I Want I Want!

Lamp
If you have not yet clicked on this link because you aren't sure what it holds - if it will be a waste of your time, something you aren't interested in, or something you will have to explore in order to find what was actually meant to be linked - have no fear! I understand. I also do not like to click on mostly unidentified links. I am often not interested in what you're interested in. I came to your blog to see what you think about something, not just see the thing itself. That being said, I think you'll want to check this out.
I do have one word of warning, though: you may face an overwhelming desire to find out where in the world you can purchase one of these (or find the evil person who posted it on the internet when you really actually can't buy it and have them jailed).
I love this item because it is both technologically innovative and visually/emotionally pleasing.
Did I mention I really want one?

Another year, another year older

As Josh and I attempt to join the real, responsible world of adults, we have found it necessary to purchase things on credit cards. It's something you have to be good at if you want to be a homeowner. (Please try to envision the faces I am making.) If you have spoken with us recently, you might have heard us mention how kind of irritating and sort of backward we find it that we have to be sort of irresponsible to be considered responsible.
Hmph!
Well, it's not all that bad. We had a bigger than normal Christmas - one idea for putting things on a credit card. But then we paid it off. Oops. So, we now have a new addition to our living room! A beautiful, not ghetto, leather couch! Great fabulousness!
It fits us both with room for more. It does not require a slipcover. It has it's own pillows. It will be easy to clean. It has legs so we can clean under it. It fits in the room. It is ... what you've all been waiting for ... comfortable to sit on.
Welcome, brown couch!

Schreck's Year End Review

Daily Life and Highlights: it's good to remember.

January: Not much work for either of us - God does a whole lot of providing and sustaining. Picked up big blue desk! Josh started teaching Biblical Background and the Big Picture.
February: still not working much - learning to go with God's plan rather than ours. Spend Valentine's at the beach and went snowboarding with the college group.
March: Josh started working more, I get a part time job - God knows what we need and what we can handle (part time is all I can handle). We start watching kiddos at church Wednesday nights. Started off the soccer season early with a pre-season Timbers game.!
April: planning for Women's Retreat worship consumed most of my spare time - so joyous and rewarding. Josh spent a lot of time working on sunday school and his photography business plan.
May: Josh continues to play indoor soccer. I help plan and attend various showers/parties for friends getting married and having babies and Grandma and Grandpa's 60th anniversary. Timber's season starts.
June: Weddings, soccer and Sizzle! Sunday school session ends, and I take a new route - 4 weeks of floral design classes.
July: Josh has the month off work; I take two weeks off for vacation in SC (again we see God's blessing). HP6 comes out!
August: Three camping trips (college, 1 year anniversary, and all church). Josh's work season starts with a bang, I pick up more hours at work, and we contemplate house buying.
September: lots of work. We get a gym membership and spend our evenings between the gym and friend's houses.
October: Work gets crazier as I take on a new role, Josh picks up more responsibility, and we start working dances.
November: More work. We get the official "okay" to go ahead with our plans for a college service at Temple. We take a mini vacation over Thanksgiving and talk about how to trust God when there's a lot going on as much as when there's little).
December: Work, various Christmas fun, and lots of planning for Night Church and Bramble (floral design business starting soon!)

Cute Art that I Love

I found these artists on apartment therapy. Love their happy spacey enthnic looking art!
APAK.

Fun Hat Day!

In order to make the holidays a little brighter under the flourescent lights and beige-y grey cubicle walls, our social committee and supervisors come up with raffles and competitions.

Today we have fun hat day! The winner gets Chipotle gift certificates. I hope I win.

Oh Fashion

Browsing fashion this week, I found some pants I love (rust colored, opposite a very interesting dress). I do own a pair of low slung wool pants with pleats, and have more recently acquired a skirt in a similar style, but I think I just can't get enough.
I also love most of the shoes in this series, and the multitude of bracelets.
A little scared of those haircuts, though... but of course, I love the hats.

Ideas for Winter

Winter doesn't always provide us with the easiest solutions for centerpieces or flower arrangements. Sticks and branches are fun, and there's the ubiquitous poinsettia, but between keeping the regular house plants happy (ours are forced into a small window sill that is too cold and they do not like it) and keeping christmas tree needles off the carpet, who has time to search for interesting flowers? When there isn't much inspiration on the walk from the house to the bus, and the weather pushes planting, dirt, or really anything alive, to the back of your mind, the ever pleasant bouquet gets lost.
Here is a fantastic idea that I think I will try as soon as I find a teacup and have a chance to run by Home Depot or Portland Nursery.

More Christmas

I've been complaining right and left that I don't really get Christmas this year because I only get the 25th off. I feel like Bob Crachit for goodness sake! Lame. This is normal for most people, I know, but I'm used to being in school and having Christmas break - time to bake cookies and make crafts and watch Christmas movies. So far all I've done is helped make one batch of cookies, watched the new A Christmas Carol (which was fantastically fabulous), and made Christmas cards. It's fun, but I'm just greedy. I'm like the opposite of Scrooge - MORE CHRISTMAS CHEER PLEASE! Anyway, it makes me a little crazy and Tiny Tim might not be down with my manic excitement about the season, so I'm trying to focus on the awesome Christmasy things I actually have gotten to do.
Such as... Gospel Christmas!
Tracy and I had a lovely time getting our soul on! Mmm. Yes, Jesus! Talk about passion and the birth of the Savior! (Also Christmasy is the Schnitz and getting dressed up for the freezing cold... I wish I had a picture of us all decked out.)

More Exotic

Nativity scenes have sheep, goats, camels... sometimes a pig or a donkey for variety. At The Grotto, while they don't have a live nativity, they do have a petting zoo near the nativity and it has more than sheep and donkies - they have a lama!

(They also have a lot of really cool lights, but I haven't emailed those pictures off my phone yet.)

Not Thriving

I'm a temp. It doesn't always feel like it, as I work the same hours, answer the same questions, and fulfill the same duties as the actual employees at my job. One of the main differences and drags of being a temp is that I do not have a permanent cubicle. I move around. That isn't all so bad, because I get to know more of the people I work with by moving around (and really get to know the ones who have vacated their desk for a day or a week by staring at their stuff all day). Some people are clean. Some people are messy. Some people are organized. Some people are creative. Some people have amazing talent with orchids. Some people are obsessed with their kids/grandkids.
Some people have really nasty weird plants. Or... one person does.


Who does this to their plans? Why??
It was gross and distracting. Thankfully I had a window at this desk so I wasn't so inclined to look at this poor plant all week.

Kick-Starting the Season

Decorations! Lights, candles, greens... Mmm... I love it.


Josh and I get a little shopping done early at the Rebuilding center.
And then Josh takes me to Cinetopia to see "A Christmas Carol" in 3D. Amazing!

To Get You in the Mood...

...for Christmas.
:D
The Nutcracker

(with beatboxing)

We Eat Meat

Steak is not something we eat often. And it's not something I really enjoy *that* much. But this? This was good.
Thanks to Lance, we had a lovely dinner of deer steak!

Well, at least it tastes good?

My toothpaste claims it offers "protection against acid attack": one more for the list of things I never should have had to worry about.

Medieval

My new reason to giggle (thanks to Kristin D and my insanely geeky English Stained Glass book from the library):


We like to call it "Jesus gets His rap fingers out"

Horticultural Update

Our spider plant continues to grow! It's arm is now rather threatening, or it would be if it weren't all covered in flowers.
Also please note my rather sad -but evident!- attempt at fall decorating (I also have a couple of chestnuts, acorns and oak leaves) and our beautifully growing aloe plant.

More Leaves...

A Walk in the Park

From our weekend walk around Laurelhurst.

Learning is Habitual

I don't know if it comes from being taught at home growing up, having been an English/Art History major where books, even novels, are a student's primary source of learning/education/homework/etc, or simply from having this be my first year after about 18 out of my 25 years of life where Fall was not synonomus with "Back to school", but I find myself unable to keep myself from rabid reading these days.
In the last couple of weeks I've read ravenously. Some of the speed that has gone in to reading these books has come, in part, from the fact that they are not all exactly sitting in the stacks at the library waiting for me to request them to be drug up from the depths (as is usually the case). We've had some things on hold for weeks that finally came - and then I was stuck in a long, non-library book I wanted to finish, so the race was on: finish the non-library book fast enough to be able to read the others, and make sure to read the last ones really fast since Josh had to read them all first, too. Crazy.
So, the last few books were read as follows:
Inkspell, C. Funke
A Monstrous Regiment of Women, L. R. King
The Case of the Late Pig, M. Allingham
A Wind in the Willows, Grahame
Birthing the Elephant, Abarbanel and Freeman
The Unlikely Disciple, K. Roose

Fog!

[I suppose I should mention that usually I can see not only these buildings in their entirety, but also the river and downtown.]