Welcome to my workspace!!!

Guess what?!  I just sent out MY proposal.  For the first time, I was in charge of a proposal.  At the time it was dreadful.  I was so stressed that everything would be wrong with it.  Now that it's out the door it feels great.  I actually accomplished something!  It cracks me up that in college I thought I was excellent at proposal writing/editing.  HA!  This year has really given me a run for my money and I'm learning what it means to be an editing professional.

This is the cover of my baby I worked on.

It was just itty-bitty, but the process felt like giving birth to a truck.

Just a half-incher.  But I did it and I am so proud of myself!  I can do hard things (sometimes)!
I figured while I was here, I should show you around my office space.

 This is my computer.  I've turned into a stick note-aholic.  They work though!

 This is one of my cupboards.  I love that little machine!  Chomps through tons and tons of paper at once to make perfect three-hole punches.  I even lock it up at night so no one takes it from me. :)

 You know how people have a junk drawer?  I have a junk cupboard...dried mashed potatos, salt, binders, sticky paper, anti-bac wipes?  Let's put them all together in the same cupboard, okay?  Not such a good idea.  It's really embarassing when it's inspection time...

 This is my phone...can you believe I work for a technical company?  I swear this guy was in use before I was born!  But, it's mine.  4105, that's me.

 I just about had a heart attach when I was a new hire and they brought me this list and told me I would need to memorize it and get to know everyone on it.  It's our phone directory for our building.  It hasn't been as bad as I thought.  I'm about 3/4 through it.

 This is a nice touch from the previous tenant.  Those words were written in permanent marker and won't come off.   Who does that?!  We learn in preschool not to do that!  Apparently someone's teacher didn't help them out with that one.  It's nice for when we're planning the structure of a proposal, or for motivating quotes, or weight loss goals....

 I hate this.  This is our "branding color scheme."  These are the only colors we're allowed to use.  It's so confining!

 This definately wasn't my idea, but I can tell you whose it was...
I break the rule all the time.  I'm in the print gally more than my actual office!

 These are our tables where we put stacks and stacks and stacks of proposal copies until it's time to ship them out.  We have to lock the room when we leave.  Top secret stuff, those WIC banking proposals!  I don't know who would steal them...if I didn't have to read them, I for sure wouldn't. But, be my guest!

 This is our heavy duty color printer, affectionately named (by my coworker Anita) "Papa Bear."  Why?  Because it's a crochety old thing that eats paper and breaks down all the time.  You have to be a printer whisperer to get it to work.  Just babysit it the whole time for every print job and say "good job printer, I know you can do it!"
Papa bear holds 7 reams of paper!  Woah, it was built for high industry.  It's living below it's privledges...

 This is the computer that controls papa bear.  Isn't that a riot?  It doesn't just "print."  You have to come here and adjust stuff and electronically force it out.

 These are the tongs for when papa bear is naughty.  We stole them from mama bear before she got moved downstairs (she was a mid-capacity color printer.  I miss her...so reliable).  We use them to pull paper out of hard to reach, piping hot areas.  We got burned once and never want that to hapen again!  Unfortunately, we have to use them a lot.

This...this is "old faithful."  It's our heavy duty black and white.  He'll do what ever you ask him to do (from your own computer!) whenever you ask him to do it and he won't jam or break down...ever!  I love old faithful.  If I ever have a choice, I send a print job to him!

Well, that's my dingy little space in this world!  It's where I change the fate of WIC!  Hope you enjoyed the tour with my awesome pictures.

Spaaaaaa Party

My friend Lechelle just had turned 30.  A cute thing about Lechelle is that she throws her husband a surprise birthday party every year.  So her husband came to me and said he wanted to plan a surprise party for her because this is a big year for her.  We deliberated and came up with a spa party. 

I kept it pretty simple, but we had a fun time, and yes...she was surprised. 

That's my shadow...remember how I said I need help to take decent pictures?  Proof...

We had a beauty bar...but we combined that with the treat table...it was squishy but it worked. 

I bought way too much nail polish, but I couldn't help it...the new muppits collection (OPI) are all fall colors!  They were way too perfect!

We had warmed facial towels in the crock pot.  They were toasty!

We had a lemon mint salt scrub -- homemade I might add.  Look at the cute bottles...Michaels!

I supposed I was moving while I was taking this shot.  Pardon me, I try so hard, but they just don't work out so well.
We had soft, absorbant towels for the pedicures (my favorite!)

and cucumber-infused water...very refreshing in a vegetable sort of way

We borrowed foot baths/wax baths from our generous neighbors...I love living here, everyone shares everything.  Seriously...these are the kind of people to give you the shirt off their backs.

See those purple footies?  Well they have beans in them that you heat up.  It keeps you nice and cozy while retaining the moisture from your lotion!
We also had a massage table...my sweet husband offered massages to everyone there.  I think people were scared to have him touch them, but a couple people took him up on it.  They don't know what they're missing!  I love his massages!

(I don't know how to turn this yet...sorry.  I'll figure it out.)

We had some delicious snacks! 

Oh...that one's bad.  You can't even tell!  Berries, bread, and turkey sandwiches on a skewer...poop :(

Costco cheese platter!!!  They were sampling this at our Costco.  I loved it and I kept going back!  The sample lady may have given me the look of "you've crossed the line, quit coming back!"  But I didn't....

We had a great and a relaxing time!

More Local Mecca

It's no secret that I love Costco.  As a dear friend once said "it's my Mecca."  It's also known as the hundred-dollar store.  Whenever I go in, I find things I've never had before and, of course I HAVE to try them at least once.  Weight Watchers has not helped at all.  They tell us at our meetings to try lots of fruits and vegetables.  In fact, try some we've never had before!  Liscense to buy weird food?!  I'm in!  My most recent shopping trips have yielded asian pears (I didn't actually buy these, they're courtesy of Lechelle, but they come from Costco)


Giant grapes


and these little pretties...baby bok choy

They look suculent and beautiful, right? 
They're not.  They're gross.  I have 5 pounds of them.  That's the curse of shopping at Costco. 
Anybody want 'em?  Any ideas what to do with them?

What are you going to be on Halloween night?

Yes, I'm aware Halloween was almost a week ago, but what's a working girl to do?  Sometimes life is just too fast-paced to get it going.  Anyway, here you go...

For Halloween Daniel and I were the Incredibles.  I would say we looked...well, incredible!  I didn't get any pictures of me, because I was busy running around...you know me.  Here's a pretty good picture of Daniel though...
***Picture credits to Shauna Burnett.  I didn't have any time to get any!

I think he had more fun than the kids did. We had a Halloween Party.  It's been my dream to have an old-fashioned Halloween style carnivale.  My husband was very sweet to induldge me. 
We had awesome decorations!  I asked all my friends to give me their old glass bottles and I would turn them into something fabulous! 
We had re-purposed wine bottles...

Apparently I love groups of three...

They were cheap, but they turned out really cute!  I am for sure keeping these for next year.
Next, we had my personal favorite, bottled blood...

and then we had jarred "specimens"

That may or may not be Daniel's practice skull for the Neuro section...

 Yikes!  Shrunken heads, brains, bugs, floating fingers!  What's a girl to do?  The best part is they're all vegetables so they weren't yucky in the jar...I love Hyvee's weird food section.

 Did you know dry ice makes the carrots jump around?  When they were sedentary, they were lame, but when they were smokin' and jumpin' they were my favorite.

We had lots of drinks.  Got to compensate for that broken clubhouse drinking fountain!

I'm still a kid at heart...smokin', bubbly brews still excite my heart!

these were fun...Yay for printables!

I made bat straws, so easy and so fun!

We played some fun games...

And did things we weren't supposed to do...like put stickers/vinals on the clubhouse walls...shhhhhhhhhh they didn't notice a thing.

It was the perfect Halloween!