Windy City Whimsy: April 2012

As the title states, and as my lack of keeping up with both facebook and our blog clearly shows...I'm no good at keeping up with social media.

So a lot has been going on in our lives the past few months, thus relating in much hectic craziness. It's really the fun paradox of being busy. There's so much to talk about, but when all is said and done, I have a hard time sitting down and taking the time to type it all out when I could otherwise...not.

Most people probably know by now that we have moved to a new apartment. It's a condo that Kayla's dad bought and is renting to us. We've actually been here for two months (hard to believe it's been that long.) It was a big step up from the first place. To refresh, our old apartment was a studio, a big studio, but still a studio. That means, while we had a separate kitchen and bathroom, we had no separated living and sleeping space. It's hard to really feel "at home" as a couple in a place where the bed and living room couch are mere feet away from each other. The new place is, well we'll call it a 1 1/2 bedroom. It's got one full size master bedroom that is almost as big as the main living space of the old place. Then it's got a second "bedroom" that you'd be hard pressed to comfortably fit anything other than a twin bed, 2 bathrooms (one with a large jacuzzi bath and the other with a shower), and a large living space that has both the kitchen (with a full wrap around bar) and living room.

My parents and Kayla's dad and sister were awesome enough to drive all the way to Chicago in the middle of February to help us move. During the move we even managed to score some discount price furniture off of the building owners. They have their last few units packed full of show furniture from the units they've sold (like ours). Obviously they find it hard to show these last few units while they're packed full of furniture, so they were eager to unload it at discount price aka half price. We got a nice matching couch and chair, matching glass panel coffee table and 2 end tables, 2 bar stools, and a hanging mirror for under $500.

In other news, Kayla's in her last actual class at Le Cordon Bleu. After this she'll have 12 weeks of externship...which translates to her working at the place she's already working, but without classes to worry about. Obviously she is worn out from the double shift of work and school (she does start her day at 4am after all) and very excited for the idea of just work. If you look down at her post you can see some of her creations. I had a large hand in eating most of what you see, so I can attest to the fact that they tasted as good as they looked. I tend to take the cakes in to work and the speed with which my coworkers devoured them attests to their tastiness too. Most of the cakes and such that I took in were gone within 2 hours of getting there.

Speaking of my work, things have been going very well there. We're crazy busy, but I've been moving up a bit and taking on more responsibility. It's awesome to work for a place that expects hard work and recognizes the people who fulfill these expectations. I loved working for MU, but looking back on it, the university did not always do this. Granted they are a school, meaning technically they're not there for profit (cough cough) so you can't exactly expect them to be handing out promotions and raises left and right (particularly if you look at their sports budget) But still, I like where I am now much more. For those back home I can attempt to summarize what I do, but it's one of those things where if I explained in too much detail, you'd probably say "I'm still not entirely sure what it is he does." I work in the shipping department of Guaranteed Rate, which is the department responsible for getting loans to their final investor on the secondary market. We're a part of the "post closing department" which like it sounds, encompasses everybody who works with loans post...closing. I jump around between a lot of different tasks making sure the loans we sell to our investors get where they need to go when they need to get there while also working to get all corrections made to it before it gets there. I'm enjoying the increased responsibility I have even if it means more stress as well.

Then of course there is the wedding. Plans for the wedding are actually going quite well and I really feel that we are getting there. Anybody coming should have gotten a save the date by now and we are going to try to get moving on the actual invitations now. So far we've got the location booked (which also includes food, but we haven't chosen the menu yet.) We've got an officiant. We've got our weddings bands. We've met with a florist and worked out the flowers. We've found our cake decorater. We've got a photographer. We've got my tux booked (and my groomsmen if they would get to a Men's Warehouse and get measured you lazy punks!) and we've booked our honeymoon. We still need to figure out what we're doing for music, and we need to get the invitations done. Oh, and Kayla's had her dress for quite a long time too...so we're pretty well along the way to having this whole shindig planned and put together. That's right, I said shindig.

So that's pretty much our lives right now summed up in a nutshell. It's a pretty large nutshell without any pretty pictures to accompany it...but you know, people don't read enough today, so...yea.

Windy City Whimsy

Saturday, April 21, 2012

I'm bad at keeping up with social media-Nick

Thursday, April 19, 2012

PICTURES!

Apartment Inspirations

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