The Right Decision?

So... it looks like we'll be moving out of our apartment next week.  Husband Guy and I have [almost] purchased a wee baby house (on less than a 1/10th of acre!) and should be closing in the next week or two.  We are excited to stop throwing money away in rent.  I am excited to not be paranoid that my loud stamping is annoying my neighbors.  Husband guy can finally get the dog he's been dreaming of for years.

There is only one thing that keeps nagging at me, making me doubt our decision to stay in New England indefinitely - My family. Or lack thereof.  I very much enjoy the company of my entire family. However, my entire family lives over a thousand miles away in Georgia.  My family has always been quite close.  Even after my parents divorced when I was in elementary school, and my mother moved out of our home, I still saw both parents every day until I started college.  My brother and I would wake up at one house, go to school, ride the bus home to another house, and then be picked up in the evening by a parent and returned to their house.  At the time it was really a pain the ass to be shuffled back and forth from Mom's house to Dad's house everyday, however, looking back I am so glad that was how things played out.  I got to spend a lot of time with both my parents and they were both heavily involved in all aspects of my life growing up.

[Stepmom, Dad, Husband Guy, Myself, Mother, Brother]

Since moving to Boston 2 years ago, I currently go months and months and months before seeing my family.  For some people I know this isn't too terrible, but for me, to go from seeing my close family everyday to never seeing them, really sucks.

However, it seems that the reasons for staying in Boston have outweighed my nagging "family" issue and I feel bad about that.  On one hand, my husband has a wonderful job here that makes him so happy (and is the reason we left GA in the first place).  We love the New England weather far more than the humid Atlanta heat we left behind.  Boston feels like another country to me, and I am just so much more visually/mentally stimulated here than in the boring suburbs of metro Atlanta. But, I have no family here.

We are kind of at the point of no return - us buying the house is pretty much set in stone.  So, I guess this is just something I'm going to have to deal with.  Perhaps I can just make room in my budget for more trips home. :)

Lazy Sun Days

Rasputin has really been enjoying the recent sunny days by sunbathing the day away.  The air conditioning system in our apartment is not very effective, so most of the summer the A/C runs all day/night and the apartment is still sweltering.  While this sucks for humans, this hairless catty is enjoying the heat.  This situation double sucks for humans that care for hairless catties, because when hairless catties get extra warm, they sweat, and in turn get extra dirty.

Simple Love

Saying so much with so little...

[click the image to be taken to the corresponding item listing]

 

Wedding Locales

In the past few weeks I've received tag orders with the request to stamp the actual wedding location on the tag.  Believe it or not, this is not a common thing that I am asked to stamp on tags for newlyweds.  Most tags feature the names and date, and perhaps a quote.  I hope this becomes a new trend, because I find it super neat to be so specific on tags.  I think it helps in making the tag a more informative memento of the event - the more details the better I always say!

Impulse Buys of the Week

I feel like I'm back to my old impulse-buying self.  After a few impulse buys that were a reaction to some unhealthy eating, I am back to impulse-shopping with no real rhyme or reason.

I bought bananas for starters.  I hate bananas. I've always hated bananas.  Plus, these are discounted bananas, which means some of them are already a lil' rotten.  I guess I thought I could force myself to like eating bananas, which would be cool since bananas are so cheap.  I ate two bites of one banana, attracted a ton of fruit flies, and then tossed out the rest of the pack.

I bought cat treats for the catty.  He doesn't even really like cat treats.  He prefers to bat them around until they wind up under the fridge.  I ended up leaving these at a kitty kennel he stayed at recently, so he didn't even get to eat any. Total waste.

I bought turkey bacon.  A few months ago my husband guy bought a sweet cast iron skillet, and wanted to "season" the pan, so we cooked a crapload of bacon in it for like a month straight.  Then we were baconed-out.  We OD'd on bacon.  So when I went to the store, I felt like enough time has passed for us to hop back on the bacon-eating train.  This pack made for a delicious ride! (Though, the turkey bacon shape was a little odd...)

I bought Greek yogurt. It happened to be on sale - a rarity, and husband guys prefers it over the regular non-Greek yogurt. It was fine.


A few weeks ago I ventured out to Costco/BJ's and ended up with a few impulse buys from there.  The worst item I felt the need to buy was a mega box of Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches. They are kind of my weakness.  Plus, when you buy them in bulk, they are almost affordable.  I didn't take a picture of the Costco/BJ's impulse buys, but I did have an entertaining conversation with my mother the other day.

Sorry if the text is unreadably small. :(

LOL, Mim.  "Good God just stop with the Jimmy Dean."

A Gift For Dad

Father's Day was last month, and I received a lot of neat requests for Father's Day tags and key chains.  Below are a few of what I think were the neatest items I shipped out this 2012 Father's Day. :)

 A simple, powerful reminder.

 Awww.

 Triple awww.

 A key chain featuring the initials of all the family members.

A little inspiration for Dad.

In keeping with the Dad-theme, all remaining Father's Day items have been marked down in the shop.  If it seems a little crazy to stock up on Father's Day 2013 gifts, perhaps consider these sale items for Christmas - it's only 7, 6, 5 months away!

Clouds + Catty Escape

For some reason I recently felt compelled to attempt one of those 30-day photography challenges.    Day 3 was "Clouds," for which I lazily pointed my camera at the sun and snapped away. "Clouds" - check!  Not surprisingly, after day four I got bored and quit.

Cloud pictures are kind of hard to f*ck up.  See a cloud, snap a picture; it looks fabulous because clouds are awesome no matter the angle.  More exciting, is that the cat almost semi-successfully escaped our apartment.

I'm sure this little photo session started out with me talking to Pooper, "Is my little Poo Poo Bear having fun looking outside and smelling the fwesh air?" - or some other stupid baby talk along the same line...

I kind of forgot that he has a tendency to want to explore everything, and off he went!  He began walking along the outside edge of our sliding glass door.  This might not be a problem, except we are not on the ground floor, and thus have a glass sliding door that could lead to a nasty fall (if stupid bars weren't in front of the opening).  I was forced to toss my camera to the side and try and retrieve the clueless cat before he realized he couldn't get anywhere and would have to struggle to back up along the little edge to get back inside.

He is such a terrible beast (albeit now safe and sound), but at least I got a few useless cloud pictures.

Darling, Let's Be Adventurers

Let's kick off the first day of this delightful summer month (here in the US, anyway!) with a few tags featuring fun, inspiring travel quotes!

I'm a little sad to say that it looks like there will be no more travels for me in 2012. :(  However, we are planning a big trip to Japan next summer, so hopefully knowing that that is coming up will be good enough to cheer up my stationary self.