Baby, its cold outside!

 Willa and I played outside the other day.  It was pretty chilly outside but it just looked so nice that we couldn't stay inside.  We decided to take Stickers with us.  He was supposed to have been an outdoor cat, but I am just still too nervous about pets getting hit by cars to let him be outside unattended.  So, we played a little, we followed Stickers around while he checked things out on the track.  Willa drug him around.  As usual. 

 Then, the neighbor dog decided to join our fun.  Here's the deal with the neighbor dog.  She (I'm pretty sure its a she) is a very pretty, sweet yellow lab who we met very shortly after moving in.  Long before we met her owners.  She was so friendly that we wanted to be able to call her by name, but she had no tag so we decided that WE would call her Sara.  Willa even named one of her stuffed puppies after Sara.  It got to the point that I think we all forgot that her name most likely isn't Sara.  We even introduce her to guests as Sara.  We never remember to ask the neighbors what their dogs' real name is.  So...back to my story.  Sara came.  Stickers was terrified.  He climbed the biggest tree in our yard so super fast and so high that there was no way I could get him down.  I had to convince Sara to go home, which seemed to make her pretty sad.  Then I had to just stand in the cold and wait for Sticks to climb down far enough that I could climb up and get him.  I was a little nervous.  I wish I would have snapped a pic of how high up he was.  We were oh so grateful when he was down and safe and we took him inside and snuggled up with him.  Which I did get a picture of:)

Greenish Black Friday

FOR REAL!  Purely Maid has a website!  We've talked about/wanted one since, oh, probably that first fateful day that we cleaned together at Marcia's house 5+ years ago.  We were like, hey, let's clean a house together, go drink some bloody marys and eat some sour patch kids, and then have a really awesome web site all about it!  Now that we have built our clientele from 1 to over 30, we have a website!  Thanks 110% to my fantastic brother in law, Brant Van Boening.  For now, the website is just featuring our Green Black Friday sale but very, very soon it will have our info and then the business can just go ahead and pour in:)  Because apparently I think we need more than 30 clients?!?  Yes.  Yes we do.  We will start cleaning on Mumphday if we must, even though now that is our day off where we do all sorts of enjoyable activities together and with our families.  You've never heard of Mumphday?  That's because we invented it.  Go invent your own day. 
In my previous post, I mentioned that I was very thankful for this business, my business partner and all of our clients and I really meant it.  As strange as it may seem, some of my best memories of the past few years have come from cleaning or cleaning related situations.  I have also met some really wonderful people, some who clean with us, some who we clean for, and some who have given us lots of help along the way.  And as an extra bonus, I get such a good feeling from cleaning.  I like to leave someone's house and know that it looks so nice and fresh and they are going to come home to that and it will alleviate just a little bit of stress in their lives. 
So, check out our Black Friday sale.  Check back later this week to see the regular website.  Email us.  Call us.  Buy a gift card for someone you care about.  Hire us to clean your house.  Or just come downtown and have a drink with me when I get off work this morning.  It promises to be entertaining, as sleep deprived as I am:)  Go Huskers!

I am thankful for...(in no particular order)

Happy Thanksgiving, friends!  Isn't Thanksgiving just the best holiday?  I mean, its all about eating and thinking about the positives in life and watching football (or in the case of my family, catching up on Dexter and Homeland).  My poor family has to put up with my wacky work schedule, so I slept till noon and we had a late lunch - which was delicious.  Brother Chris made some mushroom and shallot gravy that I kind of wanted to roll around in like a pig does in mud.  And I got some cupcakes from a coworker who has started a cupcake catering service called Jamicakes that were heavenly.  I believe that Tosha described the cupcakes well when she said that the frosting is better than s.e.x.  Then there was some red wine and some tv and ooops.  I went back to sleep for awhile.  And now I'm back at work!  What a nice day!  I did volunteer to host Thanksgiving next year, since it will be my holiday off so I'm already brainstorming...I do want to take some time now to just make a list of whatever pops into my head of all the things I am thankful for, just to kind of take stock of how great life is.  So:
family (duh). old friends. new friends. having a job. owning a business. my business partner. my health. the health of my loved ones. blogs. iphones. holidays. red wine. sometimes white wine. whiskey. tequila. vodka. sushi. frosting. green tea. curly haired toddlers. facebook. the internet. my home. my yard. stickers and bailey. luther and the memory of luther. my friends' pets. twitter. the bloggess. laughing until there are tears. the upcoming cookie baking day. dinner club. book club. 99% of our cleaning clients. tailgating. houzz.com. babies on their way (NOT mine, don't get any weird ideas). texting. email. mini coopers. anderson cooper. bradley cooper. pandora. comfy boots. slippers. hoodies. marriage. adoption. ikea. mountains. honeycrisp apples. baking. photos. painting. mad men. dee, charlie, dennis, and mac. pedicures. riding bikes. soy lattes. vegan cookbooks. tattoos. parties. beer. red beer. mimosas. bloody marys. clearance racks. pinterest. taking chances. getting haircuts. our church and its people. NOFX. concerts. stool softeners. running. magazines. books. chairs. tulips. lilies. mums. thuggy rap music. the simpsons. barney stinson. etsy. vacations. the smell of coconut. the smell of gasoline. detangling spray. basil. target. meeting friends for coffee. coffee. caffeine.
I'm sure I'm probably forgetting the really obvious ones, but its a good start. a good list to look at when something pops up to make me feel down or frustrated. And I love to look at other people's lists, so lets share!!

Hmmm. My daughter's boyfriend is like 20 years older than her...

A few weeks ago, Willa's best friend/love-of-her-life came to town to visit.  If you'll remember, Darren and Tori moved to Kansas this summer and Willa missed them like crazy!  I'm pretty sure that Brad missed Darren a lot, too.  I mean, he did stop saying 'purt near' after awhile, but it seemed painful for him:)  Naturally, we took our child to the bar to have dinner with her friend.  She was pretty shy at first, as usual.  But after a few drinks (waters) and a quick game of pool, she really loosened up.  And I must say, loosen up she did.  The first picture was taken just a millisecond before she attacked the poor guy with kisses!
We took Willa to Grandma Luth's house before she got too out of control and then proceeded to Sean and Alicia's for some temporary Halloween tattoos, creative shot-tasting, and lots of mechanic talk.  It was a super-fun night and we are very glad that we got to spend time with the Goetz's again!


If you are a vodka fan, and haven't tried whipped cream vodka yet, I HIGHLY recommend it.  Mixed with pretty much anything, or mixed with nothing. 



Hangin'

 We were finally able to get a few things up on the blindingly bright walls!  I had picked up a pretty big stack of white frames when we were at Ikea, with this very idea in mind.  Man its awesome how cheap frames are there!  I didn't pay more than $4 for any of these frames, and most of them were 2-packs!  I'm such a cheap date:)  I did the whole "make a newspaper shape for each frame and tape them to the wall to plan a layout" thing first.  Then Brad helped me with the nailing.  I also painted those sweet owl guys.  They were originally some rather dated shades of brown and orange, very 60s.  Then in Willa's old bedroom they were kind of a yellow-green color.  Now they are shiny white.  Once the frames were hung, I found stuff to stick in them.  Well, most of them.  The bigger ones still need to be filled. 

I had to grab a close up shot of this guy.  He says "F is for fainting goat."  I have a thing for fainting goats.  I mean, who doesn't???  I have also always wanted to own a print by this chickie, Meghan Stratman of BunnyPirate fame.  So when she had a booth at Craftacular, I picked up this lovely fainting goat.  She has a whole alphabet book filled with little phonetic love-nuggets like this.  Willa might need that book for Christmas.

A Very Christensen Family Weekend

What a fantastic weekend!  We had visitors from both Texas and California (Aunt Sherri, Amber, Rachel and Melissa.)  And that was the perfect excuse to have a get together or two with all of the Lincoln Christensen's! Friday evening, there was lots of food and wine and family at my mom's and then Saturday morning, there was a pre-football brunch at our house.  The celebrating did continue after the game, but it moved to Grand Island and we didn't make the trip this time.

Mom and I even got to attend the Nebraska/Northwestern football game which was fun, but also a little sad.  Tough loss:(

Aunt Sherri and I

Aunt Sherri, Uncle Dan, and mom



Mom, Andrea and I



Mom, Amber, Jada, Aunt Sherri, Rachel., Willa and Melissa.  What a beautiful bunch of Christensen girls!  I think it was decided after a few bottles of wine that it is in the genes to have great skin and look young in this family:)

Willa, Rachel, and Stickers.  I am sure that Rachel was having to rescue Stickers from Willa.

Some Like it Hot

Ordered this print for the kitchen. Waaaaay excited about it.  Check out the Etsy shop here.  I wish I had a place for the yellow print with all the old cameras!

More candy, Mom and Dad!

There are loads of great pictures from Halloween.  Willa loved trick-or-treating with Xander and Adah.  Feast your eyes upon the loads of pictures.


We checked out a new pumpkin patch just a few miles down the road from our house, called JT's.  It was awesome!



We each had a pumpkin to carve.  I was shocked that Willa was willing to dig into the pumpkin guts but she loved it!  I found that I had to keep taking knives out of her little paws though...

Willa and her trick-or-treat buddies, taekwando girl (Adah) and ninja guy (Xander)

After every house, Willa would run from the door, hand someone her bucket claiming that it was too heavy, and then run down the sidewalk yelling "More candy, Mom and Dad!"

And as I predicted on the drive home from trick-or-treating, she has asked several times since if we could please just go trick-or-treating again.  Maybe next year, if you're good.

Sneak Peek

We've been working on making Willa's room a little bit more fun the past few days.  Before we started it looked a little bit like this:

Well, except for the furniture was in the right place.  Yucky brown wood trim, dirty white-ish walls, horrible tan-ish carpet, big-dark-loud closet doors and just about the ugliest ceiling fan I have ever seen in my life.  So I invited my parents over to help me get started on the trim painting.

And I talked my dad into taking the closet doors out for me!  Thanks a million, dad!
Now the room looks a little bit more like this:

Here's what we have done so far:
Painted all the trim white. 
Painted 3 of the walls a very, very, bright shade of limey, greeny, yellow.  I feel that it is bright.  We weren't even initially planning to leave any of the walls white but the color ended up being so crazy that we needed the white accent wall.  Once we got things back into place though, I felt a million times better about the color.  And once we hang some things with a lot of white in them, I think it will be perfect.
Rehung the bird curtains on the windows.
Recreated the closet door out of the flowery Ikea curtains and a clippy system so it opens very prettily and quietly.  Hanging the curtains required my mom to use her amazing seamstressing skills for a few hours. 
Emptied out one of the little dressers by putting away some baby stuff and moving things into the closet.  Hopefully this will make room to move Willa's little table and chairs into the room so she can be a doctor and also force Stickers to drink tea in her room.
This is where the room is currently, and probably how it will stay until at least the middle of next week.  I have a few ideas running through my head, though and I am itching to get them done!  Big family plans this weekend though, so I will try to refrain.  Some of the things I still want to do are to create a new light fixture and be rid of the horrendous fan, hang a bunch of white picture frames and some artworks, and possibly replace the window treatment on the window closest to the closet.  Its a bit busy with the flowers on the closet and the birds on the window.  Down the road Willa is going to need an actual bed, too.  I'm keeping my eyes open for a good deal.  And new flooring, but I haven't decided which route to take on that, so I'm going to let her get a little bit older and keep destroying the carpet she now has while I think and save some money.