Bathroom makeover!

This weekend, I said good-bye to our boring, plain half bathroom...and HELLO to some color!

The before picture....beige, beige, and some more beige...BLAH.

The after picture! It's hard to truly see
the color in the picture, but it's a blue/green/dark teal color.
I love it!!

There is one more final touch that needs to be done - a new faucet. But since Sean was so nice and surprised me with the new kitchen faucet last week, I'll give it awhile before I start asking for the bathroom one to be replaced. :)

Shoeboxes for St. Jude

The final result of our Shoeboxes for St. Jude drive - 130 shoeboxes!! Two co-workers and I took all of these boxes to St. Jude in Peoria....my friend's Tahoe was PACKED! We had to be careful when we opened the back so that no boxes would spill out!



I learned a lot about St. Jude as we made about 4 trips from the car to their offices. Did you know that the next closest St. Jude facility (from Peoria) is Memphis (their headquarters)?!? I thought St. Jude was all over the place, but really they only have a few satellite offices. How lucky are we to live near one?? And the reason that St. Jude has a satellite office in Peoria is thanks to former Mayor Jim Maloof. He was a personal friend of the founder of St. Jude and he convinced his friend that Peoria would be an excellent spot for a satellite office, and he was right! We now have some of the top oncology doctors working close by!

Days 13 & 14...

Delayed...but not forgotten! Last Friday, Sean surprised me with a new kitchen faucet! I've been pining for a replacement for our sub-standard faucet for over two years now. What a difference!

There it is...all shiny and new!

Last September we bought a BIG mirror at IKEA for our family room, and it's finally on the wall! This, too, makes a BIG difference in that room.

We are making progress on our "Home To-Do List". What's next, you ask?? The half bath on our main floor! It's getting a make-over this weekend...stay tuned for pictures!

What dogs do when you leave them for 9 hours...

So much to blog about...

I have a lot to blog about, so I broke it into two different entries - the Vegas pictures are in the next entry below!

It's been a super busy weekend. On Friday night, with some help from good friends, I made 72 of my 'special' cupcakes for my friend Elizabeth's baby shower on Saturday. We didn't NEED 72 cupcakes, but I wanted to provide a variety of flavors (chocolate, french vanilla, and strawberry), so 3 cake mixes made that many!

Sunday evening, my friends and I filled and decorated 17 shoeboxes for St. Jude! The contents of the boxes were donated by a good friend, and all we had to do was decorate, decorate, decorate!

Jamie, Elizabeth, and me cutting, gluing, etc. We had help from two other friends, but they left before I thought to take a picture!

Most of the completed boxes, stacked on my couch.

The shoebox drive is this Wednesday! We're hoping to have around 100 shoeboxes to take to St. Jude!!

On a different note, two weeks ago I interviewed for a Team Manager position, and I'm happy to report that I was selected! Yippee!! I'll start my new job in early April.

I'm off to decorate ONE LAST SHOEBOX!

Vegas pics - finally!

It's been a super busy week since we got back from Vegas, so I'm delayed in blogging the pictures. Here they are!

We stayed at the MGM Grand, and they have a lion cage with several male and female lions. I happened to catch them while they were feeding them. They walk the lions around the outside of the cage and fling meat on the window. The lions then lick it off. It was so cool to see them that close!

The lions were playful too - kinda like dogs! This one has a big, chewed-up red ball.

Me and my sistahs! In front of the iconic MGM gold lion.

The Golden Nugget was remodeled a few years ago, and they built this HUGE aquarium with a water slide going RIGHT though it! The water slide is the tube you see in the middle of the pictures....surrounded by sharks! (And other, less intimidating fish...)

The 'excuse' for our trip to Vegas was to celebrate my 30th birthday (3 months late)! 8 days before Christmas is not the ideal time to whoop it up in Vegas, so that's why we decided to celebrate later in the winter (when it was crappy weather in IL). Kristi surprised me with koozies that said "Kari's 30th in VEGAS" - those were pretty awesome! (that's what I'm holding in my hand...)

My birthday dessert at an Italian restaurant in the Golden Nugget. I'm not sure if someone at our table ordered it, or if the waiter was trying to make up for bringing out some very cold pizzas...

Our group at some casino (can't remember which one!) plus Sean's friend, Joe, that was in Vegas for a work conference. We hung out a lot on Fremont St., where the tables are cheaper and they let you take pictures!

We asked the waitress for a pitcher of margaritas at Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville, and this is what she persuaded us to get - a self-serve margarita dispenser! Whew- those were good!

Day 9,10, 11

I don't have pictures this time...but I needed to get this blogged! Day 9's gift was reed diffuser, and the scent was Asian Mandarin. Sean knows me well - I like the house to smell good! And with two large dogs, that's rather difficult. Day 10 was a bag of granola-cherry-chocolate-banana snack mix. Day 11 was a bag of gourmet almonds that are very tasty! The last two gifts were 'plane snacks' for our trip to Vegas last weekend. Speaking of which....I need to get those pictures posted!

I'm still waiting on Day 12, 13, and 14. Sean meant to get those for me while we were in Vegas, but that didn't happen.

On a different subject...I finally received the results of the two insurance tests I took over the past two months. I was half-way happy. I passed the one I just took last week...but I did not pass the one I took at the end of January. Which is odd - because out of the two, I thought the last one was a lot tougher than the first one. Oh well....I now get to study the legal environment of insurance all over again. Ho hum.....