12 Goals for 2012

Happy New Year!!!

Hope everyone had a fantastic time last night! Phil and I decided to go out to eat then stay home for our first New Year's Eve as husband and wife! It was pretty great to be able to stay home and be an old married couple! haha

This year I am hoping to complete 12 Goals for 2012 instead of making any resolutions at all... I'm not too good at those!

12 Goals for 2012

1. Learn to quilt!

- one I didn't accomplish last year that I made sound more realistic as an overall just "Learn to quilt" instead of forcing myself to make 3!

2. Continue eating healthy and working out!

- this one may sound familiar too, but it is an important one to keep up with!

3. Make dinner and eat at home as much as possible!

- this is a new one for me & Phil since we have started living together, and we have done pretty good so far, but I would like to make it a goal.

4. Make tooth fairy pillows for my cousins/nephews!

- yes, another repeat but Alec is bound to lose his first tooth this year and I need to be a good dental hygienist aunt!

5. Read more books than I did in 2011!

- I changed last year's goal up a little bit this year! I only read 18 books in my busy 2011, and I just bought 3 new books a few nights ago, so I am bound to complete this goal!

6. Wish all my friends and family a "Happy Birthday" on their special day with either a card or a phone call.

- I am pretty bad about keeping in touch with everyone, and relying on Facebook and texting to convey my message just seems so impersonal.

7. Hang out with my friends more!

- they are special people in my life, and they showed up to the most important day in my life, so I need to be able to let them know I will be there for them!

8. To become full-time with my current job (or possibly another).

- It is hard to work only a few days a month, even though I understand our program is just starting out in my state. I just hope I will be thought of as an important member of the team enough to where they will pick me to work and rely on me!

9. Keep up with housework.

- now that we have our own place to take care of, I wanna make sure that I/we keep our house clean and organized!

10. Be a good wife!

- I want to be the best wife to Phil as I possibly can! I want to be understanding, listen to him, and make our first year of marriage go by as smoothly as possible! (they do say that the first year is the hardest!)

11. Pick back up some of my old blog followers and acquire more!

- during my absence from blogging last year, I feel like I've lost many followers and feel terrible I let them down.

12. Continue to blog!

- I know, another repeat, but I love blogging and hope to continue throughout this new year!

Well, there they are!

What do ya think?

What are your goals for 2012?

Our New Place

We love our new place that we have together! It really is pretty perfect for us as newlyweds! It is pretty spacious with a good amount of storage space and is in a great location that makes us feel pretty safe! What more could you ask for our first place? It does have some quirks, but nothing we can't handle!

Enjoy the tour!

The front of our new place, here it shows our fall decorations.

This is what we see when we walk out our front door. This is where we and our neighbors park our cars, but beyond that is just an empty field. We are on a dead end gravel road and our landlord lives in a house at the beginning of our street.

This is what we see out our back door. There are some nice pine trees blocking the view of some houses which is nice and we also have another rather large field and a little patio.

Our Living Room

It is rather spacious and we need a coffee table badly (which we are most likely getting for Christmas), but right now the Christmas tree fills it in nicely. I hate our couch, which I have had forever, but that will have to wait until our pockets are a little heavier! The couch has this beautiful quilt, a wedding gift my friend Jeff's mom made us, on it now!

Our Dining Area/Phil's "Command Center"

Our table doesn't get used much right now cause it is so busy, but Phil uses it to play on the computer while I watch television.

Our Kitchen

...with 70's gold coutertops and a gross built-in cutting board (that we cover up!) that we are sure was placed there when the apartments were built in the 70's. The closets hide the washer/dryer and the pantry. Say "hi!" to the fishies!

To the upstairs!

Our Bathroom

...complete with 70's gold toilet and tub!

Our Office/Guest Room/Phil's "Man Cave"

"Man Cave" because that is the room where Phil keeps his guitars, video game station, and his closet, because I took the 2 closets in our bedroom :)

Notice the other very special wedding quilt on the bed that was a gift from his grandmother that she entirely hand sewed for us!

Our Bedroom

...with humidifier (because it is extremely dry in there, never experienced that before!) and the same comforter they had on this season's Biggest Loser! haha We noticed that about 2 weeks after we purchased it! Please excuse the mess!

Well, that's it! I still need to put pictures up and decorate a little better! I feel like I can't get that part put together. I hope once I get our wedding pictures printed that alot of them can fill our blank walls!

Any tips for me for decorating?

Goals for 2011

I've decided to make goals for myself for the new year. They really can't fall under the category of "resolution" since they aren't really things I need to change, although I do have few resolutions too.

11 Goals for 2011

1. Find a dental hygiene job!
2. Find an apartment/house for me and Phil after finding that DH job!
3. Learn to quilt - by year's end I would like to have finished at least 3 quilts: My t-shirt quilt, a baby quilt (for my new little cousin due May 1st!), and a quilt for me and Phil.
4. Continue eating healthy and working out.
5. Use my crockpot.
6. Plan mine and Phil's wedding and have fun doing it!
7. Make tooth-fairy pillows for my little cousins/nephews.
8. Get a kitty.
9. Continue to read for pleasure as often as I can.
10. Start paying off my loans.
11. Continue to blog!

Resolutions

• Begin going to sleep earlier and waking up earlier - This will be a hard one to start and I'm afraid that it won't happen until I find a job I need to get up for.
• Start writing down what I eat everyday - I was doing this really well for the first part of my weight-loss program I joined at the Y, but lately I haven't at all.
• Be more patient.
• Hang out more with my friends!

Last year my resolution was to call my family/friends more often and get over my phone phobia. This resolution didn't turn out too well cause I never did. Bad Mariah! I hope this year's goals/resolutions turn out better than last year's!

I've also added the 11 Goals for 2011 to the left sidebar so you can track their progress with my other lists!

• Do you have any goals/resolutions for the new year?
• How did you do with last years resolutions?

Week #19

So this week I'm sort of cheating on my Pic-A-Day challenge. Instead of posting a pic of something I did for each day of the week, I am showing off some of my Christmas presents! I am too spoiled for Christmas by both my family and Phil's family and consider myself extremely blessed to have them. I would be happy if I just got hugs :-) There are also a couple pics from NYE and New Year's Day.

Day 127: I got Michael Jackson The Experience for the Wii! This weekend we tried it out and had a lot of fun learning some of Jacko's dance moves! It's pretty funny cause it comes with the MJ sparkley glove, but the packaging that it comes in says "IMPORTANT: Glove is not to be used during gameplay". I find this strange as well as the fact that the glove, when worn, feels like it is not fit for a human to wear.

Day 128: One of the gifts from my parents was a DH (dental hygienist) bead to add to my bead bracelet!

Day 129: Phil's parents got me a dental nutcracker! Possibly called a Toothcracker? ...nah! He's very cute and holds a toothbrush in one hand and a tooth in the other!

Day 130: Phil got me some loose leaf tea from the new tea store that opened up here! It is pretty pricey so I had put off buying it myself, and hadn't found it anywhere else. I've had a little tea pot that I have been wanting to use for a while now, so finally I can! And it's mint chocolate chip flavored!

Day 131: Phil's grandmother got me a sewing machine! I couldn't believe it! She is going to teach me how to quilt but I never thought I'd have a machine of my own to use! I am going to go watch the instructional dvd it comes with right after I finish this post!

Day 132: For New Year's Eve, Phil and I went to the dog track and casino with his parents for the 3rd year in a row. Unfortunately, they do not allow you to bring in a camera so I got this picture of my pretty, sparkley, silver eyeshadow before I went.

Day 133: Happy New Year! Phil got me this baby bottle of champagne to ring in the new year with! I doctored it up a bit to be a little more festive!

I wanted to post a few more pics of some gifts I got for Christmas:

• Phil got me this beautiful necklace and earrings.
• My best bud Adam got me a giraffe mug with a giraffe actually in the the mug! So cute!
• I got some Michael Jackson CDs including Off The Wall, Dangerous, and his new CD called Michael all from Phil and his family. I also got Josh Groban's new CD called Illuminations from my parents.
• I got some random DVDs including Mr. Bean's Holiday, Square Pegs (the complete series), The Sound of Music (only ever had it on VHS), and My Fair Lady from my Aunt Cheryl and my other aunt, uncle, and cousins.

And finally, a Christmas pic of me and Phil being dorks decked out in our red and green! ...planned of course! I can officially declare the Christmas posts over until Christmas 2011! And Happy New Year again!

Week #6

Here is the long-awaited (maybe) Pic-A-Day post I have to share with you today! 6 weeks down only 46 left to go!

Day 36: It was rainy as I drove home from Phil's house this Sunday evening and I got inspired to take a picture while listening to Delilah.

Day 37: So I've decided that I'm going to make a t-shirt quilt. This is what happens when you have too much time on your hands. Also, see Day 39. Anyways, this is one of my very favorite t-shirts, as you might be able to tell from the holes all over it. This night I got out all my old t-shirts I wanted to use for the quilt, but I didn't have the heart to cut this one up! *Also note it says "THE Band of the Mountain State"!

Day 38: Pretty day out and the ferns wanted their picture taken.

Day 39: I'm also going to make a yarn wreath for Halloween in my spare time. Don't judge.

Day 40: Thursday I went to this dental office, with the cool-looking brick, for an orientation to the clinic I would be working at the following Monday (today in real time). This was only a temporary job for the one day, which actually turned into half-a-day... booooo! At least I was making money and not crafts! See Days 37 & 39.

Day 41: I made Phil put on this hat at The Walmarts (as the lovely people around these parts like to call it) and pose for me. I think it suits him... or not.

Day 42: Saturday was pumpkin buying/carving day for me and Phil! We found a greenhouse nearby, but my dream is to pick them from the actual field. Anyone know where a place like that is close to me???

Thank you for patiently waiting. Now to go sell my soul to SimCity once again.

Going for the Gold

I haven’t blogged for a while, but during the whole snow-in I blogged a lot so I figured I am even. I have been sorta busy the last week. We had a stupid Dental Law Exam yesterday. And I am probably calling it stupid because I failed it the first go around, but it was stupid. It was a free exam, as in no money needed, except that since I failed it the first time and had to pay $20 so I could take it again. I could take it again immediately after I failed it. I could look at what answers I missed (I missed 3 that were true/false), then take the same exact test immediately after. I passed, of course, the second time but they got my damn money. Roomie and I thought we deserved a pedicure after this stupid exam. Now I have pretty purple toenails with a flowers on them. It’s nice to know that something so simple can make me so happy.

As you can see I changed my layout. Thanks to Miranda for giving me the html for the 3-column design! I changed my background too. Thanks to Jennifer and Angie for leading me to it! I have always thought that I wanted to learn how to quilt. I LOVE QUILTS! My great-great grandmother had made me a quilt when I was a baby and Phil’s grandmother quilts all the time. Maybe I’ll ask her if she’ll teach me. I think it would be better than my attempts at knitting. I only knitted ¼ of a scarf then lost interest and forgot how.

I went home last weekend and went bowling for a family birthday party. This was a new experience to bowl with the family because we usually just sit around, eat, and play board games. My 2 ½ year old cousin is getting so big! Everyone was around eating birthday cake when she says “I am so happy to see all of you today!” and then preceded to say everyone’s name! Too cute! It’s not like Phil and I get to see her very often so when she said our names ,with no prompting, it melted my heart. Valentine’s Day was great too! Phil went the “semi-homemade” route like I did and put together a picture album of picture of us together. He also got me the book “Animal Farm” (one of his faves) so I could read it too. I had painted him a mug at The Wow Factory with fishes on it. And I put a little furry little “Luv Puff” stuffed animal inside.

So I have been watching very little of the Olympics. Every time I turn the TV onto the channel, it is going to a commercial. And me hating commercials most of the time (thanks to at-home TiVo usage) likes to turn the channel and watch multiple shows at one time. So by the time one show grabs my attention, I forget about the Olympics. I did watch all of the opening ceremony. KD Lang was Awesome with a capital A. And I loved the tree scene with all the people dancing. I have caught a few curling “matches” but have not been able to figure out the scoring or anything. I refuse to look up the rules because I like trying to figure it out. Info Tidbit: The 2002 Winter Olympics is where I first heard Josh Groban sing and have been hooked ever since.

Roomie and I watched “The Hangover” for the second time on Thursday. That movie cracks me up with everything that each character says. This makes it one of my favorite movies of all time. I still wanna know where the chicken came from. We rented “The Time Travelers Wife” at Blockbuster yesterday and watched it. It was soooo good! It got kinda confusing, but in a good way that keeps you thinking. Tonight we watched “Julie & Julia” and I loved that movie too! It is what inspired me to blog right now! We are watching so many movies now because I brought my DVD player from home!

I think that is all I had to catch up on… I’ll need to remember this for next time and won’t make my posts so long! Have a good week!