Our First Christmas

This Christmas is our first married Christmas!  Yay!  I have been looking for a good Christmas ornament to commemorate the occasion.  It is so hard to decide, there are a lot of cute ones out there!

Isn't this Hallmark one perfect???

Here are my favorites from etsy.com

Love!

 

Cute!

 

Classic!

 

 

Any opinions?  Is it okay to have 5 ornaments for your first Christmas? lol

 

 

 

 

 

Tokyo Trip!

I have my first post about my trip to Tokyo posted, but not here:

In order to keep Bells and Bows about wedding themed things, I have started a personal blog for all the other stuff I want to write about!


www.athomewiththehinkleys.com

Hope you will continue to follow! 

Wedding Crowns on Display

I totally forgot to share with you guys, the gift that my Mom made for Aaron and I for Easter:

Love!

Close Up

She mounted our wedding crowns in a shadow box with our wedding program!  Love love love!  It is tradition to display your wedding crowns in your home after the wedding as a reminder that "God has united them to each other and to Himself and that He has bestowed His grace upon them to live in unity, faith and love." (http://www.antiochian.org/1285), so I am glad we can now partake thanks to my Mom's handiness with all things crafty.  Thank you Mom!!

What a month!

I cannot apologize enough for leaving this blog high and dry for so long!  It has been non-stop crazy at the Hinkley residence lately...
This school semester is totally crazy, I have an Ethics class which is the amount of work for 3 classes with all the papers and projects we are constantly doing; a law class which is pretty easy, and another accounting course which I have to study like mad for in order to even pass.  It has been rough!  And since we are squeezed into Aaron's one bedroom apartment, I don't have good studying space set up (or blogging space for that matter!).  But enough with explaining myself, let me catch you up to the happenings of us these days.

So here is the deal with our living situation.  I was living with my Mom and brother before the wedding, then I moved into Aaron's one-bedroom apartment.  I was dead set on moving shortly after the wedding or even before if we could swing it because I figured if we were living in such close quarters crammed amongst 2 households of stuff we would surely get divorced in a month.  That would be like 1/3 of a Kardashian marriage, how humiliating!  lol.  But yeah, I need my living space to be at very least not a claustrophobic stress inducing environment.  The plus side is that two people in a one bedroom apartment is very cheap, which the accountant in me LOVES.  And maybe it is because we are in newlywed lovey dovey mode, but we are not having any problems living in the cramped space.  We investing in some clever space saving and organizing gadgets, and sort of cleaned and got the whole place out of bachelor mode - it was just fine.  I thought that if we wanted to move it should at least wait until the semester is over - there will be more choices available on places to rent, we will be in a better financial boat at that time, and we will have time to pack and move without incident. 
Well not sooner had I come to terms with this decision did we get a lovely little note from the property management jerks. 
"The Landlord has decided to not renew your month to month contract after March."

Yeah.  Apparently, they can do that.

So this happened on February 28th, giving us exactly a month and 2 days to find a new place to live.  Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I met up with the realtor lady who helped us look for a place pre-wedding to show us around a few places.  Well Aaron was gone to Notre Dame for a conference for half the week so I was flying solo on this apartment search.  Nothing available for rent really spoke to me except this super cute duplex which was right about at the max we wanted to pay for a place (so much for paying down those credit card bills quickly!).  So I got our application in, and someone leased it out from under us!  Jerks!!!  The thing about our neighborhood (which we love so dearly and don't want to leave) is that it is a pretty highly sought after locale, so stuff stays on the market for like 2 days then it is gone.  It makes it pretty impossible to even get in to see a place let alone mull it over before you decide.  And every place that is good is pricey.  Every place that is affordable is trashy.  It is hard.  I imagine this is sort of similar to what NYC residents go through when trying to move.  And then that clock just keeps ticking down, we now have 25 days to find a place...

Since all the places weren't that hot, we just decided to go with a mega-apartment complex.  They so aren't really our style, but time was of the essence and we got everything we wanted (yes, we are upgrading to a place with a dishwasher AND washer-dryer!) for a pretty decent price.  I am sooo glad also that it is relatively new.  Our current place was built in the 1930's.  And it smells like it was built in the 1930's and had the amenities needed in 1930.  Like only 3 plugs.  In the entire apartment.  Not even exaggerating. 
AND our neighbors (well, mystery neighbor) are being such jerks lately!  We got a note on our door that someone went and printed off their computer (possibly to remain anonymous) that can we please not leave trash outside our front door.  Ok so we were making an effort, but it isn't like it sits out there for days, it is like, hours at most.  So Saturday it was monsooning outside and we were packing and such and we stuck a bag outside of the door.  It was not out there even an hour and there was another note.  It said - 2nd notice, can you please stop putting your trash in the hall, it smells and it blocks the hall for all your neighbors.  2nd notice?!  Who in the heck do you think you are??!  Do you not see/hear it pouring down rain right now??  So Aaron wrote back a sassy remark on this note and it disappeared from the door soon after.  I suggested that he put that the next time we smell probably you and pretty much everyone else in the building smoking weed in your apartment, or being super loud at all hours of the morning we will call the cops on all of you a- holes!  I was super mad.  We don't complain about a billion things that these ghetto people do. He did not take my suggestions for the response, but that is probably for the best.
So in short, I think being kicked out for no good reason was a blessing in disguise. 

Our future home!

And as if that weren't enough to deal with, remember on Saturday when it was monsooning?  Aaron was in a car accident :\.  It was the other person's fault, and no one was injured, but it is a pain to have to deal with that now too.  Just by comparison, I think April is going to be pretty fantastic :)

I promise I will get back to wedding recaps as soon as I can! 

Our first married Valentine's Day

We had to celebrate on Sunday the 11th because Tuesdays are busy busy busy for the both of us.  As far as gifts go, I got candy and flowers and Napoleon Dynamite on bluray, because it is one of the best movies of all time, and a Chelsea Handler book that I didn't have, yay!  I got him a few books and some candy.  I didn't take pictures of any of this unfortunately, and the flowers are already brown and droopy.

Aaron took me out to dinner to Fogo de Chao.  It was his choice, I wanted to go to the fondue place.  Fogo de Chao was alright.  If you like meat, it is the place to go.  I wouldn't call it especially romantic, and it is pretty pricey.  But we enjoyed ourselves and left very very full, so that was good :) 

camera phone pic, eek!

This was a papaya cream dessert Aaron ordered.  It was pretty gross, but it looked pretty!

So that was Valentine's Day!  How was yours?

Natalie vs. Irene

Does anyone still read this?? lol

Things have been CRAZY busy in the past weeks so I have had zero blogging time.  I am alive and well though, in case anyone was wondering ;)

I have about a billion posts of wedding recaps and such to come, but I feel inspired to address an issue I am having in my new married home.  My step-daughter Irene.

This picture does not do justice to how fat she actually is.

Sure, she looks innocent and cute enough.  Now I wont be over dramatic and call her the devil or anything.  But there is something very mean and unholy about her.  No lie.

And Aaron loves this creature as if he birthed her himself.  He is so openly affectionate to her that it sometimes makes me oddly jealous.  I once asked if he were hanging onto both me and Irene over the edge of a cliff and could only save one of us, who would he save: and he hesitated!  And I think I was chosen by default because cats usually land on their feet when dropped.  Thank you professor science.  Not only does he love Irene, but he has a pretty weird affinity for all cat things. But yeah, Irene always gets the benefit of the doubt.  When she scratches you and makes you bleed everywhere - she is just playing.  When she hisses at me incessantly - it is because I am making her feel backed into a corner (somehow?).  I mean, who is in charge here?!  Sometimes I feel badly that I may have robbed some lonely cat lady out of her soul mate...

Never in my life have I been a cat owner.  My Mom is allegedly allergic, but if she had been faking it all this time I would totally understand.  But nonetheless we are dog people.  Small, non-drooling, non-shedding, cute sweater wearing dog people.  Being the introvert that I am, I thought being a cat person would be right up my alley.  Plus some of my friends have cats, and they are sweet or non bothersome or do funny stuff like crawl inside of the couch.  Low maintenance pets are pets I enjoy.  They don't wake you up at the crack of dawn to be let out, and they don't bark when you are trying to talk on the phone, or want you to play with them while you are trying to focus on your tv show.  Dogs could learn to chill out every now and then.

Irene drives me nuts in so many ways.  I can be somewhat forgiving of things she cannot control.  I know it is not her fault that there is cat fur flippin' everywhere.  I have my clothing hanging up in the closet, and they still get fur on them somehow?!  It is circulating in the air or something!  I do take into account that there has not been a proper fur management plan in effect in this space.  

Then there is the fact that she is mean.  She is more mean to me than Aaron, but Aaron makes excuses for her meanness.  Everywhere I try to walk she jumps in front of me, then turns around and hisses at me.  If my hand or arm gets within 3 feet of her,  she will try to swat me with her razor blade claws.  She escaped out of the apartment when I was leaving for work this morning and i got all scratched up trying to corral her back inside.  Vicious.

Please excuse my sausage fingers and two week old manicure.

And when you sleep, she jumps on you.  She jumps on all sorts of things.  She knocked my vase of Valentine's flowers off the bookshelf.  She also claws things.  So any dreams of having nice furniture are out the window.  I don't understand why people think cats are worthwhile pets?

And I hit a new low when I tried to internet research how to get her to like me.  I mean, wtf.

How to gain a cat's trust.

See all these special things you have to do to or for this animal only so you won't be harmed when getting near it??  You know what I had to do to get my dog to like me?  Absolutely nothing!  Dogs understand the pecking order in the house, and that they are the animal.  

So dealing with the cat has been a challenge.  Anyone have any pointers of how to stop hating your spouse's pet, lol?