Picture Moulding

Our first multi-day do-it-yourself project! I don't know whether Daniel and I were inspired by the Galveston historic homes with tall ceilings or what, but we have been wanting picture moulding for the living room almost since we moved in.

Picture moulding is sort of like chair rail, but it goes up closer to the ceiling and is shaped to accommodate hooks, from which art hangs by ribbon or wire. Here's the basic idea:
We found the picture moulding (harder than it sounds!) at Wilson Door and Trim in Garland. Here's the profile of it:
We brought it home:
And painted it white, to match the crown moulding already in the living room:
Daniel used this awesome miter saw, borrowed from my brother-in-law:

And he practiced cutting perfect corners:
And then once the moulding was cut to the correct lengths, we used a wall-mounted laser level to mark where the moulding would go:
We bought a compressed air brad nailer to help with this project, and boy did it make the job easier! With this cool tool, you just push the nailer into the wall, and a nail shoots out of it. It looks like this:
We took turns nailing sections to the wall:
And we got it all up pretty quickly:
So then it was just a matter of hanging the photos and art! We bought frames and red mats from Michael's and framed several pictures from our first few years of marriage. We used gray ribbon, also from Michael's, and used those to hang the photos from the hooks we found at the House of Antique Hardware.

The finished look:

And finished just in time for birthday party hosting! I turned 25 the other day--thanks to my SIL for the below picture... I totally swiped it from her blog :).

Hungry baby bird

Merry Christmas!! Though there were lots of great things to take picture of today, I have to share a few of my adorable niece.

We began Christmas morning (after our own gift exchange between Daniel and me) at my parents' house with opening stockings and eating yummy breakfast casserole. Not 2 minutes after I handed Daniel his plate of casserole, baby Elizabeth perched herself next to him. It only took a few not-so-subtle glances between his plate and his face, and he began to feed her his entire plate, bite by bite.

Isn't she cute?

My sister swears that she does actually feed this little one regularly :).

I hope you all had a fabulous Christmas and are gearing up for a great new year. Updates soon to come on the picture rail, which is finally finished!

Graduation!

This past Friday I graduated from UTMB's PA program... finally! It had been a long time coming.

Daniel's grandparents

Joe and Sarah

Lots of family and friends made it for the ceremony and the celebration dinner afterward, hosted by good friends the Hannings. And I have to say, it was some of the best vegetable lasagna (with alfredo cream sauce) I have ever had. Thanks to Dibella's for that!

My mother, sister, and grandparents-in-law :)

Good friends Sarah and Naomi

One of the Hanning beauties and my brother-in-law

My sister on the left, and my adorable nephew on the right

My mom on the left, Naomi on the right, and the youngest Hanning beauty in the middle

My father-in-law on the left, and my aunt Barbara next to me

Me and the Hannings, and Sarah

Many thanks to all who came, and to those who weren't able, but wanted to come. The PA program at UTMB made for a rough chapter in Daniel's and my lives, but I know that the ability to serve people and to find fulfillment in my career will make it all worthwhile.

Many thanks, also, to those whose friendship and support (financial, emotional, housing, and otherwise) made it possible for me to be successful at UTMB.

An Aggie Kind of Wedding

My friends Julia and Jerry recently had a lovely wedding in Houston, which Daniel and I drove down for. It had been a long time since I went to a proper Aggie kind of wedding. Although--due to the formal Catholic nature of the ceremony--there was no "whoop" at the couple's first kiss, there were certainly some loud "WHOOP!!"s at the reception, during which all the Aggies lined up to sing the Aggie War Hymn together. There's just something so familial about a big group of Aggies.

"Saw Varsity's horns off, Saw Varsity's horns off! Saw Varsity's horns off... SHORT! A--WHOOP!!"

It's nice that Julia has such fantastic taste--isn't this a pretty bridesmaid dress?

Several of my PA school friends

Will update with pictures from graduation soon!

O Christmas Tree...

Our very first Christmas tree! How good does THAT look? <-- that's a Rachael Rayism I've picked up from watching Rachael Ray's 30-Minute Meals almost everyday. LOVE that show.
...Anyways--despite some concerns that my corolla wouldn't be big enough to get the job done, it successfully carried our beautiful tree all the way home from Lowe's. And this is the result! Isn't it pretty? Don't bother pointing out that it doesn't have an angel or star on the top. I already know, and I'm working on it*.

I think our two stockings look a little lonely all spread out like that over the fireplace, but I'm sure they'll have company in the next few years.

Will update soon about our picture moulding project!


*Christmas gift idea?

A Dentist?

One of my adorable nephews, age 4, is recently fascinated with teeth. His grandfather is a dentist, so maybe there's some sort of genetic interest in the subject? Here he is, on Thanksgiving, checking me out:

When asked whether he thought my teeth looked okay, his response was merely a nod and a smile. He might have stayed like this all day if I hadn't eventually insisted that I don't like having little fingers poking my teeth and little eyes peering in for minutes at a time. Funny, huh?

Busy Busy

Wow--working full time is very time-consuming! I started working this past week at Compassion Care Clinic, a family practice that sees a largely Hispanic population with a majority of kids. It's a great place to work--everybody is really friendly, patient, and kind. There is definitely a steep learning curve, but I couldn't ask for better people to learn with and from.

Sadly the house has not progressed much lately. I'm hoping to put more work into it on my days off. That's all for now!

Cozy Kitchen

The first photos of the new house--with our stuff in it. We are getting settled, slowly, room by room. Naturally the kitchen was first. We found a great table on Craigslist! The couple who sold it to us is comprised of an Aggie-husband and a UTD-wife, Just like us! But reversed. Anyways, the table is great. The lazy susan is also a new purchase from Craigslist.
More photos to come, as we continue to make this place look like home :).

Whew! Glad that's over!

360 questions and 6 hours later... I'm done!
So many questions! It's not the sort of test you really feel good about when you finish, but I do think I passed. I guess I will find out in a couple weeks. Thanks for all who prayed for and/or thought of me!

The Heaviest Organ

Well, I take the PA National Certifying Exam (PANCE) tomorrow, so of course I've been studying as much as possible. I think I will do alright on the exam, but I am still nervous about it. For one reason, the stakes are high--if I don't pass, that would be very bad--and it's a 6-hour exam, covering all branches of medicine.

While studying today, I ran across a statement that is provided as an introduction for almost every dermatology text I've read:

"The skin is the largest and heaviest organ of the body"

Yuck! Does anybody else imagine a pile of human skin on the floor?
Why does every author discussing dermatology feel the need to repeat this useless, disgusting piece of information? I can't think of a way this factoid is medically helpful. Every time I read it, I shudder and try not to think of Silence of the Lambs. For those interested in the specifics: the skin weighs about 9 lbs and has a surface area of 20 square feet. Gross.

Wish me luck on the PANCE tomorrow!

All Moved In

I have no pictures for this post, but good news! All our stuff is in the house, and the pod is empty! Thank you, thank you to our family and friends who helped us yesterday to bring all our things from the pod into the house. I will update with pictures as soon as there is anything decently photograph-able. Right now there's just a lot of stuff all over the place. This week's projects: curtains for the den and curtains for our bedroom! Oh and also, studying for my boards that I take next week :).

The house with all the leaves

Well, today I felt like a home owner for the very first time. Our front yard was COVERED with leaves from our awesome trees.
My leaf-raking memories from childhood had me thinking this task would probably take all day (I'm sure it never took that long), but it really went pretty quickly! We piled up the leaves all over the yard.
Then we took a small photo-op break to play in the leaves.
I am happy to say that Daniel and I worked as a real team and used a "salad tongs" approach with our rakes to get the leaves into the trash can.
Two hours and 8 trash bags later, we were completely done! Not bad!
Yay for home ownership!

Good times, good gumbo, good friends

Ever since I stayed with Joe and Sarah in Beaumont last January, I have been looking forward to having some of Judy's gumbo. Buddy and Judy are good friends of Joe and Sarah, and last night they had us all over for dinner. Let me tell you... the gumbo was awesome--well worth the wait.

Judy tells me that the skills for making gumbo are in your genes and you either have them or you don't. But I am DETERMINED to prove her wrong. To my knowledge, neither Daniel nor I have gumbo-making skills in our genes. And although I realize the more obvious time for mastering gumbo-making would have been while we lived in Galveston... we will just have to master it in Dallas instead.

I'm told the key to good gumbo is in the roux. I will update with our (Daniel and my) attempts in the future. For now, here's a picture of all five of us after an excellent meal of shrimp gumbo.
The only one missing, of course, is Daniel. Hopefully the next visit we make will be together!

We got Art!

We have been keeping a look out for Galveston art for the past several months. Galveston is such a unique place with an interesting history and cool architecture, so we thought a piece of art that somehow captured that was the ideal thing by which to remember our time here. Today we found exactly the right piece!

The artist is Rene Wiley, a very talented lady, whose studio is right next door to my favorite coffee shop. The painting is of a street at dawn, actually only a few streets away from where we lived. It perfectly captures the feel of Galveston.

"6AM Sunday"

This photo doesn't do it justice :)

I intend to find this spot and take a photo before I leave on Wednesday, but in the mean time... here is a photo of another street nearby, just so you can see how similar it is. The whole island looks like this.

Moved Out!

We are officially moved out! Our good friends helped us move all the furniture into the pod today, and after they left Daniel and I finished clearing out our Galveston house. I cannot believe this chapter of our lives is drawing to a close. We do plan to keep up with the friends we've made in Galveston, but we are so sad to be leaving them. I like the way our friend puts it: "Now we have friends in Dallas!". That's exactly right.

Here are our friends, a whole family of cool people, who helped us finish packing the pod:

And here is our final goodbye to 1320 Avenue N. It's been a good time. We will miss Galveston very much.