PMP Certification

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I’ve been focusing on studying for my PMP these last two weeks.  After attending a week long “PMP Boot Camp” and then studying in pretty much all my free time I finally took the exam on Thursday and ….. I PASSED!  I can’t remember the last time I was that nervous.  We are talking the kind of nervous that includes your whole body shaking and heart beating in your stomach kind of nervous.

So what’s a PMP you ask?  Project Management Professional (PMP)®.

In any event this certification was something I’ve been thinking about getting for years … literally.  After planning a wedding and buying a home in the past year I figured I should probably check this certification off the to-do list before any other life things get in the way.  I’ve had this book “How to Pass the PMP on Your first Try” for the past two years, but I just never seemed to have made it through the book.  Sometimes I would read it in my downtime, but studying on my own was well just not working.

Here are some resources and my study process:

Week 1:

  • Attended a 5 day – 40 hr – boot camp class

The next week and 1/2:

Our kitchen table became my own personal study center.  Computer open, books, flashcards and notes everywhere.

The night before the exam I was literally dreaming about the 42 processes!  After I clicked submit on the computer it took at least a minute until the results came up.  It was the longest minute EVER!  When it said Congratulations I wanted to scream, but I was in a testing center so that wasn’t really appropriate.  Needless to say I am thrilled I passed the exam.  Not only because it’s great for my career, but I put in a lot of work and it would have sucked to have failed.

When I posted on Facebook that I passed a few friends said they thought I wrote pimp not pmp … so I’m pimping as a pmp!!! LOL

In any even … I am back!  I apologize for my absence.  I have quite a few posts to write including, but not limited to our DIY wedding invitations and my first rodeo!

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The Husband Pact – Marriage Advice

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A few days ago a friend of mine linked from her Tumblr account to this Huffington Post article.  The article “15 Ways to Stay Married for 15 Years” by Lydia Netzer has a lot of great advice on thing she and her husband have learned throughout the years together.  All her tips are a home run – in my opinion – the only one I really can’t decide if I totally agree with or not is “Go to Bed Angry”.  Although I see her point I would almost want to modify to say “sometimes go to bed angry”.

I’ve noticed a lot of married couples have their own tips/tricks to a long and successful marriage and I enjoy hearing their tidbits.  AND … with the husband and I quickly approaching our one year anniversary together I often think this  first year was a great start to the rest of our lives together!  I hope to write my own 15 tips for saying married in 14 years and 1 month. :)


Photo Credit: Korie Lynn Photography

One of my absolute favorite pieces of advice is #12.  So FRIENDS I make this husband (and wife) pact with you …

“12. Make a husband pact with your friends – The husband pact says this: I promise to listen to you complain about your husband even in the most dire terms, without it affecting my good opinion of him. I will agree with your harshest criticism, accept your gloomiest predictions. I will nod and furrow my brow and sigh when you describe him as a hideous ogre. Then when your fight is over and love shines again like a beautiful sunbeam in your life, I promise to forget everything you said and regard him as the most charming of princes once more. The husband pact is very useful because you want to be able to vent to your friend without having her actually start hating your husband. Because you don’t really mean all those things you say. And she, the swearer of the pact, knows this.” source

The husband and I always say we are a team and it’s kind of become our thing.  So much so that we made sure the word team was in our wedding vows and made team sweat suites for the morning after our wedding.  Due to my love of the team mentality tip #14 really hit home for me …

“14. Be loyal.  All the crap you read in magazines about honesty, sense of humor, communication, sensitivity, date nights, couples weekends, blah blah blah can be trumped by one word: loyalty. You and your spouse are a team of two. It is you against the world. No one else is allowed on the team, and no one else will ever understand the team’s rules. This is okay. The team is not adversarial, the team does not tear its members down, the team does not sabotage the team’s success. Teammates work constantly to help and better their teammates. Loyalty means you put the other person in your marriage first all the time, and you let them put you first. Loyalty means subverting your whims or desires of the moment to better meet your spouse’s whims or desires, with the full understanding and expectation that they will be doing the same. This is the heart of everything, and it is a tricky balance. Sometimes it sways one way and sometimes the other. Sometimes he gets to be crazy, sometimes it’s your turn. Sometimes she’s in the spotlight, sometimes you. Ups and downs ultimately don’t matter, because the team endures.” source

What do you think of Lydia Netzer’s tips?  Is she missing any important tidbits?  Do you like the husband pact?

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Recipe: Oreo Truffle

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When the husband and I hosted a Super Bowl party this year a friend made these cute little oreo truffle footballs.  These little guys were extremely addictive.  So yummy!!!!!

Our friend was kind enough to share the recipe with me after a few reminder *wink wink*.  Although I’ve been meaning to make the truffles for a while there hasn’t been a good occasion to give the recipe a try.  We had some friends over this weekend to check out the new place so I made the oreo truffles as a littler treat for  our friend.  They were a big hit!

Ingredients:

1 package oreo cookies (entire cookie including the cream center)
1 8oz. package cream cheese (softened)
white chocolate

Crush cookies in a food processor or place them in a ziploc bag and crush into a fine consistency.

Stir in softened cream cheese.  I had to use my fingers to get it all mixed together well.  The suggestion to use the back of a large spoon to help mash the two together just wasn’t working for me.  Or maybe it was taking too long, but either way my hands were very effective.

Roll the mixture into 1″ balls and place on wax paper covered cookie sheet.  I would actually suggest doing 1/2 inch balls. These little guys are super rich and the 1″ balls is about 2 bites. I think having one bite truffles would have been a little better.

Melt white chocolate as directed on the package and then dip balls into chocolate, tap off extra and set aside on wax paper covered cookie sheet to dry. (Tip:  it helps to freeze the uncoated balls for a few minutes to keep the mixture from starting to fall apart in the melted chocolate.)

Once dry, refrigerate.  This makes about 36 truffles (or 72 if you do the smaller truffles as I suggested).  I mean seriously these are SO easy to make and they taste SOOOO good.

Happy Cooking!

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Wedding Registries Should be a Chaperoned Event

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I remember being very excited to register for our wedding.  After the husband and I moved in together we did the whole merging of the worlds exercise.  For example, we kept his couches, but I got to keep my bedroom set.  Deciding what to keep vs. discard was a fairly easy process for us.  However, nothing in our apartment was really “ours”.  For example our kitchen dishes were handed down to me from my mother when she redid the kitchen — this was back when I was still in college.  They have got to be at least 10 years old. The dishes have really held up well, but we wanted dishes that we had chosen together.

Side Note – I think this is officially my second blog post with no pictures.  The problem is I didn’t take pictures when we went on these registry excursions.  I was going to take pictures of our wedding gifts, but didn’t think that would be fun to look at LOL.  In any event I hope you enjoy the post and I promise to have pictures in the next post! :)

The husband I scheduled an evening to do our first round of registering.  Off to Crate and Barrel we went.  Despite sitting in traffic for an hour to get the big Tyson’s Corner store instead of going to the smaller store in DC I was in great spirits.  We walked up to the counter “hi we need to register”, which was followed by the whole, congrats, when is the wedding and here’s how you work your scanning gun.  Okay now where do we start?  I had done a little pre-shopping online and we had agreed on some glasses. Scan – enter quantity.  Ummm how many do we need?  I had no idea and my husband looked at me smiled and shrugged his shoulders.  After just sort of staring at each other for 30 seconds he reminds me we can update the quantity online.  Okay great we can do that later so there is no need to worry.  Now what?

Imagine walking around the store for over an hour and randomly choosing things.  We had no idea what we needed or how much.  There were also a few items we couldn’t agree upon.  We left the store a bit defeated, okay maybe a lot defeated!  I thought registering would be easy and fun … not so much.  As we returned our scanner they gave us two heart shaped champagne glasses as a gift!  At least there was a little reward at the end of our attempt to choose things for the registry.

As we drove home I texted one of my bridesmaids, who also recently got married, and reported our less than successful registry experience.  She had some great advice for us … take a parent (or parents) with you to register.  The parents are able to help with how many of an item you need, what stuff  you will want to have that you might not be aware of and when needed the parent can mediate the choosing process. =)

This is exactly what we need!!  My mother (more than) happily agreed to accompany us to the next store and provide us with her expert advice!  A few weeks later when the husband and I were visiting my parents we headed to Bloomingdale’s with my mom.  We were a lot more successful the second time around and both found her suggestions extremely helpful.

So there you have it … our wedding registry experience in a nutshell.  Do you have any tidbits from registering that might help a current/future bride to be??

Happy planning!

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Expanding the Pantry

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While doing “married things” {phrase coined by the husband} we ended up at The Container Store.  Clearly this is one of those places like Target or Bed Bath and Beyond, where I find things I never knew I needed but while we are there I think I really do NEED them.  I mean there is no reason we should have spent 1+ hours at The Container Store when it was sunny and 80 plus degrees outside.  But anyways, while walking up and down each aisle we ended up with quite the large cart of stuff we “needed”.

One of the many items in our cart was elfa kitchen storage.  Our condo is the first place I’ve lived where I haven’t had to use cabinets to store food.  The pantry is great and has really come in handy for storing items not eatable as well like batteries, lunch boxes, cook books and dish towels.  As a result our pantry has been pretty much over full since moving in.  We were hoping the elfa storage would expand the pantry a little bit.

Installation was very easy.  Hold the long rod up to the back of the door and mark the places where the screws go.  We went ahead and drilled the holes a little to get it started and make the screw go in easier.

We held up the rod and put two screws into the door to hold the rod in place.  Before fulling anchoring it to the door we ensured it was level.  It was so we put all the screws securely into the door, clipped on the baskets and we were done.  The great part about the baskets are they come in standard and narrow.  We purchased the narrow baskets to ensure they wouldn’t hit the shelving in the pantry.

Initially we purchased 4 baskets.  We were pleased to see there was plenty of room for 2-3 more baskets.  Back to the container store we went and purchased two additional baskets.  We are loving the new storage and the way the baskets help with organization!!

What do you think of our new expanded pantry?

Happy home improvements!

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