Thrift Store Love.

Today was very exciting, because I went to the House of Return Thrift Store and bought myself a fabulous new outfit that I am totally wearing to fancy dinner with mom, when we go up to San Francisco next month. Oh yes. I love thrift store dresses. They are so fabulous and weird and most importantly, they are a bargain.

Here is my new outfit. It features both a dress AND a coat. That's three outfits for the price of one. I will definitely wear the coat on its own, I will certainly wear the dress by itself (I am planning on wearing it to an event for work next month!) and I will wear them both together for double sparkly. Please observe:




The dress is a little big on top, but nothing that some tailoring can't fix.

In other fun "old stuff" news, my mom and I made a pincushion for me to display my pins the other week when I was home. She used to have all of her flower pins above her dresser, and is passing along the frame to me. Sara generously sacrificed an old velor dress from high school as the backing. The pin is above my CD rack and I can look at it lovingly. Tim told me that I was an idolater.


What else? We are very disappointed in the Bruins, but had a fun time watching the Badgers last night. Now that my boys have broken Coach Wooden's heart, I will switch to my second allegiance and root for Wisconsin. We had to take Tim's car in to the dealership this morning - the fan crapped out before Christmas, but we had just never gotten around to fixing it. Now that the weather is getting warmer, we are missing the AC. Thankfully, it's covered under warrenty, and once they get the part (Tuesday) it should be a quick fix. Out of the four Hondas we have owned, this is the first time we've had to take a car in for any sort of malfunction before the car was 10 years old or over 100,000 miles. I love me some Hondas.

We booked our trip to Door County for the 4th. I am over the moon with excitement. I can't wait for Tim to get a little piece of my childhood lore. Time to wash our hair in Lake Michigan!

Tomorrow we are going to go and scope out some open houses. Still in no particular rush, but we want to start getting a better idea of what exactly we're looking for. And it's nice to know that if we find something amazing, we can move forward with the whole process. We also have to go to the laundromat. Today was cleaning and cooking day - so domestic. If you can stop being dazzled by my outfit, check out my wonderful crockpot. It is filled with delicious garlic artichoke chicken. Which I made using the new apron that my grandma made me. She is the best (this is from yesterday, when I made pizza.) Grandma is such a nice.

Approved.

So the biggest news is that we met with a mortgage broker on Wednesday, and on Friday got our approval letter, officially authorizing us to start our home search (I know we could have looked before, but if I'm going to drive all around the West Side going to open houses, if I find one I like, I want to be able to buy.) We're approved for more than we can afford, of course, but it's nice to see that good credit and saving money pays off somewhere. The realtor has sent us some more listings; we have sent him a better idea of what we're looking for, and Tim will begin his online research, and we will start looking in earnest. HOORAY! The whole process stresses me out quite a bit, I must admit, but my boss reminded me that this is supposed to be fun, and celebratory, because we are buying our first home and building our lives together, so I am trying to keep up that attitude.

Last night we went and saw Gentlemen Prefer Blondes at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. I'd never seen it before and fell in love. I adore musicals, I love sequin dresses, and I myself am partial to jewelry. The movie had everything I needed to be happy, and it was fun to see it at LACMA, with an audience that laughed and clapped and cheered along. We'd gotten pupusas for dinner before, and got frogurt on the way home, so it was a perfect date.

Today I went to my former boss's baby shower. It was a big group of her friends, and a lot of my old coworkers, so it was a fun time. I'm definitely glad to be off to bigger and better things though. Having 21 days off instead of 10 is enough for me - I would have changed jobs even if there wasn't also a pay raise!

We've got a chicken pot pie in the oven (I cooked, Tim cleaned up) and once we've devoured some chicken and vegetable goodness, we're going to spend the rest of the evening watching a movie. From here on out, it's March Madness, all the time (even though I find basketball too fast paced and stressful.) Go Bruins! Tim bought me a little UCLA keychain that plays the fight song. I love it, but poor Thory is terrified of it - he hates when I wave it around, and the sound seems to freak him out also. His lack of blue and gold spirit is disappointing.

More Hawaii.

Jasmin posted a few new photos on her facebook - some from our last day at the North Shore (the day my camera battery died) and some from the wedding (taken by the professional photographer.)

I just thought I would share.

Here is our seal friend!


The sunset we saw on Waimea. It was absolutely beautiful, and is one of the moments I will treasure most from our visit.

Me with the boys. You can hardly tell how sore they were afterwards.

Us picking up the Fluff. I look crazy and possessed, which is of course why I'm sharing it.

We are going down to the OC this weekend to celebrate mom's birthday. Dad has promised to take us out for sushi and I am hoping to show mom a good time. She's my best mom ever.

A Little Gossip

Sorry blog readers/family members - we have not been eaten by bears. We are just up to normal, boring life stuff.

Yes, we are still looking for a house. Next week we have an appointment with a mortgage broker recommended by our realtor, so we will see how all of that goes. I will feel better about for real going to look at houses when we have a preapproval offer, and buyers know we are serious. We are still looking at things online. We are also hoping to win the lottery at some point. Sheesh.

Last week I had plans Wednesday, Thursday and Friday night, which was odd for me in terms of popularity. Then over the weekend I was in San Diego with some of my college girlfriends "the England Girls." We drank wine at 11:30 in the morning, took naps, got massages and ate like linebackers trying to gain weight before the NFL combine. A good time had by all!

Tim went down to Cal State Fullerton to talk to a video game club about his job and how he got it. I think it's very cute, because when he was a youngster, he started a video game club at UCLA, which was a big boon in his efforts to get hired at EA (because Lord knows his grades didn't serve him well at all!) This week he's been doing some training stuff at work re: becoming a technical director. He loves him some engineering.

There's been some fun conversation going around the Miller-Thiel-Nollin family re: the Fourth of July in Door County. I am so excited to see everyone and have Tim experience some of my favorite memories from my childhood. In San Diego, I bought a Door County item that I am so excited to show off in a few months. For now, it's a Suprise Prize. I've had random midwestern friends ask about the possibility of coming up for a day, to which I say, the more the merrier. Prepare yourself for cold beer on the porch and a lot of smart mouths talking all at once. Also, bring Deep Woods Off!

Tomorrow we are going to see Rent at the Pantages. A few weeks ago we saw Man of La Mancha, and I immediately bought the soundtrack and have been singing it nonstop. I've also been mixing in a little Hello Dolly! It's all musicals, all the time (but not Phantom of the Opera. We saw that before Valentines Day, to which I say THUMBS DOWN. Out of all the plays we've seen in the past few years, none by Andrew Lloyd Webber have cracked my top ten. Now Oklahoma!... THAT'S a musical.)

Valentines, etc.

Tim and I did the most romantic thing on Valentines Day - we went and met with a realtor, to get our dreams of home ownership off the ground. The guy we met with seems like a good dude - he's been in the Culver City area for thirty years, and is the second generation owner of the family real estate business. The initial meeting was just to sort of feel each other out and see if we liked him. I think we do, and our next step is to look at some of the listings he'll be sending us, and of course, to get pre-approved for a home loan.

We're looking for a single family home with at least two bedrooms, and at least a bath and a half. We'd like a two car garage but could live with a one car garage and a driveway for the second car (we stack park now, so we're used to moving one car to get to the other.) We're fine with a house that needs some surface repairs, but not looking to rewire or rebuild anything. Our goal is to stay on the Westside, but we're not married to the idea of a particular neighborhood or zip code. My biggest goal is to stay north of LAX airport, so that my commute doesn't turn into a nightmare.

We're looking for something we can afford on Tim's salary alone, to give us more flexiblity in terms of my future work schedule (or lack thereof, depending on how cute our offspring turns out to be. If it's ugly, I'm just going to leave it for Lulu to raise. What? She raised four kittens when she was only 8 months old, she can parent a human baby, I'm sure. And we got her after she had babies - we were not the irresponsible owners that let their teenaged cat daughter get PG.) Thankfully, the market has begun to drop in Los Angeles and we are in a much better position to get into a single family home than we were a year ago.

The whole experience was really exciting and also nerve-wracking. At the end of the meeting, the realtor was like, "well, let's get started. We could probably have you in a home by the end of the summer." I have to be honest, I got totally freaked out at that point - my heart started racing and I got a little teary. It's just amazing to me that we are going to take such a big step towards grown up time. We've been living in our postage stamp apartment for almost five years now (which is four years longer than I hoped we'd be here for) but what we've been saving in rent will go into our house downpayment. We're going to get a house and pay a mortgage and be homeowners, and providing we can get all of that stuff figured out, then we will become parents, to human babies (we are already very successful cat parents, as evidenced from recent posts.) Who would have thunk it?

I love building my life with Tim. He's the best Valentine ever.

Another Crazy Cat Lady Post.

I had a lovely weekend. We went down to Laguna Niguel on Friday night and hung out with the fam, including Auntie Lisa, and then on Saturday morning brought Sara back up to LA for a massage at Burke Williams, a little sushi, and a little fun time with her big sister (and Tim, who she likes better than me anyways, even though I have known her since the day she was born.)

We had dinner with mom and dad at the new fancy dining room table, handmade by a lovely Amish man. No power tools! It was especially nice because now they have new chairs, which aren't in danger of breaking to pieces at any moment.

But now I am back home. Here is a video I took of the "kids" tonight. They are both chatty buddies. And yes, I am wearing my footies. It's COLD here. I mean, it's like 50 degrees outside. I could get frostbite.

Furball Football Party.

So it's Superbowl Sunday, and now I will go into mourning over the end of the football season. What am I going to do on Sundays? What will I watch at the gym, while trapped on the treadmill?

Tim convinced Jake to have a party for all of the nerds. I thought about going, and then figured that much as I like all of those boys, there is only so much shop talk and geek smell I can take in an afternoon. I knew that the evening would end with Rock Band being played loudly while I fell asleep on the couch. So I was a hermit and stayed home and hung out with the cats (I did make a plate of cookies from Tim to take along though.)

Here are the pictures from our party:

During the first half.

Lulu hopes that someday she will get the ability to circle things on TV like John Madden.

Thor is such a dear little weirdo. This weekend he has woken up a couple of times and sort of flung himself a few feet from where he was sleeping. He then starts crying until I pick him up. I think he's having cat nightmares. It's obviously not been healthy for us to leave him alone so often lately. Poor little dummy.

Their final cuddlefest during the last few minutes. Yes, we know Lulu is kind of porky. But look at how cute her extra toe is! She's our Thumbelina. Of course, as soon as the game was over they both woke up and started squealing about their dinner.