NOW it's fixed.

I was wrong before. About the a/c being fixed. As it turns out, when you are woken up by the sound of someone weed-eating outside at 5am, you should maybe consider that it's not, in fact, a weed eater that you hear. You should maybe consider the options and perhaps investigate the strange noise. I didn't go that route, I chose instead to go back to sleep. It was when Bryan woke up 2 hours later that he discovered the sound was coming from our a/c unit...whoops! And that's the story of how we woke up to a super hot house because the a/c is officially broken now. 


Well, not "now" anymore thanks to our fantastic family! I love having a big family because someone always "knows a guy". Bryan's grandpa spread the word last night when Bryan called about pointers for increasing a/c efficiency, and good timing too since the a/c promptly went out as soon as we thought we fixed it. Aunt Sheri knew a guy and he was able to be out here today for minimal super-hot-house-time. It turns out the capacitor (flux capacitor?) went out and that means the fan wasn't moving, which means it's broken. But now it's fixed and cooling nicely!


We really appreciate all the effort and everyone who cares about us so much to make our a/c a priority on a Saturday :) 

There, we fixed it.

For a second, I thought we were idiots.


Our a/c has been struggling lately - side note: You know what? When I mention that our a/c isn't working well, how about you don't say, "Yeah, nobody's is" or anything to that effect. It's not that I don't have empathy for other people in this stupid-hot weather (I do! everyone is hot and I get that), it's that I'm 8 months pregnant, I'm sweaty, I'm hungry, and I'm in a bad mood about it. Okay, being hungry only sort of matters in this particular situation, nonetheless it's a state of being that I am constantly in these days and it can be unpleasant.


For the record, our a/c isn't "broken" "yet". It cools to a pleasant 74 at night, it's during the hot part of the day (111 yesterday! wtf?) that it won't get below 80, which isn't SO bad if you're just sitting. It's when you have to move around or use the stove/oven (this is where being constantly hungry can be unpleasant) that it gets stupid-hot.


Anyway, so I thought we were idiots. For just a second. Then I started sweating and decided that we aren't. Here's what happened: We went to the store to buy a fan so that Bryan and I can each have one blowing on us constantly. The fans are on the same aisle as the air filters. You may see where this is going. 


Me: "How long has it been since we changed our air filter?"
Bryan: "I dunno. How often are you supposed to change them?"
Me: "I dunno. Do you think that makes a difference in the temperature?"
Bryan: "I dunno. Let's get one just in case."
Since having this conversation though, I've googled how often you're supposed to change your air filter and I got results ranging from every 30 days to every 6 months. So I still don't know.


We elected to purchase a new air filter on the off-chance that it had been too long. How do you know it's been too long? When the dirt and lint build up on your current filter is so thick that it can speak to you. It had been too long. We changed the filter, and Bryan did some more research about increasing a/c efficiency. It turns out that if you open all the vents, it circulates the air better. Seems obvious. Not to us! So we opened the vents. We thought our problems were solved and we devised a plan to tell our friends and family that we had a repair man come out and fix it rather than admit that we're just dumb. 


Well, as it turns out, we never got the chance to lie to our friends and family. It's still 80 degrees and I'm sticking to my chair. Only because I already sat down and forgot to bring the fan with me. At least we have a clean filter though! And, if you stand right under a vent it feels real nice. And now we each have a fan. And 80 degrees can actually be quite pleasant with the fan blowing in addition to the vents and ceiling fans, in fact it can even be a little chilly if you're just sitting, so I'm not complaining at all. We also have discovered the positive effect of taking a cold shower, which is a double bonus because it forces me to take a shower at least once per day. Don't judge me.


Cost of DIY repair: $30 for the fan and air filter
What the repair man quoted us: $69 for the service call, then who knows what it would cost for the actual "repair"


I think it's safe to say:
Team Hoskins - 1
A/C Repair Man - 0


We're gonna have to get another fan for Mylo. 


I'm kidding, if it's still this hot when he gets here, we will definitely have a professional come out. I don't want anyone thinking I'm a bad mama right off the bat. I'm sure there will be plenty of "oops his diaper is on backwards" and "don't eat that!" and "I don't know how he got that bruise, but there's a chunk missing from our coffee table and I think it may be related" in the future to prove that. 


Oh, and we have super nice neighbors. They offered suggestions on how to fix the a/c - Drew is what some may call "handy", while we are definitely not. AND they offered us a place to stay for the night if it got too hot. Thank you to Drew and Jennifer! :)

Quarter of a Century

Can I just say that I've never looked forward to Winter in my life? I'm perfectly happy if I never see snow again. That is, until I experienced being 7 1/2 months pregnant in the second hottest Summer North Texas has ever seen. And we haven't even finished August yet! Our home a/c just can't keep up - we asked it nicely to go down to a comfortable 75 degrees and it can't seem to get any lower than 81. FAN-tastic. Literally, I have to take a fan with me wherever I go in the house. 

Anyway, so I've never looked forward to Winter until now. Especially because yesterday was my birthday and Bryan got me this sweet new hat! 

I Went with funny face because none of the smiley pictures I took were satisfactory. 

Also I'm wearing my Mario t-shirt standing in my Mario themed room. I should take this opportunity to remind you that I am a 25 year old female. 

What?

It was pretty much the best birthday ever. Brit-the-Bestie came down for a surprise visit to come to the baby shower and take me out for birthday cheesecake. She and Bryan coordinated this behind my back, and although there was a brief scare that I may have found out the plan (I didn't), it all worked out in the end.

I also bought myself a Cricut - which is pretty much the bomb dot com when it comes to crafting supplies. And you know how I love a good deal - it's a $250 thingy that I got on Ebay for $60! And as a special bonus, there were 4 coupon inserts in the Sunday paper this week. Ebay and the Dallas Morning News must have known it was my birthday. 

The rest of my birthday included Star Wars, Super Mario, the biggest Half Price Books ever, cupcakes, crafts, office supplies, and Harry Potter all thanks to Bryan! So yeah, it was pretty awesome.

And now that it's over I'm just a 25 year old sweaty pregnant lady. Sweatin' for two, like a boss.

Baby Shower #1

We had Mylo-party #1 this last weekend and it was such a good time! Since both of our families are huge, we split the showers into one for my side and one for Bryan's side. Big shout out thank you to Barbara, Terri, Lindsay, Jenny, and Becka for helping put it all together :) 


We invited men come to the shower too because Mylo's a boy and I didn't want him to feel lonely. Also, it was more of a party than a "shower", so that was super fun. Beer and margaritas FTW! Well, not for me, but for everyone else.

And now for pictures!

Errbody getting food ready! Barbara is just testing out the margaritas. You know, just to make sure they're safe. She can always be counted on to take one for the team ;)

Onesie clothes line!

It's hard to see, buy my fave is the pink one on the end that says "don't judge me". That was Jenny's. Well, not Jenny's onesie, but one that Jenny made. 

This might be my favorite bit:

It's from a bakery, so no judging my family! At one point it said "Mylo", but then Texas Summer happened and the icing melted into a blobby swirly mess. If you look real hard you can kinda see it. Maybe we can get it on Cakewrecks and Mylo's party #1 can be etched in internet history forever! Or maybe it already is...

Holy balls look at all them presents!

Mylo is gonna be all stocked up!

I love that my friends embrace how geeky I am, and what a fun little geekling I will most certainly produce.

I opened a couple of gifts, but Bryan was way more fun to watch. 

Bryan: "Hey look, bottle toppers!" 

Me: "Um, those are nipples." 

Bryan: "Hey look, nipples!"

This, of course, has nothing to do with nipples. It's a car seat base which is equally as important as nipples.

Nipples.

And one last picture:

Robin, Brit, Andrew, me, and my big ol' belleh! 

I wasn't great about taking pictures the whole night, so this is really the only posed one, but I like it. 

Thanks to everyone who came and for all the awesome gifts. Mylo's gonna be one well dressed lil dude rollin' in style in his sweet new stroller! We have one more shower coming up soon and then we can finish putting his room together!

Bear-Cut Round 2

Since we have a baby on the way (omg 2 months!), we have been looking for ways to save money lately because, as it turns out, babies are quite the money pit. One of those ways is to avoid the $60 professional groom for Bear. You may remember the last time we tried home-grooming, though...


This time I used scissors instead of an electric razor. He was a good boy, as per usual, and let me cut away as he just sat there in my lap. So without further ado:

Before:

He wouldn't come out from under our glider...I think he suspected it wouldn't end well if he did. Just look at all that hair though! Poor guy, that's no way to go through a Texas Summer.

After:

Okay, so it's not the greatest job. He got fidgety when I got up to his face, so that's why it's all uneven. His fault.

...

My poor dog.

In actuality, he likes it. He is more energetic outside and doesn't get overheated as easily - a vast improvement from his last DIY haircut that resulted in him hiding under our bed and not eating for 2 days.

From September Til Now

Well, it's been nearly a year since I updated the blog-o-rama. I suppose I just got busy and kinda forgot about it...So much has happened though! Let's do a quick recap of the past 9 months:


Last fall I painted 4 new murals: 

Fairies! 

Tree House! It's an under-the-stairs crawl space converted into a kids play area. Love it!

Ariel! 

Flowers! This isn't as much of a mural as it is accents painted around the room.

I am currently working on a new website, meghanhoskins.com, so stay tuned for more pics of all the murals I've done - maybe one day I can be a successful artist!

Last fall Bryan went to Nashua/Boston to visit his best friend, Daniel, who moved up there a couple of years ago. 

He was really excited to see all the different colors of leaves. There aren't any pictures of him and Daniel together because "men don't do that".

And then it was Christmas! 

Bryan Claus

Bear-a-Claus

Christmas plywood character cut-out overload! But since Wall-E and Up are in my top five favorite movies, I forgive them. Because I know they care about my forgiveness and approval.

I would also like to thank all of my friends and family who ordered holiday cookies from me last Christmas! I was cookie-making in almost all of my spare time, but it was totally worth it and you guys are awesome.

After Christmas we had snowpocalypse 2011. Four days straight of not driving anywhere because Texans just don't know what to do when it snows/ices. I'm not making fun, I'm one of them. You actually may remember this from the news, it was Superbowl weekend.

This car is actually parked in the road (note the mailbox). I'm assuming that they couldn't get enough traction to get up the small curb to get in the driveway. 

The ice - at least 3" thick here- hiding secretly under the 8" of snow. 

Our backyard on the 3rd or 4th day after we were done playing. We are adults without children...what?

So that was all fun and games until...

My office flooded...

From the ceiling. Twas a burst pipe due to the cold weather I'm told. This took 100% of my time and energy to deal with, so I suppose this could be a contributing factor to the lack of blog updating. 

Oh, that and I'm pregnant. They aren't lying when they say it's exhausting! 

This was taken about 2 months ago. I'm a lot bigger now - just in time for Texas Summer! I've already lost count of the number of days it's gotten over 100 degrees, thank goodness for air conditioning!

When we found out I was pregnant we booked a baby-cation/baby-moon trip of awesomeness as one last big trip for just the two of us. We went on a Southern Caribbean cruise that left out of San Juan, PR. It was the best! Lemme tell you, a cruise is the BEST value vacation to go on when you're pregnant - ALL you can eat, ALL the time! Here are a few highlights, we took a zillion pictures but I won't bore you with all of 'em.

We are happily riding the bus in Barbados!

Big ol' belly.

It seems like everywhere we went the beer was buy one get one free, so Bryan lucked out and got to have both :)

We would highly recommend this cruise to anyone! It was the Carnival Victory out of San Juan visiting St. Thomas, Barbados, St. Kitts, St. Maarten, and St. Lucia. The only thing I would say is don't bother with Puerto Rico. We stayed an extra couple of nights in San Juan after our cruise and it was disappointing. Or, if you're really interested in San Juan, go a day early and do it at the beginning of the trip, that way you end on the high note of the cruise. 

I also just got back from visiting my bestie in Kansas. That was super fun, but we don't have any pictures because "women don't do that" either, apparently. She painted my toenails, which was nice because I can't reach them in my current state. I got a tour of Ft. Riley and went to my very first Commissary and PX! It was a fun, relaxing trip. 

So that brings us up to now-ish. I'm due September 17 and it's a boy! Mylo Robert Hoskins is the name we've settled on and we're both super excited! 

Bryan is currently looking for a full time teaching job (as opposed to the substitute teaching he's been doing) and he's had a couple of interviews so far, so wish him luck! It's a tough time for teachers here in Texas, but there are a handful of positions open and I just KNOW one of them is for Bryan!

Thanks for reading, I'll be more consistent about updating now. Promise. 

GAH, I'm such a cliche.

I had a friend a while ago that said she wasn't sure if she wanted to be my friend because I have blonde hair and I wear and like the color pink. For someone who seemed to be very open-minded, she seemed pretty particular on the color of her friends hair - I thought that was weird and it became kind of a joke between us. We were pretty good friends for a while until life took us in different directions and we drifted apart. Well, it has come to my attention recently that she was right, I am a cliche, just not the one she was so adverse to. This realization came after the first yoga class I took - I am an artist, I try to be "green" (despite my penchant for "pink", heyo!), I do yoga, and my Toms are so worn out that I might as well be barefoot. I feel like I should just jump on board and be a vegan at this point (Although I don't think I will, I just can't wrap my head around veganism (veganism? I think I just made that up), sorry PETA). At least I recognize and accept this, right? So, without further ado, some cake and art I've done recently:

Minnie!

This cake is egg free, so that's a bonus! It has been different to work with egg-free cake mixes (I've done 2 cakes without eggs so far) because it comes out super dense and heavy.


Also, a while ago I mentioned that I painted our guest bedroom with a Mario mural. What? I just really like Mario. Call me a gamer, call me a n00b, I don't care, Mario's fun.

This is the first wall to the left when you open the door:

I think my favorite part of the whole mural is the mushroom.

Mario and Bob-omb are on the wall opposite the door, so they are the first thing you see when you walk in.

Wall 3 had a built in shelf that I painted like a ledge for my Goomba.

This is the corner between wall 3 and 4, see the ledge?

And this is a close up of the Koopa Troopa on wall 4.

For the most part, this mural is finished. Since it's at my house and not a client's, I might go back in some day and add little touches because sometimes I get bored looking at the same thing all day. :) For instance, don't you think it would be neat to paint the inside of the closet like the world Mario goes in when he goes down a warp pipe? Since the warp pipe is right by the closet door I think it is especially fitting.

More of my cake and art pictures are here: http://www.artifolio.com/meg

Next time I'll post a Bryan update!