handmade at it's best

i recently made my first purchase from Etsy, a virtual marketplace for all things handmade. sellers from all over the world can post their products and you can even order custom items by directly contacting sellers - very cool! i ordered personalized cards to use as "thank you" notes for my upcoming bridal shower in illinois and i can't wait to see how they turn out. maybe the rest of you have already discovered this trendy new site, but if you haven't you should check it out!

we are approved!

i can't believe this day is finally here but i am proud to announce that we are approved on our condo! we had our home inspection this weekend, which went very well, just a few small things to take care of when we move in, and i have to say, it was so exciting to be back in the place after several weeks. we still love it, we're so excited to be there, and we can't wait to get in and start making it feel like our home!

i believe we're going to be closing may 13 - just 2 1/2 weeks away! alex is planning to move in at the end of may, and he'll get started on cleaning and painting and arranging. then after the wedding, it will be all set for me to join him :) can't wait to get settled so we can start entertaining out of town guests!

my plants have roots!

guess what?? my plants that i told you about are actually growing roots! don't believe me? i don't blame you - i wasn't even the one to notice them. my coworker came in to check on them, and she pointed them out to me.

they're a little hard to see in the picture above - let me help you out.

yeah that's right. do i have a green thumb or what??

AT: cornhole arcade game

yesterday, alex and i were out running errands and we decided to stop for lunch at this bagel place my parents rave about. well, the bagel place was closed (or at least the door was locked - we got their 15 min before they were supposed to close), and we didn't feel like eating at subway next door. thankfully, just across the shopping center was this great little burger/hot dog place i remember ordering food from in high school.

what a place! the food was good and inexpensive, they had a giant gumball machine (although alex had two gumballs - and spit both out shortly after), and they had a couple of arcade games - including CORNHOLE! of course, we had to play. there was a big track ball that you used to pull your arm back and throw the bag, you could change the angle of your toss, and there was even a wind factor! it took us a few throws to get the hang of it, but once we did, we were pretty good (although i'll admit, alex was way better - he even got several in the hole!). it was awesome!

office sprucing

this has been a pretty gloomy week in chicagoland - lots of rain, lots of thunder, lots of clouds - like i said, gloomy. so i decided to spruce up my office to combat the yucky weather!

first, i changed the water in my little plants. let me explain these plants. someone else in our office brought in this very hardy plant, and supposedly you can simply clip a portion off of the plant, put it in water, and it will grow roots. well, i told her that was really cool and i should try, so the next day she brought me these two vases to do it! so now i am the proud caretaker of two green stems stuck in water...that hopefully will turn into plants someday. anyways, they sit on my window sill and i like them a lot :)


then, i decided to bring in my Easter candy and leave it in a bowl in my office for people to come in and take. then, separately another person from the office brought me this black "wet-erase" board that really serves no purpose but he saw it for a dollar and so he bought it for me. since i have this silly board, i decided to use it to announce my new candy bowl!


any other tips for sprucing up a gloomy office???

game-filled weekend

this weekend for Easter, my brother and Alex both came out from their respective schools to celebrate. my family decided to make sunday a game day, and we had some good times. first we played bananagrams, a new game that my parents gave scott in his Easter basket (yes, we still get Easter baskets). bananagrams is kind of like scrabble, but easier. you get a bunch of letter tiles and you have to use all of them to spell connecting words.


my brother, who had played before, was awesome at it, alex and i did alright, and my parents were (surprisingly) terrible! my mom kept muttering all of these non-words as she tried to use all of her difficult letters (J's are more difficult than you'd think!)...we were amused.

then we moved on to monopoly deal, which i've actually blogged about before here. alex and i had played a bunch on our own, but we decided to share the joy with the rest of the family. although it took a little while to get the hang of it (about 2.5 games into it, my mom goes "wait, so everyone gets 3 plays per turn??"...which is the most basic rule of the game and my brother kept trying to put properties in his bank), we had a lot of fun.


we ended on one particularly dramatic round, where my mom tried to get revenge on my brother and win the game only to be foiled by his "just say no" card, and my dad successfully stole a full set of properties from me by laying his "just say no" card on my "just say no card" (there's only 3 in the deck), only to lose his two full sets and all of his money in just one round. all three of these instances ended in table-round high-fives (excluding the thwarted party of course). good times.

Guam at risk for "tipping over"?

check out this video of a Congressman in a hearing about placing more US troops in Guam...it almost has to be an April Fools joke, but he looks awfully serious...or maybe hammered...