Shopping Addiction

Like many Americans, I want our economy to be healthy but...I am really enjoying the sales that this downturn has resulted in. It came at a great time too, Christmas and now that I need a size bigger :(
I spend lots of my free time at work browsing the internet sales. I check couponcabin.com daily to check out the deals. I may not buy EVERYTHING in sight but its tempting. Also Macys and Ann Taylor Loft. This is the first year i will not be dashing out at the last minute to buy Christmas gifts, I have one or two left to buy. I owe that all to the stockmarket crash of '08.

Thanksgiving summary

My husband and I drove to my sister & brother-in-law's home for a long (and much needed) Thanksgiving vacation (10 hour drive). I was so excited for this trip. A chance to relax, spend time with my husband, travel and of course to see my adorable niece. Everything went very well..
My husband & I walked around the historic town of Beaufort in the lowlands of South Carolina. They preserved many beautiful buildings and plantation style homes. They also have a new waterfront walkpath and swings to rock & cuddle on along the water. The main street has restaurants, art galleries & tasteful/creative gift shops.

We also went to downtown Savanna, GA for a tour in a trolley & a walk on their riverfront. Like Beaufort, savanna has fun shops, beautifully preserved houses & tons of history in every nook & cranny. My favorite shops include the candy stores where they make candy infront of you and give you samples too. Plus a peanut shop where you can by any product ever though of that can be made of GA peanuts. Too much to do for 1 afternoon. I found a lovely piece of pottery, a serving dish designed with a clay and painted magnolia theme-beautiful!

My neice is growing so fast! She has learned to sit up and do a half crawl-half scooting manuver to get around. I don't know how she does it but it is just about the funniest thing I have seen! She is full of smiles and loves to cuddle. She took to me straight away, letting me hold & play with her. By the 2nd day of our visit, she was falling asleep in my arms for naps & bedtime while I rocked her. It was heaven. Unfortunately, she seems to be going through a... I only like women phase... so she rarely let my husband hold her. She was even fussy for her dad.

My sister & I cooked our 1st Thanksgiving dinner...on our own (with only 1 call to mom). Lots of work but it turned out well. We stuck to the basic traditional Thanksgiving feast. The best dish was our sweet potato casserole. It had a pecan/brown sugar crumbly topping that I thought was much tastier than the usual marshmellows.

Favorite pictures

Seaworld- orlando. Manatees are gentle & endangered Florida mammals.

Picture taken at Seaworld-orlando.

I am amazed at creation.

A beautiful but functionally camoflaged seahorse

Family pet- this turtle could fit in the palm of my hand when my parents first got him. Now he feels big and tough so he leaves the safety of his pond to dig holes in the yard (under the gazebo much to my mom's frustration). He likes to balance on the edge of the pond and spread his limbs and head to take in the sun.

Enjoying a Mr. Greengenes concert- no better band to watch perform!

Friends enjoying Rock Band. Perfect way to party in the burbs.

My sister and her daughter, the little girl that stole my heart. I have learned this year how happy events like weddings and babies can bring a family closer. This has definately happened in the last year, partly due to this little peanut. This picture is currently on my desktop at work, it makes me smile throughout the day.

My wedding was this May and I love the lighting in this photo plus you can see the bliss written on my face. Also I adored my hair that day and I tend to prefer pictures that showcase it!

The big 31...

I think this was one of my favorite birthdays in recent years. It is all because I have a fabulous husband.
He isn't used to making a big deal out of birthdays (his idea of a big deal is cake & card). Well, I am into birthdays...my whole family is. I enjoy having a day to celebrate my life. I am thrilled to be alive and I want to have fun on my day. So he has been a fabulous sport this year...

My birthday was this monday but last saturday we had lunch in downtown Baltimore (Inner Harbor) and saw Madagascar II on IMAX at the Maryland Science Museum. Then a lovely dinner at Linwoods, a local place but top notch cuisine.

On my actual birthday, he suprised me by taking off work to spend the day with me. We went to a boutique fair (purses, jewelery, textiles) and spent time at my mother-in-law's home. She makes jewelery and is going to design a necklace for me. She is full of ideas and imagines possibilities in everything she sees. She had these little raw saphires in a beautiful shade of blue and we found a necklace in a magazine to use for inspiration.

My husband also baked me a cake and made me dinner. I love that he can cook!

What I am looking forward to...

Sometimes it is easy to get bogged down in day to day stresses and forget that my life really is great. While driving (on my yucky commute) to work today I thought about upcoming events and felt pure joy. I realized at that moment that a great thing I can do daily to relax is to think of the upcoming things I have to look forward to. It is also a great way for me to realize who and what is important to me.

I am excited for/about:
My birthday (Nov. 10). I love my birthday for so many reasons: getting mail (cards), phone calls from family & friends, going to dinner with my husband, taking off of work for the day.

Book Club next week. I may not finish the book but the friend hosting the event just got back to living independently after a terrible accident. Needless to say, our group is very excited!

Visiting my sister & her family. I am looking forward to spending so much time with my husband. I am totally in love with my 8 month old niece. She is the most precious angel. The best gift that God has ever given our family. I am so excited to see all the new things she has learned to do since July.

Work party is at an awesome museum this year.

Fun Christmas paties with friends

Christmas at my parent's home...sunshine & heat during winter is fabulous! Everyone will be there & this will be the first time my extended family will meet my husband. i am excited to show him were I grew up.

My brother's wedding. It will be at a beautiful resort on the beach back home (again the sunshine during winter is awesome). I am a bridesmaid & will be going for a week to help the bride & have a bacherlorette weekend too!

And the best for last...hopefully during the later half of 2009 my husband and I will start trying to conceive. I am extremely excited to have our first child. I am excited for the whole experience, the pregnancy, everything!

It makes me happy just reading these fun things!

weight gain

I am at a reasonable weight for my height 5'5" and 147, I know this in my head. But emotionally its a whole other story. Most friends really don't want to hear me complain. But 2 months ago I was 134 and I am still reeling from the change.
I take a medication that helps me sleep and I very much need it but the side affect is weight gain. At first it really made me hungry...thats were the first 5 pounds came from. The rest, I am not sure. I eat the same amount of calories as before.
One thing I am sure of, is I feel panicked that my clothes are not fitting and what I see when I look in the mirror. I am trying to be practical and not so hysterical about it (so I do not drive my husband and friends nuts) but that is a challenge.
There are 2 options IMO.
A. Go off medication (horrifying)
B. control what I can, be healthy and let go of what I can't control.
I am still trying option B.

Meditation

I have been trying to learn to meditate this year and incorporate it regularly into my life. One of the directions given for meditation is to staying in the moment, just be. That concept sounds simple, but I frequently find it difficult to accomplish. We are a society who thrives on multitasking and are constantly busy. I think that living this way has made it difficult for me to shut my mind to the past and future and instead focus on the present, the breath by breath focus needed to meditate.
I have been using the cds of Jon Kabat-Zinn. He has various meditation activities under the title of mindfulness meditation. I started with his guided body scan meditation. It was recommended to me because Dr. Kabat-Zinn talks you through the meditation. I found it easier to focus and stay in the moment by listening to him.
After I felt comfortable with the body scan I added the silent meditation cds. This was much harder for me. The cds guide me a little but much of the meditation is silent. I find it a much greater challenge to focus on my breathing and not start thinking about other things. Luckily the cds I use have 10, 20 and 30 minute options.
I am currently up to 20 minutes of silent meditation. The next challenge I face is remembering to consistently practice. It does calm and relax me but the long term health benefits come from consistent practice. Unfortunately that also makes me sleepy which can torpedo any activities I may want to do after meditating. Still, I think it is a reasonable price to pay!

Love of arts & crafts + new niece = excuse to use puff paint

I love my niece for many reasons but one of them is the excuse to indulge my love of the craft store. There is nothing else like it. Aisles and aisles of objects waiting to be turned into works of art. I could spend hours there if my husband wasn't usually shadowing me and bored after 5 minutes.

I decided for my niece's 1st Christmas I was going to buy a cute stocking and fill it with various gifts I found over the rest of the year. I have made 2 of the gifts myself. First was a ceramic fairy that I painted and had glazed at one of those shopping mall pottery stores.

Today I found a paint your own night light kit. Yes it was in the kiddy craft section but it had GLITTERY PUFF paint. How could I resist. Glittery purple, blue, pink and yellow to decorate a butterfly.

I LOVE giving gifts and I often combine that with crafts by painting/decorating wooden boxes to put small gifts like jewelry in. Its my way of showing people I care for my love by taking time to make their gift special. I want my niece to look back one day in her childhood chest of treasures and see items I made for her. I want her to know how special she is to our family and for some reason love to me = puff paint.

Encounters with the spirits

In honor of Halloween, one of the best holidays in the year, I want to write about ghost stories. I am someone who has always taken scary movies too seriously. I was honestly scarred by The Exorcist. Amazingly, I love to hear about haunting experiences, particularly if they believe it really happened. I have never seen a ghost and I am rather disappointed and hope I do someday....as long as it doesn't hurt me...or follow me around forever...

I have actually gone ghost hunting in Gettysburg, PA. There is a wooden bridge built there in the countryside before the Civil War (Or as some relatives say, the war of northern aggression). Apparently lots of deaths occured during the war on this bridge. Other deaths occured after the war. I went there late at night, it was pitch black there, absolutely NO artifical light. All we had to see with was the light of the moon and a flashlight. I never saw anything with my own eyes but if you took a picture orbs and various gas shapes were visable.

The scariest thing about visiting family in Louisiana were the ghost stories. Everone from my great-grandmother to cousins my age believed and shared stories with me. My great-grandmother insisted a ghost leg would hop around her kitchen on occasion.

My best friend, whom I trust, had a ghostly encounter that I believe. Her dad's house was his childhood home. My friend slept in her deceased grandmother's room when she stayed with him. On a few occasions, she heard her grandmother's musicbox playing, even though it was unwound & closed. She would also wake up with a blanket tucking her in. The covers had been folded up at the bottom of the bed & would have been impossible to do this to herself. Her dad swore he did not touch her blanket. I think grandma may have been looking after my friend....from the beyond.

Anyone (if anyone reads me yet) has an interesting tale...real or not...I would love to hear it!

The nickname

I would like to tell a little story about how I got my nickname, since it is part of my blog title.

Once upon a time there was an adorable baby girl with the given name of Kristina. Alas, and much to her mother's dispair, her extended family nicknamed her Nina. Now Kristina's mother comes from a family deeply rooted in southern traditions (particularly the Louisiana variety) and that tradition includes the requirement that every child have at least one nickname they deem appropriate, if not multiple names or variations on the first. My mother was determined that her precious baby girl have the cutsy nickname of Krissy. That wish was doomed from the start.
Therefore in my family I am called Kristina, Nina, Nina Bina, crissy tina, peanut. That does not include combinations involving my maiden last name.

I got off easy compared to other family members. I have a relative whose given name is Eudolie. According to family chatter and much to the delight of her older sister, Eudolie was a tad pudgy as a child. She was given the unfortunate nickname of Jumbo by the same delighted sister. Unfortunately for Eudolie, the nickname stuck. Today, dispite her fabulous figure, she is called Jum by the entire family, even in her 60s. Ouch!!

I did not know this story until I was an adult and I now feel bad calling her Jum dispite its acceptability by all. So if this tale interests you at all and you feel the need to add to my little story, please feel free to unload your nickname woes and tales ...

First blog EVER...Captivated aren't you!!!

I must be feeling a little bold this week because not only is this my first blog, I just started exploring the blogosphere (I believe is the proper term?) this week. I have mixed expectations & feelings regarding this enterprise...I am a tad scared that someone will actually read this and also that no one will (original, huh).

I am excited at the prospect of exploring my thoughts and feelings a bit more openly, i.e. the world can read about i, but still fairly anonomously.

A few concerns come to mind...
a. I am not a big fan/used to spellchecking myself or sensoring myself much before I speak (write), therefore am opening myself (rather bravely, I might add) to the ridicule of grammar nuts
b. what on earth am I going to talk about that others are not already doing do death?

I think the answer that is fairly obvious... from what I have already noticed at this advanced age...everything I think or feel is being felt or thought of 10 to the 30th power over. Thats ok, I think I will forge ahead anyway.

Have you noticed I use ... when I am not sure how to grammaticly structure my sentences? I did, but I like them...