Nope.  I’m not talking about that list of qualities your fairytale in-laws possess in your dreams… You know, the dreams where eating organically isn’t considered “hippie” and you and your mother-in-law share the exact same tastes and shoe-size?  No?  Just me?  Humph.

I’m talking Christmas Wish Lists + The In-Laws… i.e.: Sticky Situation in the Making, right?

Telling Evs’ parental units what I want for Christmas continues to be awkward for me… This is definitely one of those aspects of marriage that I never considered when we got engaged.  Last year, I was overwhelmed by the generosity of his mom and dad.  However, while I do love a pretty package under the tree with my name on it, if it were 100% up to me, I wouldn’t make any specific requests from my new side of the family for the holidays.

However, my Mother-in-Law insists upon the submission of a Christmas Wish List prior to Halloween.  Yep, we have an Early Shopper on our hands.  Which, kudos to her - I always find myself, eight days before Christmas, circling the mall parking garage aimlessly, stalking exiting shoppers for their parking stops and beating my head against the steering wheel in time to Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.

Ahem.

Anyhoo, as instructed, I recently submitted my In-Law Wish List.  As always (”always” being relative since really this is my first year to have technical “in-laws” but whatever), I followed the Three Cardinal Rules of Gift-Requesting-From-Non-Blood-Relations-You-Don’t-Have-Sex-With:

(1) Lots of options
(2) Lots of price-points but nothing over $50
(3) No clothes (don’t ask me why - just feels weird)

Now, without further adieu… The In-Laws Wish List!

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A funny thing happened last week when I was in Boston for a conference. After finishing up my work as quickly as possible, I burst out of the hotel to explore the streets of one of my favorite cities. I found myself smiling at old places, mesmerized by new ones, and… shivering. Violently. My cute little jacket with the pretty lapel and two little buttons and no lining? Not really doing much of anything in the face of Beantown wind. But I pressed forward, committed to the task of reacquainting myself with my old college town, and simply walked faster to generate more body heat. Only, um, well…. my feet hurt. A lot. Of the searing pain and bursting blister variety. Those cute “so practical!” heels on my poor feet? Boston was laughing at them. Actually, between the tiny jacket and impractical shoes (with bare feet inside them, of course) that I was sporting in America’s best walking city, the natives were all but pointing at me and laughing. And I used to call myself a Bostonian…

What my wardrobe debacle brought up for me was how much I’ve gotten accustomed to the climate and way of life in Dallas. I lived in Boston for six years, but did it ever occur to me to pack a wool coat or gloves for my trip? Nope. Did I pack even a single pair of flats in my suitcase? Nope. Why this matters is that we’ve set our sights on the Northeast as our next stop on the newlywed train. That means my closet full of fun, lightweight dresses and shoes unfit for a walking city are going to start gathering some dust. Time to take a refresher course on all things boots, tights, layers, and coats. I guess that means my cold weather footwear fantasy will have to substitute these:

For these:

Tell me: How has your wardrobe adjusted with big moves over the years? What do you miss about your old look, or look forward to about your next one?

Let’s say, hypothetically speaking of course (cough, cough), that you were a complete idiot and lost your engagement ring.

Thankfully the insurance gods smiled down at you and accepted your claim. Now you have a pocket full of money and a shit ton of options as to what to do with it.

Would you…

A. Create an exact replica of your lost ring? Why?

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Hi everyone! My name is Maggie, and I’m thrilled to join the ranks of fabulous women over here on EAD Living!

If my mug over on the right looks familiar, that’s because I recently recapped my May 2009 beach wedding for EAD Weddings. (Do campaign logos, red and blue patterns, and DIY crafts galore ring a bell?) I also hang out full-time at The Freckled Citizen, so you might know me from that red- and blue-splashed site, too (what can I say, old habits die hard).

Now that wedding madness is behind us (although admittedly, we have yet to print a single wedding photo… not quite sure what we are waiting for!), I’m a busy girl. There are work demands, sure, but there’s also kitchen adventuring, weekend getaways, girls’ nights out, and that ever-present question: What’s Next?

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(image via Flickr)

A few weeks ago, my husband went on a business trip for a couple of days. I was dreading sleeping alone again; J hasn’t been deployed in quite a while and I’ve gotten used to spooning before we drift off to dream world.  To my surprise, the first night he was gone, I had the best sleep that I can remember having in a long time. It was one of those sleeps where you wake up in the same position in which you fell asleep. I didn’t toss or turn or wake up in the middle of the night. I experienced a blissfully deep slumber. Was it because I was alone in the bed?

According to a recent study by Dr. Neil Stanley at Surrey University, sleeping in a separate bed from your partner can be beneficial to your relationship and to your health, as sharing a bed can lead to harmful sleep disturbances. “Poor sleep is linked to depression, heart disease, strokes, lung disorders and accidents,” says Dr. Stanley. Plus, if you’re tired, you’re more miserable, he explains, and that can lead to divorce. Divorce caused by sharing a bed?!

Unlike this writer’s husband, J has never unintentionally punched me in the face in the middle of the night. However, he does sleep smack in the middle of the bed, leaving me with less than half of the mattress’s surface area to claim as my own space. He radiates heat in the summer and steals the blanket in the winter. But he’s the best at cuddling before we fall asleep and the first person I want to see when I open my eyes in the morning.  So what if every night I don’t experience the best sleep of my life? I think I’d be more miserable if we slept in separate bedrooms — or worse, in separate twin or double beds in the same room. So near yet so far! Although there is something to be said for having a room of one’s own…

How does sleep affect your marriage?

At the wedding I shot on Saturday the DJ leaned over as I was signing the guestbook and asked “When are you getting married?” He inquired, of course, hoping that I was in the middle of wedding planning and looking for someone to provide some music for the big party.

Why would he ask this? Because my left hand still looks like this.

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Do I mention a lack of time in all of my posts? When I was pregnant and dreamed of being a stay at home mom, I thought I’d have all this time to make dinner and when my husband got home from work I’d meet him at the door wearing my high heels and beautiful dress with my delicious meal waiting on the table for him. The baby would be peacefully napping and the dogs will have been fed and snoozing on the floor. But I don’t live in Stepford and I’m not perfect.

After we got married, we were pretty much on our own every night for supper. I got home a lot earlier than my husband did and I was usually ready to eat well before he ever came home. He’d come home around 8:00 p.m. and not be too hungry, so he’d eat a bowl of cereal. Unless we went to a restaurant, we usually weren’t eating together. But when the baby was born, I wanted to make family dinners a priority.

I have cooked one meal since the baby was born. One. To my credit, our friends brought meals to us for twenty days after the baby arrived. We didn’t have to think at all about what we were going to eat. It was just there.

Now that he is two months old, it’s about time I figured out this time management thing. Now, I’m not going to say anything to stir up a debate about who has more free time between stay at home moms or working moms, but I will say that I’m busier than I’ve ever been in my life. My free time happens when the baby takes a nap. I know it will get a little easier as he gets older and is able to play more and entertain himself for a few minutes, but right now he needs me every second of every day.

Meal planning is the answer to my Stepford dream. On Saturday, I make a list of the meals that I want to prepare during the week and the ingredients needed for each meal. On Sunday, I grocery shop for everything I need and on Sunday night, I begin the preparations for Monday night’s meal. Having the necessary ingredients at hand is essential. I definitely don’t have time to zip down the street to the grocery store to pick up the green onion that I forgot.

Because there are only two of us, we can eat leftovers for at least one day. There’s no need for any food to go to waste. I’ve got a stack of some good recipes that can be split into two casserole dishes so one can be frozen for a later date. So while the baby naps, I get dinner started and I finish up when my husband comes in from work. As he progresses with his milestones, I will have a little more time to get back into cooking and will be able to move away from casseroles and back into fixing delicious pork tenderloin and fresh vegetables.

How do you make it work for your family? Do you manage to get dinner on the table every night?

A month later, the cat is out of the bag. I got married and I didn’t change my name. (*insert shock and awe *) I will come right out and admit that it I find it rather insane that in 2009, people still assume that I changed my name just because I got married. Honestly, in the last month I have found myself outright stunned by the large contingency of people who are taken aback upon learning that, no, I did not in fact change my name. How is it that such a thing is still somehow shocking, surprising, perhaps even a little taboo? As if retaining my maiden name somehow makes me less married than had I forfeited my name to take another. So, I’m just going to put it out there - no, I didn’t change my name. And honestly? I think it’s one of the best decisions I ever made. Not that this was a decision I entered into lightly. It was a source of great debate and personal reflection, but in the end, the decision was clear.

{Source unknown}

My great debate about whether or not to change my name was not something I publicly discussed nor blogged about before I was married. In fact, it took me a while to figure it out myself. I had a lot of mixed emotions at first, but in the end it was a surprisingly easy decision. I debated changing my name, but keeping my maiden name professionally. I debated taking my maiden name as my middle name. One thing I didn’t consider was hyphenating - it would have required far too many syllables for my taste. Ultimately, the only thing that felt right was making no change at all. So that’s what I did. Nothing. I have yet to have a friend get married and not change their name, most being outright gleeful to do so, and so I understand that this lodges me firmly in some kind of minority category. I’m ok with that. Ultimately, this was a decision I made for myself, in consultation with my then fiancé, and it wasn’t a decision that required the input nor approval of anyone else. Which, is good, because I haven’t received approval from very many people, most of my largely conservative family included….despite it being their name I was unable to part with. The irony, huh?

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To the married women out there: do you ever wonder if you and your husband would be matched on those dating websites? I mean, don’t sites like E-harmony and Match.com make each person fill out ridiculously long questionnaires to help identify key traits, similar tastes, and common goals? I met my husband in college but sometimes I catch myself wondering if the internet fates would have aligned us together unknowingly, should we have needed to go that route. Do our personalities fit together on paper as nicely as they do in real life?

There are so many ways that we are literally the same person, but just different genders. We’re both first-borns, both leaders, and we’re fairly outspoken ; we are active, competitive, and incredibly stubborn; we both feel satisfied helping others, thus the exact same career choice in health care; we’re both sarcastic brats who put on a tough front while being tender-hearted on the inside; you get my point, I’m sure. But this post is about one big fatty difference we have. I wonder if the dating websites have a question that reads, “Would you rather die by heat or by cold?” because if they do, we’d never match up as potential soul mates.

Nate was born in Wisconsin which boasts extremely cold winters. I was born in Missouri which boats extremely hot and humid summers. We are both products of our environment, without a doubt, and for some reason this is just now hitting me after 2 years of marriage and 7 years together. It was obvious way back when, just by looking at our younger selves in college.

Picture this: it’s a cold and snowy day as college students walk to and from their classes, all bundled up in coats and gloves. Then you see this one girl literally running across the quad with her gigantic winter jacket pulled securely around every inch of exposed skin, hood and all. She does not stop to say hello to her friends, for she has her eyes on the prize—getting into the next building to shelter her from the cold. She becomes a mega-biyatch when the temperatures dip below freezing so you might as well let her run from class to class just to avoid her wrath.

Then there is this adorable Wisconsin transplant who decided to attend college in St. Louis. Neither he nor his northern parents had a clue what STL summers would be like, but they found out quickly as they moved their beloved son into the dorms in August (the hottest and humidest month eva). Said WI boy calls his mother after 3 days in a non-air conditioned dorm room and begs her to ship a window AC unit to him. He might die without it. He really might. He has now decided that Missouri summers are his own personal hell and he honestly does not know if he can survive four years in this heat. (Of course, it’s all worth it in the end when he meets that crazy biyatch who sprints around to avoid the cold. He’s glad he stuck it out in St. Louis, don’t worry.)

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Memories are very important to me. When we found out that we were expecting a baby, Todd got our family a Canon Rebel. Then we purchased a pretty good little video camera after he was born. We don’t want to miss a second of his life and want to make sure that we capture the important little moments for him to look back on later.

Scrapbooking used to be one of my biggest hobbies. In college, my roommate and I would pull out all of our scrapbooking materials on a Saturday morning and sit and watch movies while scrapbooking for two days.

I love to scrapbook and have high hopes of putting together some gorgeous albums for Hudson that will be his someday. Here’s the problem: I don’t have a lot of free time! Scrapbooking requires space, making a mess, planning, and cleaning up. It could take 45 minutes to complete one page. That’s the extent of nap time some days.

My other option is to get some beautiful leather albums where I can just slip the photo into the sleeve and move on to the next one. I still have some scrapbooks from college that I haven’t completed and would like to finish before starting a new project. I have found some beautiful leather albums that can be engraved with his name and the year.

I guess I just have some dreams of being the super mom that scrapbooks her child’s entire life and gives it to him as a gift at his high school graduation. (I had some friends whose mothers did this for them in high school and I was seriously impressed—and jealous.)

How do you store your memories? Photo boxes? Albums? Scrapbooks?

Do you set aside entire Saturdays to catch up on your project or do you just find a few minutes here and there to work on them?