update on... yoga room?

hi all!  i am happy to report i'm feeling soooo much better than last weekend and back up to [most of] my usual tricks!  i'm healing slowly but surely and it will still be a little while til i am feeling totally 100% normal, but i'll take this little victory of not having taken any pain killers all weekend so far!  it's definitely summer here and our AC-free house is turning into a sweat lodge.  ugh.

after lots of work, we are finally done with the living room!  i'm so so so excited with how it's turned out.  just last weekend i posted that we took a little trip up to one of my favorite stores and bought an awesome new piece.  it's finally up and it's the perfect finishing touch of the living room!

so there it is!  the best part - it's just little clips that hold up the pictures/coasters/books/postcards/menu from our wedding, so we can change them as many times as we want!  and knowing how bored i get with my surroundings... it will be often.

the top half of our awesome find, with pictures from a bunch of our trips,
postcards we used as save-the-dates for our wedding, coasters from some
european pubs we love... 

the bottom half, with the cocktail menu from our wedding reception, an
old wine label, snapshots from prague, my parents at a college dance, and
a book called 'secret love letters and the legend of the lovers from prague,'
and a picture philip drew :)

happy father's day!

hi all.  sorry for my absence this last week, but things have been a bit off.  here's the short version: after a long day of yard work last sunday, i woke up monday morning with a bad pain in my right side.  it got steadily worse all week and by thursday i had an appointment to see my doctor.  i'll cut the rest out since this isn't really a medical blog, but basically i have some nerve problems in one of my nerve branches that starts at my spinal cord and stretches along my right side to my belly button. nothing serious, just a few weeks of chronic pain that i can't shake.  so between that, game 7 on wednesday night (SO STOKED about the b's win!) and a fancy work event thursday night, there wasn't much time for anything but laying in bed with bags of frozen sugar snaps on my side.  :(

BUT i was determined to still have something resembling a good weekend.  saturday was spent with our bikes and our neighbors at the highlands street fair in our neighborhood, which was so much fun!  lots of beer, lots of food, lots of music... and one bike wreck for me.  go figure.

so now here we are sunday, where i am recovering and roasting peppers while philip is hard at work on house stuff.  just wanted to say hi to everyone!

i was going to do a bit of blogging about some new pieces i picked up at one of my favorite shops today, but i think i'm going to wait... i have a shipment of photos coming in from apple this week and i'll blog then once i get some up.

happy father's day to all, especially my own dad! :)

me & dad, sept 2008 :)

the backyard: update i

happy sunday night all!  it's not like me to be blogging so late, but what can i say... i'm inspired by these longer days we have been having.  it's been an absolutely lovely weekend here i must say, and i definitely have some fantastic updates for you all!  we have started on our summer project: the back yard.  yikes.  i like to say that when we first moved in i'm pretty sure that is where they filmed hostel.  yeah.

but let's backtrack to the playing part of the weekend before i get to the working part :)  friday night philip and i did one of the things we do best: played our hockey drinking game.  now this is something that i made up way back in the day but is still just as fun today as it was two years ago.  there are only a few rules to the game:

-1 drink for every shot on goal
-3 drinks for every goal

the rest of the goals depend on the game you are watching.  so it can be 1 drink every time you see sidney crosby if its a pens game, 1 drink for every fight if it's an avs - detroit game, etc.  friday night we had some good ones though:

-2 drinks every time the h. and d. sedin are referred to as "the sedins" or "the sedin twins"
-1 drink for every crowd cheer of "louuuuuuuuuuuuuu" no matter the absent-minded stop
-1 drink for every mention of how damn old recchi is

so obviously we were having a good time :) until the game ended.  saturday morning i had to work - but a soon as i got home i found philip working in the back yard, and he asked me, "what do you want to do today?"  my reply: "go to the park and drink."  and that's exactly what we did.  we both got bikes last weekend, so it was a perfect time to take them on a test run.  we packed backpacks with a six-pack of alaskan amber, a picnic blanket, a deck of cards and some triscuits and headed off to sloan's lake.  after a few hours of drinking beneath the shelter of an aged tree (that one's for you philip!) we decided to head home.  it was about 6pm and we had been in the park for three hours.  so on the bike ride home, i was leading the way... and decided to bike over to three dog instead :) we enjoyed a few more drinks and some good conversation with one of our favorite couples the kremhellers who came out and met us.  it was an awesome day - even when we biked back to our house at 10:30pm.

but sunday we were done playing and on to work.  we were up fairly early and went to pick up all the supplies we would need for a successful yard work day and then started at it.  last year we laid the sod, so a lot of the hard work has already been done.  this summer it's more about fine-tuning the yard, making the sides look presentable and having a place where we can sit outside and enjoy our hard work. just a reminder of what the backyard looked like last summer when we moved in:

LIVE YOUR DREAM & SHARE YOUR PASSION.

hello all!  there have been some AWESOME new developments in the scarano-isbouts household!  i could give you the short version... but instead i think i'll use my evening wisely and post the long version (multi-tasking while i watch game 4 of the stanley cup finals, of course, so excuse any typos!).  and if you don't want to hear it all well, then, don't read it :)

so quite a while ago, i decided i needed to do something different with my life.  not that i don't like my job; i actually enjoy it quite a bit.  i work with great people, i enjoy my customers and i am never bored.  but it's definitely not quite what i pictured myself doing.  the one problem with my job is that i don't get any fulfillment out of my job - i don't go home thinking that i did something good at the end of the day.  the beginning of my journey began when i was reading what is the what, which i highly recommend everyone in life read (for a link to amazon.com where you can buy the book, click on the clink under 'i pledge to read the written word).  it's a dave eggers novel - but really it's a true story told through the eyes of a sudanese boy who lived through genocide.  and after reading what valentino achak deng went through on a daily basis, it really put my own issues in perspective.  so i decided halfway through my book that i couldn't be one of those people who just did nothing.  i need to do something to help make the world a better place, however meager it may be.

after lots of research and discussions with my super-supportive husband, i came to the conclusion that my perfect career would be working for a non-profit.  sure, i'll take a pay cut, but it will be at the expense of doing something i am passionate about and making a difference.  that's the big motivator here.  but how does one go about making that change?  the answer is that it's gradual; it's a process and not one you can take lightly - at least not at this point in my life, being a home-owner and all.  so for me, right now, step one is going back to school!  starting in august i will once again be a college student.  i'm going back for public policy, a specific track of a political science degree.  it's a good one for non-profits because you learn about the ins and outs of local and large-scale legislation, which is where a lot of non-profits need advising.  and it's a huge plus that in this phase of my life i am very, very in to politics.

so to sum it all up...

my awesome girl laura sent this to me yesterday after stumbling upon it on another blog.  it sums up exactly how i want to live my life and how i would encourage everyone i know to live theirs.  life is too short to get caught up in things that don't make you happy - profit and loss statements, hitting those quarterly numbers, whatever it is that DOESN'T float your boat.  don't do it.  live your life for YOU.  and start today.  it's what i am going to do.  and it won't be easy.  i have nine credits in the fall and i'll still be working full time (which means a minimum of 40 hrs for me, usually more).  and on wednesdays, when i have my weekly 7:30am meeting and then will work all day, and go straight to a 5pm early political thought lecture until 8pm?  yeah, i'll want to give up.  but i'll look at this blog post, and i'll look at that picture above, and i will remember what is truly important in my life.

and if this has gotten you thinking at all, please visit these websites to learn a little more about the causes i am becoming absolutely enthralled with:

VAD foundation
olive branch

there will be many, many more updates folks!  but for now, that's what i've got for you.  so until next time... "open your mind, arms and heart to new things and people, we are united in our differences.  travel often; getting lost will help you find yourself.  life is short.  live your dream and share your passion."

until next time...
xoxo

successful uneventful weekend

effortless, original. annie hall.

happy sunday all!  it was a glorious weekend here at the scarano-isbouts household.  we kicked it off with a (surprise!) saturday morning off of work for me, which was much needed.  on the way home from work, we stopped at our favorite liquor store to pick up some wine.  in california last weekend, my sister introduced me to the amazingness that is boxed wine.  it's quite the trend now i hear; it's cheaper, bigger and lasts longer (that's what she said!) than a regular old bottle of wine.  so we were browsing around some of the boxes of wine and i happened to find one of my favorite open-up-just-because bottles in boxed form.  SCORE!  so we ordered a pizza, cracked open a box of wine and put on annie hall (one of my all-time favorites).  perfect night.

shakespeare & co in paris

so saturday morning was, as usual, cleaning day.  philip washed the car and i gave the kitchen some much-needed attention.  mom came over in the afternoon and we did some serious shopping.  so i know you will all think i'm crazy... but i'm going to let you all in on a secret.  for cheap cheap cheap, fun home decor, check out hobby lobby.  don't shop online, you definitely need the browsing factor.  the first time my mom brought me i thought she was a lunatic - that's for old lady arts and crafts supplies.  but i was wrong.  there is a lot of crafty supplies but there is also some AWESOME finds.  after a few very successful hours shopping (photos of my finds below) we went out for sushi and saw the newest woody allen, midnight in paris.  SPOILER ALERT: best movie ever!  i love owen wilson as the woody-substitute, and the trip reminded philip & i so much of our trip to paris two years ago.  obviously, no time travel, but otherwise that was me in paris!  all throughout our trip, i constantly dragged philip around to cafes, bars, bistros, bistros, anywhere that was a hotspot for the lost generation of the 20s.  we had wine on the streets outside of chez georges and flipped through stein and hemingway novels at shakespeare & company.  it was absolutely brilliant.  for those if you who don't know, i'm a huge woody allen fan.  i just love his movies, and his dialogue is fantastic.  and even when you think his movies can't get any better... i just learned that alec baldwin is starring in the next woody allen - shot in rome!  my head just exploded.  ANYWAY, after the movie we went back to the house and indulged in more chicken wine... and mom ended up staying over :)

this morning, while nursing our hangovers, we did a bit more shopping.  and MORE great finds!  first stop was world market, which you all know how much i love.  i definitely picked up the best find of the weekend... a gorgeous mirror, photo down below.  then we ventured further down to home goods, which i have heard such good things about from bianca and my step-mother-in-law.  more scores!  but the best part is, i'm finally starting to feel happy about the living and dining rooms.  things are finally coming together now, looking more settled in.  i'm just so happy.  and we finished the weekend off with some homemade mojitos at our neighbor's house in their gorgeous backyard.  and blogging.  simply lovely :)

where have i been?

hello all!  sorry i've been MIA for almost two weeks... actually longer than that.  not that you you all didn't enjoy my plethora of U2 posts, but that's really all i talked about for a solid 10 days.  just be glad you weren't around me - if you thought i was intense in a blog, you would have been a little scared of me in person.

but anyway, i thought i'd share a little bit of what i've been up to lately!  first off was the U2 concert, of course.  so good it was practically a religious experience (even philip agreed with me on that!).  see, mom got us these tickets for the show for  christmas 2009 - but then the concert, originally scheduled for june 2010, was delayed due to bono's back surgery.  not cool.  but when we finally got word that the concert would take place in may 2011, the waiting began.  we had been counting down to this concert for over a year and a half!  AJ flew in from boston for the show and stayed with us for the weekend.  it was a weekend of boozing, singing and dancing.  mostly it was me doing those things of course.  a few good shots from the show below.