Modern Oasis

So I know since Shad and I don't have kids yet, it seems kind of ridiculous to pick our master bedroom for an overhaul (didn't Shad just paint that builder white room orange and golden yellow a few short months ago?). We have an entire house to ourselves to escape to from the outside world but the long and short of it is that my once daring move to paint the walls orange and yellow turned out to be a huge mistake that I loathed everytime I entered our room. And I have to sleep in that room every night so it's kind of a big deal. With the method to my madness justified lets move on to a description.

Okay so I took interior design in high school from Dotty and I'll be the first one to admit the only thing I learned in that class was to not leave harsh corners and I can guarantee you, there are almost no harsh corners in our house. Other than that, most of the interior decorating ideas I get come from magazines and blogs. My latest blog obsession is younghouselove.com . I'll just warn you. Don't click over unless you want to devote a good amount of time devouring their tutorials, before and afters and my favorite MOOD BOARDS. They are to die for.

So the mood boards that they post don't just happen, people request help for their design dilemas. They're ever so popular. They typically sell out minutes after they post new ones every week. A couple months ago I was one of the lucky ones to snag a board. You can see my custom mood board here.

I think I'm done rambling now...I'll just let the pictures speak the rest.

Before

After

Looooong Beach

I have a lot to cover so forgive me for slacking last week.

I guess I’ll start with my trip to Long Beach. My company sent me to the Society of Women Engineers Conference this year and it was a total blast. I had been before a few times in college and I was super excited to see it from a professional perspective instead of the desperate college student please give me a job perspective. The professional side did not disappoint.

We opted to stay at the Queen Mary Hotel. This alone was an adventure. For those of you that don’t know, the Queen Mary is a luxury cruise liner built in the 1920’s and cruised around the world for a few decades. After being retired, the city of Long Beach, CA purchased the ship, made it into a hotel and permanently docked it at the Long Beach Port.

Okay now that we all know what we’re talking about, let’s think about what I just told you. A luxury cruise liner…from 1920. The luxuries of 1920 are nowhere near the luxuries of today. It was like staying at your grandma’s house. Sure it’s clean, but it still kind of smells funny because it’s old and nothing works quite right. Another wonderful feature was the colony of ants that lived in the bathroom. Every morning I battled with them. Several lost their lives. Neither one of us won. Another funny thing about the ship was that after talking to the other ladies staying there, none of our rooms were even remotely similar. Okay they all had a bed and scary extension cords for wiring (is that up to code?) but other than that, completely different. Bathrooms were in different spots, there were desks in weird places, some had sitting rooms, some nothing. I guess standardization wasn’t invented before 1920.

Now for my favorite part about the Queen Mary, it’s supposedly haunted and other than being a hotel, it’s kind of a tourist attraction. So what do you do with a haunted tourist attraction in the middle of October? That’s right, you turn it into a haunted house. And not just one haunted house, several haunted houses. That overtake half of the levels on the ship and allow people to scream at the top of their lungs outside your guests windows until 3 AM.

In summary, all of my previous observations about cruise ships were validated regardless of the decade the ship was manufactured in and whether you are actually sailing on said ship or just enjoying your time. I’m so glad this time around it was my company footing the bill because I would have seriously been mad if I was paying $300 a night to not sleep and get attacked by ants.

Other than the Queen Mary from Hell (Good name for next year’s haunted house?), Long Beach was fun. The conference was wonderful, I collected lots of great swag at the career fair, and learned a lot in our sessions, actually got to meet a few ladies from other locations (I even met one I talk on the phone with on a weekly basis but have never met because she’s in South Carolina. She’s a delight in person by the way J). I’m glad I only opted to go to a few of the networking opportunities though. It was fun playing Jenga in the Irish pub across the street with the other ladies and it was great to have lunch with the company big wigs that were in town but for the most part, I like exploring alone.

I found a Z Gallerie and picked up some great pieces for the master bedroom makeover I’m undertaking this week and I had some awesome meals (see giant pot pie picture below) while people watching the drinkers at the bar. I even got to meet up with my Sister and brother in-law to play at the lake and eat some delicious frozen yogurt. It was a fantastic week and I’m so glad I had the opportunity to go.

Do You Smell?

During my trip to Long Beach last week I came to a realization, I hate people that wear perfume and cologne. It seemed like at every turn my nose was greeted with a new scent. So many different strong smells is quite jarring if you think about it. I certainly did this week.

I guess I’m pretty spoiled when it comes to people wearing scents around me. My workplace isn’t exactly conducive to waking up in the morning and feeling like you need to look fab-u-lous. If fact it’s really funny to see a new female engineer start. In the beginning she shows up, hair all blow dried and down and with a full face of makeup. Then slowly but surely, the hair turns into a wet ponytail and you’re lucky if you get mascara and eye liner. I can poke fun at this because that is exactly what happened to me. Every time I look at the picture on my badge, I chuckle to myself about the energy I had to spend time on looking so good under my hair net and safety glasses.

Sorry back to smells, the point of that story was to show even the ladies at work don’t take the time to wear perfume. My shampoo and hand lotion (which is usually only slightly scented and if you, like me, use the Huggies lotion, smells like babies.) is good enough. I can’t remember the last time I actually put perfume on. I don’t even know where my perfume is. I don’t think I even need to say the male engineers don’t bother with smelly stuff. We’re lucky they wear matching socks most days.

It really made me feel bad for people that are allergic to that type of stuff. Seriously, how would they leave the house in Long Beach?

Maybe I’m just a scent Nazi. After marrying Shad I refused to buy him his Old Spice body wash (do you think he’ll be embarrassed that everyone that reads our blog now knows he uses body wash instead of a bar of soap?) because it smelled like old men to me and I hated how it made our bathroom and bedroom smell like old men…everyday.
So did this post distract you from the fact it tells you nothing about my trip to Long Beach except for the fact it smells (good?) there? Nice. There are two reasons for this:

1) I left my camera (and thus pictures of Long Beach) in Cali with my sister so they could take a picture of themselves at UCLA for her in-law’s Christmas card this year (I don’t know).

2) Because I don’t have pictures of Long Beach, I don’t really remember what I did there for 5 days. I’m not kidding. I have the worst memory ever when it comes to the question what did you do today or this weekend? Shad asks me that every night and I usually just say I was in meetings all day because I honestly can’t really remember what I did. I guess it’s a good coping mechanism to separate the stress of work from home but honestly that’s no excuse for not remembering what we did Saturday night on Monday morning.

Yosemi - me?

Shad and I just got back from Yosemite National Park on Monday. Neither of us had ever been (neither had our friends Jared and Jen that went with us) so it was way fun to wander and find what the park had to offer.

Being from Utah, I was surprised at how many lakes there were this late in the season (most of the waterfalls dry up in August).

What is it about a log in a lake that makes you want to climb on it?

I wasn't causing any trouble on the log, promise.

The trees in the park were so big. This one had been hit by lightening and split. Jen told us to get in the hole and look happy so we did.

This was probably my favorite stop of the trip. Tenaya Lake. We were driving to go to another lake but as we drove past this one and I saw the white sandy beaches I insisted we stopped. It ended up being a good time. The water wasn't even that bad so we got to play in it.

Day two, we found ourselves hiking around the valley in the main part of the park.

Here we are relaxing by a river. Notice the man in his boxers in the back ground getting ready for a swim. He wasn't even European. Ah the people you meet in national parks.

Nevada falls, one of the few that still has water this late in the year.

Day three was Giant Sequoia day. There are a few groves of Sequoias in the park, this is the biggest. The trees were so cool. It made the gross curvy road to get there that made both Jen and I sick worth it.

The wood from one Giant Sequoia is equal to 100 acres of forest. Too bad they're really fragile so when they fall over they literally shatter.

Here I am demonstrating how one of their pinecones is bigger than my head.

For our last night in the park we waited on a ridge to watch the sunset. So pretty.

Today I'm headed back to Cali to attend the Society of Women Engineers national conference in Long Beach. It's going to be a blast. I hope the house is in one piece when I get back.

Sweater...

What is it about the cold that makes you want to curl up in a ball on the couch and not come out until it’s 80 degrees outside again? If I had had that choice this weekend, guarantee I would have done it.

Instead of laying on the couch, I was very productive. Friday night our friends Tosca and Ben had a little get together at their casa to celebrate finally being moved in. It’s a super adorable condo and I love both of them to death. Unfortunately for Shad, he got stuck at work late and didn’t make the departure cutoff so I went it alone. I’m sure he had a slamin’ Friday night at the house with our puppy though. I had a great time visiting with friends and hearing ridiculous stories from Ben and Ty about their antics while in the Green Peanuts together.

Saturday morning I got up and went tutoring and then returned home to watch some conference and get ready for craft day with Jen and Danielle. We had originally planned to do mosaics but that plan got nixed due to none of us finding something we wanted to mosaic and another opportunity came up that couldn’t be delayed. Instead we helped Jen get her Halloween costume together.

What is she being, you might ask? To which I have to respond that it’s amazing and there were lots of pictures taken but because it’s a surprise and the surprisee might glance at our blog before Halloween, you, my friend are going to have to wait. Jen’s sister is getting married on Halloween in Ohio and to celebrate the holiday in style, costumes are allowed and encouraged for the reception. Jen, looking for any excuse to get out of her bridesmaid dress early, decided to opt for a costume.

After craft day and priesthood session, Shad and I enjoyed a delicious dinner at Bistro 258. If there was one thing I could change about Ogden, it would be the lack of delicious nicer restaurants. If we’re down in Salt Lake and get to have dinner, it’s almost too hard to decide. In Ogden I always have to make a choice do I want a nice dinner (which leaves us with one maybe two options) or an okay dinner. It’s a hard choice and part of me says at that point, just make dinner, which is good for our wallets but not as satisfying.

Sunday was couch day while we watched conference. Well, I watched conference, Shad slept through at least half of conference. It was such a nice relaxing Sunday.

So you know how some people say that their kids are their punishment for being a really stubborn kid or a really out of hand kid or for never sleeping when they were little? I think Dublin is my punishment for hating the cold. He loathes it. Yesterday when I got home from work, I went to let him out. He rang the bell like a good puppy and at that moment it started to snow outside. I opened the door for him to go out and he looked at me like I was crazy. I tried to get him to go out, I even tried to push him but when a 75 pound pit bull doesn’t want to go outside, I’m not going to get him to go outside. Luckily it stopped snowing and he happily went out after that. I’m going to have to buy him a sweater.

Birthdays?

Now that I’m done blogging about the cruise, we’re back to our regularly scheduled programming. Last week was a super busy week for us. It was Shad’s birthday and our first anniversary and I had gotten us tickets to see The Get Up Kids. Good week.

Wednesday night was The Get Up Kids show. I had mixed feelings about the whole concert on a weeknight after having some exhausting days at work post vacation. Sometimes I think it’s not worth going on vacation to face the mess at work you have to come back to. But, we had the tickets so we went. We tried to go to Café Niche for dinner, apparently they only do dinner Friday and Saturday nights. I hear their brunch is to die for though so check it out sometime. Instead we ended up at Faustina, it was amazing as usual. It’s Dine O Round time in SLC so I was excited to see what they were offering; turns out they’ve changed their entire menu to work like Dine O Round – all year long! Ideal!

After dinner we trekked over to At the Venue for the show. While listening to the first two bands, I got bored and started to wonder if I was getting too old to go to shows still, it kept getting later and later and I kept on thinking about the 6:30 morning meeting the next morning and started thinking more and more about just going home without seeing The Get Up Kids at all. Luckily we toughed it out and made it to their set, and it was amazing. I think taking a few years off did a world of good for this band. I saw them a few years ago and they put on a good show but this time around, they were relaxed, they joked around, the strayed from the set list. It was great, all the reasons why I love their type of music in the first place. I hope they make plans to do another CD together and tour again but a few years off again wouldn’t be so bad either.

Thursday was Shad’s birthday. Because I tutor on Thursday nights, we planned to celebrate it on Saturday but Shad did get to open his present from me, the latest season of The Office and some new clothes. I feel like anytime I give Shad presents I give him clothes, I can’t help it that he tends to ruin clothes quickly (at least by my standards – maybe not his). Friday was our first anniversary. Shad had asked if he could plan a surprise for me, unfortunately the spa called me the day before to remind me about our couples massage. Someday he will be able to plan a surprise I won’t find out about. I wasn’t even trying this time! The massage was wonderful and after we went to our favorite Chinese restaurant right next door to the spa in Layton. I miss living right across the street from that place. For my present, Shad has stolen my Martha Stuart craft book earlier in the week and made some paper flowers at our friend Jen’s house. That’s right one year later and I have the man crafting for me.
They say that the first year is the worst and I’m willing to believe it in a heartbeat. Shad really could have used a sister growing up. Hopefully our next year won’t be so life changing either, we went from working 100 miles apart and seeing each other on Tuesdays (even though we were married and lived in the same apartment), to new a job, to buying a house and moving to Ogden, to various house projects (we do not paint well together), to getting a new puppy. It’s been a fun adventure so far and I’m looking forward to the fun years to come.

Saturday, I went tutoring and came home to start Shad’s birthday celebration. Shad had said for his birthday he wanted to take Dublin swimming somewhere and then go up to Huntsville for a lone star burger. We took Dublin Swimming at Willard Bay and he did surprisingly well. I was worried he would get to where he couldn’t touch and freak out, no instead he started trying to chase a boat that went by where we were. Luckily Shad was in the water to stop him and point him back towards shore. Too bad he’s not bred to be a water dog though. After 30 minutes in the water, he was shivering so we called it a day. I was such a proud Mom to see him actually swimming. With some more practice, he’ll be a champ.

After that, instead of going up to Huntsville, we had Jen and Jared over for a BBQ and to watch the Ute game. It was a fun night despite the game being pretty terrible.

Sunday we went down to my parents to celebrate our birthdays with them, dinner was delicious and it’s always great to see my family and hang out with them.

This weekend Shad gets to go camping with the 11 year old scouts so hopefully I will get a quiet night at home.

It's all about comparisons

So, in my last blog post I ended our cruise summary by telling you I will probably not go on a cruise ever again. You curious to hear why? Tuff, you’re going to hear it anyway through my list of pros and cons.

Pro: Cheap transportation to many different destinations – it seriously would have cost $6000 in airfare each to visit each spot. Not worth it.

Con: We only got to spend a few hours at each destination. Shad and I are engineers and thus very good at setting a very ambitious schedule and accomplishing it, that’s just not the way I like my vacations. I like to take my time and have less of a plan and more time just exploring. On the plus side, the spots we didn’t really love, we only were there for a few hours.

Pro: Copious amounts of food all the time. Now this is the number one thing people raved about while talking about their previous cruise experiences. I don’t know where these people eat normally but the food was not of good quality, even in the fancy dining room. Seriously it is convenient to go get pizza whenever the thought occurs to you, but is it really that hard to get pizza on a daily basis outside of a cruise? For me it is not. I guess for other people it is.

Con: Eating with strangers for dinner every night. On cruises typically when you eat in the dining room you have an assigned table with your fellow cruise passengers. I pictured a large round table when I thought about this situation. Not a cozy booth with one other couple we had never seen before in our lives. It’s much harder to ignore the others at the table and talk amongst yourselves when you are staring directly at two strangers two feet away from you. This was our situation. Enter Hannah and Christian from Chicago (originally Poland). Chicago is rising fast on my least favorite places ever – it will never replace Wyoming but it might come close. Hannah and Christian both work in the financial sector in securities or something. They both hate cruising yet have been on several. They hate the food on the cruise ship, they hate the cheesy activities, they don’t go swimming in the pool and go to bed by 9:00. On our days at sea, we had to hear how bored they were the entire day. We had to hear about all the things the cruise line used to do but have cut back on. During the days we stopped at places, we got to hear about their scuba diving trip (that’s all they did at every port) and then the annoying things that happened to them while on land and then lastly, the told us what we did wrong on our excursions for the day. Seriously best night of the cruise was the night we got back from port too late and opted to shower instead of rushing to dinner.

Pro: Towel animals. Who doesn’t love a good towel animal with turndown service?

Con: It’s loud. I didn’t get a good night sleep the entire time on the cruise. The walls are thin and with people walking and stewards rolling carts up and down the hall all hours of the night, it was my worst nightmare. I was so happy to get home to our silent house to actually sleep.

Pro: We made new Australian friends. On our way to the port on the shuttle from the hotel we bonded with a cute couple over the less than fancy hotel we stayed in the night before. Throughout the check in day, we kept on running into them. They’re names were Matt and Bella and we had a blast hanging out with them for a lot of the time on the ship. It was nice to share our time with a young couple that didn’t hate cruising. They even had a few incidents that required medical attention and that still didn’t get them down. (Bella twisted her ankle on the water slide at Margaritaville in Grand Cayman and Matt cut his head and had to get stitches in Roatan after a shop awning fell on it.)

Con: People everywhere. I don’t really like people and on the ship beside you’re really loud stateroom, you have no option but to be surrounded by them. I couldn’t help to think back to our honeymoon in Cabo where we saw a maximum of 5 people in our resort the entire week. That was bliss.

There you go. There are a ton of other places in the world Shad and I are dying to see and chances are good we won’t be seeing them anytime soon from a cruise ship.