In honor of my new ginamoog-ish hairstyle (holy$$ btw)! Click image to view entire set.

I'm done with our taxes w00t w00t! We made around 15K more last year than 2004, but with all the extra house deductions, ended up getting the same refund. This was awesome otherwise we would've had to pay, so I can't complain. We won't have enough from just the refund to pay off Jer's car, but will help immensely, and I'm just being budget concious to send that final check in April anyway! That frees up $200 a month right there, which I'm going to reroute to either paying off my car, or to the house payment. I still want a snazzy patio set, too, so we'll see. I'm getting my hair done tomorrow at a new salon with highlights and all. Hopefully they don't mess it up. I've yet to find a local stylist that doesn't charge crayzayy. I miss my MN girl, Lynn. Ooo and I bought some snazzy socks, but realized AFTER the fact that the company is in Portland and I could've bought them inhouse. Next time I head to Sellwood area, I'm defintely stopping by. These socks are so sassy.

Ugh! Our poor neighbors… News video here.

I guess it came down right above their baby's room! Luckily everyone is okay, though... The fire dept. wants to take out the nearby trees too. The trees aren't in the vacinity to hit our house, thank goodness, but I still hope they take out the ones on that side. Jer and I were both thinking separately within the past few days that "Man it would suck if one of those trees fell down on that house!" Eerie.

Please, pray for the family; they have to stay in a hotel while dealing with all this. I'm sure claiming on insurance is going to be a real thrill too. Oh, and I'm hoping no rain comes soon! It would be bad to add flooding to their list of issues.

Whoops! I accidentally erased my last entry, but I found it cached and put it back up, but the date is off. Anyway, I've been brainstorming for the past few days about a new Simply Irresistible layout, as I might as well bite the bullet and get it up while I'm still motivated. So far no such luck, but I expect it to come to me when I'm falling asleep some night as this layout did! :p I'm betting this weekend will be spent doing taxes, as I should be FINALLY getting all my statements in the mail after making a few calls. Hello! these things were supposed to go out by end of January lazies! I really hope we get back enough refund to pay off Jeremy's car and get a snazzy patio set and larger grill so we can throw some summer parties finally. Oh, and I really really want one of these too... but that is definitely pushing it!

See! I wasn't talking smack once again about a new layout, as you can see. It was put together with LOTS of help from my love, Jeremy, who as a yummy programmer-extraordinaire, spent every night for this past week configuring all the templates. We hit lots of snags on the way too, but it all worked out fabulously!! About the layout: the background is from some sheets we have on our bed. The main header art is from a beautiful book I found in a bin at the Goodwill Outlet Center by our house for a mere 50 cents. The original page spread was quite a bit different, so I spent several hours making it work and adding personal touches. The top/bottom box background is some wedding lace I tweaked hardcore. Music also came into play during the design, most notably Ladytron's latest release, Witching Hour. You can listen to some tracks on their myspace page. The main track is called "Soft Power," which you might just have to download on iTunes or someplace legal (or just buy the cd!!), because you know I don't condone using soulseek... uh yeah and stuff. The main reason of the switch to WordPress to begin with was issues with comment spam, and WP has more features to block it than MT did, with new plugins coming out all the time.