Hi, We're Moving Again!

No mom and Nana...not to Pennsylvania! To Denver...no, still not in PA! Woo! A whole hour away. But what a difference an hour makes...to us anyway. We love Denver and wished that we would have moved there (or Durango) from the start. The Springs has been good to us, no doubt, but it's just not for us. Denver has so much more to do, it's closer to friends, and more easily accessible for visitors (wink wink wink winkkkkkkk!!!!)

Unfortunately, it's going to be a couple weeks after Allison & co. move to Florida. I'm very sad about that but on the up side, we now have someone to visit in Florida! :)

Collin has been searching for a new job for probably a good 8 months. He's had everything from offers he didn't want, to no call-backs, to offers that just didn't work out (ie. Durango bc of my job). He finally found a good one in a good location.

So, we're moving this month! We just found a place and I can't wait! We'll finally have a yard, a basement, and we'll be about a block away from the main street of my favorite little part of Denver, the Highlands. I am super excited!

I also just found out that one of my old college friends and her soon-to-be husband are moving less than four blocks from us and around the same time. So fun!

Here is our new living room...not our furniture obviously.

I'm a little concerned with only having one bathroom, less closet space, and some of the rooms are a little tighter than we have now BUT location location location! We can walk to everything except work really. All of the homes in this area are smaller bungalow style homes but I think it's worth it for the location plus we have a yard now!

I'll keep my job in the Springs for a while until I at least finish out the year and can find a job in Denver.

And how fitting...my parents will be our first Denver guests! They're coming at the beginning of September!

Very exciting! Now onto the actual moving part, ugh!

C Tee to E Tee

Refashioning is my new favorite thing. I've recently come across some awesome blogs about girls who take thrift store clothes that most people wouldn't take a second look at, ill fitting clothes of their own, or even their boyfriend/husbands old clothes and make some seriously amazing clothing for themselves (or kiddos). One of my favorite sites of the bunch is Cotton & Curls. This girl is ridiculously talented; if I could learn a fraction of her skill I'd be happy.

One of her projects was taking a simple mens T-shirt and making it into a fitted T for herself. She painted stripes on hers as well but I wasn't feeling that ambitious.

Cotton & Curls 2012

Both of those shirts were originally men's t-shirts...whaaaat!? Awesome.

While Collin was at work I peeped into his "goodwill bag" and pulled out a few T-shirts to practice. Here is the post, complete with directions, from her blog.

Here is my attempt:














After trying the shirt on inside-out, I pinned and sewed. That easy! Well, I had to re-sew a few times but it's actually pretty fool proof. You can't see any of the seams when it's done...no matter how many times you sew over it.

The sleeves and armpits were the most annoying part. I don't know how to make actual sleeves but the tutorial didn't make them any different than I did so I just went with it.

Next, I cut the bottom hem into a U shape and I cut out the collar and then cut the neck opening a little deeper.

It was a pain in the butt but I wanted to keep the original collar but put it into the new neckline so I had to seam rip the entire thing so that it was stretchable. It ended up fitting perfectly.

It came together rather nicely I think!

There we have it. Glamor shots and all. I have more projects in mind and will post when I get the guts to try another one!

Have a great week!

Taylor Park Res

A lot of the nurses I work with on nights, basically live a nocturnal life even on the days that they don't work. I cannot fathom doing that for a number of reasons: 1) I already feel isolated from the "normal" people who work during daylight hours, 2) I would become a TV watching/internet surfing snack-a-saurus, and 3) I wouldn't be able to do all of the fun things we like to do!

Therefore, even if I work the night before we plan to go somewhere, I make it work, and I think it is worth losing some sleep over.

This weekend we went to the Taylor Reservoir, which is near Crested Butte, for some camping.

Suki watched the apartment while we were gone.

And I picked up some fresh cherries for the road!

Aside from raining both nights we camped, it was a fun trip.

Kitchen

We even did some off-roading in the Jeep, I drove! Serious off-roading too...our friend Mari closed her eyes at least a handful of times. It was legit.

We went into Crested Butte on Saturday and grabbed some lunch at a place we like called Teocali Tamale, yum, best burritos ever! We walked around a bit, got some ice cream, and then headed back to camp.

A short, but action-packed weekend for sure. On our drive home, we stopped at this little old fashioned drive-in place for burgers and fries. It reminded me so much of Boehringer's but I hate to say that the burgers were waaaay better...sorry A-town!

Now, two more nights of work and then a week off! Annnnddddd...one of my best friends from college is coming for a visit. I can hardly contain myself. I'm so excited!! Woo!!

Deep Down Good Feeling

Some days I come home from work feeling not only exhausted from working 12 hours through the night but also frustrated by working so hard for what seems like so little and for ungrateful [ie asshole] patients on top of that. But then there are other days, like today, when my patients are so amazing that they literally make me want to cry...happy tears. Last night I had five awesome patients who just made me feel so great and proud of what I do and remind me that I actually DO do something meaningful...despite the rest of my days when I wonder why the hell I spent an additional shit-ton of money to be a friggin' registered nurse.

Pt 1: A little lady who is already going on her 13th day in the hospital and today found out she has to go back to surgery yet again. Every time I went into her room she would grab my hand and thank me endlessly for caring so much for her. When I left this morning she held my hand and asked me to pray for her today and told me that she wished I was coming back tonight to take "such great care of her again."

Pt 2: Very depressed patient on countless anti-depressants and anti-psych meds, thanked me for making him laugh today, saying "I haven't done that for a while."

Pt 3: Another depressed patient, on the verge of being under suicide watch, who lost her daughter last year, and is sick with no know cause. I had some time to sit with her and chat for a while and then she was finally able to get a full night of sleep. When the day nurse came back in she said, "what the hell did you do!? you cured her, she's a different person!" She was finally smiling and the darkness you saw when you looked at her was brightening.

Pt 4: A 50 yr old man who looked at least 70, recently found out that he has metastasized cancer and changed his code status to Do Not Resuscitate because of his poor prognosis. He was such a happy man despite all of the sadness in his life and thanked me for taking "such good care of him" and said "really, I want you to know that you are one of the good ones, I mean that." That's when I almost teared up and lost it.

Pt 5: Sweetest and healthiest mid-50's man, came in for a fever and unknown to him his preliminary ultrasound showed signs of possible liver cancer. He, his wife, and I had similar senses of humor so we really had some great conversations and laughs and it really broke my heart to know that unbeknownst to him and his wife, he may soon be diagnosed with liver cancer.

Long post, I know. And I'm not bragging...trust me, if you knew all about my bad days you'd get it. But I just felt like sharing a little bit about these great people I got to take care of today.

It's a deep down good feeling when you are reminded that you really are making a difference in other people's lives, especially during some of their worst times.

I hope everyone had a great weekend...I'm starting mine right now!

Mommy Pillows

My mom happened to be impressed by my new sewing ability and asked me to make some pillow covers for her. While I was home, we went to the best fabric store ever, Burkholder's, a mennonite store with more fabric than I could even stand to look at and picked out a bunch a fabrics for me to take back to Colorado.

I busted out the first five in a week and for some reason I just couldn't get the sixth one finished...until this week. 

Here are the finished products (flipped corners show the back side), all have zippered bottom seams:

Close ups:

The top and bottom pics are the 16x16" pillows and the rest are 14x14". I sent my mom a preview before I shipped them and she loved them! Success!

Now, on to a sewing machine cover.