Progress Can't Come Soon Enough

Ok, so I'm going to look at several houses tomorrow and officially begin my home search. This is exciting, right? Well yes, but it's also freaking me out more than anything! I suddenly feel very much under pressure to make a decision, and a good one at that, FAST. I got the letter from my apartment complex today asking me to make my intentions clear as far as lease renewal. Which made me look at a calendar and suddenly think "OH NO. OH MY GOSH. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN??? WE ONLY HAVE 12 WEEKS UNTIL OUR LEASE IS UP!!"

Yeah. Twelve weeks until our rent goes up by $175 a month, if I don't find a house and close on it before then. I'm thinking we need a miracle here! Also, the thought of packing this whole place up and moving again in just 12 weeks (or hopefully not much longer than that!) is stressing me out. I know I'm jumping ahead of myself, but I can't help but think how much work it was to pack up everything that fit into the one little room I was living in before we moved here, and how much more work it will be to pack up all the things that can fit in almost 900 square feet! All I can say is, I'm really glad I'm not in school right now! It would be way more than I could handle while still keeping my sanity.

I'll try to keep updating and posting more often, but bear with me while I try to keep myself organized and make the largest purchasing decision I've ever made!

Family Time...

My Sundays are pretty much always spent at mom and dad's house. It's the only time we can all get our schedules cleared and they make all my favorite homemade meals :) I can cook for myself, but nothing ever tastes as good as mom and dad's cooking! We usually just relax and watch a movie (last week we watched Food, Inc., which was shocking and disturbing. I'm planning on buying a lot more organic food now, thanks to that movie!) or watch tv. We always call my sister and put her on speakerphone so we can all enjoy her hilarity. But last week mom and I decided that we didn't just want to watch a movie and lay around all day. Instead, we decided to make some cookies!

We made a yummy, shortbread-type cookie with raspberry jam centers and chocolate centers. They were more trouble than your average cookie, but they were extremely delicious! I would definitely make them again. For some of the cookies, we put jam between the top and bottom layer and filled in the middle with chocolate, and for other cookies we did the opposite. Chocolate + raspberry jam + cookies = DELICIOUS! I don't remember what these cookies were called or where mom found the recipe, but maybe she will post a link in the comments if she remembers where she found it.

I'm off to get my taxes done so I can use my refund to help buy myself a house! The hunt officially begins this week once my realtor gets back into town! I'll be sure to update you all on the exciting and somewhat terrifying process!!

We're Back!

This is where I'd love to be right now! This is actually part of a castle in England (photo courtesy of my boyfriend, who's currently stationed there), and it looks so much prettier than this Michigan winter that surrounds us right now! Sorry for the long absence, but this boring white winter just hasn't been inspiring me to do much writing (or much anything else for that matter!). What I have been inspired to do however, is to start looking for a house to buy! I'm still in the very early stages of the whole process, but it's one I'm excited about! I hope to be able to find something in my price range that's in a good neighborhood and close to work and family. I'm starting to get nervous about this whole process, but if this is what God wants for me, it will happen! Perhaps before I officially start my search I should consider taking down my Christmas decorations... :) I'm a bit of a procrastinator when it comes to that. I promise to try to blog more now and to keep ya'll updated on my home search, but right now I have to get ready for work!

Gettin' crafty with my momma...

A couple of weeks ago, my mom and I spent the afternoon creating a small wreath. We had gotten the idea from another blog and decided to adapt it a little bit. The final result looked something like this...

We made the wreath using a small wooden dollar store picture frame, some pages from an old book, and some ribbons and pine cones. It took us a couple of hours, but it was a lot of fun to just hang out and create together. We cut circles out of the book pages and used the end of a pencil to crinkle and curl the pages up to get the effect you see above. We then used hot glue to attach the pieces of paper to the frame, and when we were all done, I took a walk down to the corner of our road with dad and picked up some pine cones to add the finishing touches. Mom just happened to have a small key hanging around and we thought it would be a nice addition to the pine cones. The wreath is currently hanging on our apartment door, safe from the elements. It'll be a nice wreath for the fall, until it's time to put up a Christmas wreath! I don't think it will be too long before that happens though, since I'm already starting to think about purchasing a Christmas tree. It's never too early to start decorating for Christmas as long as it's cold outside! :)

Signs You're Officially A Grown-Up...

It turns out that as much as I thought I was "all grown up," I wasn't. At least, not until I learned the most basic of "grown-up" things yesterday - how to change a tire. If you know me at all, you understand that as much as I love my car, I have never liked taking care of it myself. I will gladly pay other people to change my oil, check the fluids, and do pretty much everything except check my tire pressure (I can handle that on my own, thank-you-very-much). Yes, my father taught me how to do most of these things on my own, but I have no interest in doing it on my own, and I certainly don't trust myself enough with most of these tasks to be sure that I didn't forget one little step, thereby making my car unsafe to drive. The thing I really didn't want to learn to do myself however, was changing a tire. Unfortunately, I was forced to learn yesterday when I went to pull out of my parking space at home and head to work, only to discover that my front passenger tire was FLAT. When I say flat, I mean...

not drivable.  But I had no choice. I was either going to have to change it myself or call a tow-truck. And in this case, it was worth it for me to learn something new in the name of saving a few dollars!

 So since I didn't really know what I was doing, I asked my boyfriend to walk me through it over the phone from England. I would ask him what the next step was, hang up, complete that step, and then call him again. Overall, it took me about an hour to complete the job, but I felt so proud of myself once it was done! But of course, it couldn't be as simple as just changing a tire.

Once the spare was on, and the jack was in the trunk again, I discovered that the spare was flat as well. I love my life. At this point I pretty much just quit caring and drove to the gas station to fill up the spare enough to get me to the tire store where they fixed my tire for free! I do love me some Discount Tire :)

Once I was finished getting my tires fixed, I decided to go get an oil change (ya know, since I was like 2,000 miles overdue and my car now almost has 150,000 miles on it. Did I mention I have a small oil leak? Yeah, I'm not sure how my car is still running either). While sitting there waiting for this fun task to be completed, I was informed that I had burnt out lights on the back of my car, oh and by the way, did you know you need a new serpentine belt? I'm telling you. This car. It's on it's way out.

Ok, ok....you've guilted us into posting!

Sorry about the long absence. I'm glad to see my sister was able to tide you all over, even if it was a sneaky trick on her part! The Apartment Girls have been busy lately! Kayla is still doing full time school and pretty much full time work like she has been, and I've joined her crazy schedule. I've also been trying to change my sleep patterns, which seems to be a full time job of its own. My body seems to think I need approximately 11-12 hours of sleep per night, which really isn't helpful when you've got school and work going on at the same time. It also leaves you no time for fun things, or even just everyday tasks in general. While trying to change my sleep schedule, I seem to be making it through my days as a zombie. Maybe that's what I should be for Halloween. I have managed to start cooking a little more often though, which is a plus! Last week I made Chinese Chicken Soup (a family favorite!) and I also made my own marinade to soak the rest of my organic chicken in (can you believe that the organic chicken was the cheapest package of chicken breasts I could find at our local Meijer store last week?!?)  When I cooked the marinated chicken, I also made some rice, and this is what it ended up looking like:

It turned out pretty delicious. I made the marinade out of soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, ginger and a small bit of brown sugar. YUM!

As Victoria mentioned in her post, we had a pumpkin carving party with a bunch of Kayla's friends last Sunday. We watched movies, had pizza, talked, and of course, carved pumpkins. Here are a few of the highlights from the party....

 This is apparently the only "action" shot we got of the night :)

 Kayla's very first carved pumpkin! I'm so proud of her for doing such an awesome job! :)

 This beautiful pumpkin was carved by Kayla's friend Charlotte. So pretty!

I decided to do a polka dot pumpkin. Victoria made me an awesome "swirly art" template to use, but I didn't have time to go to Kinko's to get the template enlarged enough for a pumpkin. I'm hoping to use that template this weekend on my pumpkin for work!

That's about all of the news right now! It's time to go do some more textbook reading for my online class! We'll try to update the blog more often! :)

Girls, you have neglected your blog!

Hi there, this is Victoria, Lauren's younger sister, asking all of you out there to please join me in shouting: LAME!!!! at Lauren and Kayla for not posting in almost three weeks. 

Girls, now that I am at school, HOW do you expect me to creep/spy on you without posting?!?!  It's ridiculous.  Also, thank you for sending me an email with your login info a few months ago.  I never clear out my inbox.  whoops :)

So how about an update for everyone out there who's been missing their favorite pair of cousins?  Well ok.... since you begged....

1.  Apparently last night there was an AMAZING pumpkin carving party, hosted by none other than the infamous Apartment Girls themselves... I have no idea who attended this illustrious event, but please, give a shout out to my homegirls if you want a post with sweet pictures from this amazing evening!  For now, I can only offer up this meager snapshot of a pumpkin in my parent's garden in order to appease your appetites.  I hope this holds you over for a while.

2.  Last weekend (as in 8 days ago, not 2 days ago) Lauren and I (Victoria) attended the beautiful wedding of two of her co-workers.  It was lovely, I forced Lauren to dance, and even though I KNOW she enjoyed it, there is no way in heck she'll ever admit that, or stop hounding me about my ridiculous behavior - wherein I am the cause of her actually having fun for a change.  Shame on me.  She looked gorgeous, and she helped pick out my dress, so I wasn't too shabby either :)  I won't post pictures though, because me creating this post is a little teensy surprise, and I don't want her to become so overcome by a giant photo of her face that she up and dies, thereby making Kayla change the title on the blog to "Apartment Girl:  One cousin being lame all by herself."  That just doesn't have the same ring.   (BREAKING NEWS THAT I JUST REMEMBERED... If anyone who reads this is a fan of the Bed Intruder Song, you wish you were at this wedding where an AMAZING string quartet played it.  And the Beatles.  That is, the quartet played the Beatles.  Not that the Beatles turned into a string quartet which played the Bed Intruder Song.  Because that would be expensive.  And impossible.  Anyway...it was awesome.  Just saying)

3.  On the subject of Kayla...  Well, who really knows?  Today she was working a ridiculously long shift, and while I was home for the weekend I only got to see her for a grand total of like, 20 minutes.  But she did let me use her tinted lotion in an effort to keep my legs from looking like I cut them out of the bride's skirt.  They were white.  That's what I'm trying to say here.  Anyway, she saved my bacon... or whatever.  You get the picture.

WHO'S UP FOR A FUN GAME?!?!?!

I'm going to need everyone's participation on this one!  Ok, here it goes....


We need everyone to give SUGGESTIONS for HALLOWEEN COSTUMES!!!!  YAYYYY!!!!  I would like to hear your creative and amazing ideas for awesome, budget-friendly costumes you think the cousins would look ah-mazing in!  Please remember:  While just plain old costumes are good, costumes they can wear to make them a PAIR are even better!!!!
Hoping this is the most amusing thing ever,
~Victoria ;)