Funniest Faces of 2012

One thing about being "at home" or at least at home with yourself is making faces. Both Robbie and I make some pretty funny faces, but few of them actually end up getting captured by a camera (probably a good thing lol).

So, after reviewing the pictures of us over the past year, here are my top 5 favorites of the two of us:

Number 5: "Sometimes I just want to kiss Robbie, even if he's behind the camera!"

Number 4: "No, SIRI, I was NOT talking to you."

Number 3: "Oh my goodness, this corn is good!"

Number 2: "Ehh...who needs to study? Books are for sissies."

and ... Number 1: "You think you're cool, Robbie? I'll show you cool!"

Three Years Ago...

I said "I do" to a tall, handsome, Irishman. He was just (barely) out of college, I was getting situated with my job, and we moved into a small (almost closet-sized) apartment in Murrysville. Those of you that visited us there, know that we weren't exaggerating - in fact, the apartment was actually a storage closet prior to being converted into an apartment!

Thankfully, we were only in that apartment for 2 months before we moved into a 2-bedroom, fairly spacious apartment in another building of the same complex. We could actually fit a bed set into the bedroom (before only a mattress would fit), a couch into the living room (before we only had a few chairs), and enjoyed a separate dining area from the kitchen (before it was all in one 'room').

 

Two years ago, we were fully settled into our 2-bedroom apartment, and had bought our first car together. Robbie was finishing his first year of teaching, I was very settled in my job and tackling a Masters degree in the evenings. Around our first anniversary, we still had not received our wedding pictures and discovered much to our dismay that our photographer had conveniently gone bankrupt. 

Unsure if we would ever get our wedding pictures back, we had a friend come out and take some updated pictures of us together in the Oakland area. The pictures were great (see the left picture below), and thankfully after some legal involvement were able to retrieve our original wedding pictures as well (see the right picture below).

One year ago, we decided that the time was right to look for a house, and after I completed my Masters degree in March, we spent the entire month of April searching for just the right place in time to qualify for the homebuyer's tax credit. Robbie was now in seminary part-time taking evening classes, so I really wonder how we squeezed in seeing so many houses in such a short amount of time.

As Robbie will tell you, my first impression of our house was not a good one - everything was old, dirty and in some instances just plain gross, and I had a really hard time seeing beyond the filth and work it would take to make it feel like a home. Thankfully (and providentially), there really weren't any other houses that were really drawing me, and our time was running out. We took a second trip to the house with my parents this time and decided that there was a lot of good in the house under all of the "bad", and it would just be a work in progress for the next few months.

Well, as you may have seen from the series of blog posts, this project has lasted a lot longer than a few months :) . But on the whole it has been a good experience and made us appreciate what we have now more fully (it also makes me want to stay here a very long time --- so we don't have to go through that again!).

Now that we have been married three years and owned our house for almost one year, I am finally feeling quite settled. Although we have things we will continue to work on with the house, both inside and out, the vast majority of the house is furnished, unpacked, and settled into like it should be. Now I am looking forward to enjoying a summer here without having to be stuck inside painting and cleaning! I am looking forward to spending more time at our house with family and friends - so please, come over and join us sometime! If you're in the neighborhood, come see if we are there - we'd be glad to have you.  :)

Break is Over - Back to Reality (Kind of!)

So Robbie and I did something different for Christmas this year - we spent the majority of the day on a plane - to Ireland! Most of Robbie's extended family is in Ireland, and I had not met many of them, so during the week between Christmas and New Years one of his cousins gave us a good excuse to come visit - an Irish wedding!

So we, Robbie's mom, sister, brother-in-law, and new niece all made the long trek over the "pond" (as Robbie calls it) to the "homeland". Seven days and 7,000 miles later, we were back in the US and catching up on the multiple time zone changes. But along the way we managed to get some pretty good photos of the journey!

 On top of Greinan Fort, which dates back to the time of Christ.

Windy, but we could see for miles in every direction!

 Overlooking the Northern coast of Ireland, where the cliffs drop right into the water!

Above, a view of the Dunluce castle ruins in the distance.

Below, hanging out right below the castle ruins.

 Fences are there to discourage the honest, right? Well, we can all guess who's idea it was to hop the fence and make our way to the coastline! (Below)

One of the most well-known places in Ireland is filed with thousands of these volcanic rock formations, which might look like stones placed into a road using a man-made pattern, but are actually naturally occurring...

 Some rise and fall like pyramids or hills of steps...

 ...while others are fairly level, but go up and down the coast for a good ways.

This is the Giant's Causeway, named such because there is a similar formation in Scotland, across the water (and I guess actually goes under the water as well), and the myth is that two giants were throwing rocks at each other from across the sea.

These were some of the natural beauties of the northern coast of Ireland...next time I'll show you a little bit of the city life!

Ornaments on the Tree - Life with Robbie

Hard to believe that Christmas is less than a week away (Yikes!), but there it is! Today I'm going to focus on a few ornaments that are special to Robbie and I (at least I think haha), because they represent our life together thus far. This will be our first Christmas in our new house (obviously), our third Christmas together as a married couple, and our sixth Christmas together overall.

The first Christmas as a married couple is probably always interesting for newlyweds as they determine what traditions they will take from each family and blend together to make their own (unique or continued) traditions. One Christmas Day tradition that Robbie learned from my family is that Christmas morning, before any presents or even any stockings are opened, everyone puts a card for each member of the family somewhere in the tree. So the tree is full of cards by the time everyone is up and ready to start the festivities. A tradition I learned from Robbie's family is having Christmas poppers. Christmas poppers (or crackers) are a British tradition, and are basically little gifts wrapped such that there are two ends to pull on. One person pulls on each end until the popper breaks, and the "lucky" one gets the gift enclosed on their side of the popper!

This special glass ball comes from our Alma mater, Grove City College, showcasing Harbison Chapel. While this was originally where I wanted to get married in Grove City, we were unable to have our ceremony there because our wedding was the same weekend as Parent's Weekend at the College. Nonetheless, we did manage to get beautiful wedding pictures in front of the chapel and the Quad. We both loved our time there at college, and will always remember that place fondly.

Ok, so enough serious stuff - this is a funny memory! :) In our apartment, we lived on the third (top) floor, right next to the woods. We lived in Murrysville, so there's obviously lots of wildlife out and about in that area already. Well, we hadn't been living in our apartment for too long before we encountered these little critters. Thankfully, not face to face like a few of our neighbors, but we would hear them having a party almost every night, late into the wee hours of the morning! The first time we heard them scamper about, we were in bed with the lights turned out, and we honestly weren't sure if they were in the apartment or not. Both of us (probably myself more so) were quite scared to get out of bed to find out, but thankfully after some sleuthing, determined that they were in the walls.

They continued to remain active throughout the night, scampering about - up one wall, over the ceiling, down another wall - again and again. There were many sleepless nights on account of those squirrels, but thankfully, as I mentioned, no face to face encounters (I may never have been able to sleep again if there were)! Finally, after several months of similar activity, our landlord was able to get rid of them, but their memory lives on each Christmas as they hide somewhere on our tree :) .

This last set of ornaments doesn't have a specific memory of me and Robbie to go along with it, but were made for us by my sister (I'll let you decide who is who!). I think penguins are cute anyway, but these are definitely one of my favorite ornaments on the tree! Perhaps this year we'll be able to add some more ornaments from our adventures in the "Homeland", killing two birds with one stone - world travels AND life with Robbie!

Next time I'm going to ask Robbie to write a few words about his own ornaments, and the story behind them. Don't worry, he doesn't have nearly as many as I do, but there's a story behind that as well! Look for his post sometime this week, and in the meantime Happy Christmas Decorating and Shopping!

Ornaments on the Tree - World Travels

So today is my first day of Christmas vacation (I'm off for the rest of the year), and I find that I was wide awake at 6:30 am when I rolled over to tell my husband it's time to get up! I don't think I'm ever wide awake at that time - even when I've been up for 45 minutes getting ready to go to work by then!

Nevertheless, we came downstairs to eat breakfast and it was then that I realized it had been a couple days since I'd watered the tree. Really? How can such a large decoration in our house go unnoticed (or rather, uncared for)? Hopefully it will survive despite my lack of attention to it! Maybe more blog "face" time will make it feel better :) .

Today's ornaments will feature some of the cool places I and my family have been able to go over the years. Since the girls in the family love ornaments, we're always looking for them, whether it's December,  February or July!

Most of you that know me probably know that our family has been going to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina every other year, for a long time. I think our first trip as a family was in 1995, but my parents have been going even longer than that. When we were kids, Lauren and I would go on the beach and find real sand dollars. One year, we found tons of them, and decided that we would just let them dry out on our condo porch, and they would turn out beautifully white like this one :) . Well, you can probably guess what happened, but several days later we had a lot of smelly sand dollars on our porch, and they weren't that pretty! So now we have a much better looking (and smelling) reminder of the fun on our tree.

This one might just look like a pretty snowflake to some, but if you got up close (and especially if you could feel it), you'd see that it was made completely of salt. Not just any salt either, mind you, but salt from the Great Salt Lake out in Salt Lake City, Utah. Now, I have never been to Utah, but my parents have been at least a couple times. This was actually not for my Dad's business travels, but for my Mom's! (I'm sure you can imagine that doesn't happen often!) Mom used to sell Stampin' Up! rubber stamps, and their annual convention was out there a couple years because that's where they are headquartered. So Mom actually took Dad on a business trip with her and they brought us girls back some souveniers.

This little wooden dutch shoe actually isn't symbolic of my heritage, but of a trip we took out to Holland, Michigan to see some family friends. This town is usually bursting with people coming to see all the tulips in the spring, but when we went it was during the off season and everything was cold (and dead lol). But that didn't stop us from visiting all the cute little Dutch shops! This ornament also has my name carved/burned into the other side of the shoe. 

These next three are all from the same basic area, but each tells a little different story :) .  Only a week or so after Robbie and I got engaged, my family decided to take a short getaway to Arizona - one last trip as a family before I got married. So we headed out to Arizona expecting the weather to be cool, but definitely warmer than Pittsburgh. We were in for some surprises! It was pretty cold, and in some places that we went (i.e. the Grand Canyon), there were several inches of snow! It was really cool to see, but a lot colder than expected!

Anyways, the cool cow ornament comes from a little town called Jerome, which had some great history behind it (that right now I just can't remember!). It also had a lot of little shops that were mostly small businesses selling things that were homemade and such. The cow ornament actually came from a store that basically sold everything cow you could think of!

This trip to Arizona certainly was amazing - I saw another part of the country that I had never seen before - all very beautiful, in many different ways. Hopefully I'll get to take Robbie there someday - perhaps when it isn't snowing!

Happy Friday to Everyone - 1 week until Christmas! :)

Decorating for Christmas!

So it's been about six months that we've had our house now, and the kitchen renovations are almost done (yay!), and since it's Christmas and there is soooo much else going on, we've taken a little break from renovating the house and focused more on decorating the house. After getting ready for Thanksgiving, I wasn't ready to instantly create a winter wonderland just yet (even though the snow did come on Dec. 1!). So this weekend we finally got around to getting a Christmas tree and decorating it!

As we were putting up the many different and diverse ornaments, it reminded me of lots of memories or symbolic memories that are found in most all of them, and I thought I'd take a stroll down memory lane and share some with you for the next week or so. After reading one of my friend's blogs on a similar topic, I decided it was worth sharing with all of you! So I hope you enjoy and I also hope it stimulates some of your own decorating / ornament / family / friends memories! Please feel free to share them with me by commenting below!

Each post I'll try to keep a theme, so for the first group of pictures I'll be selecting some of my childhood ornaments and memories to share with you.

The glass pickle ornament is an old German tradition. Each year families would "hide" the pickle ornament on the tree somewhere and children would try to find it to get a special present. This ornament was a gift from my (German) grandmother, who first told my sister and I about this tradition when we were very young (but old enough to find a pickle!). That first Christmas there were two pickles on the tree - one for me and one for my sister. Every year since then we have made it our tradition to "hide" our pickles on the tree just for fun (no special gifts to those who found them).

Another one of my family Christmas traditions was going to see the Nutcracker ballet each year downtown. I (more than my sister) simply loved the ballet, and even had visions of becoming a ballerina (unfortunately, one year of ballet class when I was 6 cleared that dream - professionally, at least). The Nutcracker was my absolute favorite Christmas tradition, and even when I got older and we stopped going to the ballet (Dad was falling asleep through most of it!), I still would listen to Tchaikovsky played by the London symphony orchestra each year - still do! This ballet shoe was one of a pair given to my sister and I by my mother, and reminds me of the fun girlie dreams I had of being a ballerina!

There were many glass ornaments given to me over the years from my mother and grandmother - many from German shops and some even made in Germany. They were precious to me as a child because they were so fragile - extra special care was taken to make sure they survived through 20+ Christmases to make it to my own Christmas tree as an adult. This ornament I actually found in Virginia while visiting a friend, and I found similar ones that were shaped as a basketball, tennis ball and football for my sister, mother, and father (respectively). My hope is that I can keep these glass ornaments long enough to pass on to my own children someday!

Well I hope you have enjoyed this brief trip down my memory lane, and I'd be delighted to hear about your own recollections. More to come later this week! Happy Decorating!

Breaking in the Kitchen!

Jennifer went out and bought me some goat cheese. It is the only cheese I can have since I am lactose intolerant. It is a major curse. Trust me on that. A few months back, well weeks, my mom gave me our beloved recipe for Pepperoni Rolls. (I am telling you these things are great.)

So here is the deal: you need white bread dough, olive oil and egg yolk and some seasonings. Once you roll the dough out, you need to baste the egg mixture on the dough. Then throw down some meat, cheese, and whatever else you want. Throw them in the oven for 25-30 minutes. And they are lovely.

This is what they look like before the oven.

These are the finished product.

 

This was the first thing that either of us made in the newly revamped kitchen. It was great. I loved having a bar that I did not have to bend over on. That is one bad thing about average height countertops. 

(post by Robbie if you did not notice)

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

I know it's a little late, but there's a story behind this as well! :)  I'm taking a quick break from the house developments to share our holiday story with you. But don't worry, next week I'll finish the kitchen saga and unveil the finished product!

This year Robbie and I hosted the Schmidtberger family thanksgiving at our house. Since there are now at least 3 separate family thanksgiving celebrations to coordinate within the family, we decided to host Thanksgiving dinner on Friday instead of Thursday. This turned out well for several reasons - we had more time to prepare for the big meal (especially since it was my first time cooking the turkey!), we were able to relax and take it easy on Thursday, and we didn't feel pressured to participate in the Black Friday craziness on Friday!

So Thursday when we rolled out of bed around 10am and Robbie cooked us breakfast a little before 11, it felt a little weird not going anywhere for the day. It was almost like a "snow day" because everything was closed. For once the phone did not ring at all with telemarketers (because it did again today at 9am to wake us up!). And the "only" things we had to worry about were inside the house.

Thanksgiving night was time for me to start baking our desserts - traditional pumpkin pie, apple crumb pie, and my family's special cream cheese pumpkin pie. Friday morning Robbie and I both got up early to start the cooking festivities, but I also couldn't resist throwing together some monkey bread for breakfast (cinnamon pull aparts for those of you who don't know what that is).

Robbie and I couldn't resist long - so it's already missing some pieces! :)

We finally pulled out our china for the first time, and I had fun decorating the table for fall. The turkey went in the oven around 9:30am (after spending an hour in a couple cold baths to make sure it wasn't frozen!), so then we could relax for a little while until our guests arrived.

Finally it was time for dinner and everything was becoming ready at the same time - craziness! Robbie cut the turkey, his mom mashed the potatoes, and I pulled all the side dishes out of the oven to put on the "buffet" table. Below you can see a few shapshots of our feast - a great combination of foods and efforts from the family!

And, of course, the star of the show this year - our new niece! She didn't get to share in the joy of eating with us, but she did look very interested in participating - hopefully next year! :)

Finally, I thought I'd end the day in a little reflection of a few things I am very thankful for this year. First, I am very thankful for my Savior, who never leaves us nor forsakes us, despite our own failings. I am very thankful for my husband, who also stands by my side in the good and the not so good times. This year I am also very thankful for our new home, which, despite the large amount of work it has added to our busy lives, we hope it will be a source of blessing for more than just ourselves in the years to come.

There are so many other things I am thankful for and truly blessed by. I hope you too have found or will find joy in spending just a moment to reflect on God's many blessings. Happy Thanksgiving!