New Year, New You

For those of you not scoping me out in a Reader, you will notice my blog has a slightly new appearance, but more important, it has a new title. I am no longer blogging “Because my sister made me” so it was time to change things up. What better excuse to change things than the fact that it is a new year, a new decade, and that there is no time like the present.

Check out the About Me page to see what’s changed.

Coming soon: Resolutions!! Oy….

CHEERS TO A NEW YEAR! Overeat tonight while you still can.

Oh Nine

2009 has been a big year. Huge, really. Amazing, huge, fast, slow, memorable, stressful, happy, full of love. All these things and more. A year of firsts, and a year of lasts. 2009 will certainly be one for the books.

The beginning of the year wasn’t much special. In fact, it was sort of difficult. Snow, school, and my first semester away from Stockton since studying abroad in Rome the year before. Suffice to say, I went on a lot of dates this year, not with Stockton, but with this sexy thang.

Stockton and I climbed a mountain together. Probably the first of many that life will present us with, but both literally and figuratively, we are getting good at climbing. We make a good team.

I went blonde. And oy vey… Ain’t neva gonna happen again.

I went to California for the first time in my life.

I got engaged.

And then spent the better portion of two months walking around with my left hand in front of my face. Also, in front of everyone else’s faces. Sorry about that.

I let go of the rope (for at least 5 seconds… and at most 7).

He is still way better.

I thanked God that I have married parents, and in August, celebrated 27 years of their marriage and love.

I waited patiently with lots of anxious grandmas, grandpas, aunts and friends.

For this little punkin.

And when it was all over with, I was really, REALLY proud of her.

I watched my baby sister make a public declaration of her faith and get baptized.

And I thought to myself, “Wow… they really nailed it with her.”

I learned to sew and realized that if you leave me alone in a room with a sewing machine, a holiday and a baby, it will come out dressed as a turkey.

I got a perm and good Lord, I can’t believe it, but I’m putting a picture up of it.

I helped surprise my mom. 50 years and red hot. You get ‘em girl.

I spent my last few days as a student and finished with my sanity and my brain still in tact. Damaged and in need of major rehabilitation, but in tact nonetheless.

I spent my first of many Christmases with The Aerobat (and got another hairdo).

2009 has been a big year. 2010 will be bigger.

Happy New Year, count your blessings, and love each other. The best is yet to come.

Cheers.

Santa’s little helper

This photo is to serve as double duty of things that are yet to come:

1) I cut my hair. Bangs are the obvious change, but that was just today’s haircut. Yesterday’s served a whole different purpose. Yes, two haircut appointments in twenty-four hours, because something about putting my image in someone else’s hands is just so darned thrilling during a season where your picture will be snapped for posterity and memories long-cherished about twenty million times. More on that later, with (hopefully) some of those aforementioned Christmasy pictures to further show off the new ‘do.

2) My sewing machine has been my BFF lately because while my wallet has worked overtime to finish the Christmas SHOPPING nice and early, my little fingers are now busy, busy, busy MAKING the last of the goodies. Among the treats is a chair for my lil’ punkin niece. It’s extra special because it is a refurb from one of Maddie’s childhood toys (Is a chair considered a toy? But calling it furniture sounds too serious and… I don’t know… furniture-y). I think someday Avalon might pick up on the fact that for every occasion, she will have a handmade treasure or P.O.S. (depending on which school of thought you study at) from her aunty. It will probably become a Taylor family joke that “Ohhhhh dear, what has Aunt Courtney come up with now???” and Avalon will groan to her mother in 12 years and be all “MOMMMMMMMM Aunt Court made me the DUMBEST little t-shirt with Santa’s face and googly eyes on it!! MAKE HER STOPPPP!!!!”. No time to speculate on all that now, though, I have to take advantage of her being young enough that she can’t complain about it.

Anyway, just thought I would take a time out to say hello, and I hope Christmas festivities are Merry and Bright in your neck of the woods.

34

I am linking up to this post as a little memory refresher from a few months back. Something to the effect of: SCREW YOU SAINT MARY’S AND YOUR BOOKSTORE THIEVERY. Also, $1,062? Who wants +$1,000 to just lay around?

ME. I want $1,062 to be back in my possession. I want it bad. It’s Christmas, y’all and my bank account, it’s just…. starving.

In an attempt to go regain some miniscule fraction of the loot that I fed to my hungry, swollen-bellied Business Law book and its deadbeat friends in August, I attended the semi-annual “Book Buy Back” at Saint Mary’s College. The event where desperate college students go to whore out their educational libraries to try and accomplish one of two things: 1) Be able to give loved ones something other than a gently used textbook on Christmas morning or 2) Erase all memory that Strategic Business Management ever EXISTED in said student’s life.

Monday morning, I grabbed 5 books (Three huge, fat, VERY FRIGGING EXPENSIVE books and two paperbacks) and as per usual, had no idea what I would get in return. Sometimes it’s jackpot (as in, roughly 10% of the original cost… bleh) and sometimes it’s enough to make you want to hold up the bookstore at gunpoint and demand a refund for all the times they nickle and dimed you in the last four years and WHO GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO CHARGE $6 FOR A PINK ERASER!?!?!! But I digress.

Monday, it was the latter of the two scenarios. Because let’s just say my law book alone was over $300 I believe? And despite that outrageous amount spent on one, count it, one book, the sum total of my return was, BRACE YOURSELF, $34. No, I did not forget the zero at the end of that. No I didn’t even mistype the first number. That is a 3 followed by a 4 followed by a swift kick to the nuts of the man that dared offer me such an insulting number for my textbooks that I worked really hard to keep pretty so that they would be worth big money right about now.

Apparently, as the Book Bastard confirmed for me, Business text books are always being re-released because “the industry changes so much”. BAH! Let me summarize this process for you: Publishers change the illustration on the cover, smack another Edition number under the title and tell professors not to allow any other edition to be used in their classes. Lest we all forget, college students are among the poorest sect of individuals in society, and yet, they are being robbed blind. This is why I’m quitting school. This afternoon at 4:00. After my finals are done. Which I am not studying for* because I am blogging. Hi mom.

*Also because it is always around this time that instead of studying, I do some serious exercising of my middle school math skills and calculate my grade with all different scenarios of the final exam. Basically: How bad can I do on my final and still get a decent grade?? Given that it is now 7:04 and I have an exam at 8 in Business Statistics**, I can do pretty poor on it and still get by. As in, if I don’t show up, I still pass. I would say I am way ahead of the game for planning on attending.

** The only thing I can really tell you about the study of Business Statistics at this point in my life is pretty much nothing. Except that there is a high probability I will still pass the class given I know 0% about the subject, if you take the moving average of my grades over the past 3 months and find the trend line (which is probably a negative line). Interjecting statistical lingo into my cockamamie answers? That, my dear readers, is the golden ticket.

Spread the love

Hop on over to the Orange Tree Blog and see our exciting news!! Give my mom some props for her awesome display, while you’re there. She’s the bomb.

Why didn’t the turkey cross the road?

Cause she was too cute being the Loo and humoring her cooky Aunt Court.

Here is the almighty Loo, featuring her third Aunt Courtney Original. It’s tough having an aunt that makes you weird, holiday-themed clothes and then expects you to pose in them… I had an aunt like that too and by the time I got to understand what was going on, I hated everything about those gifts because they were a TRICK to make me look like an idiot in a jumper with tin foil pockets and matching hair bow. Now I understand where she was coming from, and I feel like I have become a traitor to nieces everywhere. How could I not make the punkin’ a turkey onesie this week though?!?! Especially since I won’t be able to celebrate her first Thanksgiving Food n’ Fat Fest with her, I needed to let her know I still care, and dang it, if applique and ric-rac do the trick, I’ll Heat-n-Bond her onesies all day long.

Pleeze don’t eet me, I’m too kyoot!!!!

**Side note on how special Aunt Courtney Originals in fact are, the turkey feathers are Avalon’s actual handprints. I know. Timeless keepsakes. I’m good like that. Here’s a better picture of the true artistry in this masterpiece:

Showing you the cool that is sewing

I know since becoming a sewer (not the poopy kinda, the kind with thread hanging off her clothes) you all think I have lost it and become an old grandma. I’m here today to tell you that this is not true, and to encourage ALL of you to explore your inner seamstress (or to pay someone like me to do this crap for you ).

This is my latest ::ahem, first:: refashion project ever. And I am totally jazzed about it. I sort of was inspired by something else I saw, but I totally took the ball and made it my own thing. See, Stockton used to play lacrosse for the Holy Cross Saints when he went to school there, so I had all the gear. Sweatshirt, t-shirt…. I guess that was it in terms of gear. But still, two whole articles of clothing that I cannot wear anymore! And as I am trying to move my way out of the lazy, sloppy, college kid wardrobe of hoodies and sweatpants, I figured I needed something to turn this sweatshirt into. Thus, a project was born. And, yes, ladies and gentlemen, since your curiosity is peaked, I will tell you: It was my new sewing machine’s maiden voyage. And she’s a beauty.

Before:

Well, I don’t really have a before picture, until Stockton sends me one and I’m pretty antsy right now. But just imagine a regular old sweatshirt.

After:

A little shawl/capelet/armless tube that I can totally picture at someplace like Urban Outfitters where they would charge me at least $65.

Now even though Stockton isn’t playing lacrosse anymore, I can support my honey’s former life as a college athlete. And look way cuter than if I were wearing his baggy old sweatshirt.

I can even wear my new creation as a cool infinity scarf.

My new sewing machine and I are so freakin cool I can’t even stand it.

And it cost me all of zero dollars (my favorite price).

Sorry Stockton

I read wedding blogs. I’m not sure why, other than I am getting married and feel like I have to participate to some extent in the psychosis that is frenzied, bridal madness. Some girls are FA-REAKS!!!!! I told my mom just the other day, I am always left speechless by the girls who FIXATE on their weddings for months and months and months. They agonize over the littlest details and drag all their friends, relatives, neighbors, vendors, and strangers down with them. I mean, I’m excited for my wedding because well, my parents know how to throw a good party, and it will be a blast. However, Stockton and I are a bit more interested in our MARRIAGE, not our WEDDING. See the difference? Wedding=one day. Marriage=FOREVER, people, RE-PRIORITIZE!!!! Just the other day in the store, I had a bride looking at personalized stationery as bridesmaid gifts (so cute, right? If my sisters didn’t regularly work in Orange Tree, I would totally be all over that) so I’m trying to make my pitch and was all, “I’ll print those for free, AND have them done in 24 hours, since I would imagine you are just doing the last-minute gifts now, right? Your wedding must be in what, a few weeks?” Oh, no. Her wedding isn’t until June. IT IS NOVEMBER! Don’t you have like, anything at all that you could better spend your time on right now? Maybe a job? A nap? Spending time with your poor fiance? ANYTHING!?

On the blogs I read, I get a lot of stupid suggestions for ways to display your engagement photos, real wedding pictures and color palettes, brides who give way TMI about their wedding dresses, brides who complain because the diamonds are falling out of their bedazzled engagement rings already, but today — Oh, where to begin with today’s blog. Let me preface the entire recap by saying that I understand it is customary to give your groom a gift on your wedding day. Up to this point, I had been thinking like, cufflinks, maybe a monogrammed hanky. Maybe both if I’m really feeling generous! Today’s bride suggested a gift of a TOTALLY different genre, and one that scares me to death.

Boudoir pictures. B-pics as my ghetto fabulous, skanky bridal blogger affectionately calls them.

So for the freak in us all, there are actually photographers out there who will take pictures of brides in NEARLY NOTHING for their husbands-to-be. I am against this idea for a number of reasons. First of all, HELLO SELF RESPECT!!!! Does anyone have any??? The rest of my “of-all’s” shouldn’t even have to be discussed. It’s sick. End of “of-all’s”.

This nasty bride posted pictures, which I saw against my will, of several B-pics of other girls (thought those were supposed to be for your husbands’ eyes only. But now they are floating around on the WWW. BACKFIRE!). The most modest of these pictures depict girls in WAY too much makeup wearing men’s dress shirts. They range from this to some dang near pornographic pictures, i.e. one of a woman’s big, cellulite-laden booty with her left hand on her left butt cheek (cheeky… get it?). The caption on this particular photo read: “Take a look at that engagement ring!”. Uh, what engagement ring?? All I see is more of another woman’s hind parts than I EVER wanted to see. These girls are not in Playboy for a reason… Not that I endorse Playboy or anything that it represents, but dang, at least those girls have firm butts!

Moral of the story, my dear Stockton, is that no. You will not be receiving B-pics from me. Not now, not on our wedding day, NOT EVER!!! Hope you like cufflinks.

Bet you thought I was dead

I don’t even think I can call myself a blogger anymore. Aren’t there like, governing rules that say you must blog every so-many days in order to maintain that title? If I were an educator, it would be time for me to renew my teaching license by now. BUT ALASSSSS, I am back. At least for tonight. Because I am in Professor Doobie McPrius’ class and there is nothing else for me to attend to other than catching up on all of the blawg business I have been neglecting. It’s actually somewhat sad because my fans ::ahem:: have been heralding me to write. One fan (Love you, Shelba), even suggested I post a picture of the length of my hair. Something. ANYTHING!

So, since there have been nothing but a bunch-o-crickets on Because My Sister Made Me for a while, I think I may be forced to summarize the last several weeks in a list. I will include pictures for the right-brained readers, because apparently I don’t appeal to right-brained people according to my sales professor, WHOM I HATE. I also end my statements with question marks. And sit in my hips when I stand. And have bad breath. I’m sure there’s more, just ask her. Guess I got the cart ahead of the horse there by jumping right into academic VENTING but it was bound to happen, so might as well just nip it in the bud.

So here we go, gang.

1. I turned another year older. We (Mom, Kaley, Maddie, the Punkin, and I) were in Florida to toast to another year. I may or may not have permed my hair seconds before this picture was taken. Let’s not talk about it.



Best aunt. Ever. No contest.

Party Pooper.

And no, it’s not from my birthday, but take a look at the Punkin rocking a blue hair bow to match the swimming pool water. So matchy-matchy, that one. HELLO FUTURE LINDSEY BENKO!!! You make your auntie so proud.

2. Mom turned another year older, too.

3. We celebrated with a part-ay, hey ho!! (First person to name the movie that is from will get a prize. Literally, I’m feeling generous, I might have my first EVER give-away). (And I bet it will go to Kaley, because I think she will be all over this one).

Surprise

4. For my birthday, I got a new sewing machine. That’s right MY VERY OWN SEWING MACHINE! Please, curb your enthusiasm. And I would like to note that I am 22. Not 82. Nothing wrong with being an old soul. Or getting really excited to open a case of multi-colored thread and seam rippers from my grandma. That’s normal for women my age, isn’t it???

5. I wrote a 72 page report on The Coca-Cola Company and my group’s proposed strategy for the company for my Senior Comprehensive, and came within paragraphs of jumping off the LeMans bell tower. Blech, 4 more weeks til I graduate. 4 more weeks til I graduate. Say it with me now!!!!

6. I saw my honey. He came the weekend I was writing the paper, which was due Monday. Bad timing for my paper to be due, EH?! But it was totally worth seeing him.

7. Had an awesome family photo shoot with Joanne of Josephiney Photography, who did Stockton’s and my engagement photos. Pictures to follow for that one.

Everything else was just a blur of running from class to work to pilates to class to group meetings to the dining hall to Chipotle to bed to Starbucks…. I’m ready for the blurred running around to END, y’all!!! 4 more weeks til I graduate. We all still chanting together on that one??

Next Tuesday, as in one week from this Tuesday, as in I just crafted my paper chain for counting down the next 8 days, I am going to Arizona for some Schultz family festivities. Can’t wait to see my hubby-in-waiting and spend my first holiday with his family. Also, this is the first family vacation with my future sister-in-law, Shannon, who will be marrying Stockton’s older brother, Max, in December. Can’t wait to have the whole group together for the first time.

I’ll try to blog again in the next 3 weeks. Maybe even a picture of my hair for Shelba.

You look:

Like a moron.

Dear adult college woman of Saint Mary’s,

While loungewear is a common sight on this female dwelled establishment, please refrain from ever committing this crime against humanity ever again. Fleece onesie pajamas with rubber soled feet and an airplane pattern is beyond inappropriate attire for walking around campus in the evening. My two month old niece has more mature looking sleepwear than this. If you would be so kind as to find the 4 year old boy who you stole this hideous monstrosity from, your sisters of Saint Mary’s would be tickled. One less unfortunate embarrassment for us to explain to outsiders.

Thank you, and goodnight.