Sunday walks

We've been spending too much time on our butts so out of the house we go. Time to hit the trails!

This is why I don't ride bikes. Rouge trees everywhere.

Show me the Ospreys! Waaaaaaaay off in the distance you can see the nests on platforms.

Investigating the water. Yep, it is wet.

More birds! My internet research tells me these are Great egrets.

These two parks are less than a 10 minute drive from our house. It's pretty great (much like the egrets).

Snowy trees

Waiting for the bus in the cold.

Taking photos of everything covered in snow for the blog.

Work break

Take a look at your office plant and pretend you're in tropical jungle. 

That was nice.

Ok, now back to work!

An Early Birthday Treat

I woke up this morning an icy, slushy mess. Not exactly my ideal commuting conditions. I shouldn't complain when the bus stop is right across the street. Our front steps were completely frozen over and I held on to the railing for dear life. I'm a klutz and if anyone is going to take a digger on some icy stairs it will be be. We safely made it to the bus stop and the bus was on time.

I spent most of my day at work on the phone with IT trying to figure out why our new copy machines aren't 3 hole punching. This is a feature we use often when we're preparing exhibit books for trial. I got assigned to someone new at the IT company and he had no idea what he was doing. It was very frustrating. So far we're going on two days of this and he managed to remove a feature that I use on the printer rather than solving the hole punching issue. I ended up sending an email to one of the IT managers asking if someone else can be assigned to help since I don't have the time to spend a third day on this. I had nicely suggested to new IT guy to ask for help from someone else in the company since this has been going on for two days but new IT guy brushed me off saying they would be having the same issues. At that point I sent the email asking for help from someone else.

After that frustrating day Derek and I had to shovel before everything freezes over tonight. It didn't take too long between the two of us but that snow was wet and heavy. I'm considering that my workout for the day. I'm thinking a snow blower might be purchased soon. Dinner was at least taken care of with leftover meatball stew. The perfect post-shoveling meal.

My birthday is on Thursday so I decided to treat myself to some early birthday gifts. Since I'm spending a lot more time at home and now have more room, I've been wanting to start doing puzzles again. I use to do them with my mom when I was younger and always loved it. We'd have a cup of tea and sit down at the puzzle table in the living room and work on a puzzle. Usually there was a cat or two in the way. My mom would leave a decoy box on the table to try to get them off the puzzle. She still has the same folding green table and still does puzzles. 

I picked out these two from Amazon.

The first puzzle just reminds me of where I wish I was. On a vacation in a colorful house overlooking the water. The second puzzle claims to have a magical mind-blowing twist ending. How could I not get it?

I also got myself a puzzle matt incase I need to move a puzzle I'm working on. Sadly I do not have a cat to sit in a box while I do a puzzle but maybe if I just leave a box hanging around a kitty will magically appear. Is that the magical mind-blowing twist ending? Automatic five stars if that's the case.

I got two new games as well for us to play at home. A card game called The Fox in the Forest and a game called Chronology where you try to guess where a historic event falls in your cards or "timeline". I like history so it should be a fun game for me. Derek is still on the fence about it but he'll play it.

So that's what I bought. Puzzles and games. I really know how to go all out. 

Long weekend

This carving was done by Derek's grandmother. I love it. It reminds me of this bar we used to go to in Cambridge called River Gods.

Please Give a Big Warm Welcome to 2021

We made it to 2021! I hope your New Years was fantastic even if it was at home on your couch. This extrovert didn't mind staying home to ring in the new year. We saved money, didn't have to deal with crowds and I could wear my pjs the whole night. Sounds like a win win to me.

Now the holidays are over and it's back to work. I think we can all agree that no one wanted to go back to work on Monday. 

I bought a new planner for 2021. It's a blank one where you fill in the dates which is great since most of the planners I did find started in the summer of 2020. As someone who's very into journaling right now you would think I would jump on the bullet journal trend. I just haven't been able to muster the energy for that right now. A simple planner should work out just fine for me.

I usually don't set specific new years resolutions. I like to think of things I want to improve or focus on for the new year. This year I'm focusing on reducing my anxiety and being more creative.

Tell me how you celebrated the end of 2020 and what you're looking forward to in the new year.

Where have I been

Took a bit of an unexpected blog break. A lot has happened since the summer. After weeks of working from home in a small one bedroom apartment, we decided to buy a house. Apparently we weren't the only ones who had this idea. House hunting is stressful and I really don't plan on doing it again any time soon. I wasn't prepared for how emotional it would be to lose out on a house and we lost out on a few. One house we lost out on because the seller's agent was "overwhelmed" with the amount of offers and picked one to show to his seller because they had a dog. Our offer was higher and we could have gotten a dog! I don't think the seller's know they weren't presented with the highest offers. Talk about a bad agent. That house wasn't meant for us but at the time it stung. We stayed in our price range and the house we ended up with has most of the features we were looking for. We closed in October and are slowly getting things in order. Yes there are still unpacked boxes. I fully admit to being a procrastinator. 

I did find the time to start decorating for Christmas. I'm going to leave these snowflake lights up well after the holidays. 

Let me tell you the story behind these GIGANTIC ornaments. I thought they were normal sized and well as you can see they are not. Derek hates them, they're growing on me. When I found the box on the porch I could tell someone had opened it to see if there was anything worth taking and they decided they didn't want some giant ornaments. None of my other packages have been touched since we moved in. Now I'm paranoid about my packages being stolen. It's not a bad neighborhood at all but I guess it is the season for porch pirates.

My mom gave me the tree. She said it was too big for her apartment. My living room ceiling is not low so I think you have an idea of how tall this is. Currently our living room doesn't have any furniture. The couch is backordered until February (ordered in September!). We do have a finished basement where our old futon and loveseat is so we're not completely seatless. Maybe in a future blog post I'll talk about how my wall got damaged by a dresser delivery. 

Another decoration from my mom. It's in the dining room on the sideboard.

Very proud of how this wrapping job came out. This is a Lego set for my nephew. I need to mail out my gifts this week. Christmas is really sneaking up on me. Wasn't it just Thanksgiving? This table is in the kitchen and was left by the previous owners which was very nice of them considering how long it took for our dining room set to be delivered.

Yeah, pretty much sums up the past few months. I took this photo in Barnes & Noble to send to someone as part of a little inside joke.

I know I didn't show many photos of the actual house but I'll post more once I feel like things are more put together. It's an old farmhouse built in the 1860s. I was actually shocked when I saw the year it was built on the listing. There's been some renovations done by prior owners but if you look closely you can tell that it's an older house. The first night in the new house we thought we heard knocking at the back door when we were in the kitchen. Turns out it was either the washing machine or a ghost. There was no one at the door.