A Week in Photos: Week 8

Sunday 2/17: About two years ago when I was living in Portland I got used to going to New Season's market for lunch everyday. This is where I picked up the habit of testing out as many Kombucha drinks I could find. I have finally settled on the Grape Chai Synergy Kombucha being my absolute favorite. This summer, that's all I could drink, but with each costing about $3 a pop, I had to give the habit up. On my weekly Sunday grocery trip, I finally gave myself permission to get one again, and oh my god, it was a heavenly experience.

Monday 2/18: After giving up one addiction, alcohol, I found that I have replaced it with another, books. And my cat, but that wasn't the priority in this photo. I was showing a fellow book lover my piles of shame, aka the piles of books I have yet to read. This picture doesn't do the situation justice, there's a whole third stack with more unread books back behind those piles. My goal is to read 80 books in this calendar year, this will get me well over half that mark. As I have said before, there could be worse addictions...

Tuesday 2/19: Every morning, without a doubt, our cat Marley jumps into the bathroom sink. And it's always when I'm either mid-teethbrush or face-wash. Ryan, over the years, has allowed for him to become water snobs, only drinking out of the kitchen or bathroom sinks. I have decided that in the next place we live, we will need two sinks, one for humans and one for kittens.

Thursday 2/21: For a "throwback Thursday" photo this week, I dug one out from the dark days, aka my past drinking life. This was the summer of 2009 on a trip to Chelan to see Ryan. I think it's amazing how far we have come in the past four years. Both of us are sober now, living productive and fulfilling lives together. It only took us two false starts and seven years to get here, but I finally have the man of my dreams.

Friday 2/22: This is a large gummy bear. I have never seen such a thing before. I had to take a picture and obviously give a size comparison next to my Oregon house key. Why? Because Go Ducks!

Saturday 2/23: It's not often that Ryan ventures out of his office at work, but when he does, he can be seen doing this or sneaking food out of the back door of the kitchen.

A Week in Photos: Weeks 6 and 7

As of late, my weeks have been hectic and I have been exhausted! The treatment facility that I have been working at the last year has finally opened it's doors and Ryan and I have been working overtime to make sure our pieces of the pie are well taken care of. It's a wonderfully rewarding job, it just takes a lot of work! So the posts have been few and my free time has been short, but I'm finally feeling adjusted to the new schedule and hope to be back in the swing of things shortly! Without further adieu, here are the last few weeks in photos:

  

 Monday 2/4: As the intro said, adjusting to the new working hours (8:30am to whenever) has been a challenge. I have stopped drinking coffee because I don't like the way it makes me feel throughout the day, but of course I NEED something (anything) to energize me and get me through the day, thus, Redbull. I've been riding the bull now for a few weeks straight and I now can safely say it's just as bad as coffee for me. I crave it, it keeps me up through the night, so on and so forth, it's a vicious cycle. But until I can find a natural supplement that will keep me going and "on" through out the day, this is the lesser of the two evils.


Wednesday 2/6: Part of my job (I am a woman of many hats) is to run the girls art group once a week. When I was in treatment, it was a free-for-all lacking any real structure or creativity. My goal when I took on this challenge is to make things the girls would actually like, use and get a kick out of at a very low cost. Thus the tissue paper pom-poms. I've seen these everywhere and they make me think of Kate Spade, so I thought it would be a really fun to decorate their rooms with these gems. It was a very simple craft with a beautiful end result which the girls LOVED!


Thursday 2/7: We received a wonderful visit from Ryan's mom and brother for the week of 2/4-2/8. One of the most important things we had to do while they were here was make a trip down to Cannon Beach to visit the fabulous Sesame and Lillies. I had to have Ryan take a picture of me and my new J. Crew jacket. I am in LOVE LOVE LOVE with this jacket. It was such an impulse buy but I am so excited about it, it's a wonderful spring addition.

Friday 2/8: On Friday evening I got some very sad news from my dad, our lovely kitty cat Bella had been hit by a car on the road in front of his house. I got this sweet little girl in college when a previous boyfriend was moving into his first house, only to find out he couldn't have cats. My dad volunteered to keep her, which then she became his cat. She was a wild little girl that we all loved very much, it was a very sad day for the Briggs family.

Saturday 2/9: As a way to show his condolences and to cheer me up, Ryan surprised me with these wonderful roses on Friday evening. They've looked beautiful on our mantle this last week, even if they're in a pitcher of water. We are not a flower vase kind of family apparently :)

Monday 2/11: On another craft day with the ladies, I decided we should do something special for Valentine's Day. Last year I decorated Ryan's room with heart garland, and I thought we could do a spin on that this year. With the help of Pinterest, I came up with this heart wreath which adorned all of their bedrooms leading up to Valentine's Day!

Thursday 2/14: The "big" Valentine's Day gift I got Ryan came about two weeks before the actual day, but I couldn't not give my Valentine something on the 14th. I saw this idea on The Confessions of a Product Junkie  blog and decided it was what any 25 year old man would want to get, a sugar overload candy bouquet! Yes, I'm still reaping the benefits of this!

Thursday 2/14: As a surprise for Valentine's Day, my love took me out to a wonderful indian dinner. We have a favorite spot in Astoria called Himani that we try to go to about once or twice a month. It was the first place that Ryan ever had indian food, and for me, it's probably some of the best I've had to date. We always have one (if not two) orders of Chicken Tikki Masala (NOM!!!)

Friday 2/15: Since a treatment center is considered a medical facility, every employee is required to be CPR/ First Aid certified. It was my first time ever sitting through a class like that, so imagine my surprise when our trainer whipped these little faces out. Naturally I reached for my phone and started snapping away, right in the middle of his discussion. For my next character flaw, I will be working on: tact.

Saturday 2/16: After spending the night housesitting our bosses house and watching HGTV all night, I thought it would only be fitting to check out our favorite home decor store in Astoria, Vintage Hardware. This store has amazing upcycled pieces with the most fabulous upholstery, like this owl/deer/giraffe scenario to the right. Swoon.

Saturday 2/16: With said work situation stated above, house work and cleaning throughout the week get put to the back burner. On Saturday, I needed to take an "Erin Day" to get our living situation back to something that was more manageable. Living with two lusciously furry kitties, things can go awry real quick. Fur builds up into something that resembles little tumbleweeds across our wood floors and that it not attractive or hygienic. In the process of de-furring our couch, Marley took the no cushion occasion to remind me that my job is never going to be done. Oh the joys of cat motherhood.

A Week in Photos: Weeks 4 and 5

As everyone knows, January is a time for making... and breaking resolutions. I can say that yes, I too am one of those people that have done both this year. I will have more on that in a post tomorrow, but there's one mantra I like to stick to: Progress not Perfection, right? Carrying on:

 Sunday 1/20: In an attempt to spend more quality time together, Ryan and I have been doing Sunday day dates. We decided, since it wasn't raining, to head down to Cannon Beach and visit Ecola State Park. It was a first for me in all the years I've been going to Cannon Beach. It was a beautiful setting on Indian Beach where this picture was taken.

Sunday 1/20: To depict how foggy it was, I had Ryan stand at the overlook of the Seal Rocks. It literally was a white wall with very limited visibility of the beach below.

Sunday 1/20: I told Ryan that this outing was literally the most "outdoorsy" either of us had been in the entirety of our relationship. I can't say either of us are really nature folk. We probably spent in total an hour at the state park, followed by two hours of watching the NFL Playoff Games at one of my favorite Cannon Beach haunts, the Warren House.

Monday 1/21: What a day. This was our opening day at KLEAN Treatment Center (which I partially blame for my lost resolutions). We went to work at 7:00 AM and didn't arrive back home until 8:30 PM. Since we are a "business casual" work environment, we had to bust out the iron. Peanut was the first to offer us any help, that wonderful girl.

 Thursday 1/24: A throwback Thursday picture, Marley and Ryan being sleepy heads. Whenever I get out of bed in the morning, boy cat is right there to take my warm place, if he's not already under the covers already that is.

 Friday 1/25: Because Ryan and I are now workaholics, we decided to hook up the printer we have at the house. The cats weren't as fond of this idea. Anything new (that makes funny noises) strikes an element of suspicion and fear into the cats behavior. Like they say, curiosity killed the cat.

Tuesday 1/29: I'm a Pinterest addict. I love arts and crafts. So naturally when Valentines Day rolls around, I take out all the stops. Last year I bought a heart punch and this year I was printing out paper crafts galore, thus the homemade envelope and the heart confetti. Now I just can't wait to send the homemade love!

 Tuesday 1/29: I have yet to meet a person who does not like a good mustache. Or at least a faux mustache. It's one of those things that everyone is loving right now and I have finally come around. I thought it would be an awesome arts and crafts activity to make mustaches, thus how I wound up with pink templates. They're so festive!

Wednesday 1/30: I will say, the clients LOVED this idea! Ryan managed to snag this sweet V for Vendetta 'stache off of one of our more creative clients. He currently has this hanging up in his office for all of those "business meetings" he hosts.

Friday 2/1: We've been having some really poopy weather lately. I mean it's January on the Oregon coast, what more can you expect? But the last few days have been gorgeous and we managed to catch this sunset on the way up to Ryan's dad's house for a Friday night fiesta!







Saturday 2/2: We had been planning for weeks to take our co-worker Vern on a Portland Ikea adventure. He'd never gone before, and I'll never pass up the opportunity to buy some cheap Swedish tchotchkes. This was the moments preceding Vern's life being changed forever.