Katie's 99 in 999 (currently 55 in 555!)

This goal seems pretty trivial, but I LOVE puzzles.  They're so therapeutic, which is why I should do them more often...and yet I never do, which is why I put it on my list. A few Christmases ago, I received "The World's Smallest 1000-Piece Puzzle" from my good friend Sara George-Kreider, and I'm ashamed to admit it took me almost two years to actually put it together.  Eventually, though, I did, and it was awesome!  It wasn't one of those stupid puzzles where the water and the sky look exactly the same and you put one in the wrong place and it throws the entire puzzle off.  Instead, there was a subtle but clear differentiation between what was water and what was not. It's the little things.

On the last Saturday in September (procrastination, as usual), Ricky and I made the 3 1/2 hour drive to the Orlando, FL temple for what threatened to be a supremely awesome day.  (For those of you unfamiliar with the purpose of LDS temples, there's a website !) It was hard leaving our dear Washington, D.C. temple behind--after all, we did get married there--but we were excited for the chance to make Orlando our "home base" for the next few years.     Not as impressive as the D.C. "towering over the Beltway" look, but still impressive! Isn't this place gorgeous?  You can't see the fountains in this picture, but the temptation to jump in them was pretty strong.  It was SO HOT. No Jensen outing is complete without an awkward, "look, we match" picture.   95% of the time this is a total accident. The temple was, as usual, amazing.  You know that feeling you get when you're on vacation and you realize that you have nowhere to rush to and n...

Not only did I get to attend this wedding, but I got to be in the stinkin' bridal party! Alaina (center) and bridesmaids.  Yes, Melanie, I heartlessly ripped this picture right off your Facebook. We--the bridesmaids and Lainy, that is--have all been great friends since ninth grade, and some of us go further back than that.  (Lainy and I became best friends in eighth grade, and used to talk about how she and I would each be a bridesmaid at the other's wedding.  How's that for fortune-telling?)  We all live in different places now, so spending a few days with these ladies was indescribably fantastic!  So many of my other close middle/high school friends (including the groom!) were at the wedding that we called it our mini-reunion.  It's amazing how you can be apart from people for so many years and then just pick up like you never left--I definitely hit the jackpot in the friend department.  They're incredible people.  I was too busy having the ...

I've never been a crafty person.  Ok, that's partly a lie--I'm actually fairly decent at crafts, but I'm definitely not the type to sew a new skirt on a whim or make my own thank-you cards or scrapbook all the details of my life.  I think the people that do those things are on-par with superheroes, only they save the world through coordinating colors of textured paper and cricut machines instead of boring things like flying and superhuman strength. The point I'm trying to make here is that I spend more time scrolling through craft blogs than I will ever spend actually making crafts.  I've come to the realization, however, that sitting at home by yourself all day gets really old, really quickly.  After watching the entire eleventh season of Law and Order: SVU in a grand total of three days, I decided I needed a new hobby, and then proceeded to decide that an awesome hobby would be making hair accessories for all of the bridesmaids in Alaina's wedding party...

This is Ricky. He's 25, loves the Yankees, takes out the garbage, does his own car repair, and enjoys wearing three-piece suits.  I know what you're thinking: "This guy may have all the appearances of being the best husband of all time, but does he really have what it takes?" Yes, ladies and gentlemen, he certainly does.  I present into evidence Exhibit A: These are tickets to Cirque du Soleil.   Cirque.  Du.  Freaking.  Soleil. Eight years ago, I spent New Year's with my family at my grandparents' house in Miami.  Because grown-ups are bound by law to drag their children to boring, grown-up parties that said children would rather not attend, I spent the first few hours of New Year's Eve down the street at a stranger's house being a mopey teenager.  After I had dutifully served my time, I cajoled my parents into letting me go back to my grandparents' house, at which point I enthusiastically began AIMing all my friends back home. (Remember wh...

If there's one thing I love--luckily, I love more things than that, but if there had to be just one, and it wasn't Ricky or my cat or my family or any of those things--it's Julie Andrews. I didn't mean for Home to be my September book.  In fact, I was really eying a Dostoevsky for this month, but Ricky and I made the mistake of going into Borders one night and I found this beauty on sale for five dollars.  I opened it up there in the store and proceeded to read for 20 minutes until they announced that the store was closing and I better buy the book or get the heck out.  After a tiny twinge of guilt for spending money on a book that I certainly don't need...I bought it anyway.  (It's a problem.) And it was AWESOME.  Julie Andrews had a fascinating childhood, and the way she writes is so astoundingly British that my inner reading voice actually develops a strong accent.  I love it.  Her children's book, The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles , is ...