--- all of the pretty following buttons :)


Now back to our regularly scheduled blogging!

IT'S FRIDAY!!!!

But in A Week in the Life world, its Tuesday :)

Stocked up after grocery shopping.
Building a bookcase!
Starting some Halloween home decor projects (you can see what I used these letters for here)

 Starting to fall behind on the journaling...

Yummy food all ready for the bbq!
AJ and Allie grilling
Finally back home...
...with AJ :)


Does anyone have awesome plans for the weekend? We don't have too much planned, just some errands and cleaning and such! And I've got big big plans to scrapbook, I've had a fun layout planned to show the story of the flowers!

A Week in the Life 2011: Monday

Hi guys,


For the next week or two this will stay at the top of my posts, you can just scroll past it if you've read it already.


As I'm sure many of you have already heard, Google is going to get rid of Google Friend Connect for non-blogger blogs! 


I love all of my followers, and I love being able to follow all of your blogs, so I thought I would share some following options :)


Because I have a blogger blog, I won't be losing Google Friend Connect, but in order to follow a lot of blogs I've been following, I created a Linky Followers account. So, now you can follow using either Google Friend Connect or Linky Followers. 


You can also chose to follow via email, twitter or facebook! All of the buttons for these following options are in the left side bar.


<--- all of the pretty following buttons :)


Now back to our regularly scheduled blogging!

I took a little break yesterday for WOYWW, but now its back to A Week in the Life! I know you just couldn't wait because my life is so intriguing ;)

Homemade scones
Greek yogurt and strawberries
Getting mani and pedis at the BYOB nail salon :)

 Still doing okay on the journaling...

Our elevator
Our favorite pizza dough recipe
Making pizza dough
I forgot to take a picture before we ate the pizza, but lots of my veggies fell off because I put so many!


I'm so happy it is finally Thursday! AJ and I watch all our "Thursday shows" tonight...The Office, Big Bang Theory, Parks and Rec (okay, that's dvr-ed for me and not AJ, but I just love it!) and Jersey Shore ;) Do you have any shows that you just love to watch during the week?

WOYWW: From the Couch

Welcome to another edition of WOYWW!

Today, my "desk" is actually on my couch. Everything is all set up to make my own baker's twine in my latest Pinterest inspired project! Now I just need to get up enough energy to get started!

While I'm being lazy and procrastinating the start of this project, you should check out more desks from around the world!

A Week in the Life 2011: Sunday

Hi guys,
For the next week this will stay at the top of my posts, you can just scroll past it if you've read it already.
As I'm sure many of you have already heard, Google is going to get rid of Google Friend Connect for non-blogger blogs! 
I love all of my followers, and I love being able to follow all of your blogs, so I thought I would share some following options :)
Because I have a blogger blog, I won't be losing Google Friend Connect, but in order to follow a lot of blogs I've been following, I created a Linky Followers account. So, now you can follow using either Google Friend Connect or Linky Followers. 
You can also chose to follow via email, twitter or facebook! All of the buttons for these following options are in the left side bar.
<--- all of the pretty following buttons :)
Now back to our regularly scheduled blogging!

Sunday night, I was at the coolest store ever! It was a HUGE scrapbook store. Like Costco big. And every single thing was on sale! Really on sale, clearance style on sale. And it was all brand new releases of stamps and papers and markers and everything. I brought home quite the haul.

Monday morning, I was incredibly confused as to why all of my stuff wasn't on my desk. I searched the apartment and was really upset because I'd gotten so many awesome things that I really loved and couldn't wait to use.

That's when I realized I was never actually at a store...

Does anyone else dream about scrapbooking? Or am I the only one?

So, instead of showing you all of the super cool awesome things I bought, I'll share my A Week in the Life pages from 2011. Which I just finished when I did my A Day in the Life for 2012 - oh well, better late than never!

This week (and a little bit into next week!) I'm going to share my layouts for the different days!

 Cover page :)

Cleaning the kitchen
Shopping at Target
Lucky's Sandwich Co...where AJ was going to try the Man vs. Food Challenge.
The rules of the sandwich challenge

 Sunday I actually did very well with the journaling...you'll see how great I do as the week goes on!

The three sandwiches
AJ trying to eat all his sanwiches
AJ couldn't finish the sandwiches
What was left
AJ in a food coma
Me :)

I hope everyone is having a great Tuesday!

Oscar Movie Marathon

Hi guys,
For the next week or two this will stay at the top of my posts, you can just scroll past it if you've read it already.
As I'm sure many of you have already heard, Google is going to get rid of Google Friend Connect for non-blogger blogs! 
I love all of my followers, and I love being able to follow all of your blogs, so I thought I would share some following options :)
Because I have a blogger blog, I won't be losing Google Friend Connect, but in order to follow a lot of blogs I've been following, I created a Linky Followers account. So, now you can follow using either Google Friend Connect or Linky Followers. 
You can also chose to follow via email, twitter or facebook! All of the buttons for these following options are in the left side bar.
<--- all of the pretty following buttons :)
Now back to our regularly scheduled blogging!

Saturday, AJ and I spent almost 12 hours at the movie theater seeing an Oscar Movie Marathon. They were showing "War Horse", "Moneyball", "Tree of Life" and "The Descendants". Next week, you could go and watch the other five nominees, but we couldn't get tickets to that one!

I thought it would be fun to do a quick review of the movies today, and tomorrow I would start sharing my A Week in the Life album that I just finished from last year!

War Horse - I was a little nervous about seeing this movie. I wiki-ed it, so I was prepared for any bad thing that may occur - and even with that, I still cried! I really liked it, although AJ felt is was a little too much of a children's movie (although I think for older kids, some of the horses got hurt, and the war stuff was a little brutal, and if your kid was like me as a kid, this could be traumatizing...let's be honest, I found it slightly traumatizing at 24!) All in all, a good movie!

Moneyball - We both loved this movie! We are both big baseball fans, so I think that definitely played into why we loved it so much! I was really impressed with the way they used real play by play announcing and real game footage mixed in with movie footage too, I can see why its nominated for "Best Film Editing". I definitely want to see this one again.

Tree of Life - Can I get that 138 minutes of my life back? I understand what they were trying to do, but I really prefer when the characters in the movie, you know, speak to each other. This movie had a lot of monologues and whispering one liners in the background while characters "interact" without speaking. Oh, and there was also the 40 minute montage of exploding volcanoes, the sky, planets, abstract movements and the ocean with opera music playing in the background. I understand the concept, but I could've done without it. And based on the conversations with the people around me, we all could have done without this one!

The Descendants - I didn't expect to laugh so much at this movie, because it was about such a serious concept, but it had some very funny moments. It was really well done and very touching, this is another movie I would definitely watch again.

Well, its Monday, so I should probably be getting to work! If you are lucky and have the day off for Presidents Day, enjoy your day off! If you are like me and have to go to work, I'm sorry :(

Scavenger Hunt Sunday {2 18 2012}

Well, I missed out on last week's scavenger hunt. I just needed a little break from everything last weekend!

This was a crazy week, Valentine's Day on Tuesday, complete with a crazy brownie dessert and a crazy experience with my flowers :) The rest of the week flew by pretty quickly. AJ and I spent all day at an Oscar movie marathon. We saw War Horse, Moneyball, Tree of Life and the Descendants and we just got home! From 10am this morning! I'll give you all a review tomorrow when I can think again :)


Love

Well, this picture is actually from last summer. And I obviously didn't take it ;) but I love it, its one of my favorite pictures of AJ and I.

Duplicated

I duplicated this from this pin on Pinterest :)

Trend or Trending

1-800-Flowers was certainly trending on Valentine's Day, but not for very good reasons. These are my flowers from them, they came on February 16 :)

Paper and Plastic

Scrapbook paper in plastic page protectors...alittle bit of a stretch, I know, but I'm sure you'll let me slide since you're just so happy I'm back to the scavenger hunt ;)

Have a wonderful Sunday! I hope you have tomorrow off (Unlike me! Kind of upset about that!)

A Day in the Life

As promised, I will be posting my A Day in the Life pages (you can read more about this on Ali Edward's blog here).

But first, some unfinished business. If you are a regular here, you know all about the Valentine's Day flower drama. If you need to catch up to speed, check out the end of this post.

Yep! Those are the flowers! They arrived just as I was leaving my apartment after lunch! I think they are beautiful, and they came in a lovely deep red glass vase! Perfect for holding Valentine's Day flowers in the future :) I actually brought them to work with me, because I wanted to be able to look at them!

Because of the delay, AJ was refunded all of his money (that means these are free flowers, you know, if you don't count the hours and hours I spent on the phone with them trying to get them to deliver!) and we are supposed to get a $30 gift card and a $20 gift card.

On a related note, we will never chose 1-800-Flowers on Valentine's Day (or any other day of the year...) again! I will use the free gift cards, if we actually get them, because I feel like I need to be "paid" for the time and energy I spent arguing with them over the past few days! But after those two gift cards are gone, I will never ever call them, click on their site and if someone mentions needing to send flower, I will adamantly oppose their service as a choice!

Well, now that that is cleared up, and my Valentine's Day present is finally here for me to enjoy, we can talk about A Day in the Life.

This was a pretty typical Wednesday for us, which is what I love about this project. You get to capture just a regular day. I used Ali's free Week in the Life pages to keep track of my day and took pictures of everything I could. I didn't take a lot of pictures at work, because well, its work...hahaha.

I decided to keep all my "A Week in the Life" and "A Day in the Life" pages in one album, and use the same basic layout for each, pictures and journaling cards in baseball card pages and the worksheets in regular 8.5 x 11 page protectors! For this day, I used 3 "baseball card" layouts and one page protector :)

Reading (about A Day in the Life) for some inspiration in the morning)
Drinking tea
Its still light outside when I leave work
Stuck in traffic on my way home (don't worry, I was sitting at a red light when I took this...so far back you can't even see the red light!)
Reading on my kindle at lunch

 AJ doing some work on a presentation he was giving the next day
Goldfishies and wine :)
AJ finally got his passport!
Super closeup of goldfishies
Sauce
My glue gun :)
Finally finished my frame!

Watching Baseball IQ - we are really bad at this trivia game, but its fun to watch.
Watching Modern Family
The only picture I took for last week's Scavenger Hunt Sunday. AJ was a little weirded out that I was taking pictures of his eye for "facial feature"
Getting ready for bed
Taking pictures of the moon over the lake
Perry Bluegoogles, Mama Bear and Moosey are all ready for bed!

 What I do in a day, on an hour by hour basis. A few work things are blanked out, because idk if people want their names here...like "I had a meeting with {insert coworker's name here}." hahaha

And that is a day in our life!

I am soooo glad it is Friday, this week has seemed to go on forever! Do you have any plans for this weekend? Tonight we need to wait for the internet guy to come to hook up our own internet (as opposed to our building's free wifi) because we want to get Netflix, and I'd like faster upload speeds for things like uploading pictures to my blog and Shutterfly! Saturday, AJ and I are going to see an Oscar movie marathon, a local theater is showing 4 Oscar nominated movies - War Horse, Money Ball, Tree of Life and The Descendants. I'm really excited, although I do wish they were showing The Help in this round. I read the book, but I still haven't seen the movie! Oh well, I guess I'll just have to rent it once we get our Netflix set up :)