The infamous window boxes are done!

Tonight I finished another decoupage project for the nursery...these are boxes that will go at the top of the nursery windows instead of fabric valances. After months and months of thinking about this, I still really like the stripes, which is kind of a miracle in itself!! Thanks again to super-creative Hannah for coming up with this idea!

Miranda on Guiding Light

Here's a shot from Miranda's latest soap opera appearance...she's the one in the middle with curly hair. I also have a video of it if anyone wants to see!

Nursery decor

Many of you have heard me attempt to describe what I am doing with nursery decor involving scrapbook paper, and I now have some pictures to show what in the world I've been thinking. One of the things I wanted to do was decoupage some wooden storage bins with some of the paper I like, and I've got them done! It's true that these aren't done in the famous striped paper that started this whole idea, but I'll be using plenty of that soon too! Here are before and after pics.

thisisbroken.com

Whenever I need a mental break from work — you know, once every six months or so :) — I like to check out the blog thisisbroken.com for some comic relief. It's a site where people can submit pictures of signs, products, computer screen shots, etc. where things are just funny or don't make sense. Parking signs right next to each other that contradict each other, foreign translations that just don't quite translate, etc. Check it out.

Fun on Starbucks.com

Hee hee hee, I'm posting about Starbucks on my blog...luckily I don't think Craig ever reads it!

My friend Amy sent me a link to the Starbucks website, where you can design your own custom drink and it will create a graphic representation of it designed by fashion designer Mychael Knight. To the left, you will see my current drink, a grande decaf nonfat dry hazelnut cappucino with an extra shot. I would never actually order all those options at once because I'd feel a little too yuppy, but that is how I like to roll. (Remove the decaf after baby.) If you get lucky, you could get your drink on one of their limited edition T-shirts, but seems like they go quick.

Go here to make your own drink illustration! (Communication types: how's this for fun, interactive viral web content that educates people about your product?)

My sister's TV debut

My sister Miranda, the aspiring actress, has had her network television debut! She was an extra in an episode of One Life to Live that aired on Feb. 12. The picture below is a still shot from one of the scenes where you can see her best...she's the one in the background in the black dress. She got onscreen shots four or five times, but this was the best one. She'll also be "girl who gets flirted with in a diner" on OLTL March 1, and then she'll be "girl mistaken for a main character's deceased daughter" on Guiding Light March 7. Set your DVRs!

PS, Technically, I guess I can't say she's an "aspiring" actress anymore because, well, she has been on TV! :)

When will winter be over?

So as you noticed, since I haven't blogged in a long time I just threw up a desperation post of the top ten facts about Jack Bauer, copied from an email. These are admittedly very funny, but it seems to be cheating. I think I haven't been in the blogging mood lately in part because this whole winter thing is really getting to me this year. Cold makes me miserable. I don't like not being able to go outside very much. I don't know if I'm just getting old, but this winter is definitely making me crochety.

A few bright spots:

I was sitting by the big window in our living room on a recent Saturday morning and I could hear birds chirping, and it was like there was a little hole in winter and spring was peeking through.

Most of the snow and ice is finally almost totally melted from our front yard and sidewalk. This is especially good, since because the way the sun hits our street, our neighbors across the street haven't had snow in their yards for days and days.

Those few hours, was it last Tuesday? It was 52 degrees. I went outside at work and stood in the sun for a few seconds without my coat. As I went back inside to get back to work, I believed especially that humans were not meant to work in offices with no windows in front of computers.

Wow, so this was uplifting, wasn't it? I just wanted you all to wallow in my wintry misery with me for a few minutes. :) Thanks for indulging.

Top Ten Facts About Jack Bauer

For my 24-watching friends, this is pretty amusing...

1. If Jack Bauer was in a room with Hitler, Stalin, and Nina Meyers, and he had a gun with 2 bullets, he'd shoot Nina twice.
   
2. Jack Bauer once forgot where he put his keys. He then spent the next half-hour torturing himself until he gave up the location of the keys.
   
3. Jack Bauer doesn't miss. If he didn't hit you it's because he was shooting at another terrorist twelve miles away.
   
4. If Jack says "I just want to talk to him/her" and that him/her is you -- well amigo, you're in trouble.
   
5. Killing Jack Bauer doesn't make him dead. It just makes him angry.
   
6. Jack Bauer does not sleep. The only rest he needs is what he gets when he's knocked out or temporarily killed.
   
7. As a child, Jack Bauer's first words were "There's no time!"
   
8. Jack Bauer's family threw him a surprise birthday party when he was a child. Once.
   
9. Everytime Jack Bauer yells "NOW!" at the end of a sentence, a terrorist dies.
   
10. If you send someone to kill Jack Bauer, the only thing you accomplish is supplying him a fresh set of weapons to kill you with.

Zen clock

Emily sent this link to a cool clock today. The clock shows the year, month, date, day, hour, minute and second at once. It gives me somewhat of a "Zen peace everything is aligned in the universe" sort of feel to look at it. Then again, it's the end of the day so maybe anything that's not associated with real work gives me that feeling. Who knows. Check it out.


http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf

Web searching and shopping for the common good

Today I attended the monthly meeting of a group of church communicators from the KC area. It's a great group and so good to get together with people facing the same joys and challenges in their jobs as I do. One of the people there, Jennifer, showed us two websites I thought I'd share:

www.igive.com / You can shop here at your favorite web retailers and they will donate a percentage of your purchase to a non-profit of your choice.

www.goodsearch.com / Use this site as a search engine (it's powered by Yahoo!) and Yahoo! will donate money to the non-profit you choose from a list. You can also list your non-profit here to receive donations.

Pregnancy etiquette, part 1

So far, it's been a joy to be pregnant. As a brief baby update, he (yes, he!) is doing very well and seems to still be a quite active and squirmy young one.

But what I'd really like to blog about today is one of the things that is not a joy about being pregnant, and that is when people knowingly or unknowingly breach the bounds of what I'll call pregnancy etiquette. So let this be a helpful guide for things not to do or say to people who are pregnant. For the record, I don't believe any of the people I know read this blog have committed any of these offenses, so don't be concerned that this is a veiled attempt to tell you anything!

I invite any of my pregnant or have-been-pregnant friends to contribute other ideas in the comments.

We'll start with a classic...

Uninvited tummy-touching. Now, I admit, there is a bit of gray area here. Not all tummy-touching is unwelcome, even if it is uninvited. For example, Emily is a tummy-toucher, but that doesn't bother me in the slightest becuase she is a close friend, and that's just who she is. But if you don't know someone that well, I'd recommend asking first.

Calling her fat. Why, oh why, would this be OK? But I really did have someone tell me "you're getting fat!" I think this was meant in the way of "you are starting to show," but still not appropriate under any circumstances. Think about it. A pregnant woman has like 25-30 pounds of weight gain in front of her that she really has no control over. And she gets weighed by a doctor once and month, and said weight is going to be commented on whether it's too much, not enough or just right. And everyone she walks up to who knows she's pregnant looks at her face and then her stomach (not necessarily in that order). And she needs people calling her fat? Other people are perhaps less sensitive than me, but in my world this also goes for "wow, you're really starting to show," "You're getting really big," or "You're huge!" (which hasn't been said to me yet but I've heard it said to others. I'm sure my time will come.)

Asking her if her pregnancy was planned. Yes, really. This has happened to me several times, the lastest being today and prompting this rant about pregnancy etiquette. I can't believe anyone would think it appropriate to ask this. I think I'd be slightly taken aback if even a close friend asked me that, but so far none of the people who have asked me (that I can recall) have been on a friendship level that would allow for that sort of question. Craig and I did plan our pregnancy and this question offends me, so I can only imagine if the pregnancy was not planned, you were a bit upset about it and you were trying to put your best face forward, and some yahoo has to come right out and ask you. So don't do it.

I believe this may become a series of blog posts as the pregnancy progresses, but we'll see! And just so it doesn't sound like I'm down on being pregnant (which I have loved so far), here are some of the joys of pregnancy:

seeing/hearing/feeling the baby move
anticipation of meeting the little one
an even more meaningful reason to eat right and exercise
an excitement added to each and every day
anticipation of change
the increased bond between you and your husband
sharing baby news and seeing your friends' excitement
wearing elastic waistbands and still being hip
and many others!

Baby pics

Craig and I had a sonogram Wednesday and wanted to post the pics...it's pretty amazing what you can see these days during a sonogram! The top picture is the baby's whole body in profile (the head is on the left). The bottom picture is the baby looking at us (the head is on the left side and you can see the eyes, nose and mouth).

Brain break

I received this link from my friend and co-worker Andrea as a terrific "brain break."

www.thesurrealist.co.uk/slogan.cgi

You just enter your name, and the website inserts it into a marketing slogan for you. My most recent was "If you've got the time, I've got the Nicole." It creates some pretty hilarious slogans.

If you go create a fun slogan, post it in comments for us to enjoy!

Serial reader

I have a problem I don't know how to solve. Here's an example. See all those books listed at the left under "recent reads"? Those are all books I was in the midst of reading when I started posting on this blog. With the exception of Simple Church, I haven't finished a one of them. And I have approximately 4-5 books that I've received/bought since then that I haven't even started.

Here's what usually happens: I LOVE a new book. So I get one and dive in. Then I stop having/making time to read and it sits for a while. Then a new book comes along and I get excited about that one and start reading it, but with limited time I don't go back to the other book. I'm a book-hopper. It really frustrates me. I'm also a craft-hopper (knitting, paper crafts, drawing, etc.), but let's take one issue at a time.

A haiku about Fridays

A long time ago in a comment, my sister said she thought I should write a daily haiku or something of that nature. Well, obviously I didn't take that challenge, but the prospect of a weekend ahead has me feeling a bit poetic, so here's a haiku about Fridays:

friday afternoon
freedom stretches out ahead
sweet release awaits

Can I get an amen?

An interesting way to give

I get an email newsletter each day called "5 minutes of caring" from an organization called Cool People Care. It just has little tidbits of things you can do to care for others in about 5 minutes. Today there were several websites listed where you can easily find ways to give this holiday season, and one I really liked was called DonorsChoose. It is a place where teachers can go and post needs they have from their classrooms, from pencil sharpeners to books to curriculum supplies, and then people go on the website and can choose to fund all or part of the teacher's needs. It was something I thought all my "teacher friends" would like to see!

An argument for doggy clothing

Craig and I have an ongoing discussion about whether dogs should be allowed to wear clothes/costumes. I say if the doggy is cold and there's a cute sweater he could wear to keep him warm, why not? Craig says under no circumstances should this happen. I believe these pictures are an argument for dog clothing and accessories. This is Mosley James, Joy's son and Mandy's nephew. Would you agree?

What I'm thankful for

Happy Thanksgiving!

Here are just a few things I'm thankful for...

an incredible group of friends
terrific family
a healthy baby (so far)
that God knows my heart and loves my anyway
a house we love
gainful employment
good books and music to expand the boundaries of my experience

There are so many things to be thankful for that making a list seems a bit futile...but those are a few things. I am thankful for each of you who reads this because you have added so much to my life!

Top kid names at PV

Today at work, our database manager, Ron, ran me off a list of the most common names of kids at Pleasant Valley as my own personalized baby names list. It was so thoughtful--I loved it! Here are the top 10:

• Jacob
• Austin
• Zachary
• Hannah
• Madison
• Tyler
• Lauren
• Matthew
• Caleb
• Grace

Chronic(what?)cles of Narnia

You guys may have seen this video from Saturday Night Live before...I don't know why, but every time I watch it I think it's just about the funniest thing I've ever heard. I think this link is the easiest way to get there.

FYI, there is one bleeped out bad word, and if you let the video player keep going so it plays the Natalie Portman rap afterwards, there's lots more. We do not want to offend on the Nicole Swanson blog.