Spring? Already?

Winter was seriously short lived around here. And I really miss it. But, maybe it's just me and my broken car air conditioner. But seriously, where did winter go? Bridget and I decided to soak up the warm sunshine and practice our photography (we both got new cameras for Christmas). 

These are the signs of spring we found in her neighborhood:

But it wasn't all fun and games. On our trip around the neighborhood we found a seriously creepy mailbox topper.

Seriously, lady? Why? 

I think he's going to eat me.

In other news, I'm officially halfway done with my last semester of undergraduate education! Yay!

And Cory gained 5 pounds last week. And I haven't even switched him to whole milk yet! So, awesome.

And, I don't know how to cook pasta for less than 15 people. Seeing as we are only 2 people, it's becoming a problem.

And this was AFTER we had stuffed our faces until our bellies hurt. Yea.

Some Family History and Peanut M&Ms

 It's been a struggle to find the right photos to put on the shelves over our couch. Not exactly a life or death struggle. Or even something that I thought of more than once a week, or even made the list of things I wanted to do something about. But my original solution of printing out some random, bright, vintage-y things to put in the frames wasn't quite right. Even though I maintain that these seals are pretty awesome.

Awesome, right? Well, Cory wasn't sold on them. Or any of the other completely weird pictures I had up there. And, while I thought the prints were fun, I didn't have any personal attachment to them. They were meaningless to us. 

We displayed pictures of our parents and grandparents at our wedding reception in July. As a bonus, we got to keep the pictures, and I had spread them randomly throughout the house. They were nice on their own, but didn't really make much of a statement...then it came to me.

Down came the random artsy crap, and up went our statement:

These shelves are pretty much the first thing you see when you walk in the door, and it makes me so, so happy to see these pictures.  To see our parents and grandparents as they were just starting their marriages--before they had kids, or houses, or college degrees. Just two crazy kids living on love.

Cory's side of the family. Now that's what I call a gene pool.

Seeing our parents and grandparents at our age just kills me. I love it so much. It kind of makes me want to invite them all over to play Partini and wear 40's style clothing. I like to think that we all would have been the best of married friends. You know what I mean.

My side of the family. Ridiculously good looking.

It should be noted that our parents were married in the 80's, so their pictures were actually originally in color. When he saw my copies Cory said, "Why did you change our parents pictures? Now they look like they're a million years old." 

Because I like things to match. Okay?

Also, I have all of their love stories for you guys. I was going to summarize them in this post, but they're too amazing to summarize. They involve bike stealing, long distance war time relationships kept alive through letters alone, balls, Frisbee football, Stake basketball tournaments, and so much more. This post is already getting really long, and I haven't even told you about the M&M's yet, which was the whole thing I was going to write about today. So I'll post their love stories this week. I should have done it LAST week, what with Valentine's Day and all (which also happens to be one of their anniversaries. I know. Hindsight=twentytwenty.) but look forward to it this week.

And, about the M&Ms. Cory is a skinny guy. Like, really skinny. His metabolism is like the energizer bunny on back tar heroin. It never stops. This combined with the stress of school and a propensity to eat Honey Nut Cheerios for every meal unless something else is prepared for him has led to him losing weight on my watch. Which is bad. 

I've been working on ways to get him to eat more, but it's hard. Eating just...isn't on his list of priorities. Which is unfathomable to me. I literally cannot fathom it.

So, in an effort to put eating a little higher on his list, I've been trying to make high calorie snacks a little more accessible (I pretty much wrote the book on bad eating habits, so, I'm excited to put these skills to work).

Enter: A dish of Peanut M&M's place ever so innocently on the coffee table.

I didn't think much of it, but within half an hour of putting them out, the M&M's had disappeared! He ate them! I was shocked. He pretty much never eats sweets (Mentos don't count.). I had just hit the jackpot of fattening Cory up snacks. He loves them, and I am not tempted by them in even the smallest way. Win-win.

So, maybe our little friends started making an appearance more often. 

Maybe the dish would get refilled as he played some video games.

Maybe the dish would be on the table next to his dinner plate.

Maybe the dish would slip next to Cory as he watched TV.

Maybe the dish would show up to keep him company during study time...

Maybe I overplayed the usefulness of the dish.

Maybe this is the face he makes right before he asks, "Why are you taking pictures, and why have you been giving me so many peanut M&Ms this week?"

Uhhhmm...well...because... I just love you so much? 

But really, I don't think he noticed/minded until I started taking the pictures.

I'm thinking of buying him his own gallon of whole milk, and lacing it with whey protein. Desperate times, people. Suggestions?

I less than three you

In my head I always say it "Valentimes" for some reason. I don't know why. I'm not going to call it that on here, because I'm not four years old and it might turn some of you off, but you should know that I find it endearing. YOU try shouting: "VALENTIMES!" with no abandon. It's fun. I promise.

When I walked in for lunch on Monday afternoon, I found this little scene:

Cliche? Maybe. Still awesome? Most definitely.

There are a few reasons I loved this:

1) Flowers are awesome.

2)When I called Cory to squeal with delight he said: "You like them? I MADE them." And I just got this picture of him at  the flower kiosk in Publix, carefully choosing the perfect pink and purple bouquets. And then he gets home, and carefully combines them into his masterpiece. SWOON.

3) He picked up some milk while he was at it. Two percent.

In return, I decided I would do us both a favor and pick up dinner on my way home. I set the table all pretty and fancy like before I left, just so he would know I put some thought into it.

I was thinking of getting something kind of fancyish...but decided to call Cory and get his input. What did he think we should eat by the candle light?

Because nothing says romance like food I have to eat while wearing a bib.

Ha! Yep, he wanted hot wings. And it sounded delicious to me. So, I picked some up. And they were delicious. And I may have gotten wing sauce on my forehead at one point. I'm hot.

We finally settled in for the evening, ready to watch "Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman" on Netflix (We like Batman, okay?), and Cory was super excited to break into the box of chocolates. 

Boxes of chocolates are funny things. The whole "never know what you're gonna get" aspect really gets me. I want to know! So much so, that I'm not opposed to breaking every one of them in half, just to know what kind it is. This was frowned upon in our house growing up, so I had to resort to sneakily poking holes in the bottom of every one to satisfy my curiosity. This soon became even more frowned upon in our house. Imagine my delight when I discovered Cory's method of chocolate box eating.

 He rips open the box, and the first thing he looks for is one of those little labeled chocolate box road maps, which they don't tend to include in the..ahem..lower end spectrum of the chocolate heart boxes. He then realizes that this one is going to have to be done the hard way.

He did that to the whole box, letting me know when he got a "good one" that I needed to try. I'm so glad we're on the same page on this one. I'll share a box of chocolates with him any day.

It's Getting Hot In Here...

Cory worries a lot. Especially about fires. Namely, he thinks I'm going to start one. In our house.

I've taken steps to reduce this somewhat irrational fear, but despite my best efforts I'm still hearing a lot of "Lindy! Don't light that candle underneath our memo board full of paper!" or "Uhh...did you turn the stove off?"

Today, it was all about the hair straightener.

This is where my hair straightener lives:






















Today I decided to straighten my hair. But when I tried to turn my straightener on, I found that it was unplugged. The only plug along this wall is hidden deep within the narrow and unreachable recess between the dresser and the wall. I asked Cory if he had unplugged it. He had. Turns out, he's noticed I have a habit of turning the straightener on in the mornings, and forgetting to turn it off. Then it burns all day, and will probably explode and kill us all.

 I'm aware of this habit. This is why I purchased the metal, presumably fireproof, tray. This was my solution.

Cory wasn't buying that the tray would keep us safe. I promised to be more vigilant with the "off" switch, and he plugged it back in for me. All was right with the world.

On our way home from church, Cory says, "Hey, you turned off your straightener, right?"
Me: Of course I did...Probably.
Cory: Lindy!
Me: I really think I did...

When we walk in the door, we both make a bee-line for the straightener, where it sat with it's little red light blinking proudly, signaling to all the world that it was hot and ready to go at 400 degrees.

My bad.

So, needless to say, we're working on fire safety in our house this week. Wish me luck.

Also, the rug came in!!! I love it.

Don't you love my fancy slipcover? I call it "An old sheet draped over a chair I found in the street, with some fancy knots tying the edges together under there."  

While You Were Sleeping

Some people like to sleep in on Saturday mornings. Some people married other people who feel differently. Some people have grown to accept that, and have ceased to be surprised at whatever crazy project is going on in their living room by the time they decide to get out of bed.

Even if it looks like this:

Nothing like the sweet smell of paint fumes, early in the morning.

And yes, my favorite place to paint IS on the living room carpet. Unless it's spray paint. I take that to the back yard.

While my shelf painting project dried in the living room, I introduced some mismatched frames to my new BFF, Metallic Spray Paint.

That little parade got a little rained on pretty quickly. I almost cried when I came outside 10 minutes later to find this massacre:

Don't worry--the spray paint had already pretty much dried, so the water just wiped off. 

Much banging and many nail holes later, my first ever photo collage wall was born!

Also, it doesn't matter what time of day I decide to hang something up, Cory is ALWAYS convinced that the neighbors are sleeping. He'll say, "Lindy! Now?? The neighbors are probably sleeping!" I mean, come on. Are these people sick??? Why do they sleep so much??

And that's pretty much what my Saturday looked like.

And this is what Cory's Saturday looked like:

Check out the Mentos. I think I need to cut him off. Things are getting out of control.

This is basically what his whole life looks like right now. Turns out, engineerin' stuff is hard.