A sense of possibility

Hello again! Do you know what today is? Today is June 1st. Anybody want to tell me what that means? Anybody? Bueller? June 1st means that we are half way done with 2012. Can you even believe that??? Half way done with this year!! For some reason, that really hit me this year. 2012 is half gone, and what have I done so far?

Nick and I bought our first Christmas tree for our first Christmas in our first apartment (which may have technically been in 2011....but just barely!!), we celebrated our first Valentine's Day as a married couple, we took a road trip to Georgia for Nick's high school reunion. We went on the first camping trip of my adult life, and we visited the White Mountains (a first for both of us!!). We also did lots of (only slightly!!) smaller things, spent lots of time with family and friends, went on dates just the two of us, and ate lots of ice cream.That list is pretty impressive, and each memory on it makes me smile when I remember them.

BUT!! Being the person I am, nothing is ever quite enough. I always want to do more, to be more. I read an article this week in the Yale Daily News called The Opposite of Loneliness:
(http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/may/27/keegan-opposite-loneliness/)
If ya'll have a second, it's worth the read. It's short, I promise. Short, but insanely powerful. Part of that comes from the fact that the girl who wrote it was killed in a car accident the weekend after it was published. She was 22 years old, and the message in her article is such a wonderful one, but saddened by her much to early passing. My favorite lines are "But let us get one thing straight: the best years of our lives are not behind us. They’re part of us and they are set for repetition as we grow up and move to New York and away from New York and wish we did or didn’t live in New York. I plan on having parties when I’m 30. I plan on having fun when I’m old. " and "What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over. Get a post-bac or try writing for the first time. The notion that it’s too late to do anything is comical. It’s hilarious. We’re graduating college. We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have."  These words are almost haunting, given that she did not make it to 30 to enjoy those amazing parties she was going to throw, and wasn't given the oppertunity to grow old and have fun. I think I would have liked Marina Keegan. A lot.

Reading her article made me think (as I'm sure it did to everyone!) about what I'm doing with my life. I have found the love of my life, and I married him. That's a giant checkmark in the win column. Every day while I'm sitting at work, I'm fantasizing about all the things I'd rather be doing. I want to ride in a hot air balloon with Nick. I want to skydive again. Nick and I want to travel the US and the world, seeing everything we can possibly see. I want to buy a house and have babies running around it. I want to see fireworks as many times as possible. I want to swim with sharks, but that's the last thing on my bucket list because sharks scare me more than anything, so I know that's the one that's gonna do me in!! I want to open up an etsy shop and sell things that I make. I want to learn Italian and Spanish. I want to meet Jonathan Kellerman. There are SO MANY things that I want to do (most of them with Nick!!), and Marina's article made me that much more determined to stop day dreaming about them and go DO THEM!!! Tomorrow night I'm leaving for Italy for 5 days. I'd say that's a pretty good start, even though the trip is for work and I can't bring Nick with me. :( But I'm going with a good friend that I work with, and while I'm there, I'm going to try to get out of my comfort zone. I'm also going to eat my weight in pasta and gelato.

I guess the point of this post, other than to get Marina Keegan's article out to a broader audience, is that life is so much shorter than we imagine. My mom died young. I lost a good friend when he was only 18. When it's your time, it's your time. You're going, ready or not. So go out for ice cream. Kiss your husband. A lot. Do the dishes later, play with your kids now. Take every vacation oppertunity you get, go see all those things on your bucket list that you put on there "knowing" you'd never cross off. Just.......be happy. If there's something making you unhappy, change it. Don't know how? Email me. I'll be glad to give it a shot. If any of you have some secrets you'd like to share about how you make the most of every day, I'd love to hear them!!

Memorial Day Re-Cap

Happy back to work after the long weekend day! I know, it's my least favorite holiday of the year too. We had a fantastic Memorial Day weekend, I hope everyone else did too! Since this is where I ramble on about all the wonderfulness in my life, this is where I get to re-cap a wonderful weekend! :)



Friday consisted of visiting Davis Farmland with our god-daughter, which was a blast, dinner at Wendy's (have you tried their mac and cheese??), and ice cream and a car show at Kimballs Farm. Which is probably the best darn ice cream you'll ever have.





Fishing for magnet fish



Feeding the baby goats!



We spent Saturday in Maine, leaving our mark on Portland Headlight. I had never seen it before, so that was very cool. We went with two of Nick's brothers, one of our sister-in-laws, her parents, and Nick's parents. Talk about a full day! :)





 Unfortunatly Nick had to work most of the day Sunday, but that meant I got to spend the whole day with my bffl, who recently re-located to a very inconvenient 4 hours away!!! Lunch and some "light" shopping somehow exhausted us, but it's so worth it! :) I miss her. Sigh.

Monday we had a bbq with some of Nick's family, and then he had to work AGAIN!! It's almost as if his company doesn't care that we had plans.......but there was a sprinkler and popsicles, and then Bella and I got to hang out with my almost sister in law Haley and her chickens all evening!! Bella kept feeding the chickens her goldfish and saying "backa backa backa". Which is clearly what chickens say. So it was yet another fabulous day, except that Nick was stuck at work the second half of the day, while I got to have all the fun! Poor Nick.

Playing fruit ninja on the kinect!

Yummy water from the sprinkler!



How about you? What did everyone else do for Memorial Day weekend?













10 Habits of a Happy Marriage

Hey ya'll, thanks for popping by! Hubby and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary on Tuesday, and I'm still having trouble believing it's been a year since we said our I do's! The happy afterglow of our anniversary trip to the White Mountains made me think about what exactly it is that makes us so...well, happy. Out of this musing was born my list of 10 habits of a happy marriage. Now I am by no means an expert. Just very happily married to the love of my life. These are just what work for us. 

Us being all happy. :)

1. Think before you speak. This one is pretty self-explanatory, but it's also important. Whether it's an off-the-cuff remark or something hurled at your spouse in the heat of an argument, words can never be unsaid. Bite your tongue. Take a second to play out the remark in your head, and think about how you'd react if it was coming at you. 

2. Remember that your spouse is your best friend, and treat them accordingly. Listen to them when they need to vent, thank them for something they did today instead of taking it as a given, and watch your tone when your talking to them. I've been known to be a smidge on the sensitive side, and hubby's tone really affects what I hear when he speaks to me. No matter what words he's saying, I've found that I react more to his tone than the actual words.

 3. Actions speak louder than words. If there's a chore that you know your spouse is dreading, take care of it for them instead of nagging and nagging, and then thanking them in the end. Thanks only goes so far. Pick up that futurama bottle opener that reminds you of your hubby in the grocery store line to let him know you were thinking of him. Hold your wife's hand while you're walking through the mall. Say your sorry for forgetting pick up the dry cleaning, but back it up by heading out and doing it. Right now.


4. When you're together, be together. Turn off the phone, log off facebook, put away the to-do list. Get outside, take a walk in the woods together. Toss around a baseball. Drive around the neighborhood and pick out your future house. Watch a movie together. Or your wedding video. Whatever you do, it's about you two. Just you two.


5.  Save the drama fo yo momma.  At one point in time, I may have been somewhat of a drama queen. Nick is the complete opposite, a "come what may" kinda guy. This did not mesh well. He couldn't understand why not having the right socks on  totally ruined a bowling date, and I couldn't understand how getting rained out of out mini golf plans was okay, even though we ended up seeing a movie instead. Since getting married, I'm much more laid back, and I've gotta say, I'm much happier. And WE are much happier. We have more fun, are more flexible, and don't miss out on things just because they didn't go exactly as planned. Loosen up, people.

6. Include eachother in the small decisions, too. Even if it seems silly, you don't know how it's going to affect your spouse. We were at WalMart getting....everything, cause that's what you do at WalMart, and Nick happened to need body wash. Instead of grabbing one off the shelf, he asked me which one I liked the smell of. A tiny little decision, but he made me feel special because he wanted to use the body wash that I liked. Because I liked it. Small issue, but sweet. Finaicial decisions, housing, a new car, vacation destination, all of these things are better when you figure them out together. In our experience, the same goes for body wash, what to have for dinner, and what movie to get from Redbox. Just saying.

7. Small guestures make a big difference. We were running out the door today, and I opened the fridge to get a sippy cup out for our god daughter. Inside the fridge were 2 pieces of pie from Burger King that Nick had picked up to surprise me. Kinda made my day. He's so sweet.

8. Highlight the good, blink past the bad. I'm not saying to repress feelings or anything so dramatic. Just to focus on the amazing things about your spouse, your marriage, and the life you've built together. Not the one or two negatives that seem oh so important at one particular moment. For example, on our trip to the White Mountains this past weekend, Nick and I hiked to a waterfall, we played in the water there, we tried new resturants, we took a scenic train ride, we had Ben and Jerry's, and in general enjoyed being together in a setting neither of us had ever experienced before. We also didn't get cupcakes from a cute little cupcakery that I found online. But who cares? What I remember about that trip is candlelight, good food, waterfalls, and being with my husband. That makes for a much better memory than a missed-out-on cupcake. And that's a lot for me, cause I looooooove cupcakes.


9. Ask your spouse once (or more!) a day, "what can I do to help you out today?" Maybe not in so many words, but the principle stands. When Nick has to work after school, I make a point to ask if there's anything I can do for him that he wanted to get done that evening. If he's stopping somewhere on the way home, he shoots me a text asking if I need him to pick anything up. When we get stressed by our never ending to do lists, there's not better feeling than knowing there's someone in your corner to help you out. It makes it much harder to get overwhelmed when you know your husband or wife is right there to back you up.


10. Never underestimate the power of silly. Awhile back, Nick was putting up the leftovers from dinner and I was lounging on the couch. That's the life, huh? ;) For some reason, he threw up wadded up ball of tin foil at me. I grabbed the x-box remote and hit it back to him like a baseball. This turned into a 20 minute game, with both of us cracking up over it. 20 minutes of not thinking about work stresses, financial issues, or anything more serious than whether or not I could hit the tin foil far enough for Nick to catch it. Some days, I think everyone really needs that. 


So that's how we roll. How about you? Anything not on my list that you think should be?

Anniversary Wine Glasses

Happy Monday everyone! Hubby and I have our one year anniversary coming up on Tuesday *insert excited squeal here*, so I've been trying to come up with little things to make it special. One of the ideas I had stemmed from a bottle of sparkling cider in our fridge that is actually from our wedding day! I thought, since the bottle is so special, clearly the drinking apparatus must be brought up to par! Thus were born our anniversary "wine" glasses.

Now, this was NOT as simple as I imagined it would be. In my head, I was going to pick up two wine glasses at the dollar store, some paint at Michaels, and away I would go! In reality, it took 4 different tries and 4 different methods before I had anything I deemed worthy of our anniversary.

These were my first attempt:

It took 3 different methods to get to that point. I looked at them and thought to my self, "Self, those are not good. Those are not you and Nick. They are drab and boring. You are not." This was a very sad realization, because I had spent the majority of my afternoon, as well as the afternoon before, on these. So I had a cookie and went to bed.

The next morning, I decided that those glasses had to go. I was going to start from scratch. One quick trip to WalMart later, and I was on my way to non-drab glasses!! This time around I went with our wedding colors, purple and green. I figured that would take them from drab to fabuolous! Everything is better in purple. This is the new result:

Much better! I started out with two 97 cent glasses from WalMart, some enamel paint, and some sticker stencils:

 



The Mr. ande Mrs. are free-handed onto the glasses. I used a heart stencil for my glass and a (only slightly) more manly polka dot stencil for hubby's. Ta-da! Glasses worthy of our special day!

Ice Breaker!

Hello lovelies! My name is Janice, and I'm so happy that you're here! Sprinkles on my Jello is my little corner of the world, where I plan on sharing a little of myself with all of you while getting to know you all a little better! For my first post, I thought a "10 random things about me" would be a deeee-lightful little ice breaker for us. I'll start.

1. I am married to the most amazing man I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. Prepare to hear lots of gushing here in sprinkle-land. He's pretty dang cool. 

2. I am a jack of most trades, master of.......one or two. On a good day. I love to crochet, cook, sew, scrapbook, photograph lovely things, bake, make jewelry, and the list goes on. There are always a minimum of 4 projects of random varieties going on in my house.

3. I am a not-so-closet Pinterest addict. I spend sooo much time browsing the recipes and craft ideas on there; feel free to check out my boards here . That website is probably the coolest place on the web. Other that sprinkle-land, of course! ;)

4. I am a Seventh-Day Adventist, and I think that my belief in God and knowing that this world isn't all we have to look forward to, is probably what gets me through each day.

5. When I grow up, I want to be a: photographer,a  social worker, a stay at home mommy, a pilot, a cake baker, a cupcake tester, and some sort of multi-faceted professional crafter. 

6. I hate the word deluxe. For no apparent reason. It just grates on my ears. My fingers shook as I typed that.

7. I have one younger brother, and older sister, and an older brother, my dad and step mom. I also have several nieces and nephews, some sister and brother in laws that are just as much friends as family, wonderful in-laws, and so much extended family that I can't even list them. I'm very lucky in the family department. 

8. I love music. All kinds of music. You'll probably be reading lots of lyric fragments as you become engrossed in Sprinkles on my Jello. 

9. If I could live anywhere, it would be Wisteria Lane. I can't get enough of those ladies, and I think I would make a darn fine desperate housewife. Hubs does not agree. 

10. I am a part-time Weight Watchers follower. It's a great program, and it whipped my butt into shape for my wedding, but this time around my love of all things cheesy, chocolaty, and pasta-y is seriously overriding my desire to look good in a bikini. 

I'd love to know a few random things about you!! Leave me a comment with your top random facts, and let's get the "getting to know each other" ball rolling, folks!