thanks!

Tuesday marked 3 years of being married to my wonderful husband.  ...and his family.  I LOVE the Steichens.  They are the family who are all so smart, well-rounded, and talented.  Seriously - this is the type of family that spontaneously gathers around the piano and sings (yet are still somehow all very normal people) at the holidays....or really anytime 3 or more of them are gathered.  I'm pretty sure I'm the black-sheep of the family in that arena.

My mother-in-law is fabulous.  In fact, her nickname is FMIL - which pre-wedding stood for "Future Mother In Law," and 3 years later we both still use it on cards, etc. and say the F stands for Fabulous.  She once told me that if she was ever getting on my nerves the F could stand for something completely different.  Ha!

Anyway, my FMIL completely read my mind this week, and got me some beeyootimous new placemats.  Um...I mean "us."  She got US some new placemats.  

I was feeling a bit artsy fartsy, so I went ahead and made a homemade thank-you card.  Forgot to take a pic of the inside.  Whoops.

....Yep, another door in the background.

Stinky.

Right.  I should buy a new sketchbook.  But you see....I had one.  It contained many things that I've already posted on here, and many many things that were not.  And then Mona got sick the other day.  Really sick.  While we were gone, she managed to break out of her crate.  And so when we returned, the room in which she was contained...contained what her stomach used to contain.  That was the same room that contained my sketchbook...and um...the sketchbook got it.  Got it good.  Apparently Mona thinks my drawings are great!  ....for her to poop on!

So, because I have no sketchbook, and because Mark was talking about the Babinski Reflex while his feet were in my lap, you now can be grossed out by this lovely woman.  Her name is Babs.

Might I add...this was a challenge for the both of us.

Early Valentines

After being snowed in for a week my artistic inspiration has been taking shape in drawings such as a bottle with a human inside that has their face pressed uncomfortably against the glass.  I didn't really want to subject you all to that bizarreness.  This is my online sketchbook, afterall, not a therapy session.

I did, however, get bored enough to find an exacto knife to make myself a stencil (damask, of course) out of scotch tape covered paper.  Here are a few products resulting from cabin fever, my love for vintage wallpaper, a perfect husband, a gold paper plate (on which the paint for the stencil was), and a black sharpie.

Early Valentines for Mark.  He is, by the way, the greatest possible husband that can exist.  He - in his boredom - (while I was stenciling paper), managed to wash and fold everything in our house.  I mean everything.  Our clothes, towels, the dogs, the couch, everything.  He's the greatest.  As Holly Hunter said in Raising Arizona: "I looove him sooo much!"

Er...babe, if you're reading this...."I loooove you soooo much!"

birthday boy

Mark's birthday is today!  Happy b-day, love!  

We had a fun morning that included a little open-house brunch.   I'm stuffed, now.  And it was the 1st time we used our china since being married.  I knew we'd need it one day.  Screwdrivers (less girlie than mimosas), Peach punch, Coffee Cake, fruit salad, "Lazy Chile Rellenos," Egg Casserole, Mo's famous Cheese Grits (mom, yours are better than mine), and DoubleShot Coffee, (of course), were shared with friends that stopped by to wish Mark a happy one.  I should have taken my camera out then, huh?  Oh well.

Ashley and Ryan even brought the doggies a balloon!  Thanks, guys!

Well...I think it was actually for Mark.  But he got enough stuff.

spectacle

So, Mark and I definitely have a routine in the morning.  It begins with both of us lying there pretending to be sleeping while we are really just waiting for the other to get up and go hit snooze on Mona.  Mona's our dog...the newest member of the Steichen clan that wakes up whining (and/or barking) at 7am on the dot every day.  I know, I know..7am is sleeping in for some of you folks.  Well I think you are deprived.

Anyway, this morning, I was the one who caved first, but by this point the noise had escalated quite a bit, so I was in a hurry to get to the dog to quiet her down.  In the darkness, I didn't notice that I was completely blind without my contacts in, so I didn't even think about grabbing my glasses.

Instead, I stumbled across the hall to practice the "quiet" command with Mona-the-destroyer-of-sleep, and immediately felt bad for cursing her under my breath.  It looked as if she had gotten sick in the bottom of her crate.  Poor thing!  Must have been that Mento I let her eat the night before.  No wonder she wanted out so badly.  I loudly called out to still-pretending-to-sleep-Mark that our little pup was sick, and stumbled back across the hall to grab my glasses so that I could survey the damage to the crate and the dog.  Only, with my eyes on, the puddle of sick I had seen only seconds before had been replaced with Mona's rope-bone.  She hadn't gotten sick after all.  She was just being a brat, and I am very blind.

Love.

I used to think I would end up a lonely old lady.

Then I met Mark.  

*Update: Mark would like to let you know that he is not flipping you off.  It's an index finger, we promise.

Tetris.

Mark hooked up the Nintendo and we spent a little while playing this evening.  [ Actually, he's still playing as I type this. ]  And when I say Nintendo, I do mean the old school Nintendo...not Wii, not 64, not Super...just plain ole Nintendo.   With big plastic cartridges.  You know, the ones you might have to remove and blow on to make the game work.

Trivia Challenge:  Quick, what's the Contra Code to get infinite lives?

Anyway.  While Mark played Tetris to the dulcet tones of Tchaikovsky's Electric Boogaloo, and Bailey sat on the floor and gazed lovingly at him, I took the opportunity to do a couple of gesture drawings in my sketchbook.

Later on, I got to punch Bald Bull and Don Flamenco in the face.

Nakedness Prevention.

Mark and I try hard to be adults, but sometimes we don't quite nail it.  We currently have every single item of clothing we own in piles on our bedroom floor.  They are mostly clean...just not put away, and certainly not folded.

Every so often after spending too many hours on cleaning the house just so guests won't run screaming, we decide we've got to get it together.  One of these well-intentioned planning sessions took place at least 6 months ago, and I decided to get creative with a ruined placemat and little hand-drawn cards to create a chore chart for us.  Well...quite on par with who we are, this unfinished project ended up in a plastic bag in the closet in the computer room underneath piles of gift bags, a slinky, and a hot pink wig.  Since we recently cleaned out said closet, I found the remnants and decided to put it to work immediately.  Scrapping the original plan, I found a wire hanger, added the charms, and voila...a chore abacus.

Whoever gets to it first gets dibs on what they want to do, whether it's to be the "Top Chef," do a little "Dust Detection," or follow through on both the washing AND folding of "Nakedness Prevention."  Once we've completed the few chores for that day, we slide the charms from the "Bring it" side of the hanger to the "Oh it's already been broughten" side.  Now if only the actual chores were as fun as the keeping track.

Butterfly Effect.

Mark and I recently got two new chairs for our house.  I love them.  They are salmony-shrimpy (I'm not even a big seafood fan) silk chairs with an orchid pattern on them.  Loooove them.  Anyway, because of these chairs going into our living room, we had another chair that was getting the boot into the computer/dog room.  Just a simple move of one chair into an adjacent space...no big deal.

...So after an entire weekend spent arranging/rearranging and cleaning out an overflowing closet, we still don't have the chair in there.

In the midst of the Great Computer Room Project of 2011, I ran across this little painting sketch of my hubby I did back when we were dating.  It's representative of his very favorite activity: napping on a couch... and I'm pretty sure this is what he really wanted to be doing instead of a 2 day home makeover.

Dogs

My husband (Mark) and I have two dogs.  Bailey, who was inherited from a friend of mine, and Ramona, a puppy we adopted in October.  Gosh they are cute.  And brats too.

This is my view of Bailey from the couch anytime Mark goes in the kitchen.  ["Please Mark...please give me cookies!"]