Italia!

One of the more exciting things going on in life is our upcoming trip to Italy!  We will see Venice, Florence, the Amalfi Coast/Capri, and Rome. We absolutely can. not. wait!! This is one vacation we've always wanted to take and I can't believe it's approaching so quickly. My brother-in-law (Tim's younger brother) has been studying abroad in Rome this semester and we will be heading over there as his semester ends and traveling around with him and Tim's parents (good thing I love my in-laws!)

We haven't finalized everything we're doing over there, but among the things I'm looking forward to are a gondola ride in Venice, a cooking class in Florence, and a day trip to Capri. I'm also hoping to see Pompeii and obviously all the sights in Rome.


In other news...I will be 25 in 26 days (April 14 for those of you who don't want to count!). I feel like that's a real "adult" age. I guess I should get used to it since I graduated from college 3 years ago, have owned a house for 2 years, and have been married for a year and a half!

it's that time again

for more house projects!

We haven't officially started anything, but I think we'll be renovating our upstairs bathroom at some point this year. I'm hoping sooner rather than later - I'm dying to get something else crossed off our list!

Currently, the bathroom looks like this:

(excuse the grime - no matter what I do, this is as clean as it gets)

And here's what we'd like to do:

use tile like this in the tub/shower. We'll replace the tub with a fiberglass one and hopefully do a small tile surround.

We want to put in a double vanity. There is space for one, we just have to figure out the logistics of piping in a second sink. We're thinking white, maybe with beadboard on the door panels. We'll probably do a corian counter that coordinates with whatever tile we use in the shower.

We'll also be taking all the teal tile off the walls and floors. We'll be putting up new drywall and painting (probably a nice pale tealish-blue) and tiling the floor (coordinating with the shower of course)

The other project we have is landscaping. Remember all the work we had done outside last year? Well the time has finally (almost) come to landscape!! For the past 6 months our house has looked to barren with no shrubs, flowers, etc around. I can't wait to make our house look more homey! I will definitely be updating over the next few weeks/months as we get stuff done.

privacy please!

I've decided to make my blog private, but I don't want to lose the followers I have!

Leave a comment with your email address, or if you don't want your email address out there, you can email me at mrst2008 at gmail dot com (or if you have my other email address, you can email me there too!)

I'll wait about a week to make sure everyone sees this!

updates to our bedroom

So our new duvet came today and it's awesome. The pictures don't do it justice because it's a silk cover, so it shines with the light. I also love the paint color I chose to repaint with (it's Benjamin Moore Grant Beige if anyone happens to be interested). Someday I'll get the shams and some throw pillows :)




Just to compare - here's the old room vs the new room (you can click on it to zoom in):

new bed

You know you're an adult when you get excited over things like new furniture. As sort of a Christmas gift to ourselves (and as our solution to my parents' pending overnight visit and therefore our need for a guest bed), the husband and I have upgraded to a king size bed. We also bought the sleigh bed that matches the bedroom set we bought this past spring. It was delievered today and I L.O.V.E. it and we don't even have bedding yet (that was on the Christmas list - though we do have sheets and a blanket).

Over our upcoming winter break, I'm hoping to repaint our room (finally! and I have a good excuse!) while Tim is skiing. I'm 99% sure the paint on the walls doesn't go with the duvet we are hoping to get so what better reason to repaint like I've been itching to do?!

Without further ado, here is our new bed:



And here is the duvet we asked for:


Hopefully in a week or so I'll have pictures of our "new" room!

Christmas Decorations

As I previously mentioned, it didn't take me long to break out the Christmas decorations after we got home from our Thanksgiving trip to the Cape.

our tree

our stockings hung by the fire with care :)

garland on the railing - there are lights, but you can't see them

I wish we could decorate the outside (I do have wreaths on the doors and garland and a big red bow on our light post), but aside from the minor issue of having no bushes due to the work done outside this summer, we also have only one exterior electrical outlet, and it's in the backyard.

I can't believe it's December already. I don't know where this year has gone! Three weeks from today I will officially be on Christmas vacation (yes, we still get a winter break - the company Tim and I both work for shuts down between Christmas Eve and New Years Day - it's awesome. It will be a much needed 11 days off, even though I fear I may end up working some since our big project is going live the day we return to work.

Before we know it, it will be 2010. Time needs to slow down a little!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy belated Thanksgiving! We traveled down to the Cape and had Thanksgiving with my parents who were up from Virginia, and my sister (who lives in Boston). Then we had Thanksgiving 2 with my in-laws (also on the Cape) on Saturday. It was great to get away for a long weekend before the next 3½ busy weeks of work before the Christmas holiday.

Tim, Me, and Lucy (my parents' dog)

Thanksgiving being over means it's Christmas season! It is my absolute favorite time of year. Within 10 minutes of getting home from the Cape on Sunday, I had started decorating. The tree is up and decorated, the stockings are hung, and the wreaths are on the doors. Now if only I could get motivated to do some Christmas shopping or even to make a list of my Christmas wishes that my family keeps asking for!

In other news, our Breast Cancer 3-Day team is already prepping for our walk next July and we're growing!! Because of our success and awesome experience, our team now has 8 people on it and we're expecting at least another 3 to join! I'm amazed that we can go from 4 to 11 people in just one year. Before I know it, it will be time to start fundraising again!

it's been a while

With house projects wrapping up and work getting really busy, I've been a very bad blogger!

Even though we don't have a real guest bed (we have a pull-out sofa), I have been eyeing a comforter set from JCPenney that I finally bought. I had been hesitant to spend money on bedding for a room we don't have a bed for, but it's been on clearance for a few weeks and I had a gift card. Well on Friday I was browsing website and they had dropped the price to $80 (original price was $270) and the set includes the comforter, 2 shams, and a bedskirt. I can't wait for it to come!


We recently spent the entire weekend in Boston for one of Tim's cousin's wedding (Tim was a groomsman, so we were there Friday for the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner and the wedding was Saturday). It was a gorgeous weekend and it was nice to get "away" for the weekend even if we were only half an hour from home. The only downside was that Tim lost his iPhone in a cab on Friday night.

The wedding was in this amazing location - here is the view from the ballroom. We were 33 stories up. Spectacular.


We stayed in a hotel near Boston Harbor. The morning of the wedding we took a walk along the harbor. Here we are, revisiting the spot where we got engaged in July 2007.



And here's a picture of us from the wedding:


As I said before, work has been so busy - I'm averaging close to 50 hours a week right now (which is nice because I do get paid overtime, it's not nice because I'm stressed and worn out!). Luckily there are only 8 work days until Thanksgiving and then another 18 work days after that until Christmas (and my company shuts down from 12/24 until after the new year, so I have about 2 weeks off!).

After that, I actually anticipate being in a new position. From June until just recently I had been on "loan" to another group within my company and I really enjoyed the work and the people and I expressed an interest in switching divisions so that I could continue working on the project I have been helping out with. Last week they opened a job posting for me and this coming week I anticipate working through the logistics of salary and transition time. I'm anxious to see how it plays out. It's a pretty sure thing (at this point, I'd be shocked if the move didn't happen), but since it's still not 100% official, I'm a little on edge about it all. I'm excited about it - the job will be much closer to home (the 2 offices I could potentially work at are both less than 20 minutes from our house - as opposed to my current 45 minute commute) and it will keep me involved with a project where I will hopefully continue to get a lot of visibility. Cross your fingers that everything continues to go smoothly!

anniversary recap

A little delayed, but I wanted to post about our first anniversary celebration. Last Monday was our actual anniversary and we both took the day off work. We didn't do too much most of the day, but we had tickets to the Red Sox game that night, so we went into Boston late afternoon and headed over to one of our favorite places:


We got there early enough that we saw the end of batting practice - here's Tim walking down to get closer to the field.

Happy 1 Year to us!

September 28, 2009 :)

The club was also celebrating Red Sox legend, Johnny Pesky's 90th birthday (which was on the 27th). He got to throw out the ceremonial first pitch

It was a beautiful night...

until 9:15...

Needless to say, we went home. The game was called, the Sox lost 11-5 or something like that. So it wasn't a great way to end our 1st anniversary, but oh well!

I have a couple more things to post about, but those will have to wait.

1 year of wedded bliss

here's to many, many more!