When did it stop being OK to be patriotic?

I have to blog about this, because I've been thinking about it all week and cannot get over it. It's been bothering me that much.

On Memorial Day, this picture showed up in my Facebook newsfeed with this caption:


Nothing says "I love my nation!" like dismembering its flag and sewing it into a shirt!

There are eight "likes" and quite a few comments from others saying that no one understands the flag laws, that this shirt was probably made in China, etc. Not one person (including me--guilty) commented about how this is a ridiculous caption for this photo. I would like to chime in with the following, because this picture, and the fact I didn't comment, has been eating me alive: 


Ummm... Maybe he's just patriotic! It's Memorial Day! It's a polo shirt--not a flag that he stole from the local Perkin's parking lot and then maliciously sewed into a piece of clothing. When I was in elementary school we learned that if a flag touches the ground, you burn it. We learned you respect the flag, how to fold it, etc. This is not a flag. It never was a flag. It's always been a shirt. He didn't destroy a flag, or disrespect the nation. In fact, it's the complete opposite. He's supporting the US and showing his patriotism. So can we all just stop being such asses? Not everything has to be about something. Sometimes people just wear flag shirts, OK?

Losing Weight

I have become somewhat of a calorie counter, and have lost 12 pounds since I began on March 8. I don't really notice the difference yet, but a few people at work have noticed and said something so that's always great to hear! I think I've lost all my weight in my hand, as I can now fit my engagement ring no my middle finger.

I've been at a standstill for about three weeks now. I don't exercise, which I know would accelerate my weight loss, but I hate working out. I have never enjoyed it. I never feel accomplished afterward. I'm really hoping that being a busy-as-a-bee homeowner and mom-to-be German Shepherd will keep me more active. After all, caring for a big dog like that will FORCE me to, at the very least, get up off the couch and open the door for them to go outside. Of course I plan to be a great mommy and play with him/her and go for walks, all that. Michael and I are also planning on getting a push mower that doesn't have a motor. We have a relatively small yard, so the extra work shouldn't be too exasperating.

To help me keep track of my calories and understand portion control, I downloaded MyFitnessPal, a free smart phone app. They also have a website (www.myfitnesspal.com) for those who do not have a smart phone, and the two sync up so you can keep track via both. MyFitnessPal provides you with a daily calorie goal to stick to. When I lost 10 pounds, it dropped me a few hundred calories. I didn't think that was a very nice reward :P I don't strictly follow it, but I try. Sometimes you have to guess on the calories if you go out to eat, but quite a few restaurants have the nutrition information on their website. Of course, it's handy to know beforehand! 

Little changes really make a difference. If we grab fast food I try to go to Culvers so I can get mashed potatoes as a side instead of fries, or Subway. Carbs are my biggest weakness. I could never do the South Beach Diet! I do allow myself french fries, and other naughty foods here and there if we're out to eat! I'm sure if I was more disciplined, I'd lose more weight, but I'm not so here I am. Mike and I are in love with Skinny Cow ice cream desserts! If you haven't tried them do so right now! I have the biggest sweet tooth ever, and these really help to curve my need for chocolate, DQ blizzards and cupcakes. Are they as rich and decadent as the real deal? No, but they are really good for only 100 calories, so why not substitute it? I also love the Yoplait Whips Orange--it's the only yogurt I can eat. But, it's like 130 calories and does nothing to fill me up. It's a horrible snack, so to save me the calories I just stopped buying them. I wouldn't have realized what a waste it was without calorie counting. For lunches, I find Lean Cuisine the best for me. Their pizza is great, and so are the pasta dishes. For a frozen TV dinner, they're pretty damn good. You can usually catch a sale at Target, Wal-Mart or Festival which helps! For Mike's lunches I get him Smart Ones and Michelina's Lean ones. We've been eating tilapia more often than before too. It's great for a light meal. Hopefully we'll start buying ground turkey instead of beef as the next step.

The hardest thing for me is when I work until midnight at home. I still get up around 8 a.m., and I tend to get hungry around 9-10 p.m. If I just can't ignore it, I have a bowl of cereal. Ever since I can remember, I am really affected by hunger. I get queasy and lightheaded if I don't eat when my body needs me to. I also get really crabby. Mike told me that when he had his CPR and safety training at work, the teacher told him that woman are more affected by hunger than men. Interesting...

State Farm Insurance

Michael and I met with our insurance agent today for the home, and he couldn't be more amazing! He explained everything so clearly, was fast and tried to save us as much money as possible! No pressure from him whatsoever to go with a certain policy, add-on or State Farm in general! He's even sending Michael's car loan information to State Farm Bank to see if they can refinance it for a lower percentage rate--just because. If anyone in the Fox Valley area is looking for a freakin' awesome agent, let me know and I'll message you his contact information.

This is the only thing that went smoothly so far with the home purchase, so I'm pretty excited! I didn't know insurance could be so exciting.

Insurance

Some people's families pass down heirlooms, antiques, advice and wisdom, but my mom has given me her bad luck. Ever since I was little, my mother has complained about her down-right bad luck with insurance companies. All of them. They misspell names on the insurance cards, switch my last name for hers, they have poor service and they just plain suck.

I gathered a handful of quotes online for homeowner's insurance, and after comparing them all we settled with Farmer's Insurance. All the agents were quick to follow-up with us, but we chose the one with the lowest rate. We spoke with the agent on Wednesday, and she said that the next day she'd have our official/final quote. Well, we still had nothing the next week Monday, so Mike called, left a voicemail and didn't hear back. So today he called her three times with no answer or returned call. He just called a different office and left a message explaining that we need insurance and if this agent can't help us we'll go to a different insurer.

We close on May 31, so we kinda need insurance pretty quick here. Tonight we have some loan paperwork to go through with an estimate of what our insurance should be. Wish we could have the finalized numbers in there.

Le sigh.

Diaper Cake

These are the two diaper cakes I made. The top one is the first one I ever made for my friend, the second one is the last (as of right now) and was made for Mike's sister. The top one was made with Huggies Little Snuggler and Little Mover diapers. The second one is made me with Huggies Pure and Natural diapers, simply because I wanted all white and that was the closest I could get.

You will need...

• Diapers--I believe I bought four jumbo packs for each cake. This number can vary depending on how many layers you want. Always err on the side of more, because you can give the mommy-to-be the leftovers. I got two different sizes, but having all the same size is OK too!
• Clear hair rubber bands
• Regular rubber bands--Multi-size pack
• Empty baby bottles--Two minimum
• Ribbons and bows
• Cardboard circle--You can buy cake platters at Hobby Lobby, or use a cardboard box. The first cake I used a box I had and wrapped tissue paper over it. The second one I bought the cake platter to use.
• Double-sided Scotch tape
• Any goodies you want to include--Mine all came from Target

The first step is to roll each diaper up and secure them with a clear rubber band. 

Next, you need to place the rolled diapers around the bottle and secure them with a plain rubber band. This is your inner-most ring of diapers. Once there are five or six diapers around the bottle (depending on the size, this number may vary slightly), You can put another plain rubber band around the first ring, and add diapers into it for the second ring. Repeat for the third ring, and be sure to use an appropriate sized rubber band. I was surprised at how many rolled diapers I could get into the biggest size that came in my bag. I didn't have any snap on me, and I was really worried about that!

To make the top layer, you stick the second bottle into the first (upside down) and add the diaper rings. If you know the mom's favorite candy, you can fill the bottles as a surprise. 

The first cake I made was a three-tiered, so I have a three-ringed layer on the bottom, two-ringed in the middle and one-ring on the top. The top layer was added so the giraffe blanket thingy would drape over and look right. I didn't use a third bottle, but the second bottle in the cake stuck up a bit to help keep the top layer in place. The layers are just set on top of each other, using the bottles to keep them from sliding off.

The outermost layers will be secured by a plain, ugly colored rubber band, but that's OK, because you place pretty ribbons over them. The bows in both of my cakes are children's hair clips. Otherwise I chose some rattles, small food jars, Nuks, teethers and lotion to spruce my cakes. It's not shown in the photo, but the second cake I made I ended up filling the jars on the outside with some candy. The rattles, etc are just stuck into the diapers--no adhesives used. To secure the ribbons around the layers of cake I used double-sided tape. 

Sorry there were no step-by-step pictures! Any future projects I'll be sure to take pictures as I go, but I'm just archiving the ones I've already done. If you have any questions, just ask in the comments! 

Closer

Life has been crazy with all this house stuff! We're getting closer to being home owners though. We almost have our insurance squared away, and we are still on track for closing May 31.

Most of the rooms have their paint color chosen, and I cannot wait to get our puppy soon after! I'm super pumped to not have to drive through 15 miles of highway construction every time I come into work. I think I'm more excited about that than being a home owner!

Our inspection had some downs though. Standing water in the basement. Thank God we got so much rain so we'd know! It didn't scare us away though. We have some easy fixes we'll try first to see if that helps. Otherwise, we'll need to re-grade around the house. Yuck. Messy. Expensive.

Before Mike and I become consumed with home expenses and repairs, we are taking off this weekend for a little getaway. We decided last night. So, kinda spur of the moment. We're taking advantage of my full weekend off, and heading to Baraboo for a winery tour. Spending the night in a hotel with a hot tub, and checking out the House on the Rock Sunday before we head home. Very short and rather uneventful, but it should be nice! I've always wanted to do a wine tour/tasting, so I'm pretty darn excited. Plus, who doesn't love a nice hot tub?

Before we settled on Baraboo, we originally were going to go to Door County, but since I work until midnight on Friday it wasn't ideal since the drive is a bit longer, and it's an expensive place to stay and do fun things. Then we were going to do the Leinie's Tour in Chippewa Falls, but that was all that was in the area, so that's on the back burner too. Mike mentioned how he always wanted to go to Wollersheim Winery in Baraboo. Since the House on the Rock isn't far from that, we decided Baraboo it is!

For those of you who don't know, the House on the Rock is simply a house on a rock. There's an inn, golf course and spa. But, we're just going to the "attraction" which is a tour of the house. Mike's elementary school used to take field trips there, but he missed it. I hope it's fun! You can check out the details here if you're interested: http://www.thehouseontherock.com/.

Accepted Offer

Michael and I put in an offer on a home we found, and it was accepted! We gave them a deadline of my  birthday to respond, so that was a pretty darn good present! It's a small starter home. Not what we were expecting, but it's cute. I think they recently flipped it because everything is updated. It's about the same size as our apartment now, but it has an attached garage, basement and a yard. Plus it's OURS. And our mortgage and insurance will still be cheaper than our rent.

I can't wait to actually do the things on my Pinterest For the Home board! Finally! My mind is in a frenzy trying to think of paint colors and furniture layouts. I hope the home inspection goes well, because we already ran into too many bumps in the road on this journey!

My Dos and Don'ts to Home Buying

I heard buying a house is one of the top three most stressful milestones in your life. What I didn't know is that it would actually be stressful.

Here's what I've learned so far on my unsuccessful venture to buying our first home.

1. Property taxes matter--the higher they are, the higher your monthly payments will be. Even if you're getting an amazing deal on a house that's listed for half of what it's worth and is now in your price range, the property taxes may not fit within your pre-approval budget.
2. Do not be a temporary employee
3. Do not have debt
4. Do have great credit (you'll need debt to have good credit; it's a fine line and a not fun game. Fortunately both Mike and I have outstanding credit.)
5. Do not get attached--Seriously. I don't know how to not get attached, but I advise you to do your best to hate or mildly like houses.
6. Get a pre-approval in writing up front so you know what your price range is. Don't deviate too far from this.
7. Have an awesome real estate agent; we love ours!
8. Do have patience. 
9. Know all your loan options--We have a loan originator who is working her butt off crunching numbers for each house we're interested in, and doing her best to get us our absolute maximum loan amount. I realize this conflicts with #6, but we're a special case in that I cannot be on the loan because I'm a temp, even though I'm the one that has a higher income. So she knows we can afford what we want, but the underwriter can only do what they can do. It is what it is, folks.
10. Unless you're rich, you'll need to compromise and make trade-offs. You can't always have everything on your wish list.
11. Don't settle. We have seen so many houses that are really close to what we want, but aren't quite right. Yes you need to compromise on your wish list, but do not settle for less than what you want or deserve. You'll be mad and full of regrets every day you come home, and most certainly every month you right your mortgage check!

Survival Bracelets

Michael and I finally purchased our Paracord bracelets. They're a fashionable addition to our survival gear. For those of you who don't know what these are, basically it's a bracelet made out of a very strong string that can be used for anything imaginable! Each bracelet carries several feet of cord, even though it's only a few inches in diameter (mine is seven inches).

Girls, they are SEVERAL colors and combinations to choose from. You can even add beads to them. Mine wasn't quite what I expected, but am eager to get another. I chose "moss" and "turquoise" in the weave pattern (as shown below).

Visit the website here to order yours! The shipping was SUPER fast, even though it we selected standard ground shipping. We ordered on Saturday and they were delivered on Wednesday. From Arizona to our home in Wisconsin.

The Retail Worker's Curse

When I started my first job at 16 years old, it was as a bagger/cashier at Copps Food Center. Later in college I quit Copps and began working at Menards as a cashier, and later a sales rep. That is eight years of retail, and eight years of saying "hello" to every single customer I saw, whether they wanted help from me or not. And even though I don't work in retail any more, I continue to smile strangers... Everywhere. When I'm shopping at Target, I grin and nod my head to passersby. While strolling through the produce aisles at Festival Foods I perk up and say hi to the lady next to me picking out Red Delicious Apples.

Some ignore me, some raise their eyebrows, some wearily return a smile and very few reply with a cheery hello. I don't want to acknowledge them, my body just does it. It's almost like a reflex now. I know how to kick a habit, but how do you kick a reflex? I'm starting to think you don't...