Befores and Afters

Before:

Recently (July 23) I moved into a new house!! Not an apartment, not a townhouse, but an honest to goodness house, freestanding from any other buildings. So I got some pictures of the before and the after move-in.

Living room

Dining/living room

Bathroom

Spare Bedroom

Master bedroom

So there you have it..pre-move in pictures.

Along with moving in to a new house, I have started a new job :) As a Registered Nurse too!! I'll tell more about that later though.

Casey

Pictures to come soon!!

I do plan on having a blog very soon that actually has some pictures in it. It just requires a little more time than I am willing to put in right now. HOWEVER, I have taken lots of pictures so they will be here soon. Also, the plan is that I want to make a dish that everyone seems to love but I've never had the courage to make and I plan on documenting in pictures. :)

Preceptorship is done. It was amazing and I don't think I could've been placed with a better preceptor or in unit that I would have loved more. I learned so much and actually didn't mind getting up at 4:40am to get there. It was even ok when I had night shift and had to stay up all night and sleep during the day. Surprisingly, I slept from 9am until 5pm on the second day. Wow. Maybe night shift won't be so bad...

Second interview is today. After what felt like forever (but was really only about 9 days), I got a call back to schedule a second interview at Memorial for the Nursing Residency program. I'm not as nervous as I was before, but I'm sure it will come soon.

Hollie and Jordan are coming this week!! oh and I'm graduating too. Lots coming up...Interview today, Kat's Birthday tomorrow, Mom's birthday Wednesday, Alyssa and Aaron's engagement party thursday, Pinning ceremony friday, Graduation saturday... Lots of pictures to take :) Will post soon..I hope. :)

Life is hectic

So I know, I know, I know...I'm a terrible blogger. I don't have time for this and when I do have time, its not exactly on the top of my priority list seeing as how I don't have a lot of followers or anything. But here I am and in order for this post to be a quick one, there probably won't be any pictures.

What have I been up to since January when I last posted, well school mostly. But I am very happy to report that all the exams are done, I'm going to pass all my classes and graduate with honors on May 8, 2010. I thought that things would slow down once all the classes were done, but now I feel more busy than ever.

Frisbee has been going on too. We placed third in our last tournament and score 32 points in a row. It was a great weekend in charleston with a bunch of amazing girls.

Sophie has been back and forth between my apartment and my mom's house. She is so sweet but man she cries so much. I will be very excited when she grows out of this phase and is more content.

Right now the main thing is preceptorship. For those of you who don't know, my preceptorship is kinda like an internship. I was paired with a nurse at the hospital and I shadow her for 120 hours, doing everything that she does (i.e. patient care, charting, reporting off, etc.). Let me tell you, it has been amazing and I would love to have a job where I am right now. I am currently in the pediatric intensive care unit and Memorial University Medical Center in Savannah, GA. I love the nurses that work there and the patients that we take care of. Its not just the children, but the complexity of their illnesses that really challenges you to be a critical thinker. If not right away, I would love to work in PICU in the near future.

Speaking of work..I have a job interview today! I really hope that things go well today because this is a position that I would really like. It is at the same hospital that I currently work at as a nursing tech and also the hospital that I am preceptoring at. I'm nervous!

New Topic: Housing. I need a place to live. I fell in love with this one place, but someone else got it. I didn't feel secure enough to start signing papers without the guarantee of a job so I missed out. I hope I don't miss out on all the good places while I'm waiting to hear back from applications...

Well, that is my life right now in a nutshell. Wedding wise, there isn't much to report because nothing is really going on right now.

Cas

A DIY to satisfy any aspiring percussionist

This is a DIY blog. Now, you may be asking, "Casey, what are you going to make with bottle caps, a hammer and a beer bottle?" Well..it was all Duane's idea, I promise.

Duane got this great idea to make a bottle cap shaker instrument from a german percussionist, Roland Peil. He started with 200 bottle caps which he purchased off ebay. He used the old beer bottle to serve as a platform to nail a hole in each bottle cap. Talk about tedious, but he was very determined :)

I couldn't help at this point (but I did offer), because there was only one old beer bottle in the recycling. But, I did catch somebody napping, even with all the hammering going on downstairs.

Then I was able to help with the stringing process. He used fishing line cut into about yard-length strands and threaded the bottle caps on (about seven per line) with knots in between each cap.

When I was done threading a line, he took over, attaching the line to a rope and then using the left-over line to attach more bottle caps to the opposite side. Below you can see the final product! The whole project took about 3 hours of work (including the trip to walmart for the fishing line) and it cost about 15 dollars to make ($13 for the bottle caps and $2 for the fishing line, the rope he already had)

Lucky him, he's so happy with his new instrument.

My life has gone to the dog

Oh Sophie darling..You have taken over my life. And Duane's. (I'm not sure Duane is quite as happy about it.)

You make yourself look so cute and innocent. I wouldn't hurt a fly momma. (Yes, I often say out loud what I think Sophie is trying to say to me)
How could anyone say no to that face? Trust me, its hard when she's this cute, but it gets a lot easier when she is peeing on the floor or chewing up you clothes or your hand.
What are we going to do with you? Sophie you have officially taken over my room too. I might go crazy living in such a small space with a rapidly growing furry creature. At least (crossing my fingers) you're starting to learn how to entertain yourself.
But I guess you are part of the family now.

Its a Very-Merry Christmas Indeed!

So I definitely got some pretty awesome Christmas gifts. I feel so spoiled right now with all of this generousity. I got three really big, really awesome gifts. The first you already know about. A ring! The second is a Nikon D60 DLSR camera. I am in looove! But I'm even more in love with the totally unexpected gift....A PUPPY! OMG, there will be a whole blog dedicated to the beautiful little Sophie. But by far what was the best treat was getting to see my sister and brother-in-law. It was an unexpected trip for an unexpected death in Jordan's family and although we weren't excited about the reason they had to come, we were all very glad that they were able to be here!

We had an early Christmas on Saturday morning before their flight complete with breakfast casserole, coffee cake, and of course, fluff. It was so great to see them!

The next day there was even more Christmas at Aunt Dottie's house. There were so many adorable little children and Santa came to visit. Literally.

Complete with Sleigh-bells

Canidates for Mrs. Clause?

And plenty of excited children...

Engagement!!

This is a super quick post, cause I have an exam in 40 minutes...BUT I wanted to post up that Duane and I got engaged!!! It happened saturday night and there are definitely more details to come (when I don't know cause this week is packed with stuff). Anyways, I really love what Hollie wrote about it and she has some pictures up already so go check out her blog, and I really will try to get back to blogging soon. Love Ya'll

Future Mrs. Duane <3