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Thursday, September 6, 2012
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
House Projects
I would like to thank everyone again for reading and responding to my last post. It's not an easy decision to make, but the important ones never are:). For now I've decided to save money by not going back to school just yet and continue to pursue a design related position. I have a couple leads right now, so keep praying that something will come through for me soon!
Matt and I have been very busy this past month finishing up all our house projects. Matt finished framing out the opening we made in the kitchen wall, we're waiting on wall tile for the guest bathroom to come in, and we finished painting the master bedroom a couple weeks ago. We decided to go with a faux finish even though I wanted to do a stencil. The next project I want to tackle is putting the stencil in our 1/2 bath in the basement and painting and organizing our office. The ideas I'm thinking for those spaces are similar to this:
I printed some of our photos from our honeymoon and my favorite one that I framed was this:
Matt's proud of it since he's the one that carved it into the sand :). I'm hoping we'll get our wedding pictures back soon so I can finally frame them and hang them all over the house.
Here are a few more ideas for my future office space when I have the time and money to fix it up.
Continue reading House Projects
Matt and I have been very busy this past month finishing up all our house projects. Matt finished framing out the opening we made in the kitchen wall, we're waiting on wall tile for the guest bathroom to come in, and we finished painting the master bedroom a couple weeks ago. We decided to go with a faux finish even though I wanted to do a stencil. The next project I want to tackle is putting the stencil in our 1/2 bath in the basement and painting and organizing our office. The ideas I'm thinking for those spaces are similar to this:
I printed some of our photos from our honeymoon and my favorite one that I framed was this:
Matt's proud of it since he's the one that carved it into the sand :). I'm hoping we'll get our wedding pictures back soon so I can finally frame them and hang them all over the house.
Here are a few more ideas for my future office space when I have the time and money to fix it up.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
New Year, New Attitude
Happy New Years Everyone! Sorry i'm a few days late but it's been a busy week with work and reflecting on the past year and everything good and bad that happened. The main thing i've been trying to focus on is figuring out what I want to do with my career. I've been tossing around the idea of starting my own Interior Design Business to getting my Masters to even completely changing my career and going into the medical field. For most of 2011 I was focused on planning my wedding so I didn't spend as much time as I should have trying to start my career. I was working (still am) two jobs that I enjoy but don't want to stay at the rest of my life. Then after the wedding I focused my time on finding any job related to Interior Design. I was able to land an interview with a prestigious firm in Kansas City and they liked me soo much that they continued to consider me for 3 months. Then finally in December they called to let me know they went with someone else. Frustrating but I tried to look on the bright side and called the community college I was taking classes at to enroll in the Kitchen & Bath Design class for the spring 2012 semester, only to find out that the class was canceled due to low enrollment and I wouldn't have made a difference. I've continued to search and apply at firms and other design related places with no luck as of yet. Starting up my own design business has been on my mind for the last year or so, but each time I seriously consider it, I start telling myself that I don't think i'm cut out for it or I don't even know how to run a business let alone try to start one up from scratch or if I even have what it takes.
Several weeks ago I came across an article online about the top 5 occupations that only require a 2 year degree and pay very well. I decided to read it just for the heck of it and one of those jobs caught my interest, which was an Ultrasound Technician. I have family that's in the medical field and talked to them about it to make sure it's an in demand position and if they think I would be any good at it. Of course they said yes it's in demand and someone with that type of education is pretty hard to come by, and they think I would really enjoy it.
So one of the main conflicts i'm having right now is in May it'll be 3 years since I graduated from ISU and haven't really been able to use my design degree in the way that I would have liked to, and feel like it was a huge waste or I didn't try hard enough to become a designer. When I look back and see what my ISU classmates are doing, most of them are in the same boat, a few became designers right out of college (which I am very happy and proud of you guys!), a few more didn't until a little later (congrats! :)), others went back to school to get their Masters (you guys are rock!hehe), then the rest of them like me just aren't having any luck finding anything.
My other conflict i'm struggling with right now is I've always thought of going into the medical field, even before I considered design, and the more I think about it the more appealing it sounds. But I'm still not ready to give up on design just yet. The last couple weeks i've been looking into getting my NKBA (National Kitchen & Bath Association) membership, I would be able to see more job postings for kitchen design, get member discounts on classes and study materials for the AKBD (Associate Kitchen & Bath Design) certification. I was planning on taking the AKBD exam later this spring or sometime this summer, but since the class I was going to take got canceled, I won't have the credit hours to take the exam. So instead I researched the NKBA website to see what classes they offered and found out to get the credit hours that I need to take the exam I would need to shell out $1000, which I don't have, so that idea is on the back burner for now.
Then today to top it all off I came across another article on the internet about which degrees have the highest unemployment rates and the top degrees are architecture and interior design as well as other art related majors, and even going on to get your Masters won't really help you that much. Then in that very same article the occupations with the lowest unemployment rates are anything in the healthcare or medical field. Basically the pattern I feel like i'm falling into is once I decide to pursue a different way to use my design degree something always seems to happen to make it seem not possible or push it back for another year or more. And the healthcare and medical field seem to always pop up as an alternative. Right now I'm just very confused as to what to do and need a little bit of advice or guidance from anyone willing to give their 2 cents.
Like I said it's a new year and i'm going to be wearing a positive attitude and hope, no scratch that WILL make sure 2012 is the year that things FINALLY start to turn around for me!
Continue reading New Year, New Attitude
Several weeks ago I came across an article online about the top 5 occupations that only require a 2 year degree and pay very well. I decided to read it just for the heck of it and one of those jobs caught my interest, which was an Ultrasound Technician. I have family that's in the medical field and talked to them about it to make sure it's an in demand position and if they think I would be any good at it. Of course they said yes it's in demand and someone with that type of education is pretty hard to come by, and they think I would really enjoy it.
So one of the main conflicts i'm having right now is in May it'll be 3 years since I graduated from ISU and haven't really been able to use my design degree in the way that I would have liked to, and feel like it was a huge waste or I didn't try hard enough to become a designer. When I look back and see what my ISU classmates are doing, most of them are in the same boat, a few became designers right out of college (which I am very happy and proud of you guys!), a few more didn't until a little later (congrats! :)), others went back to school to get their Masters (you guys are rock!hehe), then the rest of them like me just aren't having any luck finding anything.
My other conflict i'm struggling with right now is I've always thought of going into the medical field, even before I considered design, and the more I think about it the more appealing it sounds. But I'm still not ready to give up on design just yet. The last couple weeks i've been looking into getting my NKBA (National Kitchen & Bath Association) membership, I would be able to see more job postings for kitchen design, get member discounts on classes and study materials for the AKBD (Associate Kitchen & Bath Design) certification. I was planning on taking the AKBD exam later this spring or sometime this summer, but since the class I was going to take got canceled, I won't have the credit hours to take the exam. So instead I researched the NKBA website to see what classes they offered and found out to get the credit hours that I need to take the exam I would need to shell out $1000, which I don't have, so that idea is on the back burner for now.
Then today to top it all off I came across another article on the internet about which degrees have the highest unemployment rates and the top degrees are architecture and interior design as well as other art related majors, and even going on to get your Masters won't really help you that much. Then in that very same article the occupations with the lowest unemployment rates are anything in the healthcare or medical field. Basically the pattern I feel like i'm falling into is once I decide to pursue a different way to use my design degree something always seems to happen to make it seem not possible or push it back for another year or more. And the healthcare and medical field seem to always pop up as an alternative. Right now I'm just very confused as to what to do and need a little bit of advice or guidance from anyone willing to give their 2 cents.
Like I said it's a new year and i'm going to be wearing a positive attitude and hope, no scratch that WILL make sure 2012 is the year that things FINALLY start to turn around for me!
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Thanksgiving
I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving with their families, we sure did! It was soo nice to see both of our families, especially since we hadn't seen them since our wedding three months ago.
I thought I would catch up on the photo challenge as well, so here goes! :)
Continue reading Thanksgiving
I thought I would catch up on the photo challenge as well, so here goes! :)
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| Ok I didn't take this one, but it's from our wedding day and it's a great picture of my husband :) |
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Name Change
Well I am happy to announce that almost 3 months after we got married I finally changed my last name to Martin! The reason it took so long in case anyone was wondering was we took a late honeymoon in October and since we've been back i've been in the middle of an interview process with a couple companies. I'm still in the running for at least one of the positions but got tired of waiting and changed my name anyway, hehe.
My dog Jett and I went on a walk earlier today, and the day that i've been dreading since we adopted him has finally come: he's just as strong as me now :(. He can pull me along and it takes me using most of my body weight to stop him, luckily he's usually really good on the leash. He's only 6 months old but I still can't believe how quickly labs grow up, I wish he could have stayed the size of a puppy a little longer, oh well :). At least I have a picture of him from the day we brought him home.
Yesterday was a busy day so I wasn't able to post, so here's day 2 and 3 for the photo challenge. Today was supposed to be a picture of clouds, but there isn't a single cloud in the sky today. :)
Continue reading Name Change
My dog Jett and I went on a walk earlier today, and the day that i've been dreading since we adopted him has finally come: he's just as strong as me now :(. He can pull me along and it takes me using most of my body weight to stop him, luckily he's usually really good on the leash. He's only 6 months old but I still can't believe how quickly labs grow up, I wish he could have stayed the size of a puppy a little longer, oh well :). At least I have a picture of him from the day we brought him home.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
30 Day Photo Challenge!
I've been seeing the 30 Day Photo Challenge floating around on Pinterest for a little while, so I decided to try it.
Our honeymoon in Cabo was amazing! The weather and scenery were soo beautiful! On our third day we went snorkeling and got to see the famous arch, we also saw a sting ray and a marlin jump out of the ocean, which was so cool! Another day we were lounging by the pool at the resort and saw dolphins swimming around and having fun out in the ocean! Most of the time we just relaxed by the pool or went into Cabo San Lucas to eat out at nice restaurants. I wasn't ready to go home, but we did miss our puppy a lot and are glad to be back home with him:).
It may be a little early to start decorating for Christmas, but it's my favorite season to decorate for! While browsing on pinterest one day I found a project idea that I HAD to try. I took one of our left over wedding invites, cut it up into strips, wrapped it around a pen and put them inside a clear Christmas ornament. I found a little "M" charm at Michaels that I put on a ribbon and tied it on. I love how it turned out!
I also thought i'd leave you with an update on our adorable puppy, he's six months old now and no longer looks like a puppy, he's weighing in around 50lbs now. I regret not taking more pictures of him when he was little, but I plan on taking more of him now, because you can never have too many pictures of your dog, right? :)
Continue reading 30 Day Photo Challenge!
Our honeymoon in Cabo was amazing! The weather and scenery were soo beautiful! On our third day we went snorkeling and got to see the famous arch, we also saw a sting ray and a marlin jump out of the ocean, which was so cool! Another day we were lounging by the pool at the resort and saw dolphins swimming around and having fun out in the ocean! Most of the time we just relaxed by the pool or went into Cabo San Lucas to eat out at nice restaurants. I wasn't ready to go home, but we did miss our puppy a lot and are glad to be back home with him:).
It may be a little early to start decorating for Christmas, but it's my favorite season to decorate for! While browsing on pinterest one day I found a project idea that I HAD to try. I took one of our left over wedding invites, cut it up into strips, wrapped it around a pen and put them inside a clear Christmas ornament. I found a little "M" charm at Michaels that I put on a ribbon and tied it on. I love how it turned out!
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| A girl's best friend :) |
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Master Bedroom Design Inspiration
I hope everyone is having a great day on this beautiful saturday in September! Man time really flies! I can't believe that just 4 days ago, Matt and I have already been married for one month! It still seems like it was just last week! But one of the many things to look forward to is in just 3 weeks we'll be on a plane headed to Cabo for our delayed honeymoon! I'm soo excited!
In the meantime while i'm dreaming about laying on the beach in Mexico, i'm also dreaming about my design ideas for our master bedroom. Here are some of my ideas for my inspiration board:
Continue reading Master Bedroom Design Inspiration
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| Cabo!! |
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| This is pretty similar to the bed I want, & I think it's the same bed in the picture above! |
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| We have this for the foot of the bed :) |
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| We also have this and it will most likely go above the bed |
I'm still looking for bedding and drapes for the windows, so i'll post options for those soon. :)
