Never ever ever. Getting back together.

Heres a quick little post about our past week and a half... 

We got to meet up with our buddies kim and zach and their little girl bree. They had a flight fly into Minneapolis so we got to see them for about an hour. Too short.. but fun!

And.. we went to waterloo for probably the last time to help out with moving Jeni and her family.. although doctor greg didn't really let me move anything.. but it was really great to see every one hopefully it'll happen again in July!

 And when we got home I went to check on my plants and my pea seeds sprouted! And even my tomato plant is growing so well I'll need to get a cage thing for it soon. Hash tag Exciting!

Baby, baby, baby, baby, right on time.

Well things are going pretty great! I've been feeling pretty productive lately and keeping up with school work and stuff at home. Chads been working and starts school next week. Im 24 weeks pregnant! Oliver moves aaallll the time. I feel like he should be sleepier and im worried he's going to be a rowdy one. Oh well :)

Here's my toes starting to disappear.

We also went to the big spoon here in Minneapolis that kasey had mentioned we should go see. It was pretty cool but the garden place around it was actually cooler. It was the coldest day of the week that we went but it was still fun to walk around. 

And as planned I painted that music box boat from the thrift store, but decided to go white instead of blue and gold which im very glad I did. It looks dreamy and beautiful. Love it.

 And.... I've been wanting to have a few plants for awhile now but never felt like i had a good spot to put them until this apartment. Once i decided to make a little balcony garden i went all out planning and made some big plans with homemade pots, shelves and everything. I realized they were too big of plans and that our deck although bright doesn't get direct sunlight for most of the day so i would hate to buy a bunch of plants and have them all die.

My original plans....

So i went back to small plans and then waited around until i found some cheap shelves that happened to show up at my favorite thrift store last week for $3.99. I liked the grey look so just added a little bit of paint to make it not look sooo industrial.

I bought one strawberry, one tomato, two sets of annual flowers, and had some Alaskan pea seeds from chad for my birthday. And got some cute pots from homegoods.

And here she is! I still need chad to take out the second shelf for me so i can actually have some plants grow on the lower half with out being so sheltered. But besides that its turning out pretty nice, im excited to add more plants once i know these will grow, which the strawberry plant is already doing great, hope it continues. 

 And here is darcy checking out the new plants. The cats have already tried nibbling on the plants while they were in the house..

 Ohh.. and i got this cheap chair for $15 at walmart that i've already enjoyed for a little this evening. :)

For the faint and broken hearted

Well this past week I had a birthday! A few weeks earlier I got my birthday present which was a new lens. I wanted to get a new one mostly for taking pictures of Oliver once he's here so I went with a fixed lens a 50mm 1.8f. The lens I was using was the old kit lens from the d50 and its lowest aperture was 3.5 or something like that and I only shoot in aperture now with the d300 and the bigger the aperture the happier I am so its been pretty nice to have this new lens. I've only really gotten to take cat pictures so hopefully i'll get the chance to take some portraits sometime soon to really see how wonderful it is. Maybe of some people I know in thunderbay... wink wink....

On my birthday chad had to work that evening so we went out to lunch at old country buffet and was deeply disappointed. They didn't even have warm plates... isnt' that like a buffet requirement? Then we went home to hang out till he left. And of course chad surprised me with a little a little birthday present even thought I already got my lens. He got me a little collection of gardening stuff like gloves and seeds and a pot. cute cute. 

Here's an example of an unedited picture of kitty that just gets me so excited for this lens! Normally I hate taking pictures of her because being mostly black shes usually just a blob in low light. But here shes so sharp with her color details showing and how her body is perfectly blurred. Its just wonderful. 

 And i've also been excited to be able to buy stuff for Oliver now that we know he's a boy. His room colors are going to be sea foam green, gold, and white.. and a little grey. I've started buying little decorations for his room at thrift stores.. here is one i got for $3 a little gum ball machine we are going to put marbles in. I painted it a gold to go with the room.

 

I see your vitals on your EKG

 Well this past Thursday we had an ultra sound and found out our little baby is going to be a boy!

Since chads family was going to be here the next day we decided to wait and tell them with a little gender reveal celebration.

 I made some pink and blue cupcakes

And chad and i emptied eggs and filled them with blue glitter, which everyone got to crack to find out the gender.

And here's a little family photo. 

 And a little announcement photo. 

Just hold my hand. I think that would help.

Here's what we have been up to.........

Found this adorable ship music box at good will it slowly rocks up and down and plays the cutest song. Its the first purchase for the babies room! If it is a girl i plan to paint it all white.. and if its a boy the boat will be gold and the waves will be navy blue.

Here is the little wind up that makes the boat look like its rocking on the water. ..... so cute.

Chad rearranged the bookshelves.

Darcy looked out the window. 

Kitty looked out the window.

I made some pretzel bites, some with salt some with cinnamon and sugar. From this blog. She uses rhodes rolls so it makes it real simple. But it still takes time because you have to thaw, boil, and bake them. But they were quite good.

And the cats and i have been going out on the deck. The weather has been super nice. Wednesday it'll be up to 70!! I can not wait we have big outdoor plans.

And the new walmart is opening that day as well which is a big deal.

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go.

Well we've been out and about a little bit lately.

Back when we went to the rain forest cafe last month we signed up for their club card which includes a couple other restaurants in Minneapolis and you pay $25 for it and then get $25 for signing up and then $25 every year for you birthday. We thought it was a good deal. So we went to bubba gump shrimp co. which is one the the restaurants for dinner the other week and it was pretty cute and kinda good. Compared to rain forest cafe I wasn't impressed with the food.  But the set up was really cute.

Next month is my birthday so i guess we will Have to eat out and we are definitely going back to rain forest.

We also explored downtown Saint Paul a little bit today because chad had a job interview at the science museum so we went down to the water and walked around which was freezing and then over to the giant Saint Paul's cathedral. The cathedral was just amazing. First we just walked around it and it was hard to take a picture of it because its just soo big. And then chad went inside and i forced myself to be brave and followed him. At first we went through some doors that just had classrooms and a little chapel and then were going to leave but saw someone go into another door which we followed into which lead to the giant... chapel? .. not sure what its called.. but it was beautiful. We walked around for awhile. I felt scared to take pictures inside even though there was a sign that said you could so i just took a few quick ones but they don't even do it justice. Its just so grand. I wish building were built like this these days. Also all these pictures are on my phone. :( All day i took pictures with my film camera though so we will see if those turned out eventually! 

I gotta cold beer with your name on it.

Chad and I have been attempting to wake up earlier these days and by earlier I just mean up and ready for the day by 12, and so i've ended up with some extra time and decided to do some crafting. 

Heres a little jar I decorated to hold my vitamins. hmm.. that made me sound like an old lady?. Anyways... Im going crazy not knowing the gender of the baby, we still have about 4 more weeks, and i am looking forward to making stuff for the future babies room. My baby pinterest board is filling up of baby room ideas with too many to decide on. 

And.. it was Saint Patrick's day. We didn't do much for it but i wanted to celebrate it in some way so i made lucky charm rice crispy treats.

And I'm like, And I'm like...

I attempted making homemade poptarts. I thought it would be a great idea since chad loves poptarts and the recipe asked for my food processor.  I used this recipe from pinterest. First problem I had was my food processor is a mini one so i had to split up the dough ingredients into two. Which worked out but i guess i mixed it too much before adding the egg and milk.... but i added flower till it felt normal again. Second problem i don't have a rolling pin so the poptarts were too thick. 

But all in all i liked them. Next time I'll just make the dough a little sweeter and thinner. 

Also my final grade in my first grad school class was an -A. Im now taking two classes per term (8 week course) and its a lot of work. But i've planned out my classes and i'll just have my final thesis class left by January 2015 and then i'll graduate. So pretty exciting stuff! 

I got a good feeling it will be alright.

Well i finally got around to finishing the hutch. Here is the before......

And the after.........

 I really love it. Its exactly how I wanted it to look. The paint was a little odd though. The brush marks are pretty visible but oh well.

And here is an adorable painting i got from the thrift store the other day.

And here is kitty... She was playing on this tall wooden chair we have (its chads... its like a wooden mid-evil dinning chair thing from homegoods?..yeah..) and it fell over with her on it. Some how she hurt her foot in the ordeal and has been limping around since last night. She seemed a little better today so we are going to wait another day and see if she keeps improving but if she doesn't we will have to bring her to the vet to get it looked at. Its swollen compared to her other paws, and today i found her sleeping on her back sticking only her hurt foot up in the air. It was pretty cute.. and sad.. hopefully she gets better real quick.

She just limped into the room while writing this.. so sad.