Inspiration? Halp!

Oh..right..I have a blog...

I guess everyone goes through phases where they feel completely...I don't know, bored? Uninspired? Just...blah? Don't get me wrong...I have plenty(!!!) of things to do, in fact, I keep myself pretty busy most of the time. I just have lots of unfinished or unstarted projects, that would really make myself happier if I would just do them! It may be more fun with a craft partner, maybe that's my problem. I don't know.

Actually...I don't really even have much to say; I just wanted to write here in case someone was missing me (hah, right...) That's pretty pathetic, and probably not going to help my want from helpful/encouraging comments :-/

I hope between now and the end of the weekend I can really finish my bathroom project, and also finish my THREE craft projects I have sitting on the kitchen table.



Umm, to add some happiness to this post...I will leave you with this video, since I have the song stuck in my head...and it's cute!

Tank Tops In January

This weekend we embraced this crazy-warm weather and made a trip to the beach! Yep, the beach, wearing tank tops...in January. Pretty sure that is a first for me. Our original plan was to go to, what we have dubbed, the "walking beach" - which is a beach we've only gone to once. We went a few years ago and it's not the type of beach where you'd really just lay there and soak up the sun. Last time we hiked for 4 hours through sand, dunes, rocks and coves; found tons of starfish and sea anemones; saw sea lions jumping through the waves. Well, we got there and there was a long line to get through the gated parking area and I peered out the window to see what the hold up was and saw a big red sign "NO DOGS." Oh, just lovely. So we turned around and headed north up Highway 1 until we found a beach that was not Pismo, hah (Grover Beach it was).

We parked, unloaded and started our trek towards the water to see how Tundra would react to it. She absolutely had a blast, even on leash! How ironic, a Siberian Husky loving the beach...that still cracks me up. She wanted to chase every bird, chase the water as it moved in and out off the shore, sniffed every little odd ocean thing she could find...it was pretty cute! At one point she took a taste of that lovely salted ocean water and I saw the look on her face: priceless. I caught her tasting the water a few more times throughout our walk, like she thought the would magically turn into fresh water, hehe!

Anyways, we walked about 3 hours total, and stopped and got some chowder on our walk back to our car. It was amazingly beautiful at the beach, even more pretty than I can remember it being. The skies were super blue and ah, you can see from these pictures it was great!

How beautimous is that seashore!?

I think she's contemplating...how to catch a bird...

Usss, happy day!

We found a cave! (Okay so did everyone else and their mothers, but I can pretend!)

Stare at the Sun.

Mmmm dinner...

Suset! Bye bye beach :(

PS, I no photographer at all, but I freaking love our new digital cam. It takes awesome pics that I mostly don't even need do edit...ahhh, love!!!!

Because I r n00b

Stephy made me a new blog header! Don't you love? It makes me happy! Thanks Steph - you get a whole blog post for yourself :)

xoxo

Dearest Thursday

Dear Thursday,



Will you please be nice to me today? So far you have; thank you for having my Dad bring me a coffee first thing this morning.

Nothing against you personally, but I'd like to get this day over fast; we have The Office to watch tonight at 9pm (and let's be real here, that's the only thing exciting about today).

I know you can't do much about this today, and even though I know it's nice to have a little bit of sunshine in my life, do you understand that it's January and it really should't be 65 degrees and sunny? I know some people might kill me for saying that, but, there's only so much rain and cloudy-ness throughout the year here and I just think it's fair if you can provide us will a little bit more during our oh-so-short winters.

Lastly, can you bring some happiness to anyone that is having a bad day? That would be great.


Thanks,

Alyssa

Confessions

I. Am. Lazy.

It may not seem like it to someone else, but I feel overly-lazy, pretty much all the time. Sometimes I think my Laziness is bipolar (yes, the Lazy me, not the me me!). For example, most days I try to walk the dog during lunch (if I go home), right after work, and once again later in the evening. Yet, at the same time, there's 3 piles of clean laundry sitting on the bed, dirty dishes all over the kitchen, a horrifically messy craft room, and a seemingly unkept front and back yard. Dirty floors, bathrooms, etc, etc, etc.

And yet, after I get home from working...after cooking dinner (okay, I actually cook most of the time..I guess I should give myself a little credit. But I am too lazy to clean up the mess!), I somehow use my spare time to watch my favorite tv shows, play games, and b.s. on the computer.

Can you imagine if I were to have kids right now??? Gees. Maybe I need some type of motivation. I was thinking a few days ago, that if I just invited people over every day - my house and life would be a lot more cleaner/organized. OR, would I just throw everything in the mess of a craft room? I don't even have room to my crafts in my craft room. A few weeks ago Steph came over and we make a baby quilt, the sewing machine & supplies are still. sitting. on. the. dining. table!!!!! Because I was totally going to start a few other sewing projects. I swear.

Whew. Glad I got that all out. I hope I made you all feel better about yourselves. Motivation secrets, anyone?

What I Came Home To Yesterday

I tweeted this, but I felt it necessary to share it with non-tweeters and anyone that didn't see.

When I get home from work, my dog goes nuts. It seems like every day she gets increasingly crazy in her reaction. I didn't get to capture the BEST parts (I couldn't seem to find my camera at first), she was doing some major howling and talking. So that's why you can hear me making retard howling noises...sorry...hah.


Crazy dog... from Alyssa Kapral on Vimeo.


And yes, that mess on the floor is everything she found to tear apart that day.

(I've Got Nothing)

Not gonna lie, I don't have anything important or too exciting to blog about. Boo.



We had a party at our house on New Years. It went pretty well and was fun; however, I re-realized that as much as I'd want to have tons of my friends over at once and entertain them all...I do not like the pressure! The whole first hour or so (when about 10 people were there) i was in the kitchen cooking and making drinks because I totally was not prepared! Bad hostess. I'm sure nobody felt awkward or anything, but still. Actually only 2 of our friends stayed the entire time, everyone else had other places to go as well. My only gripe was that I made all this food and apparently nobody came hungry. (And, blogger ladies that came over last month, remember the mulled wine? Umm, i think I'm the only one that had a glass!) I think I'm much better with smaller groups of people.



Our heater at home, apparently, decided to crap out on us. Ever since we've been turning it on, it never really seemed to heat up that much, but I thought maybe it just needed extra time to heat up. Well, Sunday we turned it on and for an hour it was just blowing cold air. Set on 78 degrees. So, being DIY'ers...Chris got out our "how-to" book, tried to figure it out..but nothing worked. So we have to have someone come check it out now. On a positive note, I love that we have a wood-burning fireplace because it feels awesome and smells so good! We're just going to ignore the fact that there are "no-wood burning" days in the Central Valley....I mean really, do you want me to freeze to death???


I've also been spending some free time playing Animal Crossing on the Wii...it's fun, I promise.

2008, You Were Good

I didn't realize how much my life has changed this year until I started looking at all of my pictures from the past 12 months and seeing how much my hairstyle has evolved! For reals.

Okay joking aside, so much has happened this year! We went from one car to two, I went from long hair to short, dropped a few pounds, moved from apartment living to home ownership, found out I'm going to be an aunt this next year (!), added a dog to our family, finally met Chris' family, among many other things!!!! It all went by so fast too; it seems to do that when you get older

So here's some pictures to take you through my years past. (I kind of stole this idea from a bunch of people, so thank you, internet dwellers, for your brilliant ideas!)

January

February

Steph and me.

Chris' got a new car!

March

Miss Kitty got fixed :(

Made this Pepto-colored table cute again!


April

Oh look...it's those Corwins again! Trip to SF!

First time hiking up in the Kern Canyon. (Um what have I been doing the past 10 years not going there?)

May

First quad trip up at Shaver Lake.

First beach trip of the year. Pismo Beach.

June
Garbage got chopped :(

*Apparently I hated my crappy camera this month-only 6 pictures that month!!!

July

We spent the 4th of July at Shaver Lake.

And on said trip, had an incident with the dog falling in the lake and not wanting to do much but act like dead weight.

Then I turned 23.

Then we visited my little cousins in Manhattan Beach.


August
We'd be on the home search for over a couple of months, this was the one that accepted our offer.

So, we started packing!

September
At the Lake again; Chris decided it was smart to grab a snake out of a stream!

Unstuffing our LoveSac :-/ Who does that? Um, apparently people with cats who peed on it.

On our moving day, we first painted the entire living area & office.

Then we moved our furniture in :)

October
(aka crafty month)
I painted some dressers black.

I made a fall wreath.

We got a new front door! Yeeeee!

I made some pumpkin & apples votive holders.

...and made some pillows.

Oh, and I did some baking!

November
We adopted our dog, and named her Tundra.

Then we took her up to Shaver.

Then we celebrated Thanksgiving

December
We went to Michigan to meet the fam.
I hosted my first party, full of wonderful lady bloggers :)

And we had a white Christmas.

Here's to many new memories in 2009!