New Adventures

So I did something.  I started a new blog.  Whaaat?! Whyyy?!

Well, Roger's been applying to Optometry Schools and I feel like it's a huge step in both of our lives, and I feel like this blog can't capture how we're feeling and what we're about to get ourselves into.

I promise my new blog will be just like this blog, with my random thoughts and updates on life and crafts... but I wanted a new space that reflected these new changes and that Roger could maybe guest blog if I ask him realllly nicely ;)

This blog has been great to me for the past two years.  It's taught me a lot about the bloggy world, introduced me to awesome, inspiring blogs, and helped me learn a little about myself along the way.

I feel a little sad leaving this blog but I hope everyone who's supported me through this blog just transfers over to my new one.  I plan to keep this blog live so that I can link back to it on occasion if I need to.  I explained a little more in my first post over there, so feel free to read through it :)

Well, I guess that's it for now.  Catch you guys on the flip side (I hope!).


PS-- don't forget that it's eyeloveyoublog.blogspot.com :)

i'm terrible with surprises

So the other night, I had some down time and I decided to start a mood board for a very special project I have coming up.  I know, I know, it's terrible because I can't give you hardly any details about it, because it's sort of a gift, so I don't want the person it's for to somehow find out about it...

And I'm dying!  I wish I could tell you all about it, but this has to remain a secret... or I'll be in a lot of trouble.

Some things I can tell you... we're going for pink ombre.  Lots of pink ombre.  And what's some ombre action without gold glitter accents??

I had more fun than one person should starting this mood board.  It was almost like putting together a scrapbook page, but it was way more fun because I have all these life-size ideas in my head that I was trying to slyly put onto paper so that a certain someone wouldn't have any ideas...

I'm planning on having an ombre cake and/or cupcakes, giant gold balloons, and an awesome s'more bar, for which I found inspiration here.

Promise I'll keep you updated with any new developments.  I'm actually planning on working on this mood board a little more today, so keep an eye on my Instagram, @taurie16, for any new updates.  I'm really excited about getting this show on the road-- and trust me, July can't come soon enough! :)

and then there was olive...

You may remember me mentioning that I had a story for you...

So... this happened.  On Monday, March 4, my mom and I took an hour and a half trip to go pick up this little girl.  Her name is Olive and she's the sweetest almost-11-week-old baby you've ever met.

Roger's in love with her.

But, here's the details.  She's a long-haired Chihuahua.  Why a Chihuahua?  We really really wanted a Golden Retriever puppy.  But, unfortunately, since we don't know what our living situation will be in a few months, we decided that a puppy that needs a yard and plenty of exercise probably wasn't the wisest decision at this point in our lives.

Roger told me to research some breeds and pick out three that I liked and then we would decide together.  Honestly, a Chihuahua is about the last kind of dog I ever thought I'd have.  No joke.  But once I started researching them more and more, they started to grow on me.

So, kind of by a miracle, Roger agreed with my pick and we started to look for available puppies.   We had a pretty long list of wants when it came to a puppy... things like:

• healthy living conditions
• parents on site
• raised with children/other animals
• up to date with vet checks, all shots, etc.

We found a lot of puppies but either they didn't have everything on our list or they were $1,500 (not a joke).  Finally, we found a litter of three puppies on Sunday the 2nd and contacted the owner.  She said there was one female and two males and they were all still available.

We immediately fell in love with pictures of the little girl.  The owner said the little girl was shy, which was something that I liked, because I didn't want a high-strung yappy dog.

So Monday after work, my mom and I took a drive to pick her up.  We got to meet her parents and her litter mates and spent about an hour there just asking questions and making sure everything was good to go.  We brought her home to meet my sisters and Roger and she's been an awesome addition to our lives ever since.

She only weighed 1lb 5oz at her last vet check on February 27th.  She has another appointment on March 25th for more shots so we'll see how much she's really grown since we got her!

I love her like crazy.  She's so cuddly, and she definitely knows who I am and gets sad when I leave the room.  It's crazy to me to think that this is the puppy that will be playing with my kids someday.  She's going to see so much with us.  Moving, school, new jobs... Craaazy.  Alright.  Slow down.  No need to talk about that right now.

We're definitely so in love with our new baby girl, Olive.

March Date :)

I'm back with the next installment of "8 Months of Dates."  Last month, Roger and I went midnight bowling as our February Frolic.  It was nice to set aside some time to spend together, because he's been reallllly busy with indoor soccer leagues and tournaments.

This month, our date also needed to be financed, so I put in the money that would cover admission charges and raided my old clue card game (not to be confused with the Clue Board Game), and got some little pieces to give him so ideas about where we were heading.

First, before I share, I'd like to point out that this is probably the date that I looked forward to most out of all of the envelopes, mostly because it was something that I'd never done before in my life.  Ever.  Not that it's super adventurous or anything, but events like this that kind of ooze creativity really make me all warm inside.

Anyway, here's what he was greeted with when he opened the envelope:

We went to the Buffalo Museum of Science's second-ever Get a Clue event!  Basically, the museum was set up like a giant clue board and you had to walk around and talk to witnesses and guess who did it, where it happened, and with what weapon.

Along with the Clue Card Game pieces, I also printed off the event's page on the website to let it do the explaining.  I also, like last month, put in a little note giving my explanation and my reasons for choosing the event, etc.


Last Friday, we finally got to go.  I'd been so excited about it for over a month and I was ready to go see what it was all about!

Unfortunately, I was really sick that night (coughing, sneezing, so stuffed up that I couldn't breathe), so in my excitement/sickly stupor, I totally blanked and didn't get any pictures of us at the event... so any of these pictures were taken off of the Buffalo Museum of Science's Facebook page.

That's one of the witnesses.  You could ask him questions and he had clues that he could show you to "disprove" your guess... you know, just like the real game!  He's standing inside one of the rooms that you could go in and look around.

And this is Seymour, the Mastadon, guarding the cards that hold the correct suspect, location, and weapon.

We all got to choose team names, so we chose:

Olive.  But that story is for a different day.

This date was so much fun and it really was much-needed, as it was in the middle of some crazy weeks of indoor soccer and school.  I can't wait to experience and share the rest of our dates! :)

February Date

So... remember the preplanned, pre-paid date envelopes??  Well, while Roger and I were in Niagara Falls a few weekends ago, I gave him his Valentine's Day present early and allowed him to open his February envelope!  Woooo! ;)

So, the outside of the envelope gave some clues to what the event might be-- money to cover admission charges, black, fun confetti...

So after he opened it, he got to read my note to let him know that we were going midnight bowling.  It's something we've been planning to do for a while and we just don't ever find the time because our weekends are so busy-- so I figured if it was our February date, we'd have to do it.

Also, since it was Valentine's Day month, I wanted to incorporate hearts and pink into the date envelope.  So I used pink paper and wrote my note with my new pink Le Pen and free-cut a turquoise heart... you know.  Because my favorite color is turquoise.  So I couldn't help but incorporate it.  A lot.

I also couldn't help myself when I found heart-shaped paper clips on Pinterest.  I'd tell you how to do it but I wasted like eight paper clips one day at work and I have yet to be able to bend another paper clip the same way, so... yeah.


Last night we finally got to go bowling!  It wasn't a night we originally planned, but the bowling alley we went to offers a discount on Thursdays for college students... so we both found our old ID's and got in a little cheaper than we thought we would :)

...back off he's mine.

And no one will ever believe me, but I actually beat Roger with my highest score ever of a 142... under his name... It's a long story.  But I swear I'm telling the truth!

Sorry the picture is a little blurry... the screen was so high.  Plus it's a cell phone pic.  Zoomed in.  But as you can see, I was on fiiiire.  I had a spare almost every frame... and if I didn't, I at least knocked down nine pins.  Roger said if I would have had a heavier ball, they would have been strikes every time because I was throwing it in the same spot and left the same one or two pins up every time.  But I really couldn't have.  I couldn't have consistently thrown a heavier ball.  I'm weak.  I have weak wrists.  What can I say??

Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of the two of us together, but it was so much fun.  I can't wait to go on the rest of our dates and try some new things! :)

winter photo shoot

We've been talking about taking some pictures in the snow for a while, but yesterday I realized that by this time next month, the snow may be gone for the most part.  So I told Roger that I wanted to get snow pictures taken asap.

We had some extra time today and my family didn't have  to work/go to school so they were home to run the camera :)

Here are some of my favorites:

Roger said he likes this picture ^^ because it looks like I'm doing a matrix move.  In reality, I'm completely out of control of my own body.  Luckily, he didn't drop me in the snow :)


Then I decided to take off my NorthFace and take some pretty pictures in my white shirt that matched the white snow :)

I'm really glad we got these done.  I plan to pick some out to print off and then choose my favorite out of the 70+ we took to get enlarged and put into a frame.

Once again, I'm thankful I live in the country.  I loved that we had a wide-open space to work with without other people's houses/yards/vehicles to deal with.  Yes, there is a barn on a dirt road in the background of some of these but I actually love that!  My favorite thing about our location was the fact that you can see the fence posts in these photos :)

I love this kid.  He's my best friend.  No one knows me like he does... not even close.

valentine's day goodness

One of my friends tweeted the other day: "One thing I don't get is when couples get each other clothes or electronics for valentines day/anniversaries.  That's not what it's about people!"

It's so true.  Some people think that Valentine's Day is a made-up holiday, and honestly, sometimes I can't help but agree with them.  We forget the meaning of it sometimes and it's easier to buy our other half something generic rather than put some time and effort into something really great.

So about two weeks ago, I realized I didn't really have anything to give to Roger.  I sort of already knew that I wanted to go the crafty-route and make him something sweet, but I really had no ideas.  So, like any other person would, I went to Pinterest.

I quickly found an idea for a year of pre-planned, prepaid dates-- one date for each month.  I believe the idea originated here by Shannon but I also liked some of the dates that I found here by Laura.  I honestly googled the topic for two straight hours and looked at so many blogs, but Laura's was the one that I found most memorable.

I started to plan out the whole project and started looking around for date ideas.  Then I ran into a problem. Remember this little thing called Optometry School that my boyfriend is applying to by the end of this month??  Yeah.  Right.  Hopefully we won't be in this area by the end of the summer, so I didn't really want to plan and pay for dates that we will hopefully never have the time to use.

So I decided to only go with seven date envelopes.  That was enough for February - August and then, I guess, when we see where we are, we'll go from there.

Most people I found put all of their dates into a labeled manila envelope and put them into a "date basket."  I liked how Allie took kind of a different spin on it and crafted the heck out of her basket and each blank white envelope.

I really wanted to make this special and unique, and I didn't really like the whole manila envelope concept of it all.  I thought it would be fun to decorate the envelope in a way that might give him a little clue about what we were doing that month before he actually got to open it.

As I was rifling through all of my craft supplies, I found something.

You might remember how I crafted up a little envelope to hold the Sabres tickets I planned on buying Roger for his birthday.  I fell in love with the idea of using these vellum envelopes again.

Since they're translucent, I could put my clues inside the envelope instead of on top of the envelope.  So here's what I did:

• Folded a standard 8.5 x 11" paper so that it fit inside the envelope
• Put my clues/any money needed on the front of the envelope so that they're visible when sealed
• Put the description of the date and any other supporting documents that would otherwise give away the date inside the folded sheet of paper

I loved this because it was sort of like scrapbooking (which I'm way behind on, by the way).

For now, I'm just going to post pictures of the covers of each envelope, so that Roger doesn't see the contents of the envelope in case he were to get on here and check my blog.  However, I promise I will come back and link this post to each new blog post and vice versa so that it'll be easy to check back and keep track of each date as it goes on :)

February:

March:

April:

May:

June:

July:

August:

Annnnnddd the final product all wrapped up:

I just wrapped it up with twine and put a little washi tape garland on it.  I also used a small doily to sort of cover up the note that explained what the gift was all about and why I made it for him.  And because I'm a sucker for mini clothespins and my favorite aqua sparkly ribbon (seriously though, that ribbon has made the cut in 8 of my 60 Instagram photos), I had to embellish a little with that.

And that's it.  All done.  It was pretty easy.  Once I got my ideas and supplies together, it didn't take long at all, and it's such a sweet and sentimental gift.  I really hope he likes it and appreciates it as much as I appreciate everything he does for me.

As promised, here's where I'll link to future posts:

February: Midnight Bowling

March: Get A Clue

April: Couples Painting Class

May

June

July

August

:)