September 27, 2012

Deja Vu

Well its almost like being back in April!  Back to looking for a job and trying to find ways to fill my time.  Thankfully it isn't as hot as it was during the first few months we were here!  I can't believe how quickly fall got here-I'm definitely still adjusting to the temperature change!  But anywho, back to what I've been up to.

Like I said I've been looking for a job; there are some pros and cons to doing this again right now.  The good thing is I think I'm in a slightly better position this time only because I know a few more people and am a little more comfortable with the area.  The not so good thing is the timing.  Since it's getting to the end of the year a lot of places are slowing down hiring-especially non-profits as they find out their budgets aren't quite in the shape they thought they were.  But, I'm working really hard on staying positive about the whole situation.  I'm getting myself in the mindset that a job is a job and it doesn't have to be a non-profit job.  I can take any job and always do fundraising and volunteering on my own time.  I did take a part time retail job at Loft (a division of Ann Taylor).  Good news is I absolutely love their clothes!  Bad news is its retail which means kind of junk hours sometimes and it will make it really hard to go home for the holidays.  It isn't by any means a replacement for a full time job but it helps me bring in a little money and gives me somewhere to go and hopefully meet some new people (plus a sweet discount on clothes I love!).  Other than that I've jumped right back in to helping out at Gilda's Club.  It's funny timing for me to be able to help again because they have another big event coming up at the beginning of October-so I'll now have helped with both of their big events this year :)

Besides looking for a job Matt and I have been keeping ourselves pretty busy.  We've made some good headway on wedding planning and even done a project or two already :)  I think I've created a craft monster in Matt, but I like it.  Crafts were always a big part of my family growing up so I'm excited that Matt is interested in doing projects now too.  I have to laugh-my mom and sister were always crafty ladies and I just never fully got into it.  I now understand the draw of crafting-only took me 25 years to get there ;)  Other than wedding planning and projects we've mostly just been enjoying some time together with nothing to do but watch football and enjoy the cool weather.

We're about at that time of year where I need to start emptying out some of my potted plants and storing stuff for colder weather.  I'm thinking we'll maybe start that this weekend....maybe.  I'd also love to find a cider mill or pumpkin patch thing to go to.  I don't ever remember going to one to pick out pumpkins or anything.  I'm hoping we can do that this weekend.  Then, next weekend, I get to go back to Madison and visit my parents!  We're going to a UW football game (hopefully they play better!) and doing a few wedding things and just hanging out.  I'm so looking forward to being back in Madison-its so great there in fall.  Not to mention how excited I am to see my parents, especially since I most likely won't see them again until December at the earliest.  Hopefully these next couple of weeks will go great and will include some job leads!


September 12, 2012

A Mixed Few Weeks

Well the good news is-it hasn't been a month since my last post!  I say that's a positive.  

Other positives in the last few weeks: Matt and I got engaged!  So that's pretty exciting (and oddly stressful already).  We're both looking forward to planning the wedding together and obviously about getting married.  Even more positives-we've finished more projects!  I think I've created a craft project monster.  Matt actually asked for more craft projects the other weekend.  I thought I was in the twilight zone :)  I'm really pretty happy about that.  It's nice to have someone to work on things with you.  So here are a couple of pictures of what we did.  Nothing super challenging or exciting but still fun.

 First, here's the completed picture frame project from the last post:


The picture frame idea was from Pinterest as was how we hung them.  I beg you-if you're ever going to hang multiple pictures use this technique:  First we cut wax paper in the same shapes and sizes as the picture frames.  Then I marked on each sheet of wax paper where the nail hole was for the frame.  We played around with the wax paper sheets until we found an arrangement we liked (and that we wouldn't be nailing into electrical wires to hang up!).  So simple.  No extra nail holes to try and fill in or anything.  It was great.

This next one was a new project (and yes, it was from Pinterest too).  This one is a little different than the original idea I found (smaller and less ornate).  We just used a simple picture frame (spray painted it white), cut out some cardboard to fit, adhered burlap and the painted letter (that we painted and then roughed up to age a bit).  It was a couple of steps but really fun.  We're planning on giving this to some friends as a wedding/housewarming gift.

Now for the not so good news: I lost my job on Monday.  Very not good news given that we're trying to plan a wedding now.  I was given a kind of b.s. reason for getting fired (that I wouldn't continually work extra hours because that's not what I was contracted for) but I have a feeling the real reason is I challenged my boss' lack of ethics.  Apparently that is a no-no.  In all honesty I really didn't like that job and I didn't like the environment/culture.  But, I did like having a job (and a paycheck).  As for my boss, she got some instant karma in that my co-worker (the only other person besides the boss who worked there) put in her 2 weeks notice immediately after I was fired.  Her loss on both accounts in my opinion.  So now I'm back to the job hunt.  I've got some interviews set up for retail part time positions just to keep some extra income coming in.  I'm hoping something will break quickly so I can get back to work.  I'm to the point of trying to be optimistic about everything but it certainly is hard.  At least I am better off as far as connections in the area than I was when we moved here 5 months ago.  Hopefully this will all work out quickly.

August 21, 2012

Projects!

I really have no idea how the time is going by this fast!  It's crazy to think that in just over a week I'll have been here for 5 months.  I honestly wasn't sure I'd last this long!  Well I did and I've had to try and find ways to keep myself busy; hence the title of this post!  I promise I will write a post soon that is more about what's been happening in our lives rather than just what we've been doing.  Tonight just isn't that night.

Work has definitely helped with keeping me busy but it's also created a bit of a stressor too.  It isn't quite what I thought I was getting into.  The foundation I'm at and the leadership that is running it just isn't a good fit for me.  I fortunately/unfortunately figured that out pretty quickly.  The conundrum now is what to do about it.  I'm still working on that answer.  At least I have somewhere to go for 40 hours a week now! :)

Matt and I have been keeping busy on the weekends.  Mostly with commitments for family or friend's happenings.  We're kind of at that age where we're going to be having quite a few weddings to go to in the next couple of years and that's already started a bit.  So all of the peripheral social things have been good fillers on the weekends.  But...we've still managed to make some time for projects.

This pictures shows the fruits of all of our gardening!  Well not all but we did at least get a successful, albeit early, tomato harvest.  Matt even made a fantastic tomato/vodka/cream sauce one night with them.  A lot of our other plants got eaten up by some of the most disgusting and largest bugs/grubs I've ever seen.  I won't make you look at them.


I think all of the remaining projects came from ideas on Pinterest.  That has to be one of the most addicting and yet useful websites of all time.  I love it.  But anywho, back to the projects :)  This one is just a basic art/decor project.  I took a plain white canvas, painted the entire thing a light seafoam-y green color and then with the help of my Mom who found doilies, spray painted over doilies on the canvas.  It didn't turn out perfect but overall I'm pretty happy with it.  Plus....it's a non-pink addition to our bathroom :)

This project was helped along greatly by my Grandma and Mom who found all of these frames for me. This was also a nice joint Matt & Katie project.  Gotta love those!  All we did was cleaned up the frames and painted them!  It was a great way to spend a Saturday night (or it could have been a Friday night....either way the message there is we're pretty lame 20 somethings!) and I'm looking forward to putting pictures in these and hanging them up in our back hallway.

These two are my favorite.  I love how the detail of the frames looks with the paint.

 All of the finished products:

This project has to be one of the more lame things I've ever done on a Saturday night.  A couple of weekends ago Matt had a bachelor party out of town so I was on my own for the weekend.  Clearly this ended in me doing a whole heck of a lot of cleaning (and listening to the Harry Potter movie marathon on ABC family).  I find cleaning when I'm alone to be one of the most therapeutic things I can do.  Well this particular night I decided to tackle our bathroom floor grout.  Here's what it looked like before (notice how the grout is kind of an indeterminable color):

Here's what it looked like during the process.  The white stuff is a mixture of baking soda and bleach.  I found the recipe on Pinterest but then kind of went off course a little and just kept adding baking soda and bleach until the consistency was decent.  The whole process took a little over two hours....and we don't have a very big bathroom!  I started by sweeping and wiping down the floors and then tackled the grout with a toothbrush.  Then I went back over all of the grout with the toothbrush plus the paste.  By the time I made it to the front of the bathroom it was time to go all the way to the back and start wiping/scrubbing off the paste.  Time consuming but I think worth it.

The floor after all that scrubbing and kneeling on tile floors:


 The grout looks amazing!  I can actually tell what color it is.  I thought the best testament to the difference it made was when Matt came home and as soon as he walked in the bathroom asked if I cleaned the grout.  I didn't even tell him I was going to do it....he noticed completely on his own.  Amazing!

This next project was pretty fun.  Again, I found the idea on Pinterest but modified it a bit.  This is a present we put together for some friends of ours who just bought their first home.  It's a bit of a fixer upper so I changed the idea accordingly.  The party was a "stock the bar" themed housewarming (fantastic idea, by the way).  So we bought them an assortment of alcohol.  Each bottle has a label with a different "first".  For instance, the big bottle on the back left is a wine called "Evolution; Luck or Inspiration"  this became "First DIY Project Completed."  The bottle in the back middle is peppermint schnapps with hot chocolate, this is "First Snowfall."  The back right is a bottle of wine called "The Slammer" clearly this one had to be "First Night Married." :)  The front left is called "Simply Red"  this became "First Fight Her."  The middle front is Jack Daniels-this is for "First DIY Injury."  Last but not least is a beer called "Arrogant Bastard" that one is labeled "First Fight Him."  All in all I think it turned out pretty well.  They seemed to think it was pretty dang cute.

So even with work we've been keeping busy.  I've been neglecting the garden a bit but it's still chugging along okay on it's own.  I'm planning on taking an evening next week and giving it some TLC.   I'm glad I've got space and resources to do some of these projects now.  It's amazing how moving away from all of my family and friends has really reinforced just how much I am my parents' daughter :)


July 25, 2012

Settling In

Well I am now in my third week at the new job.  It's been going okay so far.  I definitely have had to get used to getting up and going to work every day again.  Like everything in life things aren't always what they appear with the new job but I'm still going to try and make the best of it and learn as much as possible.  Which brings us to a good quote- "If you want to be happy, be" Leo Tolstoy.  I am going to try and use this as a new motto (for lack of a better word). 

I think, as much as I've been trying to like it here, I've been comparing everything to Madison.  Sadly, I don't think we'll ever find another place as great in so many ways as Madison was and I just need to start recognizing that.  I do still think my goal will be to move back to Madison at some point (I really don't think there is a better place to raise a family) but for now I just need to be happy with where we are at.  I'm really hoping that since I have a job now Matt and I can start to explore more of what the Detroit area has to offer.  I'm thinking I'll like it here more and feel more at home once I know more about the city and it's cultural offerings.

We're kind of doing that this Friday.  Although we have already gotten a membership to the zoo and visited a couple of times, we will be going to our first zoo fundraiser this Friday.  It's called "Wild Beasts, Wild Wine"  It pretty much sounds like a wine tasting at the zoo-which sounds pretty fantastic to me!  After this weekend we have a few busy weekends ahead of us.  Matt has a bachelor party, we have a house-warming party in a different state, and we're planning a trip back to Madison all in August!  Then we have weddings for two fantastic couples to go to in September and October.  It's really crazy how time flies!  So, even though everything isn't living up to expectations or hopes, I'm still going to work hard on finding good things to focus on.

July 11, 2012

Catch Up!

Hello!  I hope everyone had a lovely 4th of July!  I know I enjoyed mine!  I was lucky enough to be able to travel back to my hometown and spend some much needed time with family and friends.  My sister and I (plus or spouses) were even able to pull off a surprise birthday party for my mom.  It all turned out really well.  As an added bonus-we had wonderful weather.  I was even able to rid myself of some of my extreme pasty white skin :)  It was so great to spend time with my family and just hang out.  I'm already looking forward to the next trip home.  All in all a nice little vacation before I started my new job.

I started my new position as a Development Specialist with a local hospital foundation on Monday.  Monday was mostly spent at the hospital doing orientation.  I finally got to the foundation offices around 2.  Overall not a bad first day.  I would have loved nothing more than to have come straight home and gone to bed (I'm not used to that long of a day anymore!) but while we were in Wisconsin our house lost power for over a day so we had no edible food left in our fridge.  So we got to go buy all new food Monday night...yay (yes that is sarcasm).  Monday was an even longer day than it normally would have been because I had to take Matt to get a rental car at 6:45 am because we got into a minor accident on Monday before we left for Wisconsin (we really had an eventful week!).  No one was hurt but Matt's car was only drive-able enough to get it to the repair shop.  We're hoping to have that back by Friday this week.

I'm getting back in the work mindset.  There are a few perks to this job so far.  First-I don't have to be there until 8:30.  Love this!  It's perfect, Matt only has to get up a couple minutes earlier so I don't mess with his morning routine, I don't have to rush around like crazy in the morning to be on time, and I avoid what little traffic there is going my direction.  The only downfall I've discovered so far....my office is FREEZING (although I do get my own office so I can't complain too much)!  When I got there this morning it was 66 degrees.  I am not a person who thrives in cold.  My space heater will definitely be making the journey to work with me tomorrow!

Overall I'm pretty excited to be back at work and doing something productive.  Well I may not be doing all that much productive at the moment but I'll get there eventually!  This is really the perfect job for me at the moment.  I'm already using databases that I need to learn better and I'm in the field I really wanted to be-nonprofit development.  I think this quote is fitting for my experiences over the past 3 months: "When nothing is sure everything is possible"-Margaret Drabble.  I had no idea what would happen when we decided to move here.  I definitely had my doubts and was starting to really think I made a mistake moving here.  Then I saw this job posting...and wouldn't you know it a month later I have almost the exact same job I was in the running for in Madison.  There were innumerable possibilities here and I like to think I did as best I could to open as many doors to possibilities as I could find.  I had so many people offer fantastic advice and support over the ast few months.  Thank you to everyone who's helped and supported me these past three months.  I wouldn't have made it through this with a shred of sanity without you :)

June 30, 2012

Hooray!!!

I got a job offer this week!!! Yay!  I've accepted the offer from a large hospital organization in a nearby town to be there Foundation/Development Specialist.  I'll be working at the hospital foundation with two other women (its a very small shop as far as development offices).  It's very much (well almost exactly really) like a job I was trying to get in Madison.  My start date will be July 9th-3 months to the day from Matt's first day :)  I will be working for a woman I met through AFP.  She's a mentor in the mentor program I joined and I just happened to sit next to her at the very first meeting.  I think I picked a fantastic seat at that first mentor program meeting-I sat between Debbie, the Gilda's Development Director and Elsa, my new boss.  I think this job will be a great way to learn a lot more about development fundamentals and I think I'll really like the ladies I work with.  It will definitely be a bit of an adjustment-heading back to work after 3 months of just hanging out :)  It is kind of crazy how quickly those three months went.  I feel like I did a pretty good job of keeping busy though.


Anyway-just wanted to update everyone on the good news!  I hope you're all having a great weekend!

June 25, 2012

Visitors

Sorry for the two week lag!  We had our first house guests!  My sister and grandmother left this morning after staying with us for a week.  Overall I think it was a fun week- although I think it was the hottest week of weather I've ever dealt with!

We did some catching up, a bit of sightseeing, and lots of cooking!  I don't think I've ever had that much food in my refrigerator.   We got to go to a Tigers baseball game on Tuesday.  The temperature at the opening of the first inning was 93 degrees...at 7:10pm!  Crazy.  It ended up being a pretty good game-Detroit won so that always helps.  We did some shopping the next couple of days and some things around our house.  Always nice to have my grandma around to help me figure out what to do with my plants and figure out old curtains.

Thursday we went out to dinner with Matt's parents.  I think that was a success as well.  We went to a pizza place we'd never been to before and it was really good.  I'm glad we've found a good place around here to go for pizza.  Only problem is it's very popular, doesn't seat a lot of people, and doesn't take reservations.  I think we figured out if we go before 6:30 we can get seated fairly quickly.  Friday Matt took half a day off of work and we went to The Henry Ford-a very interesting and huge museum in Dearborn.  It's truly amazing the things they have in that museum.  If you are ever in this area that should be on your must see list.  Right now they have a special exhibit going on-The Titanic.  Definitely worth getting the extra ticket for that.  It's crazy how much stuff they've been able to recover from the wreckage.

Saturday saw a trip to the zoo.  Well first the farmer's market, then the zoo.  The market here is like a somewhat sad little sister of the one in Madison but I'll take it anyway.  The zoo was great.  It was only in the mid 80's that day so it felt almost comfortable :)  We stayed there for about 4 hours so we could be there for the 3:00 giraffe feeding.  My sister got to feed a giraffe-her favorite animal.  She was like a kid at Christmas.  Definitely worth hanging out for an extra hour.  Sunday was a nice day around the house.  We didn't do much-just kind of enjoyed the cooler weather (down to about 75-ish) and enjoyed a bit more time together.  Matt and I made a nice dinner on the grill and my sister made a nice dessert.  Then we finished off the evening and visit with a nice movie.  All in all a nice week.

Now I'm back to my days of having the house to myself.  I'm hoping something will come up on the job front soon.  And in the meantime-I have a trip planned to Wisconsin for 4th of July coming up soon to look forward to!