Painting Surprise!

Good morning everyone!  I hope this week flies by for everyone so that we can all enjoy an extended holiday weekend!

After having Darla, Rachel, and John stay at our house two weekends ago, I couldn’t stomach the thought of having anyone else sleep in our guest room with the current color scheme left to us by the previous owners.  As noted in a prior post they really enjoyed painting the walls in our house very bold obscure colors.  To their defense, our current guest room used to be the room of an 8-10 yr old girl and when I was that age I would have loved to have that room, but pink and purple walls don’t really go very well with our stuff, especially since we do not have a pre-teen child and won’t have one for quite a while.  So, Chris was gone this past weekend for a bachelor party camping/float trip so I decided to take the time to paint the guest room a more neutral color and surprise him when he came home.  The surprise wasn’t so much the color as anything would be better than what it was before, but the fact that he doesn’t really enjoy painting so by me doing it while he was away, it got him out of having to paint another room in the house.

Unfortunately, I really screwed up and forgot to take a “before” picture of the room to show you how awful it looked, but I did take a couple of “after” pictures to show you the current condition.  After discussion with Chris a while back we had decided that the guest room would be a great place to display all of our MN Twins and Chicago Cubs art work and gear.  (Fortunately, we cheer for teams that have the same color scheme.)  I consulted the expertise of my good friend Barb on what color to paint the room being she did such a great job helping us with colors in the main level of the house.  Barb and I decided it would look nice to paint the room a light grey that had some slight blue undertones.  This would make the room look bigger and is still neutral so that if we decide to change the theme of the room, we could easily do so without having to repaint.

I taped everything off and primed the walls on Friday night, and then my friend Lena came over on Saturday morning to help me put the coat of paint on the walls.  The room looks 100 times better now except that the previous owners did not tape off the room when they painted so you can see pink and purple paint on the trim…

I didn’t get a chance to start hanging our pictures in the room yet so the room isn’t 100% complete yet but it is at a point now that the next time we have guests I won’t be embarrassed to have them stay in that room.

Chris got home on Sunday morning and said he really liked the color.  I was a little nervous because if he didn’t like it, I would have spent a lot of time and money painting just to have to redo it again.  In hind sight I should have probably told him what I was up to for the weekend so I got lucky that he liked it.

Guest Room After with new Grey Paint

 

Guest Room After with new Grey Paint



The rest of our upstairs will need to be painted in the near future as well but will make for a good winter project.  I think had I been able to move the furniture myself, I would have probably tackled our bedroom first because the dark blue walls are driving me crazy, but I think that room is too much for one person to do alone.  We have nothing but time to get it completed!

I hope you all have a wonderful Labor Day weekend!  Ours will be filled with family and friends and I am so excited to get it started early J

-Bessie

Company, Concert & Cakes

Good morning everyone!  I hope you all had a good week this week.  Ours has been crazy busy but I am looking forward to a somewhat relaxing weekend that will include sleeping in J

Last weekend was a blast!  It was so good to catch up with Darla, Rachel, and Johnathan as they all came down for the Blink 182 concert.  As you know from my last post, I was scheduled to drive to visit them, but because they are such great friends and family, they came to us instead so that we could go to the concert together.  The concert was AMAZING!  They put on a great light show and the one liners they threw out in between songs were pretty funny.  It was a gorgeous night to be at an outdoor concert too.  I have to say, Travis Barker is one of the best drummers I have ever seen in my life.  I was in awe watching him play and he did a really cool drum solo where they lifted him and the drum set up in the air above the crowd and tipped him forward so that he was playing vertically.  VERY COOL!  I have heard in past concerts they had him set up to flip completely upside down while he was playing too but this was still pretty fun to see.  It was well worth the cheap $20 we spent to go see them.  One more thing I can check off my bucket list although if they ever come back again I would not hesitate for a second about buying tickets.

Rachel and John left on Saturday morning to head back home so Darla and I took the rest of Saturday to watch parts 1 & 2 of the 7^th Harry Potter movie.  Chris hasn’t really gotten into the whole HP series so it was good to be able to find someone to watch them with me.  I have read all the books and bought part 1 of the 7^th movie when it came out on DVD but hadn’t found 3 hrs to sit down and watch it yet so Darla and I decided to watch it at the house and then catch the second half at the theater that night.  They did a great job of closing out the series with these two movies.  Still a little annoyed that they broke the last book up into 2 movies just to make more money off the series before it was all over but they were both really good.  Sad to see the series over but I am looking forward to reading the books and watching the movies with my kids some day.

During the week this week I baked cakes for 100 people for the back to school gathering at Kenrick Seminary.  My brother’s good friend Tom is attending the seminary here in MO so he called and asked me to make the cakes.  It was such an honor and I had a great time putting them together.  The first cake was a ½ sheet blueberry cake with a picture of the Vatican flag on top.  The second cake was a 2-tier (12in and 9 in) carrot cake designed to look like the roman collars that priests wear.  They both turned out great and Tom said the guys really enjoyed them both.  While there to drop off the cakes, Tom gave Chris and I a tour of the chapel too.  It was really beautiful.  I could spend a lot of time in there just admiring the simplicity and beauty of the place.  I am so glad to see Tom enjoying his time at Kenrick and pray his journey continues to go well.  Hopefully I will have the honor of baking again for them for another future gathering. 

My cakes have come a long way since I started taking classes this winter.  It has become my new favorite hobby.  I have always known how to bake but have been learning the decorating side of it now and am really enjoying it.  My coworkers are enjoying my new hobby as well.  When I brought in a cake for the 4^th of July, I put it in the break room at 8 am and it was gone by 9 am so I guess that is a good sign that they enjoyed it J

-Bessie

Bucket List – Concerts

Over the last few years I have somewhat come up with an unwritten “bucket list” of sorts of things I want to do in my lifetime here on earth.  I have been able to scratch off a lot of the more simple things since being with Chris like parasailing, zip lining, snorkeling with the fish, travel to Mexico to stay at an all-inclusive, learn to properly play golf (lesson #2 of 3 is next week), etc.  I also have bigger things that I want to do such as travel to all 50 states (I am up to 35), travel to Australia, Italy, Ireland, Germany, attend an Olympic Games, etc. that I am still working on and will take me longer to accomplish.  But outside of the travel and adventures, I have always wanted to see a few music artists in concert: Bon Jovi, NKOTB, Blink 182, Aerosmith, Elton John.  I am glad to say that we were able to see Bon Jovi in concert the night before we left for our trip to Mexico and it was worth every second of being there, staying up late, and having to get up at 3 am for our flight the next morning.  I have come across an opportunity to scratch off another of these concerts tomorrow night.

At work, we have an internal website called Loose Change which is our way of having an internal “craigslist” site of sorts.  Please post items out there to sell, trade, list items they are looking to buy, etc.  On Tuesday morning a lady at work posted an ad for 2 tickets to a Blink 182 concert here in St Louis.  My jaw dropped when I saw this.  How did I not know they were going to be in town?!?!?!  I thought they were taking this year off after touring last year?!?!  I missed them in MSP twice when I lived there because of work trips!  I was so excited until I clicked on the link and saw it was this Friday.  Why are they coming to town when I am scheduled to be out of town again!!!!  I had planned about a month ago already to go to Peoria this coming weekend to visit my cousin Darla and my friend Rachel being I hadn’t seen either of them in a while and was missing both of them.  Now, don’t get me wrong, these two people are way more important to me than a concert, but after missing these guys for now what would be the third time, I was a little disappointed.  I sent Chris a text and told him about it and after dwelling on it, decided to email Darla and Rachel to see if either or both of them would be interested in coming to St Louis this weekend instead so that we could go to the concert together and still get the opportunity to see both of them.  They both thought it was an ok idea and agreed to drive to me instead of my drive to them so now I get to see them and the concert too!  I promised them I would make the next visit to them instead of making them drive to me being I haven’t been up there yet for a visit since I moved to IL but I am SUPER PUMPED to see this concert.

One good thing about finding out they were coming to town so late in the game is that there were about 1000 seats left in the stadium that they decided to offer them for $20 including fees each.  That is super cheap for a concert so we got a really good deal for what would have been the price for standing room GA on the lawn we now have reserved seats in the rows that are also covered in case it decides to rain out.  Because they both decided to come down and Rachel boy John and my hubby decided to join us I bought tickets straight from the venue instead of from the lady at work being she only had 2 seats.  I am just grateful that she posted the tickets out there though otherwise we would not have known about it and would not be going.

There will be more time in the next few months to get to Peoria to visit my friends in their town instead of making them drive to me like they are now doing.  I am very blessed to have such great friends that share common interests as I do so that now “I can have my cake and eat it too” J

Speaking of cake, I got a call from a good friend from ND that has moved to STL for school and he asked me to make a cake for 100 people next week for their back to school party.  This is the biggest cake order I have ever had and I am super excited to see how it turns out.  I will fill you in next time about how they turned out and let you know how the concert was.  In the mean time, I hope everyone has a good weekend and I look forward to seeing a lot of you in the next few weeks!

-Bessie

The BEST Two Years of My Life

Two years and counting.  It was two years ago today that Chris and I started dating and my life turned in a whole new direction landing me in Southwest Illinois.  These past two years have been two of the greatest years of my life and I have my amazing husband to thank for it all.  Many of you know the story about how Chris and I came to be “us” but I thought this would be a good day to document it.

I met Chris over 5 years ago at a Twins/Cubs baseball game.  At the time I was working for his stepdad and had been given two of the company seats for the game (they were awesome seats about 10 rows up from 1^st base btw).  Mike had kept the other two seats so that he and Chris could go to the game.  Chris grew up watching the Cubs and so he had come up to MSP to visit that week so that he could take in a game or two as well.  The Twins won the game and I gave him a lot of grief throughout but after the game we went our separate ways.  At the time, it didn’t cross either of our minds that we would ever see each other again as he was just the Boss’ son that lived 3 states away.

I continued to work for Mike for about 1 ½ more years before I took a position on the Distribution team.  I wanted to travel a little and get it out of my system before I settled down and with zero dating prospects at the time I was ready to take the jump.  About a month after moving teams, I ran into Mike in the hallway because I still was on the same floor, just had moved down the hall.  He asked how I was doing and then mentioned that “someone was asking about me”.  My naive mind thought it was someone that I had worked with in IT in the past so when he said Chris, I was a little surprised but still didn’t think anything of it.  I assumed he was just wondering what I had been up to since that game so I asked Mike how he was doing, told him to tell Chris hi from me, and went back to my desk.  ½ hour later, as I was at my desk working, Mike stopped over after a meeting he had just finished and told me that Chris wanted to know if he could have my phone number.  To this day, I think Mike was secretly setting us up, but it finally sank in why he was telling me about Chris.  I assumed that Mike was just playing matchmaker and that Chris would never call so I told him it was fine.  To my surprise, he called less than 24 hours later.

I was at home when he called that first time and I was a little weirded out about the whole thing (why is this guy calling me when it had been 1 .5 years since we met???) so I let it go to VM.  My roommate at the time was scolding me for not answering and after both of us listening to the VM, she said she would stop talking to me if I didn’t call him back.  We ended up speaking on the phone every month or so from that point till about a year later.

My dad moved to St Louis area when I was a senior in college so he lived in the area that Chris did, and with Mike and Chris’ mom living 10 minutes from me, we finally got together for dinner in April 2009.  I had taken a trip to STL to see my dad the weekend after his 50^th bday so that I could celebrate with him before I left for another work trip.  The Friday night that I got into town, my dad had to work late so he picked me up from the airport, drove back to his office, and I took his car to go meet up with Chris for dinner.  We went to Trailhead brewery and ended up talking for 5 hours that night.  I picked my dad up from work at midnight (oops!  Good thing he had a lot to do!).  From that point forward, we met up for drinks at our favorite wine bar in STL in June when I came to town to watch the Twins play the Cardinals, and then we went to dinner and a comedy show on August 15, 2009.  In between visits, our phone calls became a lot more frequent (about once a week) but we both thought we were so far in the friend zone it would never lead to anything more.

That night in August, I picked Chris up at his mom and Mike’s house and we went to Chang Mai Thai in uptown MSP.  After dinner we decided to go see an improv comedy show at Comedy Sports but had a little time to kill in between so we went to a bar next door to the show to grab a drink.  As we were sitting there, Chris said Mike told him “I bet I know where Stephanie is going to take you to dinner tonight!”  (As a reference point, a restaurant had just opened in Blaine that I had worked at its parent company during college and Mike thought I would take him there)  I looked at him and said “who’s Stephanie?”  He quickly apologized and said she was no one.  Based on his reaction I knew she was someone so I pressed him about it.  He told me that she was a girl he had dated about a month ago but it didn’t turn into anything.  I informed him that he was lucky we were just friends because if we were dating and he called me by the wrong name, I would not be happy.  He asked me what I meant by that and I told him I would give him a LOT of grief about it being we were friends but I would be really upset about it had we been dating.  He clarified his question and asked what I meant about “if we were dating”.  He asked me if I was interested in dating, I told him yes and he said yes to my same question.  The rest of the evening we went to the show, had a couple of drinks at “The Drink” in uptown and then I drove him back to his mom’s.  We hung out again the next night before I had to leave again for a work trip and decided that we were going to try to make this work even though it was long distance.

Eight months later, I moved to STL, a year ago yesterday we got engaged, were married in May and that brings us to the present day.  The long distance time of our relationship was by far the hardest part so far, but it lead to a lot of late night phone chats, and when we did see each other, our time together was that much more special.  I wouldn’t trade our time together so far for anything.  I am truly blessed to be married to my best friend and look forward to many years of love together!  So babe, thank you for calling me Stephanie that night.  If it wasn’t for that, we may still be stuck in the friend zone.  I love you babe!

Bessie

Old Lady…

I feel like a 28 year old stuck in an 80 yr old body lately.  I have been going to the doctor quite a bit lately to take care of the last of the remnants of my illnesses I acquired on my trip to India 4 years ago.  I have really good insurance through my current job so I decided that I need to go in and get everything checked out while it’s reasonably priced so that I can move on but as a result, I feel like I have to keep a separate schedule to keep track of all of my appointments.  Fortunately we are starting to make some headway on how to treat everything and nothing is life threatening, just more annoying than anything. 

But unrelated to India, I went to the foot doctor 2 weeks ago to get fitted for some new shoe insets because I am due up for some and my feet were starting to hurt.  I inherited a lot of wonderful things from my mother, but her crappy feet is not something that is the most pleasant thing – sorry Mom.  We both have very high arches in our feet to the point that if I would get my foot wet and make a foot print on cement, you would only see my heal and the ball of my foot because my arch does not touch the ground at all.

Anyway, the doctor asked me if I was having any pain in my feet and I mentioned that the arch of my left foot would start to hurt after being on my feet for about an hour.  He decided to take a couple of x-rays, which then led to an ultrasound of my foot and the discovery of planters fasciitis.  Most people that have this injury get it in the heal but because mine is in the arch it is going to take more effort to heal.  So much for just going in to get new inserts…I came out with a cortisone shot in the middle of my foot, a very “sexy” boot that I have to wear to bed for who knows how long to stretch the ligament, inserts on order to come 3 weeks later, and a follow-up appointment.

My follow-up was on Wednesday evening and the situation appeared to have gotten worse so I was given another cortisone shot, a doctor’s note to wear tennis shoes all the time, and was told if there is not progress in two weeks I may end up in a walking boot.  So, I am hoping for lots of progress!  In the mean time, the tennis shoes have really seemed to be helping and now I can wear my hot pink ones to work every day!  My inserts will be in next week so that should help as well.  As a side note, I used this as an excuse to get a new pair of shoes that were a little more work appropriate than my very loud hot pink ones so that they at least blend in a little more.  However, the pair I purchased is black with turquoise bottoms and laces so I can still have some fun with them!

The thing that really stinks about this whole thing is that I finally am on some medication to treat my daytime hypersomnia so I am feeling wide awake during the day now and have energy to be more active but now I can’t because of the foot issue…oh well, at least it is all getting taken care of and I am starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel.  I thank God every day that it is only these things and not something life threatening like cancer.  I try to remind myself that I could be much worse off and that I have a wonderful support system in my husband, family, and friends.

I think I will always be glad I had the opportunity to travel to India and experience a place I probably would have never otherwise seen, but after the battle I have been fighting since my return, I have no intention of going back there again.  My food borne illness could have just as easily happened here in the US, but after my experience, I can’t even smell curry without feeling a little ill.  If only I wouldn’t have ordered the chicken for dinner that night…

-Bessie