Great Weekend, Condo Update, Studio Space ;)
Hello!
Bobby and I (and Kurty) had a great time I had this weekend with Mom + Dad Fiocca! They were literally only here for 1 day but it was really nice to see them and hang out. They stayed in a corner suite at the Dana Hotel and Spa looking down State Street with floor to ceiling windows…it was pretty cool (more pictures here). We spent the day walking around the area and eating good food. We came back to the hotel in the afternoon and watched a movie. haha. It was really fun and I’m so glad we spent time relaxing and hanging out because that’s exactly what I was hoping for. :)
The photo to the right is us standing on the bridge near our new condo building on Saturday. We took a cab over there to show my parents and they were really excited to see it. I almost forgot how excited I was 2 months ago when they pushed back our closing…but since we went back I’m super excited again. :) We are literally a week away from new closing date. WOO HOO. Lets see if we really get to close this time! ha! Continue Reading →
CAD, Updates, MIA, Art Show, Condo, Broccoli Quiche
So, the Growing Up CAD show went really well and everyone had a great time. I’m glad Nick and Lee were able to come – we had a really fun night that night (except for the fact that I bumped my head really hard on Nate’s ceiling LOL) – you can see pictures from that night on my flickr set and you can also see the Chicago Art Department Photos here. Here’s cool shot of a couple checking out my piece. :) Bobby and I were really happy to have won one of the silent auctions and got to take home art from Jen Rosenthal. She was one of the original peeps in my Go Go Video class at CAD 3 years ago.
I’ve been a bit MIA lately – just have a lot going on. Doing artwork at home and selling it on etsy, planning a couple of art shows with a friend at work Nick Haas, working on some really huge projects at work that are taking up every bit of my patience, will power, and focus…in fact tonight I think I’ll be working from 7-10 on more designs that are due tomorrow. What’s fun and exciting is I get to go to New York for the design presentation in December…that will be a blast. :)
I absolutely cannot wait to go home for Thanksgiving and see my family and play with my nephew Alex and relax a bit – I’m hoping to get down to Delaware and visit with Jess and Josh for a night and celebrate their birthdays. Depends on if we have enough time to get down there and back without upsetting my family – it is the first time they’ve seen me in a LONG time. I definitely want to try and make it – I’d love to see you guys!
The condo is looking closer to finished now than I think I expected for November and that’s really exciting. :) We still have to wait until February to move in but some of the lower floors will be moving in in December/January. It’s gonna be so awesome to have our own place! yay!
I’m off to work or I’m never gonna get stuff finished for tomorrow! Hope everybody is doing great. And a big thanks to Kurt for the sweet a$$ brocolli quiche he made tonight. Yum in my tum! lol.
:)
Just got home from Ohio.
Had a great long weekend…stopped in Dayton (Waynesville) to see Melinda and Adam – sorry we were 2 hours late and only had about an hour and a half to hang out! It was still fun and good to see them and check out the new house. The house is very nice – I love the kitchen and the speakers on the front porch – and the giant yard…its very peaceful and serene out there. :) The kitties were a little freaked out by the big open space of the basement and were acting crazy…course they were acting a little weird all weekend….they are very happy to be home tonight. :)
Then we continued on to Delaware to have dinner with Jess and Josh and finally got to meet Mr. Cameron…we had a really nice time and I’m so glad we got a chance to play with Cam for a bit – he is such a cutie pie – he’s happy and smiling all the time (I think he liked the kitties!) It was a great night and Jess and Josh are very good parents!
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday we spent in Findlay with the family and had a lot of fun. We ate a LOT of yummy food, went shopping at the infamous Findlay mall, and played with my nephew Alex a lot! I think Alex has more energy than I have ever had my whole life – we were running around the neighborhood, exploring everything along the way, jumping and stomping in rain puddles, singing and dancing. He is awesome! It was really good to see my clan: mom, dad, and Jen. :)
Oh and my sister and I went out Saturday night with her best friend Heather and we had a really good time…Jen will probably post pics up somewhere so that you guys can see the silly pics of us. :) So! The wild and crazy Fiocca family is doing great and living it up. I miss them already! We just got home and had pizza with Justin and Mandy. I’m going to bed early tonight since I’ll be jogging with Jess Large in the AM tomorrow….gotta get up without hitting the snooze. Cross your fingers for me that I can do it. :) Night!
Finally, the family meets!
So I know I’m about a week overdue on updating you guys about last weekend AND didn’t write anything about my birthday yesterday yet…but I’ve just been busy doing all kinds of things so I haven’t had time yet. If you didn’t know though, last weekend Bobby’s brother Lenny and mom Suzie came to visit and so did my parents! We did all kinds of stuff, went to the Shed Aquarium, the Architecture Tour, to a bunch of restaurants and bars and walked around the neighborhood and did a lot of relaxing, talking, and drinking coffee. :) I think everybody had a good time and got along great so I’m so happy about that. I’m also happy Bobby got to spend some time with his brother and mom – he’s always happy when he gets some quality time with them. Lenny left a few days before Suzie and we wish he could’ve stayed longer. My parents brought food and wine and birthday cake and it was all really great. I’m really happy with how last weekend turned out. I had lots of fun! Here are some PICTURES FROM THE WEEKEND that Lenny took!! (Check out Lenny’s other pictures too, he is an awesome photographer!)
Yesterday was my birthday and Jess took me to get a manicure at Pinky Nails early in the morning before her big wedding event (which I hope went really good!) and then Bobby and I made lunch at home and talked and actually ended up going out to the burbs to try and sell the car, but didn’t work out…then came home later on and rode our bikes all over the city and down to Navy Pier and there were some fireworks going on, so that was a nice surprise. :) Riding our bikes in the city seems to be one of our new favorite things to do…it’s always interesting and we always see new things we’ve never seen before.
Today I’ve been hanging out with Bridget – we went to Feast for lunch (which by the way had a delicious spinach and pear salad – YUM), got pedicures at Pinky Nails and went shopping for plants and pots for her and John’s garden…. Tonight we are making BBQ’d salmon and corn on the cob and sitting on the porch to enjoy the fabulous weather. Yay!!! Bobby is working all day in the burbs or I’m sure he’d be with us. :( Too bad he has to work!
Anyway thanks to everybody for the birthday wishes and gifts. My nails are looking good all around! You made my day! Hope everybody had a nice weekend!
Last Night
Last night was fun…we went to Clybar with a bunch of people for Sachin’s 28th birthday party. We hung out there with everybody until about midnight and then went over to Mark’s house for my boss Andy’s birthday bash…people were wearing wigs and hula hooping on the roof and I believe I got a policeman’s hat and was wearing that around…can’t wait for the pictures (note the sarcasm << got that one from you – The Dawes). Anyway today Bobby and I are getting plans together for next weekend since our families will be in town. Yay! I think its gonna be great…I just have to figure out all the food, do a serious spring cleaning to the apartment, and figure out what/where everyone wants to go. We’ll have a full house…but it’ll be nice since we don’t often have lots of house guests.
Thought I’d include an updated picture of us, since I haven’t posted any lately. :) Hope everybody had/is having a great weekend! I’m going for a bike ride.
UPDATE: There are 485 photos floating around at work of my boss Andy’s birthday party…couple of embarrassing/funny ones of me too! …I’ll upload some later….but here’s one more for the road – bobby, rene, and me with a policeman’s hat on…haha. :)
Happy St. Patty’s Day + Happy Easter!
We didn’t do anything Easter-specific today …ya know, like color some hard-boiled eggs and hide them. We didn’t buy any chocolate bunnies or Cadburry eggs. We just woke up today and hung around the house….which I seem to be very interested in doing on the weekends lately. I really like having “us” time and “me” time. Maybe that’s lame, but I guess I’m ok with that. ;) Anybody do anything special for Easter? I assume my family back home is having a big lunch/dinner to celebrate and going to church together. I can see my mom rushing around with all the food and drinks and smiling really big. Wish I could be there with them!
As for last week, it was just a big work week with lots of design meetings that went surprisingly well. :) I get a little stressed when I know design presentations are coming up but my project managers usually take most of the stress off of me…they’re positive and well-spoken….one thing I hope to get better at with more practice.
We went out on Monday for St Patrick’s day (Isn’t that Kelley + Ryan’s 1 year anniversary!? – wow, time flies!) for some green beers with my friends from work – Rene, Jessica, Libby (and her finance Casey), and Bobby miraculously showed up at the end of the night to join us. Ended up at Howl at the Moon and got to see Jess for a bit. Lance was there too which was a nice surprise! I got a big foam hat and a bunch of beads and danced around a bit…ate some awesome chicken + cheese quesadillas. As you can see in the pic to the right – Bobby is also looking stylish in his foam hat, paired with his complimenting green soccer jersey. hahaha. I think it was a good night had by all…I’ll post some pics on myspace here in a minute. :)
Back home + happy
So, I’m home! Can’t believe I made it back in one piece with my crazy cats climbing all over the car – but here I am , in Chicago, in my office chillin…haha.
Had a great fun and relaxing weekend! Got into Findlay Friday real late and woke up early Saturday to go to lunch with Mom, Jen, and Alex (my adorable + awesome nephew) even though Mom had the flu and that was all I got to see her the rest of the weekend. :( I’ll have to get some extra “Momma Time” next time I visit. So after lunch we dropped mom off at home so she could sleep and we went to the famous Findlay Mall.
We picked out some new clothes for Jen’s birthday since her birthday’s next weekend and I’ll be in London….we about shopped til we dropped! The Findlay Mall doesn’t exactly have the best track record for cool stores but we found a lot of great stuff. Found two great outfits for Jen and I found this great clearance rack sweater for 14 bucks! Ding!
I had originally planned to go to my friend’s engagement party in Toledo but decided to stay in Findlay and hang out with my sis, since we never get to see each other and plus she’s super cool! So after the mall we went to dinner and Melinda drove up from Dayton to see me!!! Yay!! We originally were going to go to Tony’s Pizza/Ribs but that place was packed and we didn’t wanna wait 45 minutes…so we got back in the car and headed to Max and Ermas. I don’t remember anything except the 20 or so soft, warm, yummy, just-out-of-the-oven cookies that we got for desert at the end of dinner. God. Yum! They were soooooo good!
After that we said goodnight to Jen, Dave, and Alex and Melinda and I went back to my parents house with the intention of renting a movie from On Demand. We never quite made it to the tv…but instead decided to be huge dorks and just play on the internet the rest of the night and then go to sleep at 11. haha! …the WWW is so much fun. :)
Got up today and kinda lazied around with the fam and had a big pasta dinner (for lunch) and then sadly it was time to go home… And the cats were not happy about being in the car this time, they were pissed the whole time…I thought I was going to have to pull over and give them a talking to because they were meowing like insane balls of fury. I love them so much but they can be weird little animals…
Anywayzzzzz a BIG shout out to my sis who has lost 17 pounds and is looking fabulous as you can see in the above pic! Beautiful darling! Muah!
Hope everybody had a great weekend! Love Love Love – shells n cheese
Long Drive
…just got into Findlay, O-H-I-O….that was the longest drive of my life! I think its a huge shock to drive a 5-6 hour drive by yourself when you are usually sharing it with another person. It’s seriously mind-bogglingly boring. I did have my kitties with me (Phantom + Tex) who are awesome but can’t really have a conversation….except different kinds of meows. They were funny though, all over the car investigating the dash and the rear window making visibility sporadic and/or nonexistent.
I was driving Bobby’s car (which although it’s nicer than my car and has GPS) for some reason does not come with directions. I couldn’t figure out the cruise control so my right foot and ankle are totally numb right now. My phone also weirdly went into roaming mode about two hours ago and never came back so I couldn’t call anyone when I got sleepy. BOO! I hope the drive home on Sunday is much better. Sadly tonight I’m having lonely sleepy time because Bobby is in London (he should be calling me shortly to tell me he got there ok.)
One really great thing that happened tonight though was seeing my mom waiting for me at the door like the good ol days! I miss my family soooo much. So glad to be back for a visit!
Missed Wedding, London, & the Vera Wang Show
I just got Lance Lalanne and his girlfriend Casie’s invite to their wedding March 29th and I’m so bummed we can’t go. We never got a save the date card and it was just too late of notice to get it now. :(
Bobby has to work 2 midnight-8AM shifts that weekend for a major website release at work. If we would’ve had more notice we would’ve tried to talk to Bobby’s manager about scheduling someone else for that weekend but now it’s kind of too late to do that. We were really looking forward to going too…the wedding is near Mandaville, LA which is where Bobby’s family lives…and it’s been TOO long since we’ve been down there to visit, so it would’ve been really nice to go see the family…I guess we’ll have to pick another weekend. This month will be hectic with the London trip.
Yes, I did say London. :)
Bobby’s getting sent to London for work the first week of March so I am going to fly over there the second weekend he’s there and meet up with him. I’ve never been to London so I’m REALLY excited!! We’ve been looking online for a couple weeks trying to figure out what we can do and where we can go in the short amount of time we’re there. I’m sure it’ll be awesome! I still have to book my flight though…
Oh and I never told you guys about my weekend…which really, the only thing to tell is about Sunday night, when I went with Jess Large to the Trump Tower for the Chicago Style Wedding Expo…it was sooo much fun. There was a Vera Wang runway show, lots of champagne and all the brides to be got enormous “swag bags” that were full of goodies from all the wedding vendors. But I’ve never seen one this big. Anyway my project manager Jill and her friend Amanda were there and bumped into us so we hung out with them all night and ended up at Howl at the Moon singing and dancing. haha. I’m sure I made a fool of myself, but I had a great time and it was good to see Jess. We live 5 minutes from each other but don’t see each other enough!
I guess I ought to go to bed it’s 1AM. Night night. Sleep tight.