Mid June already...

Well summer is officially here and it seems that unlike the olden days, when summer meant sleeping in endlessly, finding a nice summer job, lounging on the beaches, and loads of TV time; our summer time seems to be speeding things up.

Let the wedding Hoorahs begin! Our hallway corkboard is officially loaded with Save The Dates and wedding invitations, each getting more creative than the last.  Mr D made the comment the other night that he's never thought of his time as "Months" before. As in, "What do we have going on this month?" which is truly how things are turning out.

He's also accrued around a week of vacation time at work and we have been itching to have a little get-away of our own for a while now. Perhaps once all the wedding mayhem dust has settled we will think about it.

Along with our busy schedule has come roughly two realizations:

1) Miss Heidi needs 8 hours of sleep to function like a normal human being. Deprive me once, I'll make it through the day just a little off beat. Deprive me a second night, my sleep bank begins to hold a grudge. And just you try that a third night and only multiple strong cups of coffee will keep my eyes focused properly and woe to the thief because my sleep bank's collection agency can tend to get rowdy when dodged.

2) We are craving some regular exercise.

You may not see how these connect, and that is simply because they really don't. However, it was out of these two realizations that we are basing our new regime upon. As of last night we started running (! Really, I promise!), and we went to bed at 11. Fabulous side effect: since I didn't have work today, we got up at 7:30-ish and had time to make breakfast together before the Mister had to go off to work.

As to the running, google maps is really such a fabulous thing. The Mister looked up running tracks and got us a few aerial views to choose from. Turns out there's a high school just 5 minutes away that keeps a space in their gate wide enough for us to squeeze through. We both ran a mile and could barely squeeze our ego's back through that gate with us. We hope to make this a regular weekly occurrence. Maybe we could run a race together sometime?? We'll see.

However, since the weekend was such a whirlwind in and out of our house, things are woefully out of order. That and the kitchen needs restocking, so my day is full already.

Happy Tuesday to you all. Much love.

Sepulveda - da da dadadum

The Mister and I had a blast going up to LA yesterday for some good ol' Getty and Jenron time. We probably would have seen more of the art had we been less engrossed in conversation and laughing at the art that we did see. So disrespectful I say.

You have to love the garden/lawn area. Wonderful.

I would have taken more pictures, but each room that I asked in, I was shot down by the security guard. You mean you just want me to LOOK at the art? No pictures? Good grief.

Afterward Jen and Jaron gave us a quickie tour of some cool LA spots. We got delicious coffee (note to self: get the mocha next time...or just fail to return Husband's mocha) and found a new truck for Scott to ogle over

I also decided we should try to make fools out of ourselves and imitate the face I saw in the wooden figure behind us:

Why not? Right?
All in all, a fantastic day, well spent with good friends. We miss you like crazy down here you two.

Well, I told Mister D that I would finish two THREE of my projects today so I need to stop avoiding them and just take the plunge. Painting and I enjoy each others' company for about an hour and then I start pestering him about why he's not done yet and then it's only a matter of time before the brushes and paint bowls turn against me. Ugly mutiny, not to be witnessed by the Weak Of Stomach.

Before I go however, I would just like to share this GEM I found on youtube. Mister D and I were trying to explain to Jenron why the fascinating street name reminded us of a classic Sesame Street song. When I searched the song I was looking for just now, it came up from the German Sesame Street! Can you even believe it. Amazing.

Enjoy dear friends...

Diehl Promotion!

This blog will probably keep changing faces throughout the day until I hit that sweet spot, just an fyi. Which probably means that I'll have to wait until the Mister gets home since my html skillz just hit their peak and failed.

In the meantime, check out Mister D's new art blog!! Super fun to have another blogger in the house. 

Why my living room is a mess

It's been nearly a week since the last real post, and as you can see by the appearance of my page, I am in a We Need Some Change sort of mood these days. Truly when the mood hits me to begin a new project the most successful response is to jump on that train immediately and hold on for dear life for as long as possible. Because this train takes pit stops that, if one is not careful, can easily become the new destination. Set up camp and get out the crock pot! We'll be here a while. Maybe my passion to finish runs out? Creative vision gets blurry? Or some new shinier idea comes along and the last idea gets shoved in a drawer.

In any case, I'm thankful I haven't been called in to work too much this week so that I can keep the momentum going for as long as I can.

At some point on Saturday I had the inspiration to paint something for the space above our couch. We keep meaning to get some prints and frame them for that area, but that is just taking too long so I'm taking matters into my own hands (because somehow that couldn't be done with the pictures? Don't ask me...). I started painting yesterday and still have a lot of work to do, mostly staring, but painting as well. I spent the greater portion of my painting day yesterday staring at the canvases and trying to picture a color that I wanted to try. Hours I tell you.

 
I found a grungy hand drawing of a bike that I liked and worked miracles on Photoshop to get it to print the right size. I won't tell you how I did it because I think it hurts Scott's soul to hear how Photoshop Ghetto I am. However, means to an end people!

Here's my "Work Space" aka our giant coffee table. It's times like these when I truly bond with Mammoth. He was meant to live in our house after all.

We also have a few new members in the house as of this week. This beauty:

is courtesy of Brian Kingston - Scott's new custom made Cajon. He's in love...and it really does suit him very well. I also made some new pillow cases for our couch over the weekend and I am quite happy with them. I just need to put some buttons on the back and then decide if I want to keep them plain or add some small embroidery on the bottom. We'll see.

I am very happy with how they came out thus far. I might pop a few more out, but we'll just have to wait and see how long this drive to keep projecting goes.

Lastly, you'll have to wait and see where these are going, but I've started working on these flowers inspired by something that caught my eye on decor8 a while back.

Cross your fingers that things can keep coming together , the more we get this place put together the more at home we feel :]

Weekend is tomorrow friends! Go out and enjoy yourselves if you are able. Scott and I have a date at the Getty that I'm pretty jazzed about. Being the museum addicts that we are.


Cheers to a sunny funny weekend!

Tribute to Glen

Hansard that is, not Miller.

This is just a quick post until I can fill you in on more of what's been going on, but I gots lots I want to do today, so you'll have to be content with this tidbit for now. And it's a juicy one, so enjoy.

This is what you get when you mix the following ingrediants:

1. A three day weekend with the Bakers (and Tlo)
2. A long day at LACMA
3. Glen Hansard singin his heart out
4. Ashley in the car after having chugged some (gross) coffee
5. The desire to hit every note you hear




On a side note, if any of our kids get married, I vote for hyphenating the last names to Diehl-Baker. Cause it sounds like Deal Breaker.

The end.

Oh Husbands...

He knew this was coming. Just a matter of time really. I wish I could tell you all the funny things that he/we do and say. Who knows how we entertain ourselves so darn much but we're having a blast.

This incriminating photo was taken after we had nodded off watching some show. I woke up (may have been shoved to the floor considering his left elbow) Once I looked back and saw this model pose, I had to get a shot. I suppose we must always look our best.

Seeing this explains so much of why I find his elbow/arm/or once - hand, on my face at night as my head is usually where his right elbow is in this photo. And yes, I said hand. That was by far the most humorous at 4 in the morning. I guess it just needed a place to rest and covering the entirety of my face seemed like a good option. I was too confused and tired to do anything about it, so I think we actually maintained that position for quite a while. That's either love or exhaustion folks.

All in all, we laugh together entirely too much, but to quote Martha on this one - I consider it a very "Good Thing".

We are 6 months old!

Tis true. As of Friday we are half a year old. Amazing how the time has flown I tell you!

So I had a wonderful evening all planned out for Friday and some fun ideas for Saturday, but sometimes even the most well intended plans don't work out. Or in this case, they get trampled all over, laughed at, and then promptly spit upon.

I wasn't going to work on Friday so that I could get everything together, but the teacher I was subbing for Thur had a really good reason for needing me, so I caved and said yes, I'd cover Friday as well. Still, I reasoned, I would be able to get home about 45 minutes before Scott and maybe I could still pull everything together. I was going to surprise him by meeting him at work as he was leaving, all dressed up and ready for the evening, with a bag packed in the car to stay the night at this awesome Inn I had found in Hillcrest. From work we were going to go to dinner at this Thai place that we went to while we were dating, and then head over to Cinema Under the Stars to watch Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window. We would go to the Inn in Hillcrest and then the next day we would go to Balboa Park to the museums after breakfast.

Here's what really happened:
The Inn I had found took a while to get back to me about reservations, and it turned out that they were all booked for the night. They recommended two other places, one of which did not look worth the money, and the other I called and they didn't have the room I wanted available.

Ok fine, we'll just stay at home, that's totally fine.

But I ended up talking to the director at work and not leaving right when I had planned to. Not only this but Scott was close on my heels leaving work. So I got home, had about 20 minutes to clean the place so we wouldn't come back from our evening to a messy house, before he got there.

I told him we needed to be "somewhere" (movie) at 8 so we could get a spot - therefore we needed to leave to eat pretty early. Naturally we somehow ended up taking a nap and sleeping past when we were supposed to leave. Poop, there goes our Thai food plans. But if we hurried we could still drive through a burrito place, and take our food to the movie. So that's what we did.

When we got to Cinema Under the Stars, and had sufficiently scarfed down our carne asada fries, we walked in and found a sign at the front that said "Sold Out". At this point I almost lost it. Are you kidding me?? No Alfred? I understand the Inn not working out, and the Thai food was our own fault, but the tickets just wasn't fair.

Scott tried to cheer me up as we walked back to the car and we drove around in the hills for a while looking at all the city lights until we could think of a new plan. As our Mexican food settled in our stomachs we decided to drive to La Jolla and hit up Forever Fondue.

Definitely redeemed the evening.

This is the burner that they turned on for us after we had ordered.

This is how we both felt after Scott convinced me to play a game of "How long can you keep your finger on the burner" He didn't realize that it had gotten twice as hot as when he had been fiddling with it before. I think we made it to 1.3 seconds before simultaneously saying "OWWwww!" and looking hurt at our fingers and each other. Sometimes we're not the brightest.

But this was the deliciousness that followed said stupid game. YUM.
After we were sufficiently stuffed to the gills, we went home and had a blast watching some of our favorite shows together. Things turned out pretty perfect after all.

Saturday we slept in, made a giant brunch and then made our way to the museum. Dinosaurs!

Super fun...we'll have to go back to hit up some of the other museums another day.

"Whoooa"

He loved this dinosaur. Apparently it's one of his favs. You think you know someone...

I don't know how frightened I really look, but hey, he looks like a happy fellow from this angle.

We decided to go to a Starbucks after our beautiful day in Balboa Park, and we both remembered that Sausage King was just in the neighborhood, so we popped in. Smelled divine in there. But we were a little snubbed since we did not have cash. The woman reminded me that they make all of the sausages there themselves, which I was simultaneously like, "That's Awesome!" and "Uh, that's weird. Maybe I want my sausage made far far away in Germany. Do you really know what you're doing?"...still, it smelled amazing.


All in all, it was a great weekend. I would highly recommend getting married - we are thoroughly enjoying it ourselves.