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Wednesday, September 7, 2011

A Little Lost

Well kiddos, I'm not really sure what is going to happen with this blog. I love blogging, but I've lost a good chunk of what I was going to blog about.

We are having to move out of the house we just moved into at the end of July.

As mentioned before and in the About page, the house we are living in is Joey's grandma's. She can't live there due to health reasons, so our plan was to live there and fix it up (which would constitute as our rent) so that when it needed to be sold, they could sell it for more money.

In the past few months we've really accomplished quite a bit.
  • Organized and packed Joey's grandma's belongings.
  • Moved all of the belongings and furniture out.
  • Cleaned years worth of dirt and grime out of the house.
  • Had a garage sale to sell unwanted items.
  • Replaced the decaying shower with beautiful tile and brand new fixtures.
  • Painted yellowed walls and ceilings.
  • Replaced the floor in the bathroom.
  • Replaced the toilet in the bathroom.
  • Fixed broken doors.
  • Patched holes in walls and areas that weren't smooth.
  • Etc.


We've done a good deal of work and spent countless hours fretting about the house and all the drama that accompanied it and working on fixing the house up.



There are a few reasons that we are moving out, but the main reason is that we were told to not put any more money into the house as it will need to be sold faster than originally anticipated. We could stay a few more months (as we've put in enough supplies to constitute rent through December) but A) We don't want to unpack and get settled only to have to start repacking again a month or so later and B) Without putting more money into this house, it isn't really liveable the way it is right now.



I am excited about the move and I love the apartment we picked out. At the same time, I'm sad about the possibilities that we are losing out on with the house we were living in. It was fun to know that we could do anything to that house to make it look amazing. You are so limited with what you can do in an apartment.

I'm going to go through everything I own as I repack and reorganize for this next move so that I can purge all the unnecessary items. I have so much and I just don't feel like I need so much stuff.



So, since we're moving back into an apartment and that means the vast majority of what this blog was going to be is a project that will no longer be carried out. I am still planning on blogging, but I probably won't do much until I decide what I want out of it. I will be back, I'm just not sure when or what will be here when I do return.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Taking a Break

Due to some unforeseen happenings this week, I probably won't be posting for awhile. I'll post more information when I'm able.

Friday, August 19, 2011

Ideas for the Bathroom

I said yesterday that I would have some pictures of our house renovation up today, but unfortunately I'm not quite ready yet. I've been working on painting the three sets of shelves in the bathroom. I have two of them finished, but I want the last one to be ready before I put up some pictures!

I still wanted to have a post for today, so I thought I would show you all what I'm planning for the bathroom. I've never lived somewhere that didn't have any enclosed cabinet space in the bathroom before. I'm trying to get creative on storage for the bathroom so that it looks neat and tidy and so that we don't have medications and things just sitting out all over the place!

I've always been... well, less than neat and tidy all the time so as I unpack and organize my house I'm trying to really be realistic about storage. I want everything to have a place so that I can keep everything in its place! Here is what I'm thinking about for the bathroom:

This is the bathroom set we have right now. We have the soap dispenser, toothbrush holder, and shower curtain in this pattern. I really like it and we just got them for our wedding last year, so everything is going to be centered around this. We're going to paint the walls green and the shelves and trim will be cream to help keep things light.
Bed, Bath & Beyond

In the Pottery Barn catalog I received a few weeks there was a close up on the shelf area of this bathroom and I fell in love. This was very close to the idea I had for my bathroom, so it's a good inspiration picture! I love the canisters and jars on the shelves. My plan is to have different jars, canisters, and baskets on each shelf so that they all match on one shelf but each shelf is different. Did that make sense?
Pottery Barn

I want small baskets like this one on the shelves to hold toothpaste, hair spray, medications, hair brushes, combs, etc. so that they aren't all sitting out looking messy. I'll use the clear jars for items such as cotton balls, q-tips, and other items that will be uniform in one jar.
IKEA

One of the three sets of shelves has three rows and is much deeper and larger than the rest. I want to keep my towels and washcloths on two rows and then my hair straightener, blow dryer, and other larger items on the third row. However, I don't want them sitting out so I want to get lined baskets like these for each row. One basket just like these (but longer) will fit perfectly on each row.
Pottery Barn

Finally, I would really like a hamper that matches all of the wicker baskets in the room. I'm in love with this one right now.
 Bed, Bath & Beyond

What do you think? Any ideas or suggestions? And don't forget to check back over the weekend to see the pretty new paint on the shelves!

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Waiting for Fall

My favorite time of year is fast approaching and I wanted to show you all just a little bit of what I'm looking forward to. I should have a house update with pictures tomorrow, but here is a little of why I love autumn!

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What is your favorite season? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Dream Garden

I want to welcome you to my dream garden!


I love this pathway, I think we'll be putting something like this in the front yard in the next year. I also like the messy look when it comes to plants! I want an overflowing garden.
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Joey and I both love fountains and we want one in our future garden.
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This might be too much of the messy look for me, but I do like it. Unless we have a dog or a kid, I want there to be little grass in our yard just lots of flowers and plants.
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I would love to have a little reading area in the yard. This would be perfect. I could even shut those doors in during a storm and stay out there and enjoy the rain.
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We definitely want a fire pit. We're looking into getting one before the weather starts cooling off during the fall. A fire pit really extends the amount of the year you can spend time in the yard. And I love s'mores, so this is perfect!
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Wouldn't it be nice to have something like this in the yard?
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I would love to have a little area for an observatory! Maybe right above a fort for the future kids. I would want to extend the roof a bit so that a telescope could be put up there as well.
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Finally, I want a little outdoor eating space. I love the atmosphere in this picture.
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I love all of these ideas! And they all came from Pinterest (where else?) but the link to the original website is under each picture if you're interested.

Does anyone have any suggestions for what they'd like to see on my blog? Leave me a comment!

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

I'm still here!

Happy Tuesday! And why is it happy, you ask? Because it is not Monday and therefore it is one day closer to Friday. You have to find the bright side!

Another bright side is that we've finally made some more progress on the house! Things have slowed down since we moved in because we've been exhausted. We've been taking some time off and we haven't even been unpacking as much as we should have been. But, Joey's been working on the house a bit and I've been unpacking here and there and it'll all get done eventually. We're really enjoying not having to work at a break neck pace anymore!

This is a project we finished awhile back, but I never put up official before and after pictures!

Didn't he do an amazing job? I love how the tile looks and the nice shiny new fixtures! The bathtub itself is stained beyond repair (you can see it in the bottom 'After' picture there) so we'll be getting it refinished in the not too distant future.

Pretty! We'll get nicer fixtures later, for the time being we just wanted new ones.




Joey painted the bedroom closet this weekend and patched that hole that was being covered with... cardboard and duct tape. The paint is still drying in the after picture, so it looks a little splotchy. It looks great now! We're still planning on putting in a new bar, painting the trim and replacing the door.



I finally bought Joey his birthday present. It was only... three weeks late. Eep. However, he loves it and has been cooking up a storm on his new grill/smoker.

Grilling some delicious burgers.
While he was grilling, I wandered around the yard and took some pictures.

One of five little mushrooms growing on our picnic table that is badly in need of a new coat of paint.


We have this plant in the yard that has huuuuuuuge leaves.

That's all for today my lovelies! I'll be posting again tomorrow about my dream yard, so come back and check it out!

And go click that "follow" button if you don't follow me already!

Thursday, August 4, 2011

A Day in the Life

I've noticed that quite a few bloggers are doing "Day in the Life" posts right now and I decided that this would be a great change up from all of the renovation and moving posts! Those two topics are not all this blog will be, it's just been my entire life for the past few months. Expect changes around here!

Normal Work Day
6:30am: Wake Up
7:00am: Get to work and turn on Beverly Hillbillies (I'm a caretaker for my husband's grandma who has         Alzheimer's)

7-8am: Try to stay awake while watching Beverly Hillbillies. No matter how much sleep I get at night, I usually can't hardly keep my eyes open for this hour!

8-10am: Turn the channel to Matlock. I also usually eat some breakfast in this time slot. I'm currently addicted to frosted shredded wheat, though I recently went through an oatmeal phase.

10am-12pm: We watch In the Heat of the Night. (Are you noticing a trend that not one show I watch at work was made later than the 80's?)

12-1pm: My darling hubby comes over for lunch! I try to have a hot lunch waiting for us. Recently we've all been into grilled cheese and tomato soup. I make a mean grilled cheese and I make them faster than you'd think possible. I amazed Joey once when he stepped out to smoke and I had 8 grilled cheese sandwiches waiting when he got back. I'm a bit of a grilled cheese ninja.

(We watch hour 1 of The Waltons during this hour!)

1pm-3pm: We watch Bonanza. I'm seriously getting into this show. I can't explain why, I really can't. It might have something to do with that fact that Pernell Roberts is quite attractive. Seriously, look at him... he's yummy. Sorry Joey!

Google him, or dig up an episode of Bonanza to watch.
During this Bonanza-fest, I start working on some homework. I know that this picture probably seems absurd, but I am so excited to get finished with college! I have 2.5 more weeks in this term and then I'm down to my last 1 class! That class is actually for duel credit, it finishes my last "Upper Division" credit hours and it begins my Teacher Licensure Program! Woo!

I also try to cook something tasty for dinner so that I don't have to waste time on it when I get home.

3pm-5pm: We watch hours 2 and 3 of The Waltons. I've watched this show for so many months now, for so many hours a day, that even though it ran for 10 years... I've seen every episode once if not two or three times.
Off and on during the day, Joey and I usually email each other. We send silly emails and funny links we've found. Like this little gem Joey sent earlier www.funnyordie.com/videos/d31242caae/slow-loris-with-a-tiny-umbrella

Some days I get to leave at 4:30 and some days I wait until Joey picks me up at 5:30. Once we get our other car working again, I will always head out at 4:30!

5:30-10:30pm: We usually stay home most weeknights, we're cuddle bugs. We usually watch some tv (from this century), eat some dinner, and do some interneting (it's a word now). Right now we also spend some time unpacking or working on the house a bit. Sometimes we work in some crafting for me and some "tinkering" for Joey... he has circuits and things? I don't understand it. haha. Then we read before bed.  Rinse and repeat the next day!

Our weekends involve much less tv and much more renovating and unpacking, crafting and tinkering, and sometimes friends!


Like I said, I want to start posting things that aren't always about the house. Any ideas for anything you'd like to see on here?


All of these pictures came from either Pinterest or Google images.

Monday, August 1, 2011

Getting Settled

We officially have all of our belongings at the house! We've turned in our apartment keys and now our life doesn't have to be split between two homes. I'm really excited to finally be able to spend more time with the hubby instead of constantly being in two places all the time. Now when we're working on unpacking or fixing up the house, we can be working on it together!

Moving was tragic. Haha, ok that's probably a bit of an exaggeration but it was not fun at all. We were up until the wee hours of the night on Saturday trying to finish up the apartment, got up really early to continue working on it, and never really did finish. Ooops. Goodbye deposit check! After it took so much time to get everything out of the house before we moved in, we just did not have the time to get all of our own stuff done. I can't even feel bad about not finishing because I know that we spent every second of every day (after work) getting things ready. Every night for weeks we would get home, have dinner, and immediately go to bed to get less sleep than we should have. Not going to lie... it was a miserable existence for awhile. But... IT'S OVER!

I have 1.5 million boxes to put away (I don't exaggerate. Ever.) and I'm excited to do it. I want to turn this house into our home!