A Letter to a Photographer

Dear Lukas,

I was beyond excitement upon stumbling on your announcement that you were holding a contest for one blessed couple to receive a FREE underwater trash-the-dress session. Every time I think about the possibility of winning the session, I get little butterflies in the pit of my stomach. I hope this letter catches your attention.

My husband and I were married over a year and a half ago, on January 3rd, 2009. (Your sister did our photography - artistic talent runs in your family!) Even before our wedding, Brent and I determined that we wanted to invest in a post-wedding day photo shoot in our tux and gown, because we wanted artistic photos of us in an unorthodox, striking location in our wedding day get-up. Unfortunately, since we've been married we haven't yet found the money in our budget to hire a photographer (you) for such a session. :)

So I'm supposed to tell you why you should choose us. Hmm, well, since you asked:

• I used to be a nationally competitive synchronized swimmer, and I think my synchro skills would give an intriguing and artistic dimension to our underwater photos. I'm thinking of all these really pretty underwater ballet positions I can get into and maintain in my wedding dress, with me in the background and Brent in the foreground...it would be so lovely. :)
• My wedding dress would be gorgeous underwater. It has a lacy, transparent and slightly sparckly train that will flow so beautifully in the water and will make a breathtaking picture when rays of sunlight shine through it. I didn't get any pictures of my dress that showed off the beauty of the train, and photographing it underwater would flatter it perfectly. Here are two pictures where you can get a better look at the lacy train. (In the second one, it's been bustled.)

• Over the past year and a half Brent has taken hundreds of pictures of me, and yet we have like TWO pictures together from the same time frame. That's an exaggeration, but it illustrates a point: I need artistic pictures of me and my handsome hubby TOGETHER!
• Ok, I don't think this will be possible, but I thought you might give me a point for creativity for mentioning it. Brent and I honeymooned in Hawaii, and snorkeling among the tropical fishies was of course a high point of our trip. It would be SO FUN to have pictures of us in our tux and wedding gown underwater among lots of tropical fish! Snorkel masks and fins would complete it! Hehe! Again, tropical fish in a pool isn't possible, but it's a cool thought. :)
  

Thank you for this amazing offer Lukas! We would be so blessed to win! And no matter who gets the fabulous prize, I'll look forward to viewing the photo shoot on your website!

Eagerly anticipating Tuesday morning,

Hayley Tyler

DRESSERS!!!!!

So like I told you all before - if you were paying attention - I've been working on refurbishing our bedroom dressers that I've owned since before I can remember. Well...that my parents owned from before I can remember, and then they let me take them when I got married. 1 1/2 years of marriage proved too long to have those dressers in our bedroom in the shape/style that they were in, so I went about the task of whipping them into good looks. Those babies have now been through rigorous cleaning, sanding, five coats of paint, and knob replacement. And they now look FANTASTIC! Here is a before picture, again:

Cleaning the dressers before sanding them down was quite a revealing activity. It brought to mind the fact that never - NEVER - in the course of my relationship with them have they ever been cleaned, other than a dust here or there. Before my eyes, the dressers turned bright white in areas I always gullably believed to be *ivory*. Stains of various colors that I had always glanced over came off easily with a little soap and water, and made me a bit guilty that I had never thought of cleaning them off before. The girl who helped me clean the dressers even suggested that they didn't need repainting, they had just needed a wash, the difference was so dramatic! Watching all the years worth of dirt and grime come off the dressers before my eyes has made me feel icky every time I use my bare fingers to touch the old knobs I still have on there that I haven't yet scrubbed...need to scrub them asap!

So before I show you the after pictures, I need to fill you in on one detail. These aren't really "after pictures" at all. I'm not quite finished with them yet, and I've been waiting so long to post the pics on my blog because I was holding out for the day when they would be truly and completely finished. Not much more needs to be done with them, all I have to do is scrub with metal cleaner the pulls that I left on the drawers. Having scrubbed one of the pulls I know the visually pleasing difference a good scrubbing makes, so I wanted my real after picture for you all to have scrubbed pulls, not 20-years-worth-of-grime pulls. Also, I wanted to wait to post pictures until I was finished decorating the areas around the dressers and my bedroom was perfectly clean, but I'm realizing none of those goals are going to be reached anytime soon, so I'm making you settle for less than "after" pictures. Sorry.

Now, here are the long-awaited after shots:

Cuter-than-cute knobs from Anthropologie:

More cuter-than-cute knobs from Anthropologie:

So because the spacing between the holes for the pulls is an outdated two inches, I haven't found pulls that I like that have the spacing for the screws that I need. And I don't feel like drilling new holes and gumming up the new ones. However, the old pulls don't look half bad now that the paint job and the other knobs have been updated. So I'm keepin' 'em. In the following picture, the knob in the upper right corner is the one that has gone through one round of good scrubbing. You can see the difference it makes:

Even the small things, like brass-colored hinges instead of the old white hinges, make such big statements and help to make the dressers so classy:

And the grand view of the bedroom!

Voila!

(Re)Decorating

My entry way has been in need of a little love and attention. So the other week, I gave it some.

Entry way table before.

Entry way table after.

Now, I wouldn't usually be one to place enlarged portraits of myself in frames and adorn my home with them, but things get a little different when you live with an adoring husband. (I came home from a busy day out once to find my coffee table COVERED in printed black and white photos he had taken of me...the least I could do was frame one of them. :)

So basically, I didn't change much here, but the things I did change/add gave the first-view-after-you-enter-my-home a HUGE pop (I think). Much more mature looking. Kept the black and white kissy photo, took away the blue-hued kissy photo (that photo/frame under the red flower balls made it look mismotched in a bad way), kept the vase with the red candle but added blue flowers to the vase (you'll see why in a minute), and added the cute little bride and groom figurines (favors from the wedding we were in recently).

Paperwork shelf in entry way before.

Paperwork shelf in entry way after.

So, I know, I didn't fix the heart of the problem: hiding the messy paper work. Unfortunately, this is literally the only mail/paperwork filing "cabinet" we own...even though our mail/paperwork sticks out of it. We'll upgrade when we really feel the need to I guess.

Anyways, redecorating the top of the shelf REALLY makes a difference, making that part of our entry way feel like part of our home rather than an office. I moved the blue kissy photo/frame over there to complement the blue shelf, put a little shaded candle next to it with some blue ribbon around it to tie in the blue, then mixed red and blue hydrangea flowers in a pink vase. The pink vase makes the pink ribbons on the flowers balls look less lonely, the blue flowers complement the photo/frame (and the blue flowers in the vase on the other table tie that tabletop arrangement to the shelf arrangement), and the red flowers tie the shelf arrangement to the red flower balls.

I haven't yet found a home for the wrought iron candle holder I removed from the wall though...he looked so lonely and forsaken sitting over there without any candles in him, but now he looks even more depressed laying on his backside in my linen closet. Maybe he'll find a permanent home in my bathroom...I'm redoing that room next.

Grand view shot before.

Grand view shot after.

In case you were wondering, one of the many reasons my posts have been so few and far between is because I've been busy refurbishing my bedroom dressers in my spare time. This is a before shot of one of them. These were my childhood dressers; my parents let me take them when Brent and I got married. We were thinking that we would have them for a year or so and then buy our own bedroom set...but yeah...that ain't happening any time soon. So I'm doing the best I can to make them look like classy married couple's bedroom furniture...not 4 year old girl furniture. I'm 95% done with the painting, then I get to go to Anthropologie and pick out the perfect knobs! Stay tuned for results!

Sugar Cookies and Haircuts

That is like the worst blog post title anyone could ever come up with. Ever.

I don't know about your mind, but upon imagining up the title my mind went straight to the thought of biting into a sugar cookie topped with 1-in long cuttings of hair. Gross.

The image was so disturbing that I couldn't help introducing you all to it. Therefore, this post is entitled, Sugar Cookies and Haircuts.

Or, more accurately, Wedding Sugar Cookies and My New Haircut.

Here is a sample of one of the sugar cookies I made for the wedding earlier this month. Purty cute, huh?

I've been growing my hair out since before I was married, with the goal of it reaching my mid-back and having long, LONG layers, all around the head. Well, haven't quite reached the mid-back goal yet, but I recently got the layers I've been dreaming about! I'm having so much fun with my new style!

Another Pictureless Post

Before I begin, you need to know that it is 8 pm on Tuesday evening, and I am at this moment exhaustified. I have no guarantees that what I write from here on out will be legible, entertaining, and not exaggerated. But I'll do the best I can.

It's been a whirl-wind couple of weeks!

After Brent's cousin's wedding on July 3rd, Brent and I took a couple days to sit back, relax, and make plans for taking some action this summer. Those plans resulted in me applying for a job at a company at which I would not have seen myself at this stage of life.

Basically, I graduated with a degree in Physics in December of '09, and have been looking for work in my field ever since. There have been a few almost-jobs, and there are still two positions in my field for which I am still under consideration, but who knows how long it will take for me to get hired (if they end up choosing me), and it has come to the point where Brent and I decided I need to be working. If God doesn't want me to be working in my field right now, then ok. I'll work in another field.

Therefore, on Wednesday, July 7, I drove around my area and gave my application for employment to the five closest Starbucks to my home. Two of the five stores were hiring at the time, and thankfully both of them scheduled interviews with me. I interviewed at one of the stores the subsequent Saturday and was hired on Sunday. Praise God!

I started my training on July 12 and have had 4 days of in-store training since. Here's another praise God-statement -- I am L*O*V*I*N*G it. The people in my store are fun to work with, the manager is really encouraging and attentive to my needs, and I've been assigned a "learning coach," a Starbucks veteran, to walk me through my training and answer my every question. She is extremely helpful and NEVER gets annoyed with all the questions I ask, and makes it clear to me several times a day that my training is her priority. Her attitude helps me to feel less like a burden when I botch a batch of steamed milk and have to start over....or when I knock a glass sugar canister off of the condiment bar and it shatter into a million sugary pieces. (You think I'm lying?) I did it right in front of my manager too...he just laughed at me and told me it's gonna happen. My learning coach was so sweet and turned it into a training moment, showing me the proper and safe way to clean up shattered glass, and then she went about wracking her brain for all the glass she's shattered during her time at Starbucks. :)

Today I spent 2 1/2 hours learning how to make espresso beverages, coffee beverages, and non-coffee beverages. That meant 2 1/2 hours of TRAINING at the espresso bar, making drink after drink for practice, then throwing them all away, all while the trained baristas are making customer-ordered drinks around me.

THEN - then - it came to the point in my training where I had to practice preparing drinks for customers. My learning coach started with me and walked me through the first couple of drinks. Then the line started getting longer and drink orders were piling up and I had to start doing more and more on my own. Then the line and drink orders grew even larger and it was time for my learning coach to go home, so my manager took her place...talk about nerve-wracking! My manager told me to be in charge of putting syrups in the drinks and he would take care of the rest. BTW, putting syrups in drinks is no easy matter when you're new...understanding how many pumps of what syrup goes in what is a matter of memorization and repetition (and being able to understand customers' custom orders), and I'm going on nothing but hours of experience here. But I made it through...only having to throw a few botched drinks away. :)

Soon the line and drink-orders built up so much that it was a full-fledged rush (in my humble opinion) and I wanted to shake in fear, roll up in a ball and cover my neck, but I didn't have time to. I just had to pull every resource in my brain to concentrate on what needed to be done to what drink at what time. Eventually things got so busy that my manager told another of the employees to come help him with frappucinos, because that is one thing I have NO experience with yet and I could offer him no help there. So there was three of us working on making drinks in that tiny little bar area. CRAZY.

Eventually, the rush died down, and I was thankful for some relief and the fact that less of a rush meant that my manager could coach me a little more.

Soon after that, my shift was over. I got a decaf Sumatra and a cinnamon coffee cake (complementary flavors, fyi) and chilled for a bit before I went home.

What I've found is this...getting home after working at Starbucks is kind of a shock. You get home, and you think, "It's only 4:30! I have the rest of the day ahead of me! I can do all my chores and complete all my paperwork and have a nice dinner ready for my husband when he gets home!" But then, as you move about your home getting your business done, you realize that your limbs are dead and are begging and screaming for you to lie down.

I gave myself some chill time at home to play my guitar and shower, and then it took every ounce of my strength and willpower to NOT curl up on the couch and fall asleep to a romantic comedy, but to instead sweep and mop, clean my bathroom, vacuum, and then get started on my never-ending pile of paperwork.

God was gracious to me today in that I didn't have to make dinner for my husband...he'll be home late from work and will bring dinner with him. But yikes...I'm nervous for the day when I work at Starbucks, do chores AND have to make dinner. I'll pray for strength.

There's plenty more to say about everything in life right now, but this post is long enough. The funny thing with me is that the more tired I am when I write, the more I write because I lack the brainpower to keep things short and to the point. So I just write what comes to my head and fingertips.

Ok, I'll stop writing now.

The Worst Cookbook Ever.

Not long ago Brent decided he wanted to shed a little weight, so together we started Weight Watchers. We both like the program, it works for us and our lifestyles. Based on your age, height, activity level and goal weight, you are assigned a certain number of points for every day. Each food is assigned a points value based on its amount of calories, fat and fiber. So you can eat whatever you want whenever you want, as long as you stay within your allotted points values each day. You learn REALLY fast that your idea of a good portion size is probably 3 times the amount that you really need, and you start making healthier choices because you learn that you can eat MORE of the food with less points values and that the larger points value foods should be kept to a bare minimum...unless you want to spend three quarters of your day starving after going all out on a chocolate cake for breakfast.

In addition to your daily points values, you also get a weekly allowance of points that you can use for whatever. You can save them all up for that big bbq on Saturday with mom's pretzel jello salad, or you can use a little everyday, and have an extra piece of chicken with each dinner or a truffle each night for dessert.

We like it because I can still cook my normal yummy meals, but we just eat less of them at one sitting. We've been saving a bit of money too, because we actually have leftovers after dinner that we can eat the next day for lunch!

So, why I thought a Weight Watchers cookbook was needed or wanted in this scenario I don't know. All I know is that I spotted a WW cookbook at my in-law's house, flipped it open to the dessert section and fell in love. Now I know that I fell in love with the names of the recipes, not the recipes themselves.

I took the cookbook home and got to baking/cooking right away.

I think I've set a personal record for being persistant with an awful cookbook. With each crummy dish I made, I didn't give up hope that the next one would be better, less diety, less stupid substitutiony. (I'm sorry for the made-up words.) Oh how I wish I had given up.

Raspberry Brownies

Fail. What an utter disappointment.

Roasted Red Pepper Dip

FAIL. Yuck! Yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck! I dreamed of Trader Joes creamy red pepper dip, and what I got instead was a bitter tasting watery mess.

Guacamole

FAIL!! You cannot, I repeat, CANNOT, ever, never in your lifetime, substitute spinach for avacado. I'm on my knees as I plead with you, not literally, but I am desperate, PLEASE appreciate the goodness and nutritious fat of avacados and never make a stupid substitution choice like I did in obedience to the awful book! The taste will forever haunt me!

Chinese "Fried" Rice

Ok, not an utter failure. This was actually quite decent. Brent and I had it as our "new meal of the week." But what I served with it ruined any morsel of desire to ever make this again.

Chinese Stir-Fried Vegetables

EEWWWWW!! Triple, quadruple failure. Disgusting. Stomach wrenching. Nose putter-offer. So bad I couldn't even stomach a bite. NEVER put bamboo shoots in home cooking!

If it restores me in your mind in any way to a just-above-awful eyer of good recipes (as opposed to far, far below awful), I will mention that the stir-fried vegetables didn't actually sound good to me. I only made them because I needed something to go with the fried rice. Never will I use that logic again.

The take home message: NEVER COOK OUT OF A WEIGHT WATCHERS COOKBOOK.

And if you do, dump what you make in a nuclear waste facility, making sure NONE of it ever gets past your lips!

News Bytes

Today is my first day home in a long, looooooong, time. Since last Saturday. Not that long ago I guess.

I've been sleeping at my house every night, but all day every day I've been at my in-laws' house, focused on frosting 236 wedding cake shaped sugar cookies for a wedding coming up this Saturday, July 3rd. As of 10:30 pm last night, the job was done, the cookies were in their treat bags with cute little bows, and they were packaged and ready to go over to the reception hall tomorrow.

Oh my goodness. I'M. DONE. WITH. COOKIES. For now.

I had the nerve to put a little gold foil label on the back of each treat bag that says "Hayley Tyler Sugar Cookies," then it lists my email and phone number. Am I really advertising for a job like this again?

Yes. I am. Because I love it, every single bit of it. :)

In other news, some of you might remember my health ordeal that I documented on my old blog back in 2008. To attempt make a long story short, I was having once to twice daily severely painful "attacks" in my upper abdomen, the likes of which reminded doctors of gall bladder attacks. Every test for gall bladder disease under the sun was done on me, each of which came back negative. Then the doctors started testing me for pretty much every other gastrointestinal illness under the sun, and one of the tests came back positive; I was diagnosed with gastroparesis. Gastroparesis explained why I was rarely hungry and why I had lost so much weight, but it didn't explain the pain. When I started medication for gastroparesis, my pain slowly went away.

However, every once in a while I go through a couple week phases of frequent "attacks" again. On June 17 of this year, my "attacks" returned worse, more prolonged, and more frequent than ever.

I saw my GI and his best guess is that I actually DO have a problem with my gallbladder, that it is emptying too slow. That would explain the pain, and if a test that I'm having done soon comes back positive, then they'll take that little painful sucker right out of me.

In the meantime, I'm so desperate to stay out of pain that I am on day 3 of an extremely minimalistic diet. Sports drinks, saltine crackers and chicken broth. Day 1 was a giddy day for me, because I remained pain free. Day 2 I remained pain free as well, but it was less giddy because it culminated in a family dinner at Islands. I ate more saltine crackers to ease my constant salivation at that restaurant than was probably good for me.

This morning, Day 3 of the diet, it's 10:45, and I've finished a pack of saltine crackers. For comparison, each of the past two days, an entire pack was slowly eaten throughout the day.

It might have had something to do with the fact that this morning I've been getting caught up on the cooking section of Pioneer Woman's website.

I'm in bad shape.

It's gonna be even worse at the family bbq tonight. Ugh.

Thankfully, tomorrow I get to add fat free milk products, simple carbs, eggs, peanut butter, vegetable juices, fruit juices, and low-fat hard candies. (Except, I don't even like hard candies...for the most part.)

Please pray for an accurate diagnosis of what is causing my pain. Pray that it is curable, so that I won't have to eat so minimalistically and un-nutritionally the rest of my life.

Also, I have some good news. Yesterday I received my test results from the state exam I took at the end of February. Passing the exam qualifies one for a position in the Radiologic Health Branch of the California Department of Public Health. I passed the exam! Hurray! I can now be considered for jobs that open up within the department! Please pray that God will give me a job soon.