Off to Vegas!

Yes, that is a Downton Abbey calendar behind me!

All ready to go to Vegas for two and a half days! I'm only taking the purse with me since it's such a short trip and I'm too cheap to pay for luggage. :) Hooray for traveling light!

Painting Our Bedroom

Yesterday I decided to paint one wall in our bedroom. Robbie helped me pick out the color, buy the supplies, and move the furniture then I busted it out in just over an hour including all the prep-work. The key to my success in finishing so quickly? This bad boy:

It is the most wonderful tool ever invented for painting. I didn't even have to tape off the baseboards because this tool makes such nice smooth edges. For $5 it was totally worth it!

This trim work took me all of 20 minutes to get two coats up! I will never paint again without that little tool for cutting in the edges. (I would like to point out that Robbie keeps referring to the edges of the wall as "margins" because he is a Dental nerd.)

This is the first coat of paint.

And the final result! The color is Mosaic Tile by Behr.


I'm still deciding on colors for our office/future baby room but now I don't feel like I'm in such a rush since I got a little bit of painting out of my system.

Summer's a Comin'!

I love Colorado weather, but April was really annoying this year compared to other years. We kept having 2 really nice days of weather followed by a couple days of snow storm ("blizzard" for the out-of-staters) and it just kept flip flopping like that back and forth. But I just checked the forecast and it's supposed to be sunny and in the mid-70's from now until Tuesday evening! Woo hoo!! It's actually such a nice day out today that I was able to pull out my bicycle and go on a four mile ride. I rode down the street to Starbucks to get an iced peach green tea lemonade and brought it back to share with Robbie.

sluuuurrrrp!

As a kid, I always liked the winter time the best and had plans to move to Alaska when I grew up (I think this idea came mostly from my love for the "Julie of the Wolves" book series). But the last couple years I've been enjoying warm weather and being in the outdoors so much more that I just can't wait for summer to come.

Robbie's second semester will be coming to a close in less than two weeks so he's got a lot of studying to do right now. The semester ends on Wednesday the 8th of May and then summer semester will start up on Monday the 13th (I am a little disappointed that he won't have a longer break than 5 days in between). This summer will be somewhat intense too because he's taking his written boards in July.

In spite of the fact that Dental School won't be easing up over the summer, I'm still looking forward to a lot of things including:

• hot weather
• a Fourth of July BBQ with our friends
• swimming in our pool
• bike rides
• having our windows open to let in the delicious fresh air
• eating ripe watermelon
• getting a little sun so I'm not quite so pale
• just being outdoors in general

The only things I'm not looking forward to about summer are:

• Wasps (our apartment complex seems to have an abundance of them in the summer and they all seem target me and no one else)
• Mosquitoes (that carry the dreaded West Nile Virus!! duh duh duh!!)

In other news, I'm flying out to Las Vegas this Monday to hang out with my sister for her birthday. I checked the weather and it's going to be 98 degrees so she told me to make sure to bring my bathing suit. I'm especially looking forward to going to Firefly (a wonderful tapas restaurant) while I'm there to have warm spinach salad, bacon wrapped dates, and sangria. YUM!

This is us the last time I went to visit her. Yes, we're crazy.

Ikea

One of the benefits of living in Aurora is that I am now only 20 minutes away from Ikea! Yesterday, I had some time in the afternoon so I took a little trip over there just to look around. I was able to use my "Ikea Family" card to get a free coffee as well so that's always nice.

The first time I visited an Ikea was actually when I was visiting my sister in Istanbul, Turkey in 2007 and I have loved it ever since. I can't tell you how excited I was when they announced that they were building one in Centennial, Colorado (basically that's south Denver). I'm not that into shopping, but I am a big fan of Scandinavian style furniture and I love meatballs so basically Ikea and I were made for one another.

I won't lie... one of my main purposes for visiting Ikea was to scope out prices on baby furniture, especially the cribs. Did you know that you can buy a crib at Ikea for $99? To be fair, I was checking out kitchen tables and outdoor furniture as well. I refuse to buy anything big without Robbie seeing it first and agreeing that we should get it so I only spent $3.19 on a set of lint roller refills. It was still fun to look around and see what they had that was new since the last time I went. Hopefully I can get him to come back with me sometime soon to see some really inexpensive outdoor furniture that would work well on our patio.

How I'm Feeling Today

I just can't get over the looks on their faces!

One of the best love stories ever told. And they didn't even need to use words.

Food with Friends

We just renewed our lease this morning which makes me really excited for three reasons: 1) I love our apartment; 2) It means we can know for sure that we won't be moving again until at least next May; and 3) This means I can start painting!! Woo hoo!! Our lease allows us to paint as long as we restore it to the original color (white) before we move out. I was holding off in case we decided to move somewhere else but now that I know we'll be here another year, I feel like I can commit to a new color. I'm one of those weirdos who really love to paint and find it more therapeutic than bothersome. As I get closer to deciding on colors, I will have to post  a few pictures of what I'm thinking of doing. 

This evening we're having dinner with two other couples we met through Dental School. Instead of making one big meal though, we're all bringing finger foods to share. This can sometimes be a little challenging because a lot of finger foods have gluten (which Robbie cannot eat). Here's what I've decided to make:

Caprese Skewers with Balsamic Drizzle

This is her picture, not mine. Hopefully mine will look half as good!

Spinach-Artichoke Cheese Fondue with Veggies for Dipping

 
This is a copycat recipe from The Melting Pot! They actually won't let me use their photo, but click on the title to take you to their website.

Vanilla-Pumpkin Dip

 Her photo, not mine. I bought gluten free cookies and fruit for dipping!

I will give an update tomorrow about how all of these turned out. I unfortunately don't have a pumpkin to serve the dip in, so it won't look quite as snazzy. Also, I am attempting to make the fondue in my crock pot so we'll see how that goes! 

Just looking at these photos is making me hungry already! One of the other gals is bringing homemade white strawberry-lemon sangria. *so excited!!!* Both of my friends are really good cooks so any time we get together I feel like we have such amazing food! I enjoy baking a lot more than cooking, so I'm striving to keep up with the delicious goodies they always bring.

New Blog Pages

I just added a couple new tabs at the top of the blog. Check them out and give me ideas for other things I should add! I'm so proud of myself for figuring out how to add them all on my own! haha