Williams Fitzsimmons Wedding Website!

In case you want to be a creepy stalker, or if you're actually invited to the wedding, here's a link to the Williams Fitzsimmons Wedding Website: https://sites.google.com/site/williamsfitzsimmons/home. I'm trying to get our domain (http://www.caseyandterrence.com) to redirect to the Google site, but have thus been unsuccessful. I spent like 156 seconds trying to do it, arf. :-P

Update: It now works! Go ahead, type in "caseyandterrence.com" and you'll find our website.

My family!

Gratuitous Mustard Photo

Bouncy Fun

Life has been quite busy, and we're about to go on vacation!

Highlights from the past months:

Greg, Me, and T re-enacting the first weekend T and I spent together

Shark-infested Birthday Bouncy House!

"Why am I so sore?" Best 30th birthday celebration ever.

Cousin love at the Boston Marathon

A road trip to DC - we spotted this unique passenger on the way.

T's a godfather now!

Visiting a large sweet potato. And family.

Poison Ivy hate after doing hard work. Thanks, T.

It's been a busy and itchy month. Now off to Europe!

Before & After: T's Office Area

We love our new place. And have done a lot to make it even better!

T graciously let us use the second bedroom as a craft room. He has informed me that should he want to do a craft, he will be using said room. :-P Fortunately there is another area - not the foyer - that he is using as his office.

Five windows and a large closet. He loves it. It gets great sun so the area is now full of plants, his desk, books, and a man chair I got him for Christmas.

Side note:

Today is crazy sunglasses day at work. No joke. Well, the glasses are a joke, but everyone's wearing them.

T decided to paint the office Slate Blue, an upgrade from the dingy white it was previously (side effect of the fireplace).

It's quite handy that he used to own his own painting business. I don't have to get involved with painting at all.

The office area looked GREAT after he finished it a few hours later.

The bookshelves were made by my grandfather 40 years ago. Traditionally red, I painted them a wretched sea green in college. T re-painted them white when we first moved in December.

Can't really tell what the paint looks like during the day because of all of the light, but it's the perfect shade of blue.

But I convinced him he needed curtains. Valences just didn't feel right. So we went Swedish Shades! What. A. Pain. to make, mostly because of all of the measuring. However, the library book "Quick & Easy Window Treatments" was helpful. Tip: Don't make the first curtain after drinking two glasses of wine. It may or may not be too narrow, causing you to throw it onto the floor in frustration. You may not have a smaller window that you can fit the shade to after taking out some stitches (though I did). Just sayin'.

T took care of the installing.

Wood, L brackets, screws, rings, and strings. Home improvement goes more smoothly wearing a Reliable Bob/Red Oak Renovations hat.

Compare: Swedish Shade to American Blind. The Swedes win.

Proud Office Dweller:

They take a little more time to roll up than the blinds, but it's so much classier.

We are decidedly delighted with the results. T said "At least! We're finished!" True, every room in the house now has custom window treatments, but honey we still have to refinish your office chair. And get you an antique desk. And finish the TV console from the curb. And refinish the coffee table.

But let's pause for a moment and admire the results from our labor thus far. :-)

More Before & Afters Here
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Craft Room: Before & After

Everyone knows T and I moved to a new place. 

Some of you have even seen it in person.

It's way bigger than before. Numbers on that front will be shared shortly.

But first, I bring you the craft room:

Where all the magic happens.

Two whole windows!

The room used to be lime-flourescent green, but T kindly painted it for me a lovely shade of purple. It's a little more pink than expected... but I knew that curtains would pull the color into the right shade. That's right, color. Get pulled.

Thought the room still needs a LOT more organizing (you can see a peek of Grandpa-cabinets to the right), FINALLY finishing the curtains has made me inspired:

Mari Mekko inspired fabric. I will no longer be staring at the neighbors as I work from home.

Floor length curtains. Decided not to "pool" the fabric because the other window is partially behind a radiator.

Next up: Taking my fabric collection and putting it on the shelves, and moving the clutter from the shelves into the cabinets. And recovering my lovely chair with the fabric scraps from the curtains. And hanging some more art. And finding a place the for the plants. And putting away the ironing board.

So there's a lot. I call it "the reasons I shouldn't be watching NCIS or otherwise sitting/laying on the couch".

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The New Place

It's a two bed.

With a dishwasher, working fireplace, and laundry hook-ups.

And they allow small dogs!!!

Moving in less than two weeks... eek! But in the theme of growing up and getting a real bedroom, we'll be getting movers. Love it.

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Camping at Tolland State Forest

In list form, here is some advice in case you decide to undertake a camping adventure at Tolland State Forest:

1. Advance reservations are not always necessary. Sometimes you get lucky and make a camping reservation the Wednesday before Labor day, but are still able to get a sweet lakeside campsite at one of the top 100 campsites in the U.S. of A.

2. Even though you may in fact be very experienced at setting up your tent, do not stay at family reunions late enough that you arrive at your campsite in the dark. Bad things will happen. [Let your imagination run wild for a few minutes, then move on.]

3. Do not pull into campsite in the dark, and then back up. Though it may look like a nice friendly driveway, in reality it is not. It is a sloped driveway with rocks. Many rocks that can catch the bottom of your low-riding Mazda3 Hatchback.

Oops. What a nice morning surprise!

4. Always bring a 'multi-tool' (or Leatherman) in your camping supplies. I would also advise a ratchet set, as we used it to unscrew the hanging piece of plastic after driving 30 scraping minutes and buying it at ACE hardware. The multi-tool was useful in sawing off the plastic piece when a rusted bolt just wouldn't let go. And we used it to cut up cucumber for our salads.

5. Seek out a grocery store before getting to the campground. Though our convenience store hot dogs, chips, and s'mores were good, dinner would have been better if we had driven 0.5 miles out of the way in Westfield to a real grocery store on our way to the campground.

6. Make sure you look up at the sky often, both during the day and the night. Who knew the sky was so blue/so starry?

The daytime sky. Night time sky was not photographed, so you'll have to take my word for it.

7. Make sure you visit Tolland State Forest. It's amazingly beautiful, right on a lake, and they have flush toilets and a free shower!

*Bonus Tip! We highly advise driving the back roads to Amherst on the way back to Boston for a little Antonio's action. Yum!

How was your Labor day?

Nibbling

I have a nibbling problem.

It's serious.

This morning I packed T's lunch for him.

It consisted of:
- 1 piece of pizza, minus one bite
- 1/2 of a sandwich, minus one bite
- Banana, intact
- Hard boiled egg, intact

Little bites just taste so good.

This is me. A chronic nibbler.

If T had corn for lunch, it would look like this:

The way I look at it, he's lucky I made him lunch! The nibbles are just taxes.
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We're going to 'Rico!

'Rico.

You know, short for Puerto Rico.

George and Lyndsay are tying the knot, we'll be there to celebrate with them! We're having an extra celebration today because we decided to extend the vaca by three days so we'll be there for 8 days total. Lucky us. Now we just need to plan what we'll be doing with that time:

Terrence M. Fitzsimmons III: we'll figure it out

adventure style

Sent at 4:31 PM on Thursday

me: yeah

i would like to figure out a rough schedule

basically if there is anything you really awnt to see

Sent at 4:56 PM on Thursday

Terrence M. Fitzsimmons III: i know you love planning

i want to see old san juan and the rain forest

and go to the pork area

i saw it on a show on netflix

pork everwhere

Am I the only one who didn't know Puerto Rico, sorry, 'Rico, was known for its pork? More specifically, their pigs? Where do they put all those pigs? It's not a big island, and pigs produce a lot of waste. I guess I'll have all those answers for you after we go. 

Still, I've been there twice already. And I had no idea about the pigs/pork. Thank you, Netflix, for bringing this to T's attention.
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Photos from Thailand Posted

Drum roll please... photos from Thailand have been posted! These might be further edited, with new additions as I go through the photos again and get a roll of film (yes film) developed. 99% of the photos have a caption explaining what the hell you're looking at. Enjoy, and let me know if you have any questions about the trip, the tour company we went through (SmarTours, a great deal), or how to cook Tom Yum soup.  :-)

Back Home from Thailand

Annnnddd..... we're back! 1 bus ride, 5 airports, 4 flights, 3 layovers, 1 flight change, and 1 taxi ride = 35 hours of travel back home to Boston. I am greeted by a new "Casey Williams" imposter who has signed me up for Nestle Family, Nestle Health, GNC, and Disney something. It's like they just got email for the first time, and discovered email newsletters. Sigh.

Pictures will come soon. Highlights of the trip include:
1. Making paper.
2. Riding an elephant.
3. Taking multiple boat rides.
4. Eating lots of pad thai.
5. Hanging out at a preschool.
Bonus Highlight: Our tour guide, Ketsara, was fantastic. Down to earth, friendly, caring, knowledgable. I 100% recommend SmarTours Thailand.

Low lights of the trip:
1. 26 hours of travel to get to Bangkok.
2. 36 hours of travel back to Boston.
3. Awful, awful, awful intestinal issues. I've been to lots of developing countries, and had intestinal issues before, but they all pale in comparison to this one. I actually threw away the t-shirt I was wearing during the onset of it. Ew.

Back to settling in! And drinking our lovely lovely lovely clean tap water.

Subtle But Important Change in the Bedroom

This is serious stuff. Life-altering changes going on in our bedroom, specifically on my side of the bed. Keep your minds out of the gutter, people.

The bedroom, before:

Ignore the woman behind the curtain. In fact, look at the photo below instead:

These are the before photos. Yes, they were also the "after" photos of the closet makeover, but we didn't stop there.

Here is the after photo for this post:

Other than there being fewer pillows on the bed, a blue blanket on the end of the bed, and no girl behind the curtain, can you spot the life-altering change?

No?

What about this close-up?

Focus in on the bed frame. The $10 bed frame I got off of Craig's List a year ago, behind which is my bedside table, lamp, alarm clock, and books. Oh and the closet.

The view, pre-change:

My books were in jail, and my arm could only fit through in a sideways fashion. It sucked.

T spent a manly Saturday afternoon with his dremel tool, cutting out two pieces of the bedframe. Now I can reach my books, the lamp, my glasses, my chapstick, whatever-the-hell-I-want that is on my mini-bedside table without bruising my arm, sticking it through the slats.  The quality of my life right before I fall asleep, and right when I wake up, has improved immensely.

Who says small changes can't make a huge difference? Not this behind-the-curtain girl.

Thanks, honey!

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Bonus Bedroom Improvement

T's project during the move (besides moving all his stuff in) was to improve the bathroom situ. As seen from the Closet Door Makeover, the toilet is ~5 feet from the foot of the bed:

The bathroom did have a door of its own, but not a "real" door, 'cause that wouldn't fit. It was one of those faux-wood folding doors that unfortunately we do not have a "before" photo of. We were so anxious to get it out that we just ripped it out. This is what it would look like if you were going to buy it online, say from Home Depot:

Ug. I shudder just thinking about it. It felt like you were shutting yourself in the closet of a trailer home.

T came up with a plan to modify a louvered door to fit in our non-standard-door-sized door hole. It took a little longer than expected, so for a little while we had a hot pink floral sheet hanging there. T loved that.

Now, however... Now we have a "real" door. Ok, real-ish:

Isn't she a beaut?

And T came up with the brilliant idea of angling the dresser differently so there was more than 9 sq feet of open space in the bedroom. Now there's like 12!

This is his favorite change we made. Mine is still the curtain/closet... and the butler's pantry. What's yours?
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Before and After: The Butler's Pantry

We might only have 455 sq feet, but that includes a butler's pantry. Yes. A butler's pantry. No, we did not come up with that name on our own -- the Realtor and landlord both refer to it as such. Our apartment is part of what was once a much larger, grander apartment. The kind of apartment that would have a butler's pantry.

Anyway. This butler's pantry has wonderful built-in cupboards and shelves and glass cabinet doors. It's one of the reasons we can live in just 455 sq feet together. Storage.

However, the butler's pantry used to look cluttered, thanks to those glass-fronted cabinet doors. I had covered one of them in colorful IKEA paper, but the rest was just left open for all to gaze upon.

[Mostly] Before:

Clutter. Mess. But functional.

I took the "before" photos in the midst of the move, when the BP (as I affectionately call it) was used as the way station for all things headed towards the basement. It usually wasn't quite so messy. Ok, ok, fine, it was usually somewhat cluttered but not quite this bad. Also, the left photo has the initial panel of the "after" solution. I got so excited I put it up before taking the "before" photos.

After:

Clean. Peaceful. Butler-less.

Our initial thought was to tape in some of the wallpaper left over from the hoosier re-do, but quite frankly it was too expensive to be used in such a disposable manner. Instead, a trip to SewFisticated resulted in this perfectly matching pale blue fabric that I stapled to the inside of the doors after serging the edges to prevent fraying.

The project took about an hour (excluding the trip to the fabric store), but this is hands down my favorite change to the apartment.

What it's hiding:

Our dirty secrets. Books, sewing suppplies, T's clothes, the Kitchen Aide, etc. I feel so exposed.

Bonus Pic:

GO FOR IT! You can finish those DIY projects in no time!

I love going to a nearby church thrift store, and drag T along after our Saturday morning breakfasts at Jim's Deli. I buy medium retro dinner plates, T buys random games from the 1980s like "Go For It!" or "Museum". Think of "Go For It!" as the 19080s version of Life, where you collect Status Cards in "house n' home", "wheels", "feelin' good", and "goin' places" categories. They just discovered the power of the apostrophe back then.

Right now "Go For It" sits on his dresser top in the BP. It's just that special.
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Before and After: Our Couch

I don't buy new furniture. Mostly because I'm always renting - why buy furniture that fits in one apartment that might not fit in another? Ok, I did buy a new Panang chair from Ikea a few years ago, but Ikea is like disposable furniture so it doesn't count.

Generally, this used furniture thing works out for me. The hoosier, for example, just required some elbow grease and now it's lovely. My bed - $100 from Craig's List 5 years ago - is comfy. The bedframe - $10 from Craig's list - is functional. Etc etc etc. I'm not going to catalogue the contents of our entire 455 sq foot apartment.

There is one glaring exception from the used furniture success: The Couch. The Floral Couch. $80 from Craig's List, small enough to fit into the apartment, but Ugly with a capital U. Not only was it ugly, but the fabric was rough. It was short. And narrow. And hard. T and I couldn't lay down on it at the same time without become one person (which we did every night because we wanted to lounge that badly).

The Couch, Before:
The top photo is T during the broken arm adventure. Instead of sleeping on the couch, he chose to sleep on the floor. That's right - the couch was so bad, he preferred the hard floor to the couch. The middle photo is Greg and Danielle trying to enjoy the couch. They can't. The bottom photo is of T sitting on the couch with some sock monkey gifts. Notice the floral ickinessm and how the monkeys are trying to escape the couch.

So when T moved in, the first (and only) thing we purchased was a brand new couch. Thank you, Building 19. Thank you U-Haul, for renting us a van. Thank you weather, for being sunny... oh wait it was pouring rain. But it was worth it. Worth it for the wonderful large soft yet firm couch in neutral tones we now have.

Our Couch, After:
That's right - all 5'9" of me plus my size 10 feet and long wavy arms can stretch out on the couch. And the back was low enough to be able to fit into the apartment.

T and I are in pure bliss. We come home from work and slouch on the couch, or lounge, or lie there spooning with plenty of room.. and ponder: Should we go do something cool, or enjoy the couch? Inevitably the couch wins. Give us time, we will learn that the couch will be there when we come home again, but right now it's pure bliss. Pure bliss, I tell you.

About tonight- I know I was supposed to go to book club, ladies, but I, um, have other plans..

Warm Milk Dispenser

Terrence: I can't fall asleep yet

Sent at 5:05 PM on Thursday

Terrence: flying anxiousness

me: noo! drink warm milk

Terrence: ooooo - there is a warm milk dispenser downstairs

me: hahaha

Terrence: seriously, there is

me: shut up

Yes, the hotel in Copenhagen really did have a warm milk dispenser. Man, those Danes know how to treat a visitor!

iPhone echo

I love my iPhone.

I even had a dream last night where I was trying to help my friends from being mugged, and the muggers saw me and were like "GIVE ME YOUR iPHONE, We need it!!" And I was like "NOOOOoOOOoOOoo Anything but!"

It was disturbing.

However, what is more disturbing is the gosh darned annoying as all hell echo that I hear whenever talking to anyone on the thing. It doesn't matter if I'm using a headset or not, or how many bars I have.

There are a few potential causes (according to el interweb):

1. Bad hardware. I should trade this model in.
2. Bad software. I need to do voodoo on it - like turning the phone on and off, and then plugging my headphones in and out three times; calling myself (which just accesses my voicemail); or turning on and off vibrate.
3. It's not my phone, it's whoever is calling me. Now that I think about it, the echo always happens when I talk to T. He also has AT&T, but a crappy little white phone.

Hmmmm.... off to investigate further... in the meantime, I have completed the voodoo. ;-)

Summer weekend

Went to Oleana Saturday early evening - sat on the patio and the most delectable meal in celebration of my promotion a few months ago. Hands down my favorite restaurant. SO DELICIOUS words cannot describe it. Worth every penny.

And, we played the game "Masterpiece," which Terrence bought at the Brighton Congregational Church's thrift shop for the bargain price of $1. It's mostly luck, some strategy, game where you collect art pieces (ie postcards of famous works). Pretty fun, though I bet it's more fun with more people.

Annnnnnnnd, we packed up T's house, or most of it anyway. So glad I'm not moving.

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Broken arm on the mend

Surgery last Monday was 6+ hours. T had some great doctors from the New England Baptist hospital, which is the one of the top orthopedic hospitals in the US.

Despite this, the days following the surgery were pretty rough. I watched a lot of movies, T slept a lot. However, he's now on the mend. Wo-hoo! Now that's a birthday gift he's happy about. He'll be out of work next week too.

Broken arm

I was supposed to be at Keuka Lake over the past four days, but instead have been holed up with Terrence at my apartment. Why, you ask? Well.. let's just say that he broke his arm in seven places. Ok, we're not just saying it, that's the truth. SEVEN places. A six hour surgery on Monday evening to put in some plates and screws.

The patient is recovering, the nurse (me) is getting a flat butt from sitting around so much.

My honey is a muppet

He has the snuffles. Real bad. Just like Snuffleupagus!