(T)arina and (A)tkins in Chicago

I love Christmastime. Mainly what I like is the gathering of friends and family and the eating of many delicious foods. Unfortunately, for the third year in a row, we’ll be unable to join our family for Christmas. So, I will delight in my next favorite part: the decorations.

I don’t know why I like Christmas decorating so much, but I really do. I don’t go all crazy and decorate every room, but I put some stuff up each year. This year, thanks to a porch I can close off from the cats, I actually was able to put a tree up! I was so happy to be able to do this. So, here are a couple of pics:

I went for an “ice” theme, which is something I’ve been thinking about for a really long time. I think it came together really well, and it makes me very happy. :) You can see how we can close it off from the sneaky little cats and keep it safe.

And, while we’re talking about Christmas, I understand that the links I put up for the baby registries weren’t terribly obvious. Let me try again. Not that I am saying you need to send us stuff, it’s just in case you missed it before. Here they are:

Target Registry

Amazon Registry

Hope that helps. And I am always up for suggestions about things I am missing. I’m good at picking out cute things like stuffed animals but not so great about things I’ll actually need (especially if I don’t know I need them).

Merry Christmas to you! Hope your holiday is filled with love and happiness (and cookies). :D

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I know, I know, it’s been a long time since I updated the blog. I’ve been more than a little busy, though. :)

As you all know who read this blog regularly…well, as regularly as I post, you can basically catch up on it quarterly. “I wonder what Tarina is thinking this season” you might muse before seeing I still haven’t updated anything.
Okay, I’m veering a bit off-track. I mainly want to tell everyone that Atkins and I are expecting our first baby! He or she is due on April 27th, which means as of this posting, I am about 14 weeks along.

Soon, one of these will be ours!

The beginning of the pregnancy was a little rough on me. I had some bad cramps and morning sickness (not just in the morning) but things seem to have settled down. Food actually tastes good and I am enjoying eating again. Yay!
I am sure, if you haven’t been able to talk to us lately, you have a few questions, and I’ll attempt to answer them here:

-Yes, we are extremely excited and we are also quite nervous!

-No, we don’t think we’re going to find out the gender before the big day. This is something that we kinda go back and forth on, but I think the idea of the surprise is the most appealing (at least for now).

-Yes, we have started thinking about names, though not too seriously as we still have a little while to go. There are a few that I like that Atkins seems to tolerate. ;)

-No, I will not tell you these names. haha

-Yes, we are registered. We’ve started registries at Target and Amazon though neither registry is complete. We don’t even really know what we need, so we probably have some pretty big holes there. Plus, we just started looking at things and thinking about this whole “lives are changing completely in 6 months” thing.

-No, we haven’t started putting a nursery together yet. We have a room right across the hall from our bedroom that will be the nursery and we like the idea of a jungle theme, but that’s about as far as we’ve gotten. Right now, that room holds our bookcases and cat boxes.

-Yes, I will move the cat boxes when the baby comes. ;)

We are a little concerned how the cats will handle the new addition to the family. We’re pretty sure Anubis will be cool about it, because he seems unphased by anything. Loki will probably be scared–that’s typical Loki style. The big question mark is Raika. Those of you who know her need no further explanation, but she is a little unpredictable. She gets overstimulated easily and doesn’t like loud noises. That being said, I think she has a bit of a mothering instinct. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.
Thanksgiving is coming up and we are so happy to be traveling to Colorado and seeing our friends and family soon! We miss everyone. It’s fun in Chicago, but it can be lonely without our loved ones!

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Okay, it’s been about 2 weeks since we moved, and we are almost 100% settled in. So it’s not quite as impressive as last time when we were completely unpacked in three days. But still, I think that’s pretty good. I’m feeling less stressed and more like I get to sit back and relax and decorate the new place at my leisure. We are working on getting some pics up, but here’s a little one to satisfy your curiosity:

This is a good pic because you can see a few cool things: the hardwood floors, the crown moldings, the non-white walls (hooray) and the nice built-in bookshelves. There’s an identical one on the other side of the tv.
We’ll have many more pics soon enough.
Of course, the best way to see it is in person. Just floating that out there…
Now I just have to decide where to hang all the pics, where all the decorative stuff is going to go and what we are going to do with all the space. :) I think I may get a couple of area rugs, but there is no rush for that.

All of you who are wondering how the cats are adjusting (and I know that you are all dying with curiosity) will be happy to know that so far, they seem to be enjoying it a lot. There are many more windows to look out and many more interesting things to see outside. They really couldn’t see much out the old sliding doors.
Alrighty, look for another post soon.

Toodles!

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Yesterday was our one-year anniversary. Last year on May 31st, we were surrounded by our friends and family and proclaimed our undying love for one another. Unfortunately, our cake topper is still in a freezer in Colorado so we were unable to complete the “eating a year-old, freezer-burned piece of cake” portion of our anniversary.

Still, it was a good day. I’ve been nagging Atkins a lot (to the point of annoyance, I would imagine) about how much I hate our current bed. I finally put my foot down and said that I refuse to move this bed one more time. I constantly wake up with back aches, neck pains, you name it. So, we decided to go bed shopping for our anniversary. It also serves as our anniversary present to each other.

We decided on the Angelique mattress from Simmons. We went to Macy’s during their mattress/furniture sale and got a pretty good deal, I must say. It’s so amazingly comfortable! The nicest thing is that we agreed on it right away. We were both afraid that we would each like a different mattress and our anniversary would be spent fighting and someone would end up unhappy.

After that major purchase, we decided to have a nice lunch and then go to see Star Trek. I have to say, I really enjoyed it. I thought the new actors captured the mannerisms of the characters quite well, and it was a kick to hear all the catch phrases on the big screen.

We also picked up the keys to our new place. Though we haven’t really started packing yet, we are getting really excited about moving in! The thing I am less excited about is the prospect of taking my desk apart. It is a mammoth. And one of those mdf-laminate deals, so you know it’s not modular. Ugh, this is going to be rough.
Oh well. It’ll be fun to settle in to a new place. We’re trying to flesh out a bit of a guest room. You know, summer is the best time to visit Chicago! Beautiful weather, lots to do. Come on over. We’d love to see you!

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Our search for a new apartment was a little rough. We visited several places and saw a lot of great examples of where we didn’t want to live. Many of the apartments were a bit run-down or just plain old. Most of them were okay, but nothing great. And some of them were in less-than-ideal neighborhoods.

It was also difficult to find places to go see. I searched many online listings and found decent places. We decided to use an agent to find our dream apartment, so we looked on this agency’s website. This is when we were introduced to the fact that apartments are renting damn fast. I perused the site, and found 22 properties. A lot of them looked amazing, and some of them looked pretty good. When it came time to see these listings, I was told that all but 4 of them were rented. And three of those were not what we were looking for (i.e. crapholes).

So, disheartened by lack of a good apartment, we drove up to the last place on the schedule for the morning. I liked the street immediately: one-way, tree-lined, quiet. Okay, so the El is right behind the property, but it’s not all that loud.
We go inside and immediately I can tell that this place is a cut above all the others. It’s a three-bedroom with new kitchen, bathroom, hardwood floors, and laundry in the unit. Yay! Here are a few pics. I didn’t take any on my tour because the real estate agent told me there was a virtual tour online. (Had I looked at the quality of that tour, I would have just taken my own pics, but c’est la vie. Here’s the link though it may be taken down soon)

This is the living room, looking into the sun porch. This is the front of the building.

This is the absolutely huge dining room. We’re not sure what we’re going to do with it yet.

Nice, bright kitchen with a dishwasher. ;)

There are a lot of cool things about this place that aren’t apparent even in the virtual tour: there is a little brick patio in the back where we can have our grill. We may be able to do a little bit of gardening as well, though our landlord seems to maintain the flowers around the patio. We’ll have to see about that. And, there is enough space for a guest room! Yeah, there’s only one bathroom, but at least you’d have a nice room to yourself when you come visit!
Okay, so it’s not the perfect place: there is no central AC, no garage spot, and it’s more expensive with fewer amenities than our previous place. The hardwood floors and first-floor location make it a little noisy (as does the El), but we think it’s all worth it for the location! It’s really close to Lincoln Square, which has a lot of fun shops, restaurants, and a movie theater. We will be able to walk to the El in about 3 minutes, and Atkins’s work is only 4 stops down the line. Near to Atkins’s work (3 stops down) is an art studio/cafe where I am thinking about taking some classes this summer. It will be much more convenient and safer than going from Edgewater to Lincoln Park and then traveling back at 10 pm.

In short (too late) we are super excited about the move! That does mean, though, that we are going to have to put the anniversary party on the back burner. In fact, it will probably just become a housewarming party once we are all settled in. What does this mean for our first anniversary? Well, it may mean that we are going to be celebrating with wine and pizza in our new place surrounded by boxes.
That sounds pretty good to me! :D

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I can’t believe that Atkins and I have been married for almost a year! It’s been a great year. We went on an amazing honeymoon in February and have really been enjoying working and living in Chicago. Our love and friendship has continued to grow throughout this year and we are truly and deeply happy!

I hope this cake is as delicious one year later as it was on the day of the wedding. Hm. What an interesting tradition.

This year is going to be another busy one! We are planning on moving in a bit closer to the city. While we have loved our apartment and our neighborhood for almost two years now, we are getting a little tired of the long El ride or drive in to visit friends. We’re looking at a younger, more vibrant neighborhood where we can get out and do more things.
We’re also trying to find a place with a little more character. Don’t get me wrong, our view is second to none, but the apartment itself is a little, well, boring. Add to that the fact that the cheap carpet coupled with the low humidity in the winter turned our cats into lightning bolt factories and fried some of our electronics and you can see why we want to bail.
So, we’re looking quite a bit at the Lincoln Square area. It’s a nice neighborhood, close to Atkins’s work, and there are a lot of pretty two- and three-flats with nice apartments. These apartments boast such amenities as: seeing trees, windows on more than one side of the building and only one or two neighbors.
We are going to look at five promising places this Saturday, so I’m sure I’ll be posting soon with the results of our expedition.

Okay, back to the anniversary thing. I’m a little disjointed today. ;)
We are planning on having a party. Originally, we were going to have a Chicago reception after we got back from the wedding for all our friends here who were unable to make it out to Colorado. Due to exhaustion and financial concern (we had just paid for, you know, a wedding) this never really came to fruition.
So, we thought it would be fun to have a get-together for our friends in the Chicago area (and anyone else who would like to travel to said Chicago area) at the end of May to celebrate our anniversary. I’m going to start looking around for restaurants and getting price quotes and things like that. It’ll be funsies! Mark your calendars. Buy your plane tickets.
And look for new blog posts to come soon!
Love you guys!

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Okay, so the Salvation Army showed up around 3 that day and picked up my stuff. Yay!
Now, I am going to post pictures of cute kittens in the hope that it will give me good cat luck at CCD. Plus, it’s getting near to kitten season, and I have kitten fever!

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So a while ago, I hired a wardrobe consultant to help me go through my closet and get rid of clothes that don’t fit me well and give me advice on what I should buy. Let’s just say in the end there were a LOT of clothes on the floor.
I boxed these up (eventually) and then called the Salvation Army to come pick them up.
It sounds like I did this fast, but there were boxes of clothes in our closet for months. *whistles innocently*
Anyway, I call the Salvation Army to schedule a pickup and this was supposed to take place last week. They call me 5 hours in to the 7 hour window (keep in mind I’ve been sitting around waiting all morning/afternoon) and say they can’t come pick up that day. Can they come Monday? No, they cannot come Monday as I work all day. The earliest I can do is Wednesday. Okay. Case closed, or so I thought.
I get home on Monday and there is a message from the receiving room that the Salvation Army guys are there to pick up. Yeah. Apparently “No, I can’t do Monday because I have to work” translates to “Sure, come on over on Monday.”
Yesterday, the Wednesday in question, I call, just on the off chance that they might still remember that I wanted a pickup on Wednesday. Nope, nothing on the books. So I schedule one for today. The window they give you is 9am-4pm, but they assure you if you call back before 9 am, they can give you a more specific window.
I call this morning at 9:10 and am told that the driver is not done writing out the tickets. Can I please call back in 15 minutes? Ugh. Okay. I give them over an hour and a half instead (just to be thorough) and call around 11. After a while on hold, the lady comes back on and asks if I’ve been home all morning. Yes. Is there any reason they wouldn’t have been able to get a hold of you? No.
Suddenly this is my fault? Grr.
She seems surprised, like he should have already been here, and gives me a window from 9am-2pm. Wow, thanks guys. Way to narrow it down there. She also instructs me if he hasn’t made it by 2 to give her a call. So she can do what, exactly? Reschedule AGAIN?
It’s so frustrating. I wonder if it is this way for everyone who calls in or if I’m just getting “lucky.”

We’ll see how this shakes out…

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I uploaded all of our vacation photos to my flickr.com account. I know what you’re thinking, I can’t wait to go through all 500 photos from Tarina and Atkins vacation. Well then, proceed directly to the Belize collection on flickr and enjoy.

Wait?!? What’s that? You have better things to do? Well then for our top 50 pictures with titles and descriptions check out the Best of Belize set. Below are some of my personal favorites.

There are videos too. I uploaded all of our videos to my YouTube account. Below are a few of my favorite videos.

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