A long while...
...and a ton has happened.
Do you ever get to that point? Where just so much has gone by that you start to wonder if you'll ever be able to catch everyone up? I'm there. But I'm going to try...so here goes.
Twenty-four
The last time I posted was at the beginning of August (oshbighsh that was a long time ago!). Since then, my 24th birthday came and went :) Taylor is an awesome birthday celebrator and started the day by surprising me with my favorite breakfast when I woke up:
Yum, right? I think yes.
These little pretties were around for a good two weeks before my birthday - Taylor is a pro at getting presents ready super early so you have to stare at them for days until they can be opened!!
These little pretties were around for a good two weeks before my birthday - Taylor is a pro at getting presents ready super early so you have to stare at them for days until they can be opened!!
Our delicious meal started with two house salads, went on to share a bowl of lobster bisque (our special "4th" course thanks to the coupon), and then had the most phenomenal steak and potatoes I think I've ever had. At this point we were pretty much stuffed to the brim but I was still determined to at least try a dessert - fortunately for us, our waiter rocked and asked if we wanted to just go ahead and box up one of our two desserts. Yes please! So we shared a slice of heavenly chocolate-peanutbutter cake and brought home a slice of cheesecake. Papa Bro's may have become our favorite steakhouse. Yum yum yum. And yum again. Oh two awesome things about the restaurant? 1. They have shawls for women who are chilly inside - no joke! I must have looked cold at one point because a waiter came over and asked if he could bring me a shawl! I thought he was joking at first. 2. After dinner, right as we were about to leave, another waiter came around with little boxes of truffles for each couple! So fun!
Time Art
So from the moment we moved in to our apartment, Taylor has had a vision of putting up a huge modern-style clock in our living room. Remember our big blue wall?
This was his vision of where the clock should go (sketched up in Photoshop) - see how big it would need to be???
Building your own clock is a little more complicated than you might think...you can't just buy hands and knobs and expect the thing to work - you need to actually buy the clock mechanism. This was a little big of an ah-ha! moment for me. Don't laugh.
So Taylor found a clock-part website and ordered two large hands and the actual clock part. Then he went to home depot and found scrap pieces of wood in the right size for the hour-marks. Taylor decided that the clock should be white so it could stand out against the blue wall, so he spray painted all the parts:
When they were finished drying, Taylor set everything up on the floor to see how it would look. My pink book is on the floor for scale - it's a huge clock!
We borrowed an extremely tall ladder from Taylor's parents, and one night got our new clock up on the wall! Taylor measured everything out perfectly and it looks AWESOME!
We got the clock up just in time because a few days later we had a bunch of friends over for a little (wine & cheese) birthday get-together. I always forget to take pictures during parties, but here are a few of the munchies we set out beforehand!
Miscellaneous Goings On
Okay, my next few thoughts are truly random. I have a habit of only remembering what we did if I took a picture of it, so sorry if we seem totally scattered :)
If you live in Dallas you've probably heard of Half Priced Books. If you're outside of Dallas, you have an excuse...but you're definitely missing out! It's a store that...believe it or not...sells books for half price! Taylor and I LOVE books. We love reading them, and we love having a library. We do not, however, love how heavy our books are when we have to move. When we moved in, we had about 6 boxes of books! Lately we've been trying to get our apartment in better order and generally just weed out all the "stuff" that sits around forever. Unfortunately, books tend to fall into this category. Taylor uses his Kindle most of the time so he doesn't often add to our bookshelf, which is good because I do. Frequently. I blame it on HPB. I love brand new books, but lately I've been trying to only purchase them on sale...because I tend to go through them pretty quickly...and since you can't go wrong with a book that's $3-$7...you end up with a lot of them. And then they end up in yet another stack on our shelves. You see the problem?
Anyway, one day we decided that we were going to purge our bookshelf. Did I mention that HPB will buy used books too? Purging becomes a lot easier when you can actually get money back for cleaning out your apartment.
We packed 98 books and a huge stack of magazines into a massive bin and set out for HPB. I have to admit, we picked out and saved our favorite books (and cookbooks - I cannot part with those!) so we still have a "small" library. Don't worry, we weren't going totally crazy!
Afte HPB took 20 mins to sort them...we ended up with a whopping $58. Okay, so it wasn't a crazy amount...but we were definitely happy to put $58 go into our savings account and have less "stuff" in our apartment as a result! I still love buying books...but something about getting less than $0.50 for each one definitely makes me only want to buy them on sale from now on :)
On a totally different note (see? this is a prime example of the random pictures on my phone)...one night we went out to dinner at Deep Sushi in Deep Ellum (using a Groupon of course!) and they brought it to us in a boat - LOVE it!! It made me really happy :)
Our last bit of news is our biggest life-change at the moment. I've been accepted into my company's 10-week training program. What does this mean? In a nut shell, I've been promoted to an Account Executive within my company, but have to go through a 10-week training program at my company's NY office to get there. It's a selective program - they only hold two of these 10-week classes a year and each class is comprised of a select few people from our offices around the country. My class has a total of 9 people in it, including me. There are two guys from LA, one guy from Boston, one girl from Atlanta, and four people from NY. We just finished week 1 and it was the longest week of my life. I worked approximately 70 hours and got about 20 hours of sleep for the entire week combined. Despite the crazy amount of work and being totally sleep-deprived, I love it. My industry (TV sales) is SO exciting and fun and I can't wait to learn everything I can. I'm a dork, I know.
This is the stack of books we walked into on day one. Oh.emm.gee right?
And so, that's where we are right now: plugging along in Dallas & NY.
Xoxox
Gwendolyn & Taylor
So from the moment we moved in to our apartment, Taylor has had a vision of putting up a huge modern-style clock in our living room. Remember our big blue wall?
This was his vision of where the clock should go (sketched up in Photoshop) - see how big it would need to be???
Building your own clock is a little more complicated than you might think...you can't just buy hands and knobs and expect the thing to work - you need to actually buy the clock mechanism. This was a little big of an ah-ha! moment for me. Don't laugh.
So Taylor found a clock-part website and ordered two large hands and the actual clock part. Then he went to home depot and found scrap pieces of wood in the right size for the hour-marks. Taylor decided that the clock should be white so it could stand out against the blue wall, so he spray painted all the parts:
When they were finished drying, Taylor set everything up on the floor to see how it would look. My pink book is on the floor for scale - it's a huge clock!
We borrowed an extremely tall ladder from Taylor's parents, and one night got our new clock up on the wall! Taylor measured everything out perfectly and it looks AWESOME!
We got the clock up just in time because a few days later we had a bunch of friends over for a little (wine & cheese) birthday get-together. I always forget to take pictures during parties, but here are a few of the munchies we set out beforehand!
Miscellaneous Goings On
Okay, my next few thoughts are truly random. I have a habit of only remembering what we did if I took a picture of it, so sorry if we seem totally scattered :)
If you live in Dallas you've probably heard of Half Priced Books. If you're outside of Dallas, you have an excuse...but you're definitely missing out! It's a store that...believe it or not...sells books for half price! Taylor and I LOVE books. We love reading them, and we love having a library. We do not, however, love how heavy our books are when we have to move. When we moved in, we had about 6 boxes of books! Lately we've been trying to get our apartment in better order and generally just weed out all the "stuff" that sits around forever. Unfortunately, books tend to fall into this category. Taylor uses his Kindle most of the time so he doesn't often add to our bookshelf, which is good because I do. Frequently. I blame it on HPB. I love brand new books, but lately I've been trying to only purchase them on sale...because I tend to go through them pretty quickly...and since you can't go wrong with a book that's $3-$7...you end up with a lot of them. And then they end up in yet another stack on our shelves. You see the problem?
Anyway, one day we decided that we were going to purge our bookshelf. Did I mention that HPB will buy used books too? Purging becomes a lot easier when you can actually get money back for cleaning out your apartment.
We packed 98 books and a huge stack of magazines into a massive bin and set out for HPB. I have to admit, we picked out and saved our favorite books (and cookbooks - I cannot part with those!) so we still have a "small" library. Don't worry, we weren't going totally crazy!
Afte HPB took 20 mins to sort them...we ended up with a whopping $58. Okay, so it wasn't a crazy amount...but we were definitely happy to put $58 go into our savings account and have less "stuff" in our apartment as a result! I still love buying books...but something about getting less than $0.50 for each one definitely makes me only want to buy them on sale from now on :)
On a totally different note (see? this is a prime example of the random pictures on my phone)...one night we went out to dinner at Deep Sushi in Deep Ellum (using a Groupon of course!) and they brought it to us in a boat - LOVE it!! It made me really happy :)
Our last bit of news is our biggest life-change at the moment. I've been accepted into my company's 10-week training program. What does this mean? In a nut shell, I've been promoted to an Account Executive within my company, but have to go through a 10-week training program at my company's NY office to get there. It's a selective program - they only hold two of these 10-week classes a year and each class is comprised of a select few people from our offices around the country. My class has a total of 9 people in it, including me. There are two guys from LA, one guy from Boston, one girl from Atlanta, and four people from NY. We just finished week 1 and it was the longest week of my life. I worked approximately 70 hours and got about 20 hours of sleep for the entire week combined. Despite the crazy amount of work and being totally sleep-deprived, I love it. My industry (TV sales) is SO exciting and fun and I can't wait to learn everything I can. I'm a dork, I know.
This is the stack of books we walked into on day one. Oh.emm.gee right?
And so, that's where we are right now: plugging along in Dallas & NY.
Xoxox
Gwendolyn & Taylor
Wow, congratulations Gwen! That is awesome! And I am very impressed with the clock, Taylor!
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