Happy New Year 2013!

Wow!  I can't believe it's 2013 already.  2012 both flew by and crawled at a snail's pace, at the same time.  How is that possible?

2012 was really a watershed year for me.  In January, I became a mother.  No matter what anyone tells you to the contrary, becoming a parent truly changes everything.  My attitude towards my work changed; my relationships with my husband, my parents, my family and my friends changed; and my already-hectic schedule got completely annihilated.  I am exhausted and, as soon as I think I have the stage that Sawyer's in figured out, he moves on to something entirely new - and I have to learn a whole new way to approach things (cases in point: feeding, sleeping, play, babyproofing, diaper changing). But I wouldn't trade it for the world. 

In 2012, I also said goodbye to my dearest friend - my beloved Siberian Husky, Kayla.  At 12 years and 7 months, on the most gorgeous first day of fall, she completed her journey here on Earth with us.  After finding out that she had a massive liver tumor that was causing her to not eat, Chris and I made the most difficult decision to euthanize her on September 21, 2012.  Although Chris and Sawyer accompanied us to the vet's, at the end, it was me and her together when she died.  I'm crying just now thinking about it - how sad and peaceful and painful that moment was.  I try to take comfort in knowing that we made the right decision and that she wouldn't have wanted to be in pain any more.

So we went from a family of three to a family of four, then back to a family of three.  And then in October, we moved from our old apartment in Virginia Highlands to a single-family, split-level home in Decatur, complete with a huge backyard.  Chris and I have spent what seems like every weekend since then organizing, decorating, or just trying to figure this new house out.  I revamped Sawyer's playroom in time for the New Year - pictures up soon!

Chris and I also celebrated five years of marriage this past October.  I can't believe that we've been married for half a decade, and together for eight years.  I am really truly blessed to have him as my partner in this life and as Sawyer's dad.  He's pretty awesome.

This year, I also celebrated four years as an attorney with my Agency by starting a new position with a different group of clients and colleagues.  While I'm still in the same office, it's refreshing to work in a different area of law and be challenged by a new learning curve.  Oh - and last night, Congress passed a bill to avoid the fiscal cliff, which means I won't be furloughed until at least March.  So that's good.

What's in store in 2013?  Your guess is as good as mine.  If I've learned one thing over the years, it's that you can't plan for the future.  Instead, I've got a few goals:

• Train for and run at least one half marathon.  Planning on doing the Country Music Half in Nashville in April.  Going to start the 10-week Fitness Magazine half training next week (1/7).
• Drink 10 glasses of water per day.
• No alcohol in the month of January.
• Limit my Diet Coke intake to one per day - but I really want to quit entirely.
• Limit consumption of animal protein to twice per week, and avoid dairy and eggs as much as possible.
• Limit processed food and refined sugar intake.
• Go on date nights with Chris at least once per month.
• Turn off iPad at least one hour before bed and actually read a book.
• Travel to Europe with Chris.
• Learn how to use my new digital SLR camera to take pretty photos.
• Refinish bedroom furniture.
• Go out to lunch with a "mommy friend" at least once per month.
• Go to the 2013 Presidential Inauguration.  We're planning on doing this while we're in Maryland celebrating Sawyer's first birthday with my family, so half-check already!
• Weekly family walks to reconnect and unplug.
• Blog at least once per week.

That's it for now.  Generally, I want to stop being so frazzled and start treating my body like the temple it ought to be (but is not currently as a result of a combination of pregnancy, post-baby-stress, lack of sleep, too much junk food and lack of exercise).  My temple needs some deep cleaning!

Holiday Wreath

I've just been on kind of a DIY holiday kick lately.  Next up: my Christmas wreath.  I made a wreath almost ten years ago that, while it looked good in its heyday, has now lost its luster.  So I decided to make a new one.  Inspired by the South - magnolia blooms, moss, and - of course - a houndstooth ribbon in honor of the Crimson Tide!

I purchased the twig wreath, berries, moss, and blooms at Michael's, and the ribbon at Hancock Fabric, all for around $30.  Plus lots of hot glue and floral wire.

Salt Dough Christmas Ornaments

Well, we are finally (somewhat) settled in to our new house. The tree is up, lit, and decorated. All that we needed was a handmade ornament by our little one! Yesterday, I used the recipe I had pinned from Home Made Simple to make salt dough. I got Bug all ready to press his hands in the dough. Here's the funny thing about 10-month-olds: while they want to put their hands on everything, they do not necessarily want you to put their hands on anything. After some mild baby-wrangling, I managed to get several decent hand impressions. Then I punched a small hole in the top of the ornaments, and baked them for three hours. After Bug went to bed and the ornaments were dry, I painted them. After they were dry, I added to cute ribbon. Ta-da! Ornament for the tree!

Places of the Heart Tutorial

Our family may be moving soon.  Bug is getting bigger, and will be crawling soon.  Our current place - a 2 bedroom, 1 bath rental condo in VaHi - is way too small for us now, and the walls keep closing in day by day.

So I've been thinking a lot lately about decorating a hypothetical new place.  I have an obsession with pinterest.com - I get so much inspiration there.  I saw this piece from Mini Moz and thought, "Hey! I could do that!"  So I did.  And I think it will be perfect in our new home (wherever and whenever that might be).

Here's how you make your own:

First . . . Decide how many places you want to put on your "map."  I think four would be the max, but you could do as few as one.  Just depends on you and your life.  I did four, so that's what I'll do in the tutorial, but you'd need to adjust your spacing for less than four.

Second . . . Go get your maps at the USGS Map Store. Click on "Map Locator and Downloader."  Then type in the location you want in the search box. A red marker will appear for the maps available for your area; click it and download the 7.5 minute map.  Click the "Add Files to Bundle and Download" button:

Once you've retrieved all of the maps you want, click the "View Download Cart" button, which will take you to this page:

Click "Download."  This will give you a zip file with all of your maps.  They're all pretty large, so be patient as they download. (I'm assuming you know how to open and unzip files).

Third . . .  Let's get started with your maps!  Open whichever one you want to work with first.  The process will be the same for all maps, so just pick one and let's get going.  (I'm going to start with A-town, since that's the name of this blog). You're going to want to turn off the orthoimage (which is the background satellite image) - it makes it too busy and gunks up the cool quad map-feel.

In the PDF, click on the "plus" sign next to "Images."

Under "Images," you will see an eye icon next to orthoimage.  Unclick it.

Now, you have just the topo without the satellite image.

Under File, select "Take a Snaphot."  Then select the area you want for your heart.  I suggest that you pick an area that is roughly 3 lat by 3 long (that's 3 yellow squares by 3 yellow squares for the uninitiated).  You might have to tinker a bit to get it to center on an area that's both: (1) important to you; and (2) aesthetically pleasing.  I leave that to you.

Fourth . . . Open the Paint program.  Under Edit, select Paste.  Now your base map is in the Paint program.  Save it, and exit Paint.

Fifth . . . You need to find a heart template.  I used this one:

Open it in Paint.  Then, under Image, uncheck "Draw Opaque."  Save it (you'll need it for all your hearts).  Then select the "Select" tool (dashed box), and select an area as close around the heart as possible.

Sixth . . . Reopen your base map in Paint.  Then paste the heart template in.  Drag the bottom right corner of the heart template to match the bottom right corner of the map, so that the heart template takes up most of the map:

Seventh . . . (and this is the really tedious part).  In Paint, erase all the map areas outside of the heart template using the Eraser tool.  I found that you can pretty quickly do most of it in the normal view, but then you have to go to View, then Zoom > Large Size, and manually erase around the heart template.  You don't want any stray marks outside the heart.

Repeat steps 3 through 7 for each heart.

Now you're ready to put together the complete file!  Here we go . . .

Eighth . . . Open either Microsoft Word or Microsoft Publication.  (I used Publication, so that's how this Tutorial is set up).  Set up your document to be an 11-inch by 17-inch document in landscape orientation.  Under the View tab, select Zoom > One Page.  Also, make sure you have the ruler showing (View > Show/Hide > Ruler).  Set your margins to 1" on all sides.

Now, we're going to add some guide lines so we know where to put our hearts.

For 4 hearts, add vertical lines at the following locations, by selecting Insert > Shapes, then selecting the straight line.  Make sure to hold Shift down while you draw your line, which will keep it straight.

• 2-7/8"
• 4-3/4"
• 6-5/8"
• 8-1/2"
• 10-3/8"
• 12-1/4'
• 14-1/8"

Ninth . . . Insert your hearts, using the lines as guides.

Tenth . . . Add text boxes underneath each heart, center the text, and type what that place means to you.  Ours say: "where we met"; "where we married"; "our first home"; and "where baby made three."  Pick a cute font.  I used Script MT Bold, 26-point.

Eleventh . . . Insert a text box for the heading.  Center the text. I used Georgia (naturally), in 80-point for our family name, and Script MT Bold, 48-point, for our "established" year.

Finally . . .  Publish the document to a PDF.  Then either print it yourself (assuming you have access to a good quality color printer that can do 11 x 17), or send it out for printing.  I used FedEx Office's online printing.  It cost me $1.88.

I used a Ribba frame from IKEA, which cost $14.99.

Total project cost: about $18.