Project 365; 356-365

Here are the last few days of 2015's 365 project... better late than never, right?

356/365: One of my colleagues had a Christmas party at his house, so I went over with the intention of leaving after an hour or so...... one Muppet's Christmas record, a few drinks, one snake, and four hours later.... I finally went home.

357/365: The best cure for a hangover is a huge hearty breakfast, right? WRONG.


358/365: My brother and sister came over to exchange gifts, and we spent the better part of an hour playing around with Shawn and I's new camera. Hilarity ensued, as is quite common amongst siblings. You think I'm ridiculous? You should meet these two.



359/365: Waiting for Santa!


360/365: Shawn and I stayed home for Christmas and had a relaxing day in our pajamas. I baked off some frozen Trader Joe's croissants (you guys, those are supposed to be mini!!!!) and we indulged in some champagne. Or I should say, I indulged. Good thing I got the small bottle.


361/365: Our fridge became holiday card central for a few days.


362/365: What's up, Doc?


363/365: Kaylah sent me some tea with her card, so of course I had to try it. Dude. That was so freakin' tasty!


364/365: I was so done with this project, I'm not even going to make an effort to fill this in with a photo from another day....

WHOMP WHOMP

365/365: This is the perfect representation of how unexciting our New Years Eve was. We got invited to a few parties, but we opted to stay in, fell asleep on the couch, and were in bed before midnight. Yep, we are an old couple.

Reflections on Project 365:
I can't even properly express how happy I am to finally be done with this project! The motivation to keep at it lasted longer than I expected, but these past few months have been difficult. Ultimately, I just don't feel that my life is interesting enough to take a photo of every single day. Or, I'm not artistically inspired enough to even take a self portrait on the days that I'm just sitting around at home. While I do feel that doing this project slightly improved my photography.... I still went through all of the pictures recently and wasn't really wow-ed by many of them. It was fun while it lasted, but I'm really happy to not continue it into 2016. Maybe 2017? We'll see.

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Project 365, 349-355

349/365: Our left-overs anniversary dinner! Pulled pork bacon burgers and fries. And beer. And whiskey.

350/365: Shutterfly offered me a free magnet with our holiday card order... of course I picked a photo from our wedding. I love it!!

351/365: I love how it looks as though the hop is blowing space dust on the succulent candles. Except it's more like real dust, honestly.

352/365: Speaking of candles, I've been remembering to light this one. It's starting to get interesting!

353/365: Shawn doesn't write grocery lists on paper like a normal person.

354/365: My friend Alina saw this in Sweden and thought of me! It's a tomte. Basically a Swedish Santa-gnome.

355/365: We joke that Lloyd likes to get his tan on. He's always seeking out the sun; Sylvester, not so much.

Just wanted to pop in and say, Hey! I'm still here. My work schedule has been different because of the holidays, and holiday parties, and all that jazz. I have two weeks worth of blogs to catch up on in my blog reader.... so if you're in the same boat as I am, here's another post to add to your feed that you won't look at until after the new year!

Merry Christmas-Eve!!!

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Project 365, 342-348

342/365: That cat tower was the best dumpster find ever! I love catching both of them in there at the same time.

343/365: Lloyd was "helping" put up some new ornaments.

344/365: Practice makes progress. See also, unrelated, homemade roast pork sandwiches.


345/365: My colleagues are... interesting people. This is on the back of the door to the basement.

346/365: Tree lights!!! Shot with the new camera that Shawn bought us for Christmas!

347/365: I LOVE THIS FACE SO MUCH.

348/365: Lloyd also doubles as a pillow in his spare time.

Favorite things this week:

• Getting the (one) parking permit for our building: Our town is weird... they only offer one street parking permit per building, regardless of how many apartment units are in each building. It's first-come-first-serve, so one lucky person got it last year for our 18-unit building, at the price of $20 for the whole year. If you miss out on the street parking permit, you can only get permits for the municipal lots around town, and those cost $35 per month!!! Parking permit renewal starts in December, so you better believe I was the first person in line this year! And I got it! Now I don't have to worry about parking my car for a whoooooole year.
• Homemade pulled pork, because seriously, there isn't much better than that. I've been trying to keep track of all the different ways we use it so that hopefully I can make a fun post about it soon.
• Adulting Ornament shopping: My girlfriend Briggette and I spent the better part of an afternoon shopping for ornaments for her huuuuuge tree in the house she and her fiance recently bought. We went to Michaels and two different Targets. Then we had lunch at a local pub, and then we went grocery shopping. It felt like a very adult way to spend an afternoon. At one point, she was trying on coats at Target and I asked "Are you sure you don't want the larger size? Will you be able to wear a thick sweater under that one? You're only wearing a thin shirt right now....Ahh! I sound like a mom!! What is happening?!" (Mom, you taught me well.)

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Project 365, 335-341

335/365: This is a proper start to the week.

336/365: I received a package in the mail and Lloyd was all about the box. See also, quiche, unrelated.


337/365: Slightly food-photo-centric this week.... made some vegetarian quesadillas that were the bomb. (Do people still stay that??)

338/365: Chasing sun beams, and colorful beer cans.


339/365: Our apartment complex decorated the vestibule for the holidays.

340/365: Cherry bars. I am not usually a fan of cherries, but hot damn, these were tasty!

341/365: I hosted a craft night with some girlfriends! More photos to come.

Favorite things this week:

• Hosting craft night! I had been planning a ladies craft night for a while, and got (what I thought to be) far too much food in preparation. We ended up eating pretty much everything, drinking a lot of beer, and making a few crafts. I love hosting small gatherings; I love the preparation and bringing people together. It just doesn't happen very often because we live in an apartment complex and I don't want to upset my neighbors.
• Spending some time with my sister. My sister rarely comes out to Philly, but she drove out and joined us for craft night! We still need to make plans to exchange gifts before she and my brother leave for Spain in two weeks. The older I get, the more I appreciate spending time with my siblings. Or maybe it has to do with the older they get...
• Holiday decorations around town. It finally feels like Christmas! Our town put up lights in the trees and little wreaths on all the lamp posts. Now if only it would snow....

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Project 365, 328-334

328/365: Plant maintenance day. Shawn moved all the plants so that they would get more sunlight. I didn't realize how many we had until I saw them all lined up! Can you tell that we enjoy beer too?

329/365: I've been training in bread baking at work... I made all the loaves this day!

330/365: Lights, camera, action!

331/365: Lloyd looking pensive. Apparently I didn't take any photos of actual Thanksgiving... but I'm sure you can all imagine what it looked like. (Insert turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes, and dinner rolls here)

332/365: Nighttime cuddles.

333/365: We got our Christmas tree Saturday evening! With all the bird and squirrel ornaments we have, there's a woodland critter party all up in here!


334/365: I LOVE CHRISTMAS. So does Shawn; he had been hounding me for weeks about getting a tree. It really does make the whole place feel cozier and brighter.

Favorite things this week:

• Getting our Christmas tree! I was trying to figure out how many trees we've gotten together now and I think this is the fifth one. (I don't think we had one our first year of living together.) This one is my favorite so far... we walked around the tree lot for a while, slowly narrowing down our favorites. I wasn't sure about it until we brought it home, but it really is great! Even better? Opening up the box of ornaments and finding all the ones that you had forgotten about.
• Making plans with friends; My friend Jess and I made plans to go to New York city in January. She mentioned that she hates winter (what?!) and she likes having something to look forward to, so we decided we'll go to NYC and eat fancy food, drink fancy booze, and generally feel fancy. It is nice to have something like that to look forward to.
• Being absolutely ridiculous with Shawn; So, I've definitely never mentioned this here before, but Shawn and I have dreams of being awesome at karaoke. This means we spend a lot of our time together standing in our living room, singing fairly loudly along to songs. (I'm sure our neighbors love us....) We're trying to narrow it down to a few core songs... which means we play anything from Queen to Backstreet Boys to Bon Jovi. It's quite a sight, really. You should have seen Shawn trying to dance like Freddie Mercury. (Actually, be happy you didn't see that.) Seriously though, nothing compares to being able to be your(weird/crazy)self with someone.

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Project 365, 321-327

321/365: Same subject, different angles.

322/365: I sent this photo to my mom to show her that Lloyd thinks the gifts are for him. Actually, I think he's really just interested in the bows.

323/365: Someone bought a zebra print dress from my Poshmark closet, so I drew a quick zebra on the thank you card.

324/365: Speaking of Poshmark, I got two awesome dresses in the mail. Can't help but do a little shopping myself....

325/365: We switched cat foods a few weeks ago and Lloyd has had so much energy since the switch! He keeps trying to get Sylvester to play with him, but Sylvester isn't interested. I don't think our cats know how to be cats....

326/365: I spent a few minutes admiring the color and patterns in Target's pajama section.... almost went home with some pizza pajamas.

327/365: Caught the sunset before meeting my friend Amy for dinner at a local pub I had never been to. We got fried pickles and they were awesome. I followed it up with some bison sliders.... why don't I eat sliders more often?!


Posts have been few and far between these past few weeks, and I don't see them picking back up again before the new year. I seem to have lost my focus lately and I'm working on getting back in tune with blogging and building up some better content. The new year seems like the perfect time to roll it all out (along with a new layout). In the meantime, these 365 posts and the Fun Finds Friday posts will be my focus.

Currently:

+ Fighting a cold/seasonal allergies that have left me with a sore throat and an incessant ringing in my left ear for the past week. I think it's allergies because it's all sinus related, and the constant shift in temperatures lately hasn't been doing anything to help. I worked a nine-hour shift yesterday and then came home and took a four hour nap, watched Grandma's Boy, then slept for another eight hours. I didn't get anything done yesterday, but I do feel somewhat better today!

+ Looking at a to-do list that is ten bullet points long, half of which relate to the upcoming holidays, the other half of which relate to important adult stuff, like taking care of the recent recall on my car, and paying bills....

+ Blasting classic rock to tune out the construction workers playing pop radio way too loud outside, and trying not to get angry about the fact that their construction project was supposed to be finished over a year and a half ago; at least that's what we were told when we moved in.... The noise and disruptive conditions have gotten progressively worse over the past few months but our apartment company doesn't seem to care one bit, despite Shawn sending them an angry email (or two).

+ Realizing the vast discrepancy in the amount of photos I take of Lloyd versus Sylvester.... you guys, it's not that I don't love them equally! (Actually, if we're being completely honest, I may be partial to Lloyd, but can you blame me?!) Lloyd is clearly just more photogenic. Though, my friend Amy took some really great photos of both of them with her new phone on Sunday. Clearly I owe you (and Sly) a cat photos post.

+ Sipping lemon green tea every day to soothe my throat, warm my belly, and get me through the day.

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