what to use to shelf those books...

Chris and I decided it's time to finally buy ourselves a couple of bookshelves!  (We currently do not own a single bookshelf. We did have one 3 years ago, but got rid of it because it was a cheap one from college. We actually meant to buy one in Lafayette, but that didn't happen.)  But we don't really know what kind we want...and I've discovered that there are a lot of different styles.  It almost as complicated as picking out any other piece of furniture.  Right now we're thinking about putting one upstairs in the office and one downstairs in the living room.  So I'm not sure whether to get 2 matching ones or not - we'll probably end up getting matching ones in case we ever have to put them both in the same room in the future.

I've been doing some browsing online this week.  Here are a few that I've found.

The ladder shelves seem to be an "in" thing right now.

Do we go with a white one (instead of a brown/black like all of our other furniture)?

One with hidden storage on the bottom?

a simple one

the ones with different divisions are kinda neat and are more modern.

an open-backed one would show the wall behind so it probably wouldn't seem so bulky.

One with doors would be nice. And it has drawers on the bottom.

Or there's one with only the doors.



Any suggestions or opinions?  What kind of bookshelves do you like?  I would like one that's fairly tall, sturdy, and well made - we have a fair number of books (many heavy engineering ones from college).  I can see the hidden storage as a bonus but I could also use baskets/totes for things I don't want out.  And doors would control dust.

Feel free to weigh in!  I imagine we'll be doing some window shopping in the near future since it's always nice to see things in person :)

project: love, me

Today over lunch I was looking at some of my scrapbooking blogs (which I like to do often).  I came across an idea called Project: Love, Me since it was featured on Creating Keepsakes blog today.

I think this is a really great idea for capturing a lot of who you or I are as a person and the detailed information that doesn't come out in just any scrapbooking layout or blog.  The concept is that a prompt is given each week and then you make a layout to go along with that idea.  And I think the really cool thing about this is that you can scrapbook it or blog about it...you can adapt it to make it work for you and to be documented in the form you want.

If I could get back to the point where I make at least one layout every week, then I would love to do this.  I just might have to try a little harder to get back to scrapbooking more so I can do this project.  (I haven't scrapbooked very much, especially since we moved last fall.)

What do you think of this project idea?  Do you think your family would love to see these kind of layouts/blog posts?

fun in STL

This past weekend me and Maggie went down to visit my brother and sister in St. Louis.  Katie didn't get in until after midnight on Friday from a 2-week work trip to California.  So when Saturday morning came around, we didn't do much but hang out around her place. 

In the afternoon, we made our way to the Galleria mall.  Katie and I had each received a $10 gift card from a promotion the mall was doing while we were there over Thanksgiving.  So we took the opportunity to find something we wanted to buy.  At first, I was trying to look for a small clutch, but wasn't having much luck.  Then Katie suggested going into Forever 21 when we walked by it.  And I'm glad she did!

We each ended up finding several pieces of jewelry and we each didn't spend more than $15 (only $5 with our gift cards)!  You see, they have really cheap jewelry.  (All of their merchandise seemed really cheap, at least from just glancing at everything.)  And I thought this was just wonderful.

This is what I picked out.  That's right, 5 pairs of earrings and a long necklace for about $13 :) The necklace was the most expensive item at $4.80.  I had a lot of fun picking these out and knowing that I wasn't going to pay very much at all for them.  I just might have to go back to Forever 21 again when I'm needing some more jewelry!

Well, after deciding that we didn't need anything else since we had spent our gift cards, we went to have a little something to eat at St. Louis Bread Company.  We were all pretty hungry since it was about 3:00 and we hadn't eaten since breakfast.  We only wanted a little something to tie us over because we were headed to...

and we knew we would want one of these...

That's right - we headed to Crown Candy Kitchen (within sight of the Arch) to have some of their infamous milkshakes.

This place has been around since 1913 (and now I think I know why)!  It's one of those places you have to visit, especially if you live in STL.  Even Adam Richman from Man v. Food has been there.  Yes, he attempted the crazy milkshake challenge, where you have to eat five 24 oz. milkshakes in 30 minutes!  I can't even imagine trying that!

Katie and Kyle's friends, Beth and Mark, had also met us there because they had never been and wanted to see what it was all about.

We had a good time and the food was absolutely delicious :) Katie and Kyle split 2 milkshakes (so they could have 2 different kinds) - strawberry and chocolate malted.  I chose to go with the ice cream - one scoop of oreo and one of strawberry.  I think my eyes were bigger than my stomach because when they brought it out it was bigger than my head! (OK...not really...but it seemed like it.)  But it was soooooo good.  I can't remember the last time I've had ice cream that good.  And after tasting the milkshakes, I have to say that they were absolutely wonderful too.

such a tiny little place - we had to wait in line to get a table and it was a slow time for them :)

All of us were stuffed after having our ice cream and milkshakes, but we thoroughly enjoyed our visit to Crown Candy Kitchen.  I even got some dark chocolate to take home to Chris since he wasn't with us.  I would definitely recommend this place to anyone visiting or living in STL!  (We went in the late afternoon on a Saturday, which seemed like a decent time - we only had to wait a little while.)

We had a great rest of the weekend in STL.  Thanks to Katie and Kyle for letting us come bug them for the weekend while Chris was away :)

missing Chris

I've been missing Chris a lot while he's gone on his work trip this time.  Maybe because I got used to spending a lot more time with him, with going to India and all.  Well, since I was missing him tonight and I was stuck in the house (with the snow storm/blizzard), I decided it was time to pick up a scrapbook album I haven't worked on in a while. 

I pulled out the album I started last summer with all of the pictures and memorabilia from the time that we were dating.  I originally started the album because I wanted to document that special time in our relationship and I know that I will love looking back on it in years to come. 

But the problem is that it takes me forever to complete a scrapbook so I needed to make it uber-simple.  So I decided that I would make each layout very simple.  Each would have pictures, a few embellishments, maybe some letter stickers, and a little blurb/journaling about what happened during that time.  On our 1-year anniversary (which was after we got engaged), I had written out the important and memorable dates from our first year together.  But this was just with Crayola markers on normal printer paper - not very archival-worthy!  That was another reason to do this album - to have a place and a reason to put those dates, events, and descriptions (essentially journaling) into a form that I would want to keep for a long time.

So...here's one of the layouts that I had previously finished:

And here are the two layouts that I did tonight:

(look at my incredibly long hair! i doubt it will ever be that long again. and chris' shirt with the duck says 'don't eat soap' :)

(look at how young Kaitlyn is! it's hard to believe it has been that long.)

I also have attached all of the pictures with photo corners so that any of them can be removed in the future to make copies.  All of these pictures were taken in the days that camera film still existed - it is a pain to get copies of negatives now!  I just used 2 photo corners for each photo - it's enough to hold each one in place in the album.

Be safe, stay warm, and have fun playing in the snow tomorrow!  I'm excited to wake up in the morning and see what it looks like outside :)