holiday tipping

I'm kind of a cheapskate, but the internetz (and Emily Post?) tell me that some people tip mailmen, garbage men, and other similar service people...

A woman on a message board I follow was nice enough to tip her mailman (I've never even met our mailperson, so sorry if you're out there, no tip for you) and this is the thanks she got.

I'll stick with tipping my hairdresser (and a special tip to daycare for the holidays).

kitchen makeover, 98%

Remember that kitchen makeover we started over the winter?

To refresh your memory, here's the kitchen from when we moved in:
Last summer, we painted and changed the drawer and cabinet pulls...

But the yellow floor and "wood" countertop remained, plus the lovely laminate, grease stained backsplash, and a tipsy faucet.

Our goal was to give it a facelift for under a thousand dollars. Its been mostly done for a while, but the details were slow to be finished, since right after we finished the floor, counters and backsplash the chaos of the spring rugby seasons began.

What do you think?


What all was changed:

• Gone are the "wood" countertops with sharp, peeling edges. In are the new cut-to-fitIkea Countertops with a rounded edge.
• Gone are the semi-gothic handles! In are sleek chrome ones!
• Gone is the faucet that was falling into the sink. In is the faucet with a functional sprayer.
• Gone (well, tiled over) is the vintage yellow pebble lineoum. In is the "luxury" groutable vinyl tile (photos of this job here)
• Gone is the white-ish plastic backsplash. In is the tile. (This created a detail of time, as I then had to do outlet surgery to pull them flush, as the tile is much thicker than the plastic was!)
• Gone is the wallpaper. In is the new buttery yellow paint. We also painted the (unfortunate) ceiling tiles Craft White to help brighten the room (and cover the effects of age).
• Gone is the brown, not centered, room darking light. In is a normal light!

All in all, I believe we spent about $750 in supplies, well under budget. We also bought the little white cart to replace the table-for-not-really-two and an energy efficient and not hideous almond fridge (about $1100 total), but these items will come with us when we move, so I think of them seperately :)

Remaining details:

• Buy a paper towel holder. I have no idea how we don't have one!
• Hang blinds, purchased about 4 months ago :)
  

things I have issues with

Being on email at 12:30 am and 7 am and again at 8:47 pm tonight when I still make a couple thousand less than I did at 23.

Remind me why I quit engineering?

how bad is the recession, really?

If people can spend money on stuff like this?



At least the Snuggie was functional and not obviously hard to use (see shaking of TP off stick...)

Thanks, Student Financial Services

email I got at work today

In these difficult economic times, consider these payment options when planning to pay your upcoming Fall 2009 and Spring 2010 term bills:

3. Lock in current tuition rates through the Tuition Stabilizer Plan. If you have the resources, consider prepaying tuition and mandatory fees for future years at the 2009-2010 rate, and avoid increases. Enrollment can be for two, three, or four years, and is open to all students, except those entering their final year. Enroll by July 15.

Sure, let me pull (many) THOUSANDS of dollars out of my back pocket. Oh, wait, my "resources" you meant my trust fund didn't you?

sigh

and the rich get richer...

GoodSearch

Mike posted about GoodSearch as a fund-raising search engine. I love a little philanthropy (see 3-day link in sidebar!! Walking 60 miles for breast cancer research and awareness (shameless plug to encourage donations!)) . I found my HS marching band as one of the groups you can donate to! As important as cancer research? Probably not. Benefiting the lives and development of hundreds of kids? Yes. CHS Mustang Band, you get my couple of cents per search!

I have no idea how this compares to Google, but so far so good and Mike has Zappo-ed on it, so I figure I can run everything through GoodSearch and if that's not productive, try my buddy Goog (I need to branch out anyway...between gmail, blogger, gchat, googledocs, googlereader, googlefinance...Google owns my life)

(slight) change of plans

I'm not running the MORE half.
I didn't register in time. Since my training has been spotty, I've been putting off registering, and when I went to do it tonight, I found it was full! Bummer! The MORE is cheaper than most races and all women, and in NYC! sigh.

So plan b (developed at 11:23 tonight). Princess Charming and I are running the NJ Half Marathon instead.

Upsides:
flat!
10,000 total cap (I like bigger races, and this is a big but managable size). looped course, so I get to be the one abandoning the 2,500 marathoners (and feel fast outrunning so many of them who are pacing themselves for, eek, 13.1 more miles. I will try to remember their pain and remember how 13 miles feels short during full marathon training...).
free NJTransit to the start! (I think we'll drive down to a reasonable stop and do this, and have my parents pick us up!)
Loop course also means more spectators (theoretically anyway) since its easy to get to people in multiple spots. And there's bands! (this is a pretty well reviewed race)
AND there's no rugby that weekend for me to have to decide to bail on (with the other option to risk being tired/sore on race day).

Downside: $85. Normal price for a half, but more $$ than I was planning on. Oops. Hope its a tech tee at least.

Overall a win I suppose.

(and we have an extra week to train, which is good since I'm kind of behind!)

doing it again

I never really had wedding withdrawl - perhaps because I was never SUPER engrossed in wedding planning - but I do have "if things were different" thoughts when I see other's wedding photos, etc. Since I haven't finished my faux-married-bio (since I mostly blog from work, where my photos are not!), I will do a different recap today :)

We had a wedding I loved on a reasonable budget. We're legally married (some places) and had our nearest and dearest (who could afford the trip) there.
However.
If things (DOMA, among others) were different, we'd probably have gotten married in PA where we live, seeing as it'd be weird to pick between our hometowns 900 miles apart. And we would have done just one reception (no casual-backyard-at-home reception), and the wedding would have been bigger in general. Still relatively economy without being tacky, but bigger.

Needless to say, I never really planned out those details since it wasn't going to happen.
I did, however, pick out some lovely fancy items for the wedding I would have if someone gave me, say, $50,000 I was only allowed to spend on the wedding (not the honeymoon, not a house, etc etc).
So some lovelies from that theoretical, totally impractical, waste-of-money-in-my-opinion wedding I might have a fleeting dream of but would never have. (And, now, little fleeting wants, be gone from my head!)

I'd have done a more lux invitation








and a custom stamp to match.
We'd have used a (duh) bigger place, and but kept our requirement of character and non-wedding-factory feeling, ala...














with understated ivory candle centerpieces and gold chivalri chairs.

real flowers for the bouquet with cymbidium orchids and calla lillies ala








and a spectacular dress ala















and somehow have hair that could pull off this











and a photographer that could do this












and now, back to your regularly scheduled, practical programming.