So, October begins, and we are back to the gym.

Project Runway....I mean, come on, 4 again?

Tonight's TV:

Season premiere of Tim Gunn's Guide to Style (Bravo)

The only new episode of anything I'll be DVRing is Ugly Betty. Oh and Survivor. Tonight is the Vice Presidential debates. So, no The Office!

I am still in the mood to redecorate/rearrange. I have been moving stuff around the house here and there but no big changes. We've talked about rearranging the living room but I don't know how I feel about that yet. There are so many windows and doors that there aren't many ways you can arrange the furniture. So I dunno.

I think I'm going to make this Real Simple recipe for dinner tonight: Parmesan Pasta with Chicken and Rosemary

Cash has wanted to live outside a lot lately. We let him out and after a while he bangs on the door to be let back in. We let him back in. Five minutes later he is ringing the bells or scratching on the door to go back out! He loves being outside, but he brings back leaves and other parts of plants. Last night when I went to bed there was something on my foot. I threw the sheets off and turned on the light and it was a SLUG. GROSS. Little Mr. Slug must have accompanied Mr. Cash Howard into the house. Yuck. That better never happen again!

I leave you with a few photos from RenFest on Saturday.

Here we are


James and Michelle came from Fergus to go


I need to learn to smile


We all enjoyed our soup in a bread bowl


Fire!


Awww cute


Later!

YAY it's Monday...or something. Trying to psych you into waking up...heh.

We had a good weekend. Watched the debate with friends and had a bonfire. Ate cheese and crackers and tried some new cocktails. Saturday we went to the Renaissance Festival with James and Michelle and afterwards M and I did some $1 scrapbook shopping (Big Lots and Target). Yesterday Trev was gone all day at a golf tournament thing put together by a co-worker. I caught up on my DVR'd TV (NCIS was ok, Ugly Betty was funny, the other stuff meh), organized in the office, did laundry, burned copies of mix CDs, etc. Cash Howard was my little buddy for the day. When Trevor got home we finished the night off by watching the final 3 episodes of Alias season 1. "The Man?"!!!

It's almost October, people! October! This week the weather is in the 60s. I'm wearing a sweater today because I love sweater weather. This week should be good. Not too much going on, and then Friday we are going to see Weezer at the Xcel. Fun fun. I've been listening to Weezer since 1995 or so and haven't seen them yet...as long as they don't play too much off the Red album it'll be good. "I am the greatest man that ever lived..." Huh?

More new TV this week. What are you looking forward to?

Tonight's (Monday) Season Premiers:

Chuck (NBC)
Life (NBC)

We're looking forward to watching Chuck! It was probably our fave new show last year.

Hi everyone. Welcome back to another week! It really feels like Fall here now in Minnesota. This weekend was so nice and relaxing for the most part! We got to see family and friends, bake cookies, cook yummy dinners, watch a movie and some TV, etc.

We watched Vitus Friday night. Overall we liked it. It just dragged a bit in the middle. It's a Swiss film about a boy who is a brilliant pianist and just brilliant in general, who decides he would rather be "normal."

Here's the trailer:


I'm looking forward to J.J. Abrams (creator of Lost, Alias, Felicity) new show that starts on Tuesday on Fox, called "Fringe." But, man, another airplane? Most new stuff doesn't start until the end of the month.

Hi peeps. Hope all is well with you and you had a fab weekend.

We were supposed to go to Fergus this weekend but they got over a foot of snow, so we stayed in Mpls and enjoyed being at home!

I had a great time with my friends Esther and Becca, and a friend of theirs, Becky, Friday night (I headed over there after a goodbye party for a co-worker). We were going to watch Juno, but we talked the whole time instead. :-) We're all into couponing, especially CVSing, and crafting. It was fun! I made some cards. Can't wait to make some more. So anyway, when I went to leave to drive the 45 minutes home, it was snowing! Ack.

Saturday morning there was snow on the ground. :-( It is too late for snow. Anyway, I met up with Becca, Jeremy, and Becca's mom Karen Saturday morning at the state fair grounds for Craftstravaganza. There was a lot of stuff there, but it was freezing in the building and they had the doors kept wide open! Becca and I both bought necklaces from Pam Loudy. I also bought this great calendar from Happify, but it was only $5.

On my way to Craftstravaganza, I at the last minute decided to take 94, which was a bad idea. The traffic was worse than rush hour traffic, barely moving. I started listening to FM107, and one of the hosts was in the studio, and the other was on the phone, which was strange....So at one point the host in the studio says "Ok, I've got the update on 94. There's a truck on fire and an accident and it's backed up to 280." The host on the phone said, "Oh ok, I am at the Huron exit." I can't remember the actual exit it was, but I was in shock, because that's exactly where I was! I started looking around but EVERYONE was on their cell phones. Haha. ;-)

So to make a long story short, I also had a horrible time getting home, which was strange for a Saturday morning. When I got home I had Trev hop in the car and we went out to lunch and went shopping. This is after we realized we weren't going to Fergus because of the ridiculous amount of snow. It was nice to just do whatever we felt like and be in Minneap. We ate at IHOP, which we hadn't done in years. I had a coupon but it turned out it could only be used Monday-Friday! Then we went shopping. We went to Macy's to use gift cards we got for Christmas...finally. I bought some Clinique because it's gift time. It was a nice one. :-) Trev got some new work clothes. Then we went to Big Lots, and I found a bunch of good scrap stuff for cheap. What I bought was mostly American Crafts and Heidi Grace stuff, for those of you that are interested. I got a bunch of stuff for a total of $10 because each item was $1 or $2.

We spent some time doing our own thing and I got some organizing done. I don't even remember what we did Saturday night! We were just at home hanging out and watching TV and stuff. I made us spaghetti for dinner. It was nice to just be hanging out at home.

Sunday we went to church and then decided to head to Southdale for a movie. We ate at Ruby Tuesdays and then saw Baby Mama, which was fun. We went home after that and hung out with Cashie boy. I spent a long time doing my weekly coupon stuff and we watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and some tv.

This week is busy. We have our household stuff to get done tonight and Trev has pool tomorrow so I'll probably do my shopping. Wednesday we are going to Timi's to sort through our stuff we are storing there since she and Trev are doing a run to Goodwill on Saturday. Thursday my friend Andy is in town so we get to see him, and Friday Betsy is coming over. This week will go by fast!

So this weekend we:
*Went to the gym
*Ran errands
*Watched Into the Wild (We weren't fans)
*Started watching the first season of 30 Rock on DVD
*Went to Holy Land for the first time (the one on Central and Lowry)
*Went to Herkimer, Bryant Lake Bowl, and Little T's on Saturday night with Jake and Mindy. We actually bowled at Bryant Lake Bowl. Haha. That only makes sense to the local people...
*Went to Archiver's and used my gift card M.E. gave me for Christmas, finally. Got a few fun things, like some KI Memories lace cardstock
*Palm Sunday
*Hung out with Timi a bit and got to see her new living room furniture. She redecorated with brown and light blue and I love it!

Easter is next weekend!

This weekend was awesome. We got a lot done and also were able to just hang out and relax.

We did some shopping (and bought a new vacuum cleaner!), organized and cleaned a lot, went through our huge stack of magazines, played with the dog outside, attempted to give the dog a haircut (scheduling grooming appointment asap), and watched a couple of movies. Oh! I also finished my scrapbook of James and Michelle's wedding!

We focused on getting our office organized since it has been a disaster for a while. I even cleaned out my closet! I can't believe I was able to get it as organized as I did! Since our house is old and we have tiny closets, the closet in our bedroom is Trevor's closet, and then the closet in the office is my closet, plus I have a dresser in the office with my clothes in it. The closet had craft stuff, candles, wrapping paper and tissue paper, extra clinique stuff and hotel shampoos and soaps, CDs, etc. all shoved in it in shopping bags. Now I have a bin with all my gift wrap stuff, a plastic organizer of toiletries, etc. all neatly displayed in the closet, along with all of my clothes. Trevor organized the desk area and mail, bills, etc. It feels nice to walk into the office now!

Rent this movie! God Grew Tired of Us. It is about the Lost Boys of the Sudan. There are a couple of documentaries out right now about the Sudan/Darfur, and this is the only one we have seen so far. It is absolutely excellent! It really made us think about our own lives and attitudes, and made us laugh, ache, think. It really is amazing. It is hard to imagine all that these boys/men have been through in their lives.

After Daylight Savings it's only an hour difference but it was hard to get up in the dark this morning!

We'll finish cleaning up the house tonight. Tomorrow Martha and Rebecca are coming over to hang out and watch a movie while Trevor is at pool. Should be fun!

Trev got back on Friday, so I finally got to see him when I got home from work. We ate pizza and watched King of Kong, which was awesome.

I drove us to Fergus on Saturday. Trev's dad had to go into work all weekend because they were moving to a new system, so we were mostly with his mom. We didn't do a whole lot. Trev spent a lot of time working on their computer, and we did a little shopping. We hung out with James and Michelle on Saturday night and played the Sweet Valley High board game from the 80s. Such a blast!

We also bought me an ipod tuner thing so I can listen to it in my car, which is awesome. It works pretty well even though we are in a big city.

I also am happy about some Target clearance notecards and scrapbooking stuff I found. Cheap is good!

Yay for it being March. There is hope that spring is in the near future. You never really know what to expect here in Minnesota though. We could have snow through the rest of the month, or it could warm up to the 60s.

My weekend consisted of:

Two times at the gym
Two times at the grocery store
Unpacking my huge box of Tupperware stuff and re-organizing the kitchen to put it away
Scrapbooking some of James and Michelle's wedding
Eating every meal at home
Cleaning the house
Spending hours in the kitchen yesterday cooking and cleaning, and hanging out with the random cousins and friends we had over for the Super Bowl. The last of them left at 11PM.

I somehow pulled a muscle in my arm and it kills.

Only 4 work days this week as Friday morning we are flying to Vegas! It can't come soon enough.

Here is one of the pages I did.


And finally, here is the sign I made for our front door.


It's snowing today and the drive home from work is sure to be FUN!

Here are some more photos I took while on the treasure hunt, as well as a couple of puzzles for those of you who are interested.

There were 12 puzzles with 12 photos. Each puzzle had a zodiac sign on it to match it up with the corresponding photo. Once we figured out a puzzle, it would give us an idea of where we needed to go to find whatever was in the photo and figure out what letters were being covered up in the photo.


We scribbled stuff all over these. Ignore that. Anyway, Lisa figured this one out, so I'm not sure how it works. She figured out what it stood for and decoded it: "Within many glass rooms the winter flower blooms." I tried cheating by using the internet, but check out the corresponding photo.


It says "In honor of Charlotte and Ellis." I couldn't turn up anything. We went to two conservatories before finding the plaque outside of one of them on a planter.


The words that were covered up: "Kluge."

( the Russian puzzle and more )

The treasure hunt. Yes. The 24-hour treasure hunt. Would I do it again? Maybe if it was in the summer and was a 12-hour treasure hunt. Then maybe yes. We did not win the hunt, but we did finish! There were 6 teams. 4 teams finished. The other teams had 5 people on them, and we only had 4 on ours. We had 9 of the 12 puzzles figured out by 9AM (the hunt started at 8PM on Friday night), and had found some of the signs at the locations that we needed. We needed hints for 3 of the puzzles, but in the end we solved all but 1, went to 11 locations, and then figured out what the clues meant and made it to the final location at 3PM. We then slept for 4 hours and Trev and I headed to the "winners ball" but only stayed for an hour, headed back home and went back to bed! We slept in yesterday and hung around the house all day yesterday. We were tired!

The puzzles were hard. I should scan in a couple, but only if you want me to.

Here are a few pictures to start out. I'll get the rest up tonight.


hanging out at the masonic lodge, scoping out the other teams before the official start.



on the hunt.









( gotta love minneapolis )