Things I NEED from Anthropologie

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The Lovely Bones review

Sorry that I'm just now getting to the review. We saw this last Sunday and I thought it was great. I was a little worried going into it because the movie is almost 2.5 hours and it's hard for me to stay interested and awake in movies that are that long, but it definitely kept me intrigued the entire time. I'd heard great things about this book, but I never got around to reading it. I'm glad I didn't though because the movie is pretty suspenseful and if I'd read the book it would have been ruined. Okay, not ruined, but I wouldn't have been on the edge of my seat like I was. The story itself was great, but what made the movie even better was the beautifully portrayed imagery of the area between heaven and earth. Everything was very artistic and really added to the film. The acting was great too, but I'm not an expert or anything on that so I won't give any further elaboration. I recommend you see this, unless you live in Lake County because it's not in the theater anymore. Um yeah...you might be thinking "didn't this just come out?" Yes, yes it did, but since Lakeport Cinema only has 5 screens they have to rotate through movies very quickly. Most are only here for a couple of weeks :(

My plan for design awesomeness:

I thought I'd share the resources I'll be using to design the Totorica Plumbing and Fire Protection website. If any readers have thoughts on additional things I should use or look at then let me know!

First, we purchased this:


I am SO excited about this. I used photoshop a little back in high school and I always wanted to learn how to REALLY use it because it can do amazing things. I know that this isn't what the professionals use, but I think it will definitely serve its purpose for this project and any future projects. I started playing with it a little the other night, but I definitely don't remember anything so I have a lot to learn. We purchased this to teach me:


To help with the actual website design, I asked Christina (designer extraordinaire) to recommend a book. She suggested this:

If it's not helpful then I'm going to be calling her every 5 minutes or so for help ;)

I also saw this on Amazon and it had great reviews. I read a few pages of it and it's actually very entertaining so we purchased it too.


I'm excited for these to arrive so I can get started!!

3 Jobs

I've never really written about where I work because my jobs aren't very exciting, but I'm adding a third one that I am really excited about so I thought I might as well tell you about all of them. The first job I got after we moved here was at Lakeport Furniture. After about a month of going everywhere in the county I finally found this place. Luckily my degree is Interior Merchandising and I've worked at several other furniture stores so the owner thought I would be perfect. I think somewhere along the lines I vowed I would never work in another retail store, but my options were limited and this seemed like it wouldn't be so bad. And it's not that bad. My boss is really nice and I have set hours that can be changed if needed, but with the economy being so slow right now, a furniture store is not really the most hopping place in town. You can go here to see a view images of the store: http://lakeportfurniture.net/

My other job is at Safe Schools Healthy Students. It's a program through the office of education that provides counseling at schools for kids in various "at risk" situations. I'm only the receptionist, but hopefully I can eventually do something more challenging and rewarding. It's a great program so I hope they can continue to get funding for it. If you want to read more you can go to http://www.sshs.samhsa.gov/. It's a nation wide program so they might have it near you!

My third job is going to be with Totorica Plumbing and Fire Protection! I'm not actually getting paid for this job, but if my work is helpful and brings in more clients, then Jake will get paid more and then he can buy me pretty things ;) I'm going to be designing a website for them. Well...I'm going to attempt to design a website, but since I really don't know much about web design, this might be a challenge. We've purchased a couple of resources from Amazon and my awesome graphic design friend (aka Christina) is only a phone call away, so hopefully I can come up with something that will bring in a little bit of business. I'll let you know how it turns out!

Rain, rain, go away...

I know I shouldn't complain. I spent two and a half years in the middle of the desert where it never rained and I thought people were crazy when they'd complain about the rain. I would have given anything for a couple of rainy days, but now I'm definitely over the rain and I'm ready for a day of sunshine. Yesterday we saw the sun for a little bit, but not long enough for it to actually be enjoyed. It's not even that I really need sunshine. What I need is to be able to go running outside, and I want to walk to work again, and I want the floors to not get dirty so quickly. I suppose these things will happen eventually. At least the lake is filling up. It was so dry towards the end of the summer and it smelled disgusting. Here's a picture that I took today.


Here's a random picture of a church that's now an office.


Rumor has it that it's haunted. Someone was painting the steeple and fell and died. I guess he haunts it now.

And here's where we had lunch today.


We've been before, but I think the place is so cute so I thought a picture was necessary. While we were waiting for our food I said "I wonder if we could live here" and Jake said "I was just thinking about that, but I doubt it's zoned for a residential space." Yes, we're dorks and we basically share one mind. The green color is pretty much the same as the color of our living room and bedroom in Las Vegas. We just really like green a lot.

We also saw a movie today, The Lovely Bones. I'll write a review about it later. Short version of what the review will say: It was good. Go see it.

Youth in Revolt review

When Jake and I were in Santa Rosa last Saturday we went and saw Youth in Revolt. I can't say that I highly recommend this movie. It had some funny parts and all, but it just wasn't that entertaining. My biggest complaint has to do with the location of where the movie takes place. First, let me preface by saying that I'm still trying to adjust to small town living in Lake County and when we go all the way to Santa Rosa, part of the thrill is that we're in a place completely different from where we actually live. So please imagine my disappointment when I found out the entire movie took place in Lake County. Granted, nothing actually resembled Lake County and I guarantee that nobody in the movie even visited the area before writing the script. How do I know this you might ask?? Because the plot centers around this boy's summer adventures on a family trip to Clearlake and somewhere in the midst of things, he ends up living in Ukiah, yet he's still able to walk to his girlfriend's house in Clearlake. Here are the reasons that this is not even feasible. From Ukiah, the closest part of the lake (Nice) is at least 30 minutes away. 30 minutes if you're DRIVING. Sorry movie makers, you messed up on this one and it drove me crazy the entire movie. I was also annoyed by the fact the movie basically tells young people that they can be complete idiots and do illegal things, but it won't really effect their life at all. And another thing...I think Michael Cera (the lead character) is funny, but how many times can you play the exact same character? I think it would be in his best interest to change it up a bit. Anyway, I'm not a movie expert, but I doubt this one is going to get much praise (even from people that weren't bothered by the geography of the film).

Collections Update

After my recent post about my new collections, I received some honey pots in the mail!!! My grandma sent 2 that she had and my mom sent one that I actually got a long time ago when I was shopping with my grandma. My collection has more than doubled!


I forgot about one of my collections during my last post. Ever since I left for college my mom has sent me boxes of goodies that include anything and everything. The past couple of years though she's included these cute biscotti tins. She usually packs homemade cookies in them, but this time they actually contained biscotti! She always gets them at World Market and when she found the latest one she was so excited because it has airplanes on it. It's my favorite one so far.

She also sent these cute scarves that she made (along with salsa, beans, a marinade, and some candy). She definitely makes the most of those flat rate boxes!

I'm a very lucky girl :)

Our Day in Santa Rosa

Jake and I made the big trek down to Santa Rosa yesterday. We started off at the mall so that Jake could get some pipe tobacco. Every couple of years or so Jake gets the urge to smoke his pipe. He's kinda a old man. It doesn't bother me though because he doesn't do it often and it actually smells good. After that we wandered around town. We went into a few antique stores and a costume shop.

This is one of the antique stores we went in. It was huge!! I looked for honey pots, but didn't find any :( I also looked for blue mason jars, but they were all priced $15-$25 and that's just ridiculous. I did find these though and had to take a picture:

Only few people that read this will find it funny, but it's worth confusing the rest of you so that they can get a good laugh.

We didn't actually go in this building, but I thought it was picture worthy.

These statues are all over town because Charles Schulz lived a good portion of his life in Santa Rosa. One day I want to get a map of all of them and spend the day taking pictures. We had to take a picture of this one because it's pilot related.

After all the walking around we were starving so we went to Mary's Pizza Shack. Then we headed over to Sports Authority. I needed some new running shoes and we had a gift card from Christmas, AND they were already $40 off so I ended up paying half of what I usually would! We also wandered around a couple more stores and then headed home. We had a fun time.

Worms

After my run this morning....

Jake: You smell like a rainy day.

Me: Well it's kind of raining outside.

Jake: No, you know how when it rains the worms come out of the dirt? You smell like that.

Aussie Bites

These are the best things in the world. Mom #2 tends to always have them at home so that's where I first learned about them. She recently gave us a package to take home and now Jake is addicted as well. We've gone through several packages the past couple of weeks, all courtesy of mom #2 and we are just so grateful. These things are amazing. They're like dense little cakes of deliciousness. I've seen recipes online, but the pictures don't look quite as good as the original. You can find them at Costco, but Sam's has them too (with different packaging). Although they have tons of healthy ingredients, they also have a high fat content so I'd advise against eating several at a time (too bad I can't take my own advice). They're also kind of pricey, but they actually last a really long time. We're able to make a package last almost a week, so people that eat normal quantities of food should get at least 2 weeks out of a package. I think I'm going to write to Safeway and see if they can start carrying these things because Costco is so far away and I don't want to be without my Aussie Bites!

Sydney

I'm sure most of you couldn't care less about my cat, but I think she's the cutest thing in the world and I know my mom loves looking at pictures of her, so here are some of the latest ones. She's doing this new thing now where she leans off the side of the chair and watches either the reflection of the TV on the floor, or her fur flying around. The other night she was trying to position herself on the chair but she couldn't get her balance or something so she was just flailing about. It made us laugh.

Pea Soup

My mom sent me a couple of soup mixes for Christmas. She's sent different flavors before and they are all delicious and make a ton of soup! She's only able to find the brand at World Market so you'll have go and pick some up. Here's the one I made tonight. This is only the second time I've made split pea soup and I love it. When we lived in Las Vegas Jake would ask me to make it whenever we had a cloudy/rainy day, but those are few and far between in the desert so I didn't make it until we moved here. Now I'm hooked. I know it looks gross and if you don't like peas then it would probably taste gross to you, but I think it's wonderful. Most recipes call for ham to be added, or at least a ham bone, but we don't really like ham so I leave it out.

2010 Calendars

I love calendars. I wish my life was more exciting so that I could write down lots of important dates. Maybe my new years resolution should be to have a more exciting life. I think I'm limited by geographical boundaries though, so we'll see how that goes. Anyway, I thought I'd share my collection of 2010 calendars with you.

My grandparents gave us this one. It's made up of old football program covers. AND they're 11x14 so they'll be easy to frame! I'm tempted to frame a few now. It's going to be so hard to wait a whole year!

Jenna gave me this one for Christmas. I love it for obvious reasons. It's hanging in my craft room right now.

I got this one for only $6 at Barnes and Noble. It's purse size so I can carry it around and pretend my life is super busy :)

The Framing Predicament

Yesterday we went to Santa Rosa to do several things, but one of the main reasons was to find frames for the following posters.


We planned on going to Bed, Bath and Beyond and Michael's for various things so we figured we'd find some frames at one of the stores. We were really excited though when Jake's grandma told us that Aaron Brothers was have a buy one get one for a penny sale on frames. We made that our first stop only to find out that they had frames in either 24"x 36" or 27"x40". The size of our posters are 26"x39". Huge bummer. The only solution to this problem was to get the bigger frames and then have then have them matted, but that was going to be an additional $35 per poster. We didn't feel like doing that so we went to BB&B and Michael's to look for frames, but neither store had the size we needed. Needless to say, I was super disappointed about this. I think it was extra frustrating because I was so limited in my search options. If we'd had more time and knew the area better we might have been able to find something, but it was getting dark and we were getting tired. I suppose I could search online, but I'm guessing that shipping costs will be expensive too so I think I'll just wait and we'll try again another day. I'm open to suggestions though. Does anyone know of some cheap, big frames? Oh, Jake also got these signs for Christmas too. They don't need to be framed, I'm just showing them off because they're so cool.

The Observatory

http://www.lake-coe.k12.ca.us/apps/comm.asp?Q=96

FYI...Kelseyville has an observatory! Who would have guessed, right? Actually I found out about it a couple of weeks ago while searching the office of education website and I thought it looked interesting. Needless to say, I was excited when Jake mentioned his whole family was going to be attending a presentation. It wasn't a private event, but I think there were only 2 or 3 people there that weren't related to us in some way. The presentation was about dating the birth of Jesus by using astrological data. According to the film, it was likely that Jesus was born on Sept. 15th in 7 BC. I'm somewhat fascinated by space. Well, I was really fascinated by it until I took astronomy in college and then found it to be incredibly boring. I was hoping the class would explore the idea of extraterrestrial life, but instead it was more like a physics/chemistry class. I accidentally skipped the one class that was devoted to a lecture about the possibility of aliens. So lesson to those still in school: don't skip class!!! Don't worry mom and dad, I ended up with an A or a B...well probably a B.