KirstenL4W

Up to My Eyeballs in Boxes

Kirsten — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:39:03 +0000

We have less than two weeks left before we leave Las Vegas. My house is in a state of controlled chaos. We have a lot of stuff packed, and a lot of stuff not packed.

Then there’s my energy level. I’ve been on the edge for a few weeks now, and I have a few weeks left before we get back to a sense of normalcy. I’m still working (last day is this Friday) and I feel like I’ve had very little, if any, time to relax. But this move is a good thing.

We’ve been taking loads of stuff to donation centers every weekend.

We will be close to my family and not so alone anymore.

We will get a fresh start, which after the past few years, is sorely needed.

But first, there’s a lot more stuff that still needs to be boxed up.Other Posts Like Me:

Trick the Dog

Kirsten — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:00:01 +0000

Over the weekend, we had a friend visit from out of town. Greta is still very skittish around strangers, especially in our home, but she was really good for this one.

Saturday morning, after I finally woke up, I ventured downstairs, where our guest was sitting on the couch reading. She was sitting where I usually sit, so I sat down where Mister usually sits. Greta came downstairs just after I sat down, and ran around the coffee table, and jumped in our guest’s lap. Greta was confused because I was not sitting where I normally sit, so she assumed the figure sitting in my spot was her human.

Once Greta jumped up, she looked over to me and realized that she was not in my lap. She looked at our guest, and her eyes got really wide as she came to the realization that she jumped into the lap of a total stranger. Then she scrambled up the stairs as fast as she could. She was not at all pleased about this mean trick we played on her.

Greta will have to get socialized with humans a lot better than she is now, and there will be plenty of opportunity for that once we get back to New Hampshire. In the meantime, it’s fun to watch her open up more to different people.Other Posts Like Me:

Bye Bye Picnik

Kirsten — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 08:00:06 +0000

Picnik has announced that it is closing its doors in April. Boo hiss!

Wait, did you just ask me what Picnik was?

If you’re a blogger, you probably already know this, but Picnik is an online photo editing site. You can upload your photos, do all sorts of edits from basic stuff to adding text, frames, borders, stickers and more, then save the edited photo to your computer. I’ve been using it a lot for some of my blog graphics because it’s super easy to use, and offers quite a bit, even in the free version.

But that’s all changing in a few short months.

Picnik will be moving their services to Google+, where it’s already available in limited form. Not all of the editing capabilities are there, and the biggest downside to doing it on G+ is that no only do you need a G+ account to use it, but there is no ability to save the edited photos to your desktop. They’re all saved on your G+ profile. I do not like that at all, as I would like to upload things directly to my blog.

Pretty much anyone who’s ever used Picnik is upset about this change, and discussion has already turned to what the alternatives are.

This older post from Daily Gyan includes Picnik, but also 9 other alternatives.

Chris Perillo lists is favorite alternatives.

You can check out what Susan thinks of some of the alternatives over at Between Naps on the Porch.

Mashable has something to say about this as well.

And this whole post was inspired by Centsational Girl’s post on some alternatives she found and some tutorials.

As for me, I’ve already started searching for the best one for me. I’ve played around a bit, and so far I like Pixlr best. I do need to learn the whole layers thing, though. For those who have never used layers, it’s not really user friendly for a beginner to figure out on their own, but I think I had a breakthrough the other night, hence my latest header:

The one thing I’m not keen on in Pixlr is that the effects and the edits are two different parts of the site, so I’d have to make my edits, save them, then upload the photo to effects to do any of that stuff. It’s a bit much.

I’ve been thinking about springing for Photoshop Elements. I had it a few years ago, but never really figured it out too well. I do know that there are lots of tutorials available for it, and any Photoshop tutorials should mostly apply to Elements. I can’t use Gimp of Paint.net because they aren’t available for the Mac, but those are excellent alternatives to Photoshop if that’s the direction you want to go in.

Maybe this is one of those silver lining things on the clouds moving in on Picnik. I might actually learn some photo editing skills.

What about you? What will you be using when Picnik as we know it is gone forever?

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Four-Eyes

Kirsten — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 08:00:38 +0000

I’m trying to avoid packing right now so of course I have a bunch of post ideas floating in my head that don’t have to do with moving.

I recently bought some new prescription sunglasses that I absolutely love. Unfortunately, they did not come with their own case, and they don’t fit into the case for my regular glasses.

I started searching for a case that would fit both pairs of glasses, since that would be more convenient than fumbling with two different cases every time I want to change from my glasses to sunglasses or vice versa. I wasn’t finding anything I liked.

Then I decided to just look for a case for my sunglasses. I gave up on being able to cart the two pairs around together and figured I’d have more luck. But do you know how hard it is to find a glasses case that will fit a big pair of sunglasses?

On a whim, one night I decided to check out Etsy. And what do you know – I found exactly what I was looking for, only way cuter than I ever imagined! And bonus – it fits both pairs of glasses and a cleaning cloth.

If you’re ever looking for something and you’re not having any luck in the stores, check out Etsy. Seriously, it’s worth it. Not only will you find what you are looking for, but it will be handcrafted and you will be supporting small business.Other Posts Like Me:

Moving Is Exhausting

Kirsten — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 20:00:30 +0000

Mister and I have been busy packing everything away and getting ready to schlep it all across this great country of ours. The picture above is the back half of our living room. The bookcases are empty, over a dozen boxes of book are piled up in the garage, and we started in on the kitchen last night.

By the way, books are heavy. I’m glad that we’ll have my young, strong nephew coming to help us load it all into the truck.

We took all the decorations down from the tops of the cabinets last night. What a huge difference that made in making the place look packed up! Today we’re going to pack up all the low-priority items in the kitchen. We have a ton of kitchen stuff, and we can do without a lot of it for the next few weeks.

Few weeks. We have less than a month to go – 28 days to be exact! And I have just 3 short weeks of work left.

Next weekend, we have a friend coming to visit us from California before we take off for the east coast, so the guest room needs to stay intact for the time being. But we did take out pretty much all the decor and furniture, so all that’s left in there is the bed and a nightstand. As soon as she leaves, that stuff gets disassembled.

We’ve spent a lot of our free time packing (when we weren’t being sick – both of us got some sort of fast-acting plague over the past week), and there’s lots more to be done. Not to mention a few craft projects that I need to finish up before packing up my crafty supplies. It’s gonna be a busy and exhausting few weeks!Other Posts Like Me:

Weekend Photo

Kirsten — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 08:00:00 +0000

Come on, Mom! Let’s play!Other Posts Like Me:

Pack All The Things

Kirsten — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 08:00:02 +0000

Over the holidays, I had a ton of time off so Mister and I used that to our advantage to start organizing, decluttering, and packing. Our Leaving Las Vegas date is just under 6 weeks away, and we still have a lot to do, but we’ve also made a lot of progress.

A lot of the issues that I’ve had with clutter is that when we moved in together, I had a very hard time integrating our stuff. At first, a lot of my stuff was in boxes in the garage because I moved into Mister’s one bedroom apartment, and I felt weird moving in and declaring all of his stuff as ours. Then, when we moved house, I finally got to open those boxes, but the storage situation in this house kind of sucks, and things just got shoved wherever they could be put away. Not the most effective solution. I still clung tightly to that “mine” and “yours” attitude regarding our stuff, and in some ways, I think Mister did too. Either way, we just dealt with a lot of stuff by not dealing with it.

Now we come to where we are packing to move cross country, and we have to decide if we really want to move this stuff. We’ve already made multiple trips to donation centers and thrown a lot of stuff away. We still have a ways to go, but this decluttering feels good.

We’ve also made decisions about some furniture. I brought into the household a bunch of modular cabinets. Some of them you’ve seen before (here and here), but they haven’t had a proper purpose since Mister and I moved in together. They’ve just been extra places to shove stuff. So, they go. We’ll have to find some more storage, but it will be more effective and something that we both like, since neither one of us is really fond of the blonde wood.

We also made the decision to get rid of our desks. Remember when I showed you my desk? Mister and I both have the same desk – a slick glass desk with an extra shelf on it. It’s never been my favorite, but Mister insisted that with two desks in a small room, glass would be better because it would visually open things up. It’s a great theory, until you start piling lots of crap on your desk. Then it doesn’t matter what it’s made out of, the room just ends up looking cluttered and small. So we talked about it, and rather than risk moving two glass desks that we’re not fond of, we’re going to do something like this:

Source: younghouselove.com via KirstenL4W on Pinterest

One long desk, and rather than the sweet $1 cabinets that John and Sherry used, we’ll use stair newel posts as supports, and use furniture we already have and love for storage underneath, like my aqua file cabinet and other small items like that. Then we won’t have our backs to each other, we’ll have a surface space that we can get better use out of, and we can use the wall behind us for bookshelves and have ourselves a proper looking office rather than a clutter cave.

So that’s where we’re at right now. Office and garage are partially decluttered, plans to declutter furniture right before we leave are in place, and we still have a ton of packing to do. I guess you all know what I’ll be doing for the next 6 weekends!Other Posts Like Me:

Christmas Loot

Kirsten — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 08:00:28 +0000

Christmas was pretty decent. Mister and I stayed home, just the two of us. Actually, when you include Greta it was just the three of us.

We started the day by watching A Christmas Story – on DVD so there weren’t any of those pesky commercials. We started with our stockings, as was always the tradition when I was growing up. Greta got a nice rawhide bone that she immediately disappeared upstairs with, though we heard some rather obscene noises coming from upstairs.

After stockings, we moved on to the loot under the tree. Here’s what we ended up with:

Since we’re moving to New Hampshire soon, and I’ve been living in the hot dry desert for the past 8 1/2 years, I needed some winter gear. I got it in the form of quality goods from LL Bean (LL Bean has no idea who I am and I was not paid to say that. I just love their stuff.) I got a winter coat and boots, both of which will come in really handy back there. I also got a new cell phone, which I really needed since mine won’t recognize the SD card – which means it won’t take pictures and I can’t have as many apps on it as I would like. I got it all charged up and will visit the cell phone store tomorrow so they can transfer my stuff. Some knee socks (to wear with my boots), chocolate covered cherries, a “K” ornament and a few other goodies rounded out my haul. I hung the ornament over my desk, which is my “K” wall since I have a few other initial items there.

Mister got an electric shaver for his head and face, since he mentioned that he wouldn’t mind at all if Santa brought one of those. He also got a BBQ lighter in the shape of a rifle, some nice leather gloves that actually fit his huge hands, a little talking Darth Vader plush, a CPU cart, whoopie cushion, cinnamon flavored old-fashioned candy cane, and a bunch of stocking stuffers that he wanted and a few that he never knew he wanted until he got them.

The best quote of the day came from Mister. As he was digging into his stocking, he exclaimed, “I love my wife – she buys the best presents!” You do some pretty good shopping yourself, my dear!

Greta was a bit confused at all the excitement and stuff in our living room, but once she received the previously mentioned rawhide, decided that she likes Christmas and wants it to happen every day. She also received a new harness and leash set that makes her a bit more visible than her old one. (Note: dog in photo above is not Greta.) Since Greta has black fur, and the road is black, and the dark is black, I was worried about people seeing her when we go out walking at night, so I decided that I wanted some reflective gear for her. This set is pink and the bones and paws print on it is the reflective part. Greta was excited and had to try them out right away, so I put on my new boots and coat, Greta put on her new harness and leash, and we went for a short walk.

The rest of the day was spent watching holiday movies, cooking and eating ham, and napping. Relatives were called, and we expressed how much we are looking forward to seeing them soon and spending next Christmas with them. Overall, it was a pretty good holiday, but the best part of all was getting to spend it with Mister and the pup.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!
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The Great Christmas Post of 2011

Kirsten — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 08:00:28 +0000

I just realized that I didn’t do a Christmas Post last year like I did in 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009. I’m not going to recap two years, so here’s the scoop for 2011.

Mister and I started the year getting to know our new dog a bit better and dealing with her as she got used to us. In February, my mom came for a visit and made my dog howl. My blog turned five years old and I continue to try to learn as much about the back end stuff that I can.

It wasn’t the greatest year as far as money matters are concerned. Due to Mister’s ongoing (still!) worker’s comp case, we listed our house for short sale. The realtor we hired didn’t do his job as far as submitting the listing agreement and other information to the bank, so when we applied for a deed in lieu, after the house had been listed for a specified amount of time per our mediation agreement, we found out that the house was back in the foreclosure since the bank assumed we didn’t keep our end of the agreement. More stress, attorney fees, and even more stress ensued. The locks were changed one afternoon while Mister was out, and he was able to thwart another attempt to have the locks changed. Because of this, Thanksgiving and Christmas are being spent at home instead of with family members in other cities. We don’t feel comfortable leaving the house for an extended amount of time.

But, we were able to hire another realtor who actually knows how to do her job, have submitted all the required paperwork to the bank, and are waiting to hear back from them if they will accept the listing and if they will postpone the scheduled trustee sale. We’d still like to manage the situation on our terms as much as possible.

Ok, enough of the depressing stuff. There’s more good stuff from 2011!

I needed a new computer, and ended up with my beautiful iMac. We celebrated an entire year of having Greta, who continues to make us smile when she does pretty much anything. I took a vacation to Florida to visit my sister and celebrate my niece’s 5th birthday, and it was really awesome to see how much Mia has grown. When I got home from my vacation, Mister and I started eating paleo-style, and even though it’s a struggle during the holidays, we’ve already noticed some benefits.

The biggest news of the year is the announcement that Mister and I are moving to my home state of New Hampshire. We miss the seasons, my family and friends, and all the opportunities that New England can offer us. We plan on moving in February, so keep watching my blog for updates!

That’s all the news for now. Merry Christmas, and here’s hoping 2012 is a great year for everyone!Other Posts Like Me: