My Stay-cation: A Postmortem

I can hardly believe that my vacation week is over. At this time LAST week, I was fretting and worrying about what I would EVER do with myself for an entire week at home! I was SURE I'd be terribly bored and lonely and I'd just sit in the dark and listen to emo music all week.

Not so! Even though seminary kind of took them away for a little while, I remembered that I too can have hobbies! I CAN enjoy free time again! What a concept!

So here it is- ALL the fun things I did with myself on my winter stay-cation....

Movies Watched: 7
Mama Mia
27 Dresses
Sex and the City
-These 3 movies I rented on the first day. I was bound and determined to watch chick flicks while I had the week off and Dave didn't. Mama Mia kind of made me want to die, but the other 2 were like eating Peeps. SO bad, yet SOOOOOO good.

Groundhogs Day
-Netflix Instant Play...you are my new best friend.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
Spellbound
-Netflix DVDs that had been gathering dust on our shelf for the last month. We're not real good at anticipating what we're going to want to watch.

Burn After Reading
-Oh, Coen brothers. You make me laugh, but then you fill my head with disgusting, terrible, violent scenes. Why do I keep going back to you?


Craft Projects Started: 10
I made 2 trips to the local Goodwill and found all sorts of old ugly mirrors, frames, and other home decor pieces from circa 1982. And thanks to the wonders of the internet, I learned all kinds of techniques for how to paint them and make them cool again.


Craft Projects Completed: 5-ish and counting
As usual, I bit off more than I could chew in my goal of TOTALLY revamping and coolifying our apartment in one week. BUT it is coming together. Photos will be shared once we get there.


24-hour jaunt to Chicago: 1
My friend Erin is now a chaplain at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, and she lives RIGHT in Lincoln Park. It is an AMAZING treat for me to go and visit her, to be with a fun girlfriend (who loves H&M and Forever21 even more than I do), and to be in an actual city. Bloomington-Normal may host 100,000 residents, but it ain't no city. And I've discovered that I LOVE cities. I love good public transportation. I love walking everywhere. I love the diversity of people, architecture, cultures, RESTAURANTS (for the love!!) and basic amenities. As I told Erin, I am so sure that I am called to this church, and for that reason, I love that we are here. But 10 years from now, I somehow doubt I'm going to look back and miss living in Walmart/Chili's/Corn&Soybean central.


Feelings of pride after a successful (and frugal) Ikea trip: 42,837
So, going to Ikea for me is like having the cartoon angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. I walk in planning on just looking, or MAYBE buying one or two things. I know that we do not have a lot of money to spend, and I want to be a good budget-keeper (New Year's resolution, much?) The angel reminds me that I do not need to be consumeristic and buy things to make me happy. But then I step on that elevator and begin walking through all the cute-y cute rooms, set up perfectly with matching everything, and the shoulder-devil starts talking. "You NEED that (insert weird Swedish word here) chair/table/pillow/curtain/cheese grater. Your life is not complete without it. Everything will be so much better if you would just pick it up and put it in your big yellow bag. What's the harm? It's SO CHEAP!" I end up wheeling a tower of particle-board goods up to the cash register and suddenly I've spent $562 dollars on chairs and cheese-graters. Not good.

BUT!! Not this time. I walked through the showroom and drooled appropriately, but I ONLY bought what was on my list. And though it ended up costing $50 more than we had budgeted, what did I discover in my purse? Oh, just a $50 Ikea giftcard from last Christmas. Boo-ya! Take that, Sven! Your attractive, cheaply produced, Swedish homewares have no power over me!


Books Read: 0.25
Yeah, it's pathetic. I was talking to my mother-in-law yesterday, recounting the week's events and she kind of gasped when she heard that I HADN'T spent my week reading. But who has time when Groundhogs Day is available for watching? I mean, this is Bill Murray we're talking about!


So now it's time to go back to work. I'm glad because I love it. But I am also extremely glad and grateful for the past week. For not knowing what I was going to do, I certainly did a lot.