Cleaning & Organizing--- Photo Update #1

I promised Angela I'd post photos of the progress we've made in our quest for organization. So, here are some photos. Please enjoy them. They took me forever. But, they were well worth it! We enjoy knowing where everything is and keeping it that way! Of course, since we had help organizing the first few days were an adventure because sometimes we didn't quite know where some things were. For example, one day I needed the strainer and I looked everywhere and beyond. And, Andrew can't seem to grasp the concept that cereal is in a cupboard instead of on a shelf out in the open in the kitchen. And then there's the fact that our food and dishes have traded places - food is now in cupboards (wow, what a concept) and dishes (including glasses) are out in the open on our bookshelves in the dining room. The concept behind this is that dishes are nicer and prettier to look at than food is. Um... yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense now that I think about it. But, every time I go to get a cup I still go to the old cupboard instead of where they really are. But, I'm sure eventually I'll get used to it.

Here are some cupboards. Beautiful and organized!

Here are more cupboards. Nice and organized!

Here are our bookshelves and pantry -all organized and pretty too!

Goals! 2011

Everyone seems to post their goals in January, but as almost anyone will tell you: January has come and gone! Really? Gee. I hadn't noticed.

Anyway, I decided I'd post some of my goals for the year tonight.
They are not really in any particular order except for #1. #1 is #1 and cannot be substituted, sidestepped, or subverted. I'm going to keep my list to 10. I know 10 sounds like a lot but some of them kind of overlap.

1. Deep Clean & Organize the Apartment! (And set up a plan to keep it that way)
2. Read the Scriptures every day!
3. Exercise 6 days a week!
4. Make a Calendar and block in work time, home time, and personal time and stick to it so I have as much of a balanced life as possible - and don't go CRAZY!
5. Do my French-Canadian Family History and go to Québec to work on the difficult parts of it!
6. Brush up on my Québecois (French-Canadian dialect of French)!
7. Read something uplifting & motivating each day!
8. Read something about healthy living each day!
9. Pick a subject and set up a plan to learn about it (i.e. Chemistry, History, sewing, etc...) and then once finished go on to the next subject!
10. Cook with Andy as much as possible so we can try out new and exciting foods and so he can't say he "can't cook"!
11. Produce my own Youtube Late Night Talk Show!

I know I said I'd keep it narrowed down to 10 but I forgot to add number 11 and number 11 is pretty important to me. Also, it's something Andy's going to help me with. So, it's going to be our new "hobby". Hopefully our friends and family will watch it. If not, at least someday our kids will. And, they'll think we're hilarious, right?

Redesign

I just did a major overhaul of our blog this morning. It took about 20 minutes. I'm not so sure I like it, but it needed it. I wanted to make sure it could be easily read (i.e. the font color was ok, etc...) and it is. But, honestly, the color scheme is kind of out of whack so I'm going to do another overhaul very soon. Looking at it makes me sick. The colors just "don't quite go together" but at least you can read it without any problems which was my original intent and the background is different.

And, as is the current trend here is a video from youtube. And no, I do not spend hour and hours on youtube these days. I've just recently found a use for it. Anyway, this is a video of what Andrew calls "That French guy again". He's the guy who wakes me up from my naps every afternoon and he even tries to wake me up when I'm not taking a nap. He's a French-Canadian singer whom I really like and whose cd has been in our cd alarm clock for months. The cd is set to go off every afternoon and so like I said he wakes me up from my naps even when I don't need him to and when Andrew is home and the cd comes on he says "There's that French guy again!" So, here is Roch Voisine singing my favorite song Hélène

Here are the lyrics: Lyrics to Hélène :
Seul sur le sable
les yeux dans l'eau
mon rêve etait trop beau
l'éte qui s'achève
tu partira
à cent mille lieu de moi
coment oublier ton sourire
et tellement de souvenir
nos jeux dans les vague
pret du quai
je n'est vu le temps passer
l'amour sur la plage désertée
nos corps brûlés enlassés
coment t'aimé si tu t'en va
dans ton pays loin là-bas(ba ba ba ba)

partie en anglais
pourquoi tu part reste ici
j'ai t'en bessoin d'une amie
partie en anglais
pourquoi tu part part si loin de moi
là où le vent t'emporte loin de mon coeur qui bat

partie en anglais
pourquoi tu part reste ici
rete encore juste une nuit

seul sur le sable
les yeux dans l'eau
mon rêve était trop beau
l'éte qui s'achève
tu partira
à cent mille lieu de moi
coment t'aimé si tu t'en va
dans ton pays loin là-bas
dans ton pays loin là-bas
dans ton pays loin là-bas(ba ba ba ba)
dans ton pays loin de moi
Seul sur le sable
les yeux dans l'eau
mon rêve etait trop beau
l'éte qui s'achève
tu partira
à cent mille lieu de moi
coment oublier ton sourire
et tellement de souvenir
nos jeux dans les vague
pret du quai
je n'est vu le temps passer
l'amour sur la plage désertée
nos corps brûlés enlassés
coment t'aimé si tu t'en va
dans ton pays loin là-bas(ba ba ba ba)

partie en anglais
pourquoi tu part reste ici
j'ai t'en bessoin d'une amie
partie en anglais
pourquoi tu part part si loin de moi
là où le vent t'emporte loin de mon coeur qui bat

partie en anglais
pourquoi tu part reste ici
rete encore juste une nuit

seul sur le sable
les yeux dans l'eau
mon rêve était trop beau
l'éte qui s'achève
tu partira
à cent mille lieu de moi
coment t'aimé si tu t'en va
dans ton pays loin là-bas
dans ton pays loin là-bas
dans ton pays loin là-bas(ba ba ba ba)
dans ton pays loin de moi

My Second Arbonne Paycheck is here!

Yay! Today my second Arbonne paycheck arrived! As with the first, it is not fully representative of my entire profits (i.e. buying product with my discount and having clients wanting to buy it from me at full retail price, etc...). My paycheck would have been about $98, but sadly I had someone return a rather large order and instead of doing an outright exchange I had her do a return and go and purchase the other items instead. I should have had her purchase the acne line at the beginning, but I really thought that the Re9 line would help with it. But, I've learned and for some people it does, and for others the acne line works better. So, as with most things in life - You live and learn.

Anyway, here is a picture of my paycheck for all those who require proof. (And, it gives me a chance to use our snazzy 2 month old printer/fax/scanner combo)

Belarus

I checked our blog's stats again today and found that we've had a visitor from Belarus. At first, I didn't think much of it. I just figured that Belarus is pretty much the same as Russia. But, apparently, it is not. Thanks to wikipedia and youtube I've officially been schooled. I like that we've had a rather diverse population visiting our blog lately. I've always been interested in other cultures but I have a hard time knowing where to start when it comes to learning about them. But, when people visit our blog I find it's easy to use that as a starting place. I promise that this phase will probably pass shortly. But, really we don't have kids (yet) and the only other thing of note lately is our cleaning and organizing progress (Angela, I did take pictures, but I had to take them with my phone and it's taking forever for me to figure out how to send them to my email and then download them - apparently they're bigger in size than I would have thought - but... I took a TON yesterday, JUST for you!).

So, without further rambling here is what I've learned about Belarus. The following information is courtesy of wikipedia:

Belarus (ⁱ /bɛləˈruːs/ bel-ə-ROOS; Belarusian: Беларусь, Russian: Беларусь, Белоруссия, see Etymology), officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe,^[7] bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno (Hrodna), Gomel (Homiel), Mogilev (Mahilyow) and Vitebsk (Viciebsk). Forty percent of its 207,600 square kilometres (80,200 sq mi) is forested,^[8] and its strongest economic sectors are agriculture and manufacturing.

Until the 20th century, the lands of modern day Belarus belonged to several countries, including the Principality of Polotsk, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Russian Empire, and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. As a result of the Russian Revolution, Belarus became a founding constituent republic of the Soviet Union and was renamed as the Byelorussian SSR. The final unification of the modern day Belarusian lands took place in 1939 when lands that were part of the Second Polish Republic were united with the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic as a result of the Soviet invasion of Poland.^{[9][10][11][12][13][14]} The territory and its nation were devastated in World War II, during which Belarus lost about a third of its population and more than half of its economic resources.^[15] The republic was redeveloped in the post-war years. In 1945 the Belorussian SSR became a founding member of the United Nations, along with the Soviet Union and the Ukrainian SSR.

The parliament of the republic declared the sovereignty of Belarus on 27 July 1990, and during the collapse of the Soviet Union, Belarus declared independence on 25 August 1991. Alexander Lukashenko has been the country's president since 1994. Under his lead and despite objections from Western governments, Soviet-era policies, such as state ownership of the economy have been continued. According to some organizations and countries, elections have been unfair, and political opponents have been violently suppressed.^[16][17][18] Since 2000, Belarus and Russia signed a treaty for greater cooperation, with some hints of forming a Union State. Belarus also has the highest Human Development Index among members of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Most of Belarus's population of 9.49 million reside in the urban areas surrounding Minsk and other oblast (regional) capitals.^[19] More than 80% of the population are native Belarusians, with sizable minorities of Russians, Poles and Ukrainians. Since a referendum in 1995, the country has had two official languages: Belarusian and Russian.

Also, I watched a really interesting, informative, and emotionally compelling video on youtube about Belarus. I watched it thinking it was going to teach me how to speak some basic phrases in Belarussian. But, instead it was more of a documentary. Like I said, I really didn't know anything about Belarus before today, so this video really opened my eyes.
It's not super long...only about 10 minutes and it's really worth watching.

Здравствуйте!

I checked our blog's stats again today and I was pleased to learn that we've had a visitor from Russia this week! So, in honor of our Russian friends, I'd like to say: Здравствуйте! pronounced : [zdras-tvooy-tyeh] which means "Hello!"

I could go on for days and days with regards to everything I know about Russia. Andy could also go on and on about Russia. So, I've decided not to bore everyone with that. Although, I'd like to formally announce that I'm somewhat jealous that Andy's visited Russia and I have not yet had the pleasure to do so. (I was a Russian major for a year and Andy simply studied Russian in high school) Andy's been a lot of places that I have not, but this is the one place I've dreamed of visiting since I was a little girl. I could care less if I ever make it to Germany or Italy or some of the other places he's visited (although it would be nice). I'm still upset that Andy has never shown me any of his pictures from Russia. I'm not even sure he has any. I'll have to ask him tomorrow.

I remember in Russian class we used to watch this show called ДО СВИДАНИЯ ЛЕТО or in English - "Goodbye Summer" - We used to beg our professor to let us watch it. I'm not sure why because it is super cheesy. But, I guess it just goes to show how far you will go when you're learning a language...sometimes.
About a year ago when I when I was back in school I was looking for economics lectures on youtube because I had swine flu and I was quarantined in our apartment I got sidetracked and ended up looking for ДО СВИДАНИЯ ЛЕТО instead and to my delight I found it. (I eventually ended up finding some economics lectures too) So, here is the very first episode of ДО СВИДАНИЯ ЛЕТО for those who are interested.
If you don't watch it I'll be offended; however, Andy won't I'm sure. He'd probably tell me it's cheesy and question my sanity for liking it.

For something a little lighter and more fun here's a cool Russian Pepsi commercial I found on youtube.

Ok, that's all for today, hopefully those who visit our blog will have found it interesting and somewhat useful, or at least entertaining.

Dobry wieczór

I checked our blog stats this evening and noticed that most of our traffic comes from the United States. However, we've had 2 visitors from Poland this month. So, in honor of our Polish friends I've labeled this blog entry with the Polish phrase for "Good Evening".

Now, neither Andrew nor I speak Polish (although we do speak some Russian, which is somewhat similar) so before anybody goes away thinking that we have some Polish language skills - we don't, well, none aside from what Google gives us.

Life hasn't really been super exciting (good or bad) the last couple of weeks so we haven't had much to blog about. Our apartment is still a work in progress, and I fear any "in progress" photos would only cause heart attacks by unassuming bystanders (really, they're probably not that bad). The kitchen is almost completely finished from top to bottom and side to side and everything has a place - well, "almost everything". We're still working out a couple of glitches.

Anyway, I decided to take this opportunity to talk about everything I know about Poland. (Please indulge me, it's really not a lot)

There's the composer Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin who was Polish. I looked him up on Wikipedia and learned that there's apparently some dispute as to the date of his birth - some sources give 22 February while others give 1 March 1810. Interesting! I did not know that!
For food there's - kielbasa, pierogi, and kapusta (cabbage)

Then there's the -The Treaty of Warsaw -According to Wikipedia this was a treaty between West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany) and the People's Republic of Poland. It was signed by Chancellor Willy Brandt and Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz at the Presidential Palace on 7 December 1970, and it was ratified by the German Bundestag on 17 May 1972. In the treaty, both sides committed themselves to nonviolence and accepted the existing border - the Oder-Neisse line, imposed on Germany by the Allied powers at the 1945 Potsdam Conference following the end of World War II.

Sadly, that's about all I know about Poland. I'm sure Andrew knows a lot more, but he's asleep and I'm sure he wouldn't be thrilled if I woke him up to ask him everything he knows about Poland.