Family Heirloom

So, it is soon March...as in 2 days away!  I thought I would post a picture of one of my favorite places to play.  This park has special meaning to our family because Matt's family donated the track of land where the town-Enola- eventually built this completely awesome park for kids to play (hence, Ricci in the park's name).  It's like a family heirloom.  It gets better and better with age.  :)

I was out and about when I saw how beautiful it looked at Adams-Ricci Park (oh how I love going there!).  I whipped out the camera and shot a couple pictures to remember (on one of those sweltering, hot July days) the loveliness of snow and the beauty in God's winter.

train caboose in the park

 

I can't wait to do more photo sessions here as the weather warms up.  It's a little gem I love sharing with clients, especially the little ones!

Spring is on the way.

Be Blessed.

30 Things to do before I turn 30 pt.1

So, as you all know, I recently turned 29.  I decided to make sure that my 30th year was the best yet! :)

Here are the first 5 things I came up with and decided I wanted to do before I turn 30.  They are certainly not in order as I am NOT putting myself in the icy Susquehanna River to achieve the first on the list here... :)  They have varying meaning for both myself and my family.  Feel free to ask more about them if you are interested.

Kayak down the Susquehanna River.  Way cool.  You can make stops on one of the many islands along the way back to City Island.  What better way to see the city than from the river?  Last time I saw a city from the river, I was in London on our honeymoon.  Bliss.  We will make our own little Honeymoon in Harrisburg- haha!  Maybe I will plan this as part of our anniversary this year!!  :)

Run road races again.  This is something I LOVED to do when I was in high school and I still maintained it in college, but then the real world set in and I just never made the time to continue to do this.  It is one of my true fitness loves and Matt (Mr. crazy runner man) is going to hold me to this! 

Eat 30 new things. While this sounds simple enough, I actually like to try new things, so it will be challenging to find 30 things I haven't already tried!  :)  I will definitely tell you about these things when I come across them!

Grow a garden. I don't mean a rinky dink one.  I mean a real garden.  My grandmother and grandfather raised me on gardening and I would love to honor them by continuing with the tradition. Last year our little garden made enough to feed Isabella all through her winter mushy food months, so my goal is to can enough for my family that we don't have to buy it in the off-season.

Be Thankful every day.  Enough said.  We are all part of God's plan, we just don't always know how it is going to play out.  He has blessed my family so much in 2010 and I have faith he will continue to do so.  I want to work on being even more Thankful and less 'complaint filled.'  I read so many posts on Facebook and blogs about people complaining (while to each his/her own); I just think that there are so many good things going on out there- why complain??

Okay. So I am going to post these in increments of 5....so as not to overwhelm myself and to remind myself how much each one means to me.

Be Blessed.

Designing a new room...

So, you have already heard about our new flooring that arrived, so I decided it was time to let you in to our journey into the realm of "finished basements"... oh wow.

So, it has been a while coming along with the basement building (we started before I went back to work).  Matt (with the help of his Dad and brother-in-law Bill) has done every inch of it himself!  I am SO proud of him!!  :)  <3  Things were in lightening mode right as I went back to work and Christmas rolled around (we thought at the time it would be slightly functional during our holiday festivities, but alas, it wasn't--not for lack of Matt's trying though!!!) and after the holidays and our traveling, things slowed down a bit.  It was really cold here (which meant it was cold downstairs, and things weren't drying correctly) so Matt waiting until it was above freezing to start again.

Things have progressed nicely the past few weeks and the multiple layers of mudding are almost complete!  Hooray!!  :)

It is really coming together nicely, the design looks fabulous and very functional.  The room that is almost finished is my lovely, big, organized laundry room!  Wahhoo :)  I picked out some functional cabinets that are going to rock my organizing socks off, and I can't wait to tell you all about it!  The only thing left is to sand, paint, and put the tiling in.  I will definitely post when we are finished with it!

The large space will become a family room type area.  We are moving our TV and current couch downstairs and we will change the living room into another fun room to design.  More on that later as well!

We are going to have a library- bliss.  It will be a little while before I post on this.  We have to finish the room first, then I have to design  (and Matt has to build) the bookcases- floor to ceiling.  Double Bliss.  Don't worry, I will tell you all about it! :)

Really, the biggest bulk of the work is complete- everything is built, wired, juiced, walled, and almost mudded.  We just need to sand all of the walls and ceiling, paint and lay the floor.  Not much left!  Yay!  :)  I can't wait to start using this area, especially since it walks right out to our back area where we are going to have plants GALORE this spring and summer!!  :)

Our goal is to be finished before gardening season kicks in, since we are having a monster garden this year, it will take most of our time.

Be Blessed.

Designing a floor

In celebration of our new flooring arriving- here is a little insight into what we have been working on.

Okay, so I am not crafting my own floor, but selecting the appropriate coloring is an important choice.

We have a darker, Malaysian Kempas wood flooring (click the link) upstairs in the living room, dining room, hallway and upstairs landing.  This looks perfect with the wooden stairs that we refinished earlier last year before Isabella arrived.  Okay, who am I kidding, Matt did it all.  I picked the color and propped my 8 month pregnant self up on the couch! ;)  But he did an awesome job and they look great!  There is a lot of lighting upstairs so it looks good.

My concern with continuing this color scheme for the flooring downstairs was that it would make it dark and dungeon looking.  Not at all what I wanted.  It is going to be a special space.  A retreat.  An oasis.  NOT a dungeon.

I decided that I should browse some lighter colored woods to see what we could find and what we both agreed upon.  I found fabulous natural colored woods, but being in a sub-groundlevel area I did not want to have to worry about building a sub-floor just to be able to have it installed.  There had to be a better way.  I am also not one to do what everyone else does, and tile is just boring- so that was out of the question- that is the easy thing to do.  Don't even ask about carpet.  yuck.  In a basement?  double yuck.

So I browsed some of the various grades of laminate flooring just to check it out.  I searched and searched and searched...without a solid choice.  Then we came across the best of both worlds.  Spanish Maple laminate.

It is beautiful.

love. Spanish Maple makes my <3 smile.

I love that it is the light colored wood of natural.  The striated patterned beauty of Maple's wood grain, and it ties in the darker wood that we will take downstairs (framing of couch and TV center) with the natural knotty colors of the Maple.

Bliss.

The stark contrast between dark framed furniture and light flooring is perfect.  I cannot wait to walk on it once it is finished.  It is just what I was searching for.  And better yet- Matt loved it!

Be Blessed.

Happy Valentine's Day

From the Dressler's :)

Our Valentine's Day was spent the best way...together.

We did "our" thing on the weekend, then had a lovely dinner on Valentine's evening!

The weather was gorgeous over the weekend (by that I mean a balmy 40 something degrees), so we went to Riverwalk and took a few shots of the snow and ice covered Susquehannah before it thaws for spring.

I wore red to work (one of the few times since leaving Target) so that no one would pinch me...then I realized it wasn't St. Patrick's Day. Way to go, Sarah. It goes without saying that I didn't get pinched.

We made brownies together- Isabella giggled and giggled. My heart melted. We danced the night away in the kitchen to Veggietales and 80's music!

My husband gave me a heart bead for my bracelet, and I gave him new guitar strings. I think my gift sucked. He kept saying that is what he wanted.

I loved this Valentine's Day more than any of those crazy high-priced dinners we went to before, and I wouldn't trade this for the world. I love my family and there's no better way I can think of to spend our Valentine's Day. :) Be Blessed.

An Adventure with the IPhone 4

So, you know we are newly a Mac family.  I have been debating (for literally a year-asking people on both sides of the "issue") on whether or not I wanted another BlackBerry when my renewal came up or whether I wanted to go IPhone.

I made a bunch of pro-con lists (here are the main points I kept writing down).

BlackBerry 
Pros
Instant Email (I mean faster than my computer sometimes)
Click screen of the Storm (wasn't ready to go all the way touch screen back when the Storm came out)
Cons
Yucky apps (okay, almost non-existent)
Storage memory allocation was silly (umm hello- if I have a memory card in my phone, shouldn't I be able to save my apps (the few I could find) there??)

IPhone 
Pros
Awesome Apps
Better product organization/function
Cons
only on AT&T
Not instant email access (do I really need this??)

Well, now Verizon is carrying the IPhone 4!  Hooray!  Scratch the "Only on AT&T" point.

Matt and I both have upgrades available on our accounts.  He thought he originally wanted an Android phone, but was very interested in the phone "Skype" type chatting we could do together (with Isabella) on the IPhone.

Well, on Tuesday Matt (and inevitably I) got up at 2:30 in the morning to log on to Verizon's site and order our new IPhones.  He actually go in before the 3am opening (who knows how that worked- maybe b/c the site went down at 2:45 due to too much traffic), selected the phones we wanted. 

Now comes the LET'S TALK A DEAL portion of the story!!

We got the smaller IPhone- 16 gig- since we both have IPods dedicated to our music libraries and knew we wouldn't be using the Phone for a lot of music.

The IPhone 4- 16 gig version sells for $199.

So, like I mentioned, our account had upgrades on both phone numbers (Matt's as well as my number).  That right there is $100 off each phone.  Rock on.  Now they only cost $99 each.

Then we had previously done some research to find out that we can sell our BlackBerries back to a company that Verizon uses for 50 buck a pop (Cha-Ching!).  That brings each phone down to a whopping $49.

So our family got 2 IPhone 4s for a whopping $98 (less than I was going to spend to buy myself one at AT&T) and our data package (unlimited use) didn't change a bit!!  WAHHOOO!

Verizon is shipping the phone directly to current subscribers' homes OVERNIGHT FREE OF CHARGE, so after processing the order and shipping it out- we got our phones today!  Rock on AGAIN!

Three whole days to download whatever I want to customize it to my tastes before we can set it up for the network on Thursday.  Setting it up on the network can be done at our home!  Wahoo again.  We don't have to go to the Verizon store and fight the MADDENING CROWDS to turn it on.  yay.

Go us for getting a great deal on a cool phone!

A New Love-Affair

So, many of you interact with us on a daily basis, others only every quarter (sometimes not even that frequent).  Those of you that don't see us daily will be able to learn a little insight into our technology obsession (those that see us on a daily basis will already know that we are eccentric technology fans and have a gazillion gadgets around our house!).

We have recently become a Mac family.  I fought the system for YEARS I tell ya!  As of recently though, Matt received an IMac for Christmas and I got an IPad for my birthday.  I love Mac now and I am not sure why I didn't give it a shot before??  I think I was just being stubborn and didn't believe in what Mac stood for, however, I believe more in investing in our future and making a smart purchase (note we have burned through 4 Windows laptops in the past 4 years).   The IMac has been great for my photography business, creativity and editing my photos- it is top-notch for creativity- I will give it to Mac for that (and it has a super fast start up- rather than the bogged down program-laden Windows start up).

My current favorite is the IPad, which I bought for my photography business: Bella Vita Photography (shameless plug!).  It has become one of our go-to pieces and I have found some awesome apps for it!

A couple of the ones I use the most are:
1. The Bible App from YouVersion- it ROCKS!  Bookmarks, reading plans, progress monitoring, and sharing- plus it works on IPhones, Andriod, and BlackBerries.

2. The Daily- A brand-new DAILY News App that just came out specifically for the IPad that incorporates true news, in an interactive style designated especially for you!  TOTALLY rocks- it is getting a lot of media coverage currently, so check it out on any of the big news media outlets websites. 

3. PDF Expert- the reason for my shameless business plug!  This app allows you to edit PDFs on the go.  WAY COOL, which means that when I go to sessions, I don't have to take any paper contracts.  I just tote the IPad along (great way to show the client other pictures from my portfolio) and they sign on the PDF contract without ever raising pen to paper! 

4.  Educational Apps- there are way to many to list (we have already downloaded several) that we play around on with Isabella.  She will be teaching me about technology before too long! ;)

5.  Travel Apps- there are a couple I use- Lonely Planet for all my background locational info and a couple others for the planning stage.  I am a very detail oriented person, so these apps together rock out at vacation planning!

I really think that technology is the wave of the future (why else would school districts fork out hundreds of thousands of dollars on laptops, programs, computers, cameras, SmartBoards, etc for students to interact with during the educational process if it were only a phase?  I know I use these things daily with my kids, and in moderation with Isabella (have I mentioned lately that she's so smart, and makes me smile!!??) 

I am certainly not trying to persuade anyone to believe anything that we do, just thought y'all would like to know some of the changes (for the better) going on in the Dressler home!  Be Blessed.