P-M-S...OH MY GOD!

Signs I'm PMSing?

1. I'm craving KFC
2. The sound of Matt chewing makes me want to throw a book at him (love ya babe)
3. My desire to put on makeup is at an all time low
4. I'm nesting...cooking wise not cleaning (pish). Like tonight I'm making homemade Italian meatloaf & homemade mac & cheese. 
5. And lastly my sad stretched out yoga pants are especially tight. This one is the most depressing sign. 

Tomorrow I am starting the Fit Girl's 28 Day Jumpstart. It's a fun meal plan & exercise regime with proven results. I'm excited...but also scared that my typical lack of discipline will stand in my way. I'm seriously hoping the next 28 days will fly by. 

P.S.- If anyone out there gets the 'Roseanne' reference I made in the title...then you & I should be besties. 

Why Valentine's Day Matters to Us

Most of my life, I have hated V-Day. I was single all of my life up until I met my hubs...never had a boy friend, not even an inkling of one. So I usually spent this fateful chocolatey day watching romantic movies with my dear friends Ben & Jerry. Then I started dating Matt and our first few Valentine's Day together were a little rocky. Mostly because I was PMSing and was a raging biz-natch and sent myself into adult tantrums (they're a thing...trust me) over the tiniest thing. So the actual day was usually a train wreck. But when we were dating, it was easy to have every day be Valentine's Day. We went to the same school and spent almost all of our free time together, so every day we had had ample time to tell each other and show each other how much we loved the other.

Baby Matt & Chelsea pre-dating

Fast forward to married life. Valentine's Day became kind of "hard" to celebrate. Our wedding anniversary was just 2 months before, and I had the mind set that our wedding day was more important to celebrate than some silly Hallmark day. So we became lazy about it. Mostly doing our usual routine, except with some tiny Valentine's Day flair. Our lackadaisical approach to this day of love got me thinking. We really shouldn't need a specific day, especially one fueled by such rampant consumerism, to remind ourselves to show each other how much we loved the other. But this year...we kinda do need the reminder. We are so incredibly busy...well Matt is so incredibly busy...that it's been tough to show each other how much we mean to each other. He has been attending grad school twice a week, has a new position with more responsibilities at work, and is volunteering as a hospital chaplain once a week. I don't have quite as much going on, but his busyness mixed with my somewhat busyness make it hard for us to be the lovey dovey couple we were when we were dating. We have gotten into quite the routine of laziness and sometimes don't realize that we haven't had an actual conversation the entire day until we go to bed at night. So this year, and maybe for a few more, we are using this holiday to remind each other why we love the other. We don't nearly do it as much as we should, so it's almost nice to have this reminder to slow down and love on each other a bit. Valentine's Day isn't a great day per se but in our busy lives if we need this day to remind each other to slow down and get back to being all lovey with the other then I will take it. 

Married Matt & Chelsea...older, wiser, and still crazy in love

Winter is Finally Here

When I say "finally", I do not mean "Yay it finally snowed and is cold enough for it to stick so I can go out and build a snowman and reenact scenes from Frozen!". Oh no no, I mean "I can finally stop holding my anxious breath because the skies have finally opened up and released white fluffy hell". Yes, I hate snow. I live in Illinois and hate snow. I hate winter really. Last year was a nightmare. When the forecast predicts that it'll be so cold that it'll be dangerous to go outside? Yeah it's time to pull a bird and fly south. This year the weather was cruel and teased us with a rather pleasant December. Now it's barely a week into January and we are covered in snow and the windchill is being predicted to be at an all time low. For those of you lucky ducks out there who live in lovely happy sunny places, windchill is the actual temperature you will be feeling the wrath of. Not the seemingly bearable temperature that gets flaunted in the forecast. Windchill will freeze your face off and make you regret getting out of bed. This snow & bone chilling cold is ruining our plans to take our pup for nightly walks, my DIY project I have planned (and am so FREAKING excited for) and it makes me want to have soup for dinner every night. I am hoping and praying that this cold snap isn't going to last 3 months like last year's did. Until we get above freezing, I am hibernating under my giant purple blanket and pretending that we live in Cali.

Frozen Hell

Our Sorta Staycation

A while ago Mister suggested that we trek into Chicago for a weekend away to celebrate our 2 years together as married folk. I was quite surprised that he wanted to do this since we're trying to save some dough, but it turns out he had a surprise for me. I had been hinting at wanting to see Cinderella for the past year and had honestly thought they had fallen on deaf ears. Silly me for thinking so. For our anniversary I was surprised with tickets to see the show the weekend we'd be down there. Crafty Mister! 

So this past Friday we headed into the city for a weekend just us two. I always forget how lucky we are to live so close to Chicago. Our hotel was fun, very modern, and had the best bed I have ever slept in. I spent more time than I should have thinking how I could steal that bed. We really had no plans as to what we'd do or where we'd eat so we walked around a bit Friday and stumbled upon Elephant & Castle. I had hands down the best butter chicken I have ever tasted. We then got lost in the South loop looking for a Target I thought I spotted. We found it...eventually. While we bought some snacks (mini bars are still crazy pricey) I fantasized that we actually lived in the City and were making a grocery run. Actually the entire time we were there I imagined that we lived downtown. I have a very strong fantasy life. 

The rest of the weekend went by in a blur. Cinderella was wonderful, funny, & magical. Lots of women & young women wearing crowns. It had snowed/rained while we were in the theater so we slipped and slid over to dinner at Magianos. I was craving Italian food and at this point I did not want to risk my life to find a less touristy joint. Dinner again was amahzing, lobster mac & cheese is on my top 5 list & a dark and stormy is my new drink. Before we retired to our hotel room we checked out the giant Walgreens next door. I have a weird thing for convenience stores that look different than ones near where I live. This one had a sushi bar, fro yo station & every possible bottle of liquor you could imagine. I was in heaven. We went back to our room, watched some movies & talked about our 2015 goals. 

Sunday was check out day & the skies opened up and poured down a blanket of snow. It was so fun walking around the quiet city while it snowed around us. We had left the hotel early to get breakfast at our beloved Corner Bakery. The one right by our house closed when we moved to town so we took advantage of one being so close to the hotel. My heart got broken by Argo Tea since they are apparently closed on Sundays and I was denied a red velvet tea. We boarded the squeakiest train known to man and were on our way home. We both loved being away for the weekend in the city that I love, but man oh man are we glad to be in our own house with our Corgi. 

Butter Chicken...Om nom nom

Love this installation in Anthropologie! They're all wine corks!

All romantic & rainy 

Trying to take a sneaky pic in the theater. The last time I did this I got seriously yelled at by a theater employee. 

This marquee lights up my life (pun intended, sorry I had to)

Plum-Grape-Blackberry juice? Um yes please!

Our snowy view

Yay it's snowing and we get to walk around in it!

My two guys who are both just as happy as I am to be home!

Spending the weekend in the city was just what the doctor ordered for us. We were really burned out and exhausted by our jobs so we loved the chance to re-charge. Stay tuned for lots more posting...the city really inspired me and seemed to have jump started my heart for creativity. 

2015

2014 ended with a very lazy bang. I had spent the entire day on our couch with a heating pad & a corgi, trying to combat serious cramps. They were so bad that I spent the morning crying and wishing away my lady parts. Mister stayed home from work to make sure that I was OK, love that sweet man. So we hung out on the couch, reading, watching TV & enjoying our Christmas candy. Dinner came around and we ventured out into the biting cold to get Portillos. We watched a terrible movie that I can't stop thinking about and remedied it by watching How I Met Your Mother (sans season 9). Mister decided he needed to clean around 11:30 and I helped as much as I could from the couch. Midnight came along & I grabbed him for a New Year kiss and we smiled thinking about what's in store for 2015. Fireworks went off somewhere outside and Watson barked at them. A few years ago when Mister & I were dating, we stayed up all night eating Chinese food and binge watching a TV show the old fashioned way. This year we were in bed closely after midnight and were just exhausted.  

Super Cool Drawing done by Wesley Bird

Year 2015 is going to be the year of health, more love, traveling more, worrying about money less, working out more, and maybe hopefully the year we add to our family. 2015 you are going to rock my socks. 

Happy Anniversary House!

One year ago, Mister & I bought our first home. We nervously signed the papers with our lawyers and  happy danced once we had the keys to our new abode! Of course we had little time to really be excited. We had to be out of our town house by the 1st of January and we were barely ready to move out. But 2 days & a wicked winter storm later, we had all of our belongs in our new home. Our hot water wasn't working yet (when the temps are in the single digits, you want hot water) so we stayed a couple of days at my parent's house while the pipes were fixed. The first few months were scary for me. We had a lot of repairs to do that we had no idea needed to be done and some of them were pretty expensive. Mister of course is always cool as a cucumber, but I tend to freak out a lot. Each time we found out that something new had to be done, I had a meltdown. I wanted so badly to decorate our home and get it looking like our dream house. But we kept at it and we are FINALLY at the stage where we can start working on the fun parts of home repairs. 

I had my moments with our home where I seriously regretted purchasing our little green ranch. I guess you could say I had buyers remorse. I saw people on Facebook and the other blogs I read where families were buying beautiful homes that needed nothing done to them except to beautify it. I was jealous and yearning to put art up on the walls instead of fixing cracks in our walls. But I have grown to love our home. It's a crotchety old man, who's floors squeak and fixtures are old as dirt. But it's our home.

Happy Anniversary little home...here's to many more!

Catching Up

Wow it has been a REALLY long time since I last wrote here. It is't even that I've been horribly busy, I just haven't felt the urge to write. But here I am after reading some of my favorite blogs and I am just itching to start again! 

A lot has been going on around here at the DeBall frontier. Mister got a promotion, we moved forward with a lot of updates on our home, and my sister & I have started talking about starting a project together. I am finally at the point in our home repairs where I don't enter a room and dread all the work we need to do. I am at peace with our home. And just in time for our one year anniversary of purchasing our homestead! 

Christmas has come & gone in what seems like a flash. This year Mister & I separated our Christmas gatherings between our families. So basically every other day we were with either my family or Mister's. It was nice not having to split the days up between parties and we got to spend the whole day with whoever we were with. But I am utterly exhausted and so glad to be home with nowhere to go! We have absolutly no plans for NYE except to stay home with our pup and dine on Chinese take out while binge watching our show du jur on netflix. Life is just so peaceful and easy right now, I am loving it. 

Our Christmas lights have been absolutely enchanting. I'm not sure I ever want to take them down.