Xmas Card

Hoo Me Christmas

Make a statement with Shutterfly Christmas photo cards.

View the entire collection of cards.

Florida Trip May 2010

Click here to view this photo book larger

Shutterfly Christmas Cards

Hi all. I haven't written much lately, but I wanted to take the time to post about upcoming Christmas cards! I know Thanksgiving isn't even here yet, but I'm a planner and I like to have my cards in hand by Thanksgiving so we can address them that weekend and send them out on December 1st!

I have used Shutterfly for many years for my pictures and for calendars for gifts. But this year, they have a HUGE selection of Christmas cards and I am very excited to use them for my Christmas cards this year. Their quality is amazing and the paper is SO NICE!

Here's a link to see some of their great card designs! http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery . You can see some of their new calendar designs here as well:  http://www.shutterfly.com/calendars/wall-calendars. The awesome thing about the calendars is that you can personalize your calendar with all the birthdays and anniversaries and doctor appointments already printed on there. AND they even save that information for the next year, so that when you go to create your calendar a year from now, you don't have to keep adding Uncle Tom's birthday. 


I am very excited to make our cards this year with Shutterfly and I hope you guys join me!

Pictures of our Open House

Instead of pasting the pictures here, I had a trial of my .mac account with my new computer and so i have a slideshow there.

This is as clean as our house will ever be :)

Enjoy!

Click here to open it up

Some help for our cause...

Hi all. I just wanted to ask you guys if you could sign two petitions. They are important to us because as you all know, we are coming up on the one year anniversary of the loss of our baby bean. These are things we really believe in and will only take you about 1 minute to sign both. This would mean a lot to us.

The first is a petition for google to do one of their "doodles" for the March of Dimes to raise awareness.

(from the March of Dimes website)
The rise in premature births is reaching epidemic proportions. It's time we think big for tiny babies. The idea is simple. Each year half a million babies are born too soon. Each day millions of pages on Google are seen the world over. Join the petition to convince Google that the crisis of premature birth is worthy of the top spot on November 14th!

You can see what the google doodles are here:
http://www.google.com/holidaylogos.html

The petition is here:
http://www.marchofdimes.com/forms/signPetition.asp

The other is to get Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, October 15th made a national holiday. (You can see my name on this one as I'm #8,511!)

And the petition is here:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/557217746

Thanks everyone. This is an issue so dear to our heart that just a moment of your time could help women who suffer loss like me.

NJ Visit August 2006 -- Riverbend I, II & III

Riverbend I, II & III



I love this place. This would be my first choice. The only problem with it is (SURPRISE!) it's on the high end of our budget. Like right there :) But it doesn't fail that I like the most expensive place. The amenities here are one of the big draws for me. They have one HUGE fitness center with yoga and kickboxing classes included in the rent, two smaller fitness centers, three swimming pools, business centers, 24 hour concierge, indoor basketball court, huge club room with a pool table and AMAZING views of NYC, and a movie viewing room that has free movies every friday night that have just left the theater. This place also has this Roselink package that includes a T1 internet connection, DirectTV with 7 HBO's, 4 phone lines, intrusion alarm, in wall surround sound speakers, all included in the rent. This is right on the water, has a huge promenade to walk along, with benches to sit on along the way. Just amazing really.

We looked at a one bedroom that was 773 sqft to get an idea of the fixtures and everything. The apartment we are considering for this place is the one bedroom that has a "sitting room" attached and is 949 sqft. So it would be much bigger than the pictures below. Also, we are considering one of the smaller two bedrooms, but we didn't get to see one of those.

Here is the floorplan of the pictures you will see below.


Living/Dining Room



Kitchen


Bathroom


Laundry stacked in bathroom closet


Bedroom with a cal king in it


Big closet


Right outside of the apartment building, view of PF Changs


View of building where we just were


This is the floorplan of the one we are interested in.


This is the two bedroom we are interested in as well.

NJ Visit August 2006 -- The Landings at Port Imperial

We like this place a lot. This is probably in the top 3, and especially since we loved the management. The location is pretty great. We really liked the location of these, a very hip area and lots of new development. Tons of great shops and restaurants. Nice floorplans, nice community grounds, amazing pool view of NYC, promenade along the water, and it's the closest place to the ferry to NYC, which is what I would take to work. One problem here is that there didn't seem to be too many floorplans available, but she said that changes often. One downside to this place is there is no fitness room at all (or indoor pool). So this is one thing that has me a bit down about it.

The floorplan of the pics below:


OMG THE VIEW FROM THE POOL!!!!


Laundry room


Pantry or Linen closet, I dont remember :)


Kitchen



Closet


2nd bath


Living/Dining room


Master Bath (I'm so annoyed at the wasted space in here!!! It's just DUMB!)

NJ Visit August 2006 -- Half Moon Harbour

Then it was on to Half Moon Harbour. Ok, so we liked this place. We weren't completely overwhelmed by it, but it was nice. It's on the water and a lot of them have great views. There was basically one floor plan we really loved here and we were told it's much sought-after and it's also on the upper range of our budget. The thing with this place is that we didn't care for the other floorplans very much, so if this one wasn't available, I don't think we would go with this place. But we aren't ruling it out.

The floorplan, which is a corner unit with amazing views.


The master bedroom and closets


The master bedroom windows


Master bathroom (they were still cleaning up this place. the people had moved out the day before)


The utility closet that has almost a closet in there too, so lots of storage.


The kitchen



OMG THE VIEW OF MANHATTAN!!!!


Living/Dining Room (I'm standing in the dining room taking the picture)


2nd bedroom. (yes, it's pink it was a little girls room)


2nd Bathroom

NJ Visit August 2006 -- Mariner's Waterfront Rentals

Next we saw Mariner's Waterfront Rentals. This is the place that I really liked online, so there was a big expectation here. Again we saw two different floor plans here and I'll talk about them separately below.

The management was nice and the apartments were spacious. There are two different parts of this property. One is the garden apartments about a 1/2 mile down the road from the leasing office. And the other is a tower building that is on property with the leasing office. It's hard to group them together. So I will split up the paragraphs.

The garden-style apartments are about 10 years old. They are in the process of remodeling the interior hallways of these places, so that will help with the feel as well. These don't have any views, but are on the water, so you could easily walk to the water. The interiors are very nice, they have decent sized as good closets and good sized balconies.

So here are some pictures of the garden style apartment (2 bedroom).

The floor plan first:


The outside of them. (Big balconies)


One of the bathrooms


The breakfast nook with the kitchen to the left


The kitchen


The Living Room with the balcony off of it. Love the hardwood floors, love the light. This particular unit looked onto the street and was on the 2nd floor, but it was pretty quiet.


One bedroom


Big closet


Master Bath


The tower apartments are WOW! We really loved the tower apartment. We saw a small one bedroom (715sqft) and it was laid out so nicely that it seemed so much bigger than other ones we've seen, even bigger than 2 bedrooms. The tower itself has a huge fitness room, an indoor pool and an indoor jacuzzi for the community to share. LOVE the location of the towers. Great restaurants in walking distance, bank next door, 24 concierge, etc.

Ok, so here are the pictures of the tower apartment we looked at. The one we saw was 710sqft, but the one we really want to move into is a one bedroom with 965sqft. (no pictures of the larger one, and no floorplans online of these.)

The view out of the one bedroom we saw. That is the George Washington Bridge there. This is considered the "lesser" view. We loved the view :)


Same apartment, just turned to the right on the balcony.


The living room and kitchen. (keep in mind that this one is 250 sqft smaller than the one we like. and ignore the shopping carts. they are for the painters who are in there getting this apartment ready for the next people)



Closet


Bedroom view/window


Kitchen