Summer "To Do List" Update

Since today's my last day of summer vacay, I thought it would be fitting to do an update on my Summer "To Do" List and share what I finished!

1 - Clean out my email.  Check!  Although it's already starting to pile up again...never ending process I guess :)

2 - Complete the Photo Wall in our bedroom.  Check!  You can read all the details and see pics here!

3 - Make a desk for our bedroom.  Totally scratched that idea!  After completing the photo wall, I decided I'd rather have a long bench or low table underneath it instead of a desk.

4 - Spray paint the door knobs & hardware in our house.  Downstairs - Check!  We are about halfway through with this project!  

The downstairs is complete except for the deadbolt on the back door (does anyone have any clue how to get those off!?) and we're almost complete with all the doors in our bedroom.  12 doors down, 11 to go!

This project is not hard at all, just time consuming as the summer humidity makes it take longer for the spray paint to dry!  Brandon has kind of adopted this project, so knobs and hardware are only getting painted on the weekends when he's home.

We love, love, love how it's looking, though!!  We feel very DIY savvy ;)

5 - Get a chair for our family room.  Check!  We ended up getting this chair this past weekend!

I originally wanted a colorful, printed chair; but after lots of looking, nothing could be shipped within a timely manner & this one was on sale and is very comfy!!  It's from By Design.

Ben's in his lion perch :)

Since the chair isn't colorful, I added some colorful pillows!  I'm still trying to decide if I love it and may keep looking for something I like better.  We can always move this chair to our bedroom if I find a different chair down the road.

6 - Organize our closet & create a jewelry wall.  Check!  God Bless us, we have a huge stinkin' closet and this girl right here isn't complaining!!  As of today, closet updates are finally complete!  

I organized all my clothes several weeks ago and hung the jewelry wall 2 weekends ago.

neutrals and pants way down there

Jerseys, scarves, and light jackets 

Colors!  And dresses

Here's my shoe wall just for fun :)

jewelry wall

Then today, I picked up the final jewelry organizational pieces - these 2 dishes from World Market to hold my bracelets and earrings on top of my dresser!

Without the dishes, my earrings and bracelets were all over my circle plate - it was a confusing mess! I love the way it looks now!

7 - Change the title for my car to be solely in my name.  Unfortunately, this task is not complete!  I did pay off my car (yay!!) back in July and I've been waiting to receive the title in the mail ever since.  Thankfully, I decided to call and check on it and they told me it had been 'returned to sender'!  Weird considering they had the correct address!?

It should be in the mail now, though.  Sadly, I now have to pick an afternoon after school to spend at the lovely DMV.  Joy!

8 & 9 - Get a queen box spring, mattress, & railings and make a headboard for the guest bedroom. Ha. Haha. Hahahaha.  I knew this one wasn't going to happen!  Not this summer anyways! But it is still on my house 'to do' list.....for one day :)

So since I scratched #3 and I knew 8 & 9 probably wouldn't happen, I completed 4 1/2 tasks out of 6.  Not too shabby!  

Truthfully, I'm just thankful to have a summertime to relax, vacation, complete some "to do's", and rejuvenate before heading back to teach my kiddos!

I'm convinced summertime was really invented for teachers ;)

Random Updates

Mondays never seem as bad in the summer :)  Says the teacher!  Haha, but this Monday can't be that bad for most - I sure hope most of you will have Wednesday off and lots of people take the rest of the week off, or at least Friday like B is doing!

The 4th is one of my most favoritest holidays {A dead locked 3 way tie for 1st between Christmas, Thanksgiving & the 4th} because I really love my country and I love everything the 4th celebrates!!

More on that later though...

How was your weekend?  Ours was pretty great despite the ridiculous amount of heat that plagued most of the country.  Brandon and I worked out and did a few things around the house Saturday, then Andrea & I visited our favorite nail place, Polished, to get pampered for our week of vacation...

We were only slightly high maintenance...breaking a bottle of nail polish {it fell off the table attached to my pedicure chair as it was giving me a bouncy massage, oops!}, needing foil to remove a previous shellac manicure {Andrea!} and requiring refills of our wine glasses! :)

I seriously considered some Red, White & Blue nails in order to be festive...

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...but I just didn't know if I could rock it, so I went loud and proud and got some hot pink on the fingers & toes!

I made B and I dinner and convinced him it would be fun to go out!  So we met some friends at the new Ten Park Lanes for some drinks!  We didn't actually bowl, but we were very impressed with the revamp of the bowling alley.  It looked great and had a really fun atmosphere!!  We'll have to go back soon!

I'm currently writing this from the back seat of B's car as we travel up to Virginia today.  Man I love modern technology - a MiFi card, my computer & phone - I'm a happy traveler!  I did bring a book and 4 or 5 magazines as well :)

I'm traveling in the car with B today and tomorrow, but by tomorrow night we'll be at our friend Justin's place in Virginia Beach!!!  Andrea's coming up that night as she has the rest of the week off, so we have 3-4 days of all beach to look forward to {Brandon & Justin will be working Thursday, so probably no beach for them that day}!

I'm so looking forward to drinks on the beach, playing ladder golf, lathering on the sunscreen, grilling out, fireworks, sparklers, wearing my red, white & blue, celebrating & enjoying this great country, brunching, spending time with good friends....I could go on! Yes, this is why the 4th is my favorite!!!

For now, I'm going to clean out my email - another item to check off my "To-Do" list - and peruse the internets for sweet puppies to adopt! 

I'm really itching with puppy fever y'all!  But I want to find the right one for us, which is more complicated than I had imagined.  We're exploring lots of options from bigger pups {perhaps a golden doodle, labradoodle, German/Australian shepherds, etc} to smaller ones {a bichon frise, westie, coton, or some kind of mix}.

Although, I can't lie, I'm leaning toward small.  I like lap dogs and that they don't slobber everywhere like a big dog!

I found a few Bichon/Toy Poodle mixes at this Rescue in SC, but we waited too long and now they're all spoken for, I guess, since they're not longer listed as up for adoption anymore :(

But our pup will come at just the right time.  I have faith!  Any recommendations friends!?!

Happy Monday & July 4th week y'all!!

Summer "To Do" List

I have disclosed several times my love of lists, list making, and the joy of crossing things off a list :)  And some things never change, for instance, right now I currently have 21 running lists in the notes section of my phone...

Don't judge me!!

I just can't help it.  So much goes on in this big ol' brain of mine, if I don't write it down, I'll forget it!  So anyways...a current ever growing list of mine is my Summer "To Do" List. Seems appropriate as a teacher that I should at least be accomplished during the summer months when I'm home & finally have time to get stuff done!

Last summer my list was rather short, and I accomplished 4 out of 6 tasks, which I think is pretty decent.  But this summer, my list is rather long and since we have a house now, pretty much a lot of this list coincides with the "things to do for the house" list!

But, alas, that list is far too long and many of the things on that list fall into a "will be completed in the future" list, haha.  {aka - they require beaucoups of moo-la!)  So house things on my summer list are definitely things I can accomplish this summer!

I've already gotten a good start on the list as well...

1 - Clean out my email.  I tend to let emails from places like Groupon, Living Social, Spartan Race WODs, etc pile up in my account.

For example.... I may see a good deal in a Groupon email and think, "Well let me think about that and I'll come back to this email" OR "Ohhh that looks like a good workout, I should keep this email so I can do this workout one day."  And then I never go back to the email.  So then I have 5467 emails in my account....ok, not really.  Just 900.

I plan to tackle this while I'm holed up traveling in the car with B next Monday & Tuesday!

2 - Work on a photo wall for our bedroom.  We have a giant empty wall in our bedroom that I plan to fill with a desk and photo wall.  I've already ordered a canvas of this print...

...purchased this mirror...

...and I have a few other prints on their way (that are kind of a surprise to B!) that I'll frame once they get here.  It most likely won't be finished with these few things, it's a big wall, but it's definitely a good start!!

3 - Make a desk for our bedroom.  I actually don't know if that will happen this summer...but I'm hoping!!  I found this post off Pinterest and I'm completely inspired!  It will go under the picture wall in our bedroom and be sort of my workspace since B already has his home office.  

Our desk will be a bit different, though.  We'll be using a glass table top from our old coffee table instead of wood and these cabinets instead of the ones pictured in their post.

4 - Spray paint all the door knobs & hardware in our house.  Currently, all 24 of the doors in our house have gold/brass knobs & hardware.

It's fine, it's just not really our style.  Our kitchen hardware is a bronze color & we really love the look of it so we planned to eventually change out every door's knob and hardware to a new bronze knob and hardware set, but after checking into the cost of that, it was going to be about $50 a door!  $50 a door!!!!  Times 24 doors...you do that math!  Too much $$$

I saw Melissa, from The View From Five Two, tweet something about spray painting their door knobs in their house a few weeks ago and I knew we had to try it!!  Worst case scenario, we'd be out about 7 bucks for the spray paint and we'd eventually replace the door knob and hardware of the door we tested and didn't end up liking.

So last weekend, we tested out a door from our guest bedroom...and it looked great!!!  Such a rather cheap and relatively easy fix!  And it completely changes the look of the doors, which I love :)  I'll do a complete post about it once all the doors are finished, but this is currently what our laundry room looks like...

...and our garage...

  

Haha, kind of a mess, but hopefully by doing 2-4 doors a week/weekend, I'll have this completed by the time I head back to school.

I might be most excited about this task :)

5 - Get a chair for our family room.  We purchased a sectional couch when we moved, but we really need a nice chair in the corner to complete this room....

I'm attempting to find/thrift a relatively affordable one and possibly recover it if needed. These kinds of chairs with fun, colorful, vibrant prints are my inspiration...

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6 - Organize our closet & create a jewelry wall.  Ever since seeing Kate's {from Every Mile A Memory} posts about her custom closet & jewelry wall I've had a strong urge to get organized!  I really just need to rearrange my clothes to the specific way I want them (should I organize by color or by article of clothing??  i.e. all tanks together, sleeveless shirts together, tees together, button ups, sweaters, etc - oh the possibilities!) and order the wall mounts for my jewelry!

7 - Change the title for my car to be solely in my name.  This requires a trip to the DMV. Joy of all joys!  When I pay my car off next month, I'll receive the title in the mail, which will read my name as well as my dad's since I needed a co-signer when I bought the car in college.  But now, since apparently I'm all grown up, I'll be changing it :)

8 & 9 - Get a queen box spring, mattress & railings and make a headboard for the guest bed room.  Sadly, I don't think I will actually accomplish tasks 8 & 9 this summer. :(

Brandon apparently thinks it's gross to buy a used mattress set (per say off of Craigslist) but I didn't think it would be that bad!  Especially since it would be in our guest bed room & we wouldn't be sleeping on it, ha!  Would you buy a used mattress??  Is it really that gross??

Since B vetoed that idea, we'll eventually be forking over some money for a new mattress set.

And I've seen so many of these types of headboards all over Pinterest & this is definitely what I want for our guest bedroom...

I even found a great tutorial here, but I think I'm just running out of time considering items 1 - 7 as well as two week long beach trips coming up!!  But that's ok, I'll get to it one day :)

So there's my list!  Long right!?  Props to you if you even read it all ;)

I'm off to spray a second coat onto the knobs & hardware currently drying in my garage!

Happy Friday, y'all!!!

A Busy & Exciting Spring

Holy moly, y'all!!  My brain has been a big ol' jumbled mess lately.  My brain feels like an ADD kid all jacked up on sugar!  It's probably because we have, oh, just 9.2 million things going on ;)

I keep going through my calendar each day and starting this weekend - we have something almost every weekend until summer time!  Whoa!

The good thing is - it's all super exciting, fun stuff!!!

It's hard to not be so excited with all this wonderful stuff coming up, so I couldn't help but start some countdowns!  Hold on, it's about to get real busy over here...

Tomorrow morning we have our home inspection!  We're so excited to go back, walk through again & check everything out!  Then, tomorrow afternoon, I'm running in the 2nd Annual Family Fun Run & 5K at my school!  I'm just running for fun, so I'm not too worried about my time!  Should be a good day :)

Next Saturday is the St. Patty's Day Bar Crawl!

It's the biggest bar crawl in the world!!  And a fun day of some bar hoppin' with the friends!  If you're in Charlotte, you should definitely throw on some green and join!

Sunday the 25th Brandon & my brothers are participating in the Spartan Race at the White Water Center.  My SILs & I along with the kiddos are gonna go watch!!  It should be really fun - I'm just hoping no one gets burned from jumping over fire or beaten up from the gladiator style jousters!

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The next weekend starts Spring Break!!  Friday the 30th B and I leave for VA for a wedding shower for my cousin Erin!  My mom, grandmother, my cousin Ashley & I are all throwing it!  It's going to be so pretty, I'm so excited!  It's been so much fun to plan!

We come back to Charlotte Sunday, April 1st and fly out early Monday the 2nd for Miami!!  From Miami, we board our cruise ship to the Bahamas!!!

Hello vaycay!  That's right!!  We'll be boarding the Majesty of the Seas cruisin' for 4 nights in paradise!  All thanks to Brandon's hard work, by the way - he won the cruise from his company!

We fly back to Charlotte April 6th and 5 days later, April 11th we close on our house!!!  We are so giddy to close and have our house!

We won't be moving that weekend, though.  April 13th - 15th I'm off to Charlottesville, VA for my cousin Erin's Bachelorette party and Brandon is off to Hilton Head for a little Brocation!

My cousin Ashley & I have been planning an awesome girls weekend & some of B's best buddies are flying down from Michigan.  Lots of vacay time back to back - I can't complain!

After Bachelorette & Brocation weekend, we'll finally get to move April 20th & 21st!!  Woohoo!  I absolutely hate moving, but there's a lot of gratification in knowing we won't have to move for another 15, 20, or 50 years :)

We'll have a weekend at home, before heading back to Virginia the first weekend in May.  More wedding fun!  Erin & Ryan have a couples shower at the lake!

May will be a bit of a quieter month - I'm hoping it will consist of a little painting in the house & some furniture shopping!!  Memorial Day weekend is usually a good time, too!  I'm hoping for a good cookout and maybe some lake time :)

And then, before you know it, it's June!  June 7th is my last day of school & June 8th - 10th is Wedding Weekend!!

Good gracious...that's a lot, huh?!  So let me just go ahead and apologize way in advance if I seem a complete ADD mess between now and June - but I sure hope you'll stick around for all the fun!

A Girl Can Dream...

HAPPY VETERAN'S DAY!!!

Thank you, thank you to all the Veteran's who have served and all those currently serving!  I am forever grateful and indebted to you!!

I'm so thankful for my freedom and all the sacrifices our soldiers and their families have made, but I'm also REALLY thankful....

....for a day off!!  :)

In between a laundry list of chores and cleaning, the Today Show, The View, etc.....I plan to paint my toe nails and do a little online Christmas shopping!! Well more like browsing....

My mom, Brandon, Brandon's family, my family....they've all asked what I want for Christmas.  And I keep saying "I don't really know...I don't know what I want."  But as I've been browsing today, I've realized not knowing what I want is not actually the problem.

You see there are actually a lot of things I want.....

but the problem is home girl has Champagne taste and a beer budget.  =(

Haha, I can find TONS of things I want, but they're all, ahem, hundreds of dollars, rather expensive and irrational requests for Christmas gifts.

But a girl can dream, so just for fun, here is....

My Champagne Christmas List

A KitchenAid Stand Mixer

I could whip up some fabulous things with this bad boy!  It was on our wedding registry, but sadly, never got bought :(

The Dyson Animal Vacuum

Do you know the insane amounts of Benson hair (and Michelle hair, I shed SO much!) I could pick up with this sucker!?!  

I don't.  :(  But I'd love to try!

A Louis Vuitton Bag

I told Brandon if anyone ever offers him a free Louis Vuitton Bag tell them the Speedy 35 or Galleria GM would look fabulous on his wife's arm!!  This gift alone will require a large savings fund :) no, really!

A Gorgeous Fall/Winter Blazer

I've been wanting a good blazer to add as a staple to my wardrobe.  These beauties are from Banana Republic.

A David Yurman Ring

Oh David, how I would love to wear you.  Every day.  As a beautiful addition to my lonely right hand.  The left hand gets the weddings rings, the right hand needs some love, too right!?

Ok I'm getting carried away.  MUST. STOP. NOW.  I'm off to finish more chores before this list starts to cost more than our entire house fund ;)

Happy Friday friends!!!

Low Key Kinda Weekend

Our weekend over here was pretty low key....and as it turns out it was just perfect :)

We feel like we go, go, go SO much, especially Brandon since he's gone 4 days a week, and just in general since we fill our weekends with friends, family, and trips so often.  This weekend was uneventful and much needed.

Friday night we watched my niece and nephews while my brother & SIL went to a friends wedding.  We had lots of fun hanging out with the kids!  Wells was a stinker, though, and wouldn't go to bed!!

In the history of all my years of babysitting and nanny-hood (which is upwards of 13 years), I don't think I've ever had a child not go to sleep for me. So now, my first non-sleeper was a family member!  Haha, guess he just needed Momma & Daddy to tuck him in :)

The kids (and my week in general) obviously wore me out, I was asleep on our couch about .35 seconds after laying down once B and I got home.  B put a movie in and I think I made it through the title and introduction.

We decided there must be a reason kids typically come one at a time.....so their parents ease themselves into the whole parent thing.  3 at one time would be a lot, so rest assured I will surely not be praying for triplets over here!

Saturday we slept in which was oh-so-glorious!  Well didn't sleep in too late actually, about 830, but when you go to sleep at 930 the night before, that's a whole lotta sleepin'!  :)  I felt brand new.

We ran some errands Saturday morning and picked up a few things for our Halloween costumes!  And no, we are not being SMURFS!!!  Hallelujah, Praise the Lord, Amen....I do not have to paint my face or ANY part of my body for that matter for our new costumes!  Thanking all that is good in the world that we got off that idea :)

Can't tell ya what we're gonna be though!!  You'll just have to wait til next weekend to see some awesome pics, my friends!  And let me just say....they will be awesome!

Remember this past summer when I had a "to do" list of a few things I was going to accomplish with all my time off from school?  Well about 3 things didn't get completed, but I was able to cross one off Saturday!  Only 2 months late.  Whatev...

We FINALLY have artwork for above our bed!  I wasn't 100% it would work just looking at it in the store, but once we got home, it was perfect!  Our bedroom is complete :)

We hit the gym after our errands and then came home to relax for the rest of the evening.  I found a yummy recipe for Pumpkin Spice Muffin's here so we tried them out!  Between the muffins cooking in the oven and our Creamy Pumpkin candle burning, our house smelled of fall perfection!

We cooked some delicious Omaha burgers on the George Foreman and watched the movie The Set Up.

It was filmed in B's hometown of Grand Rapids so it was fun to watch it and have him point out all the spots he knew!  I even recognized some places!

This guy snuggled and slept in my lap while we lounged on the couch...

He's such a good boy when he's sleeping!!

We finished The Set Up pretty early in the evening so after it was over, we were looking for something good on TV to leave it on.  Much to my surprise and enjoyment, this movie was on TV...

I was so excited!!!  Haha, this is by far one of THE best movies to sing along to!  Brandon indulged me and turned the volume nice and loud so I could sing along and break out some couch dance moves :)  This movie brings back my days of choir and makes me miss it so, so much!  I love singing, but these days the most action I get is in the car, stereo up loud, belting out.  It'll do!

In other news (outside of my love for choirs - nerd alert!), the Panther's finally added another W to their season today!!!!

We thought about going but we're trying this new thing out where we act responsible and adult like and stuff (which is for the birds in my opinion) in order to save $$ so we can buy a house next year!  Spending $120 on tickets just didn't seem like the responsible choice today....so we watched my boys get the W from our couch.

We also threw in a long run, a good apartment cleaning, and a little work today.  And now here we are, gearin' up for another Monday.

Those Mondays sure come around a lot.  I'd like to spread them out a little more ;)

Midweek Randos

Well it's not quite mid week yet, but I thought it was Wednesday pretty much all day so I feel like this is an appropriate title!

If you look above....I've added a few pages.  

An "About Me" page - just a intro to me, my life, and my little ol corner here in cyber space.  As well as a "Recipes" page with links to all the recipes I've blogged about.  

This one is almost more for my convenience - ha it's definitely more organized than any recipes I have at home.  You'll find all my recipes in a large stack in a semi-neat pile in a "catch all" cabinet.  Maybe one day I'll organize those.  Maybe not... :)

I have a few more pages I plan to add, but I'm not sure when they'll be up. Probably around one of those days when I have time to organize my recipes!

I FINALLY finished The Help!!!

I started reading it this summer, but then school started back and got in the way of any free time I had!!

Week nights, reading puts me straight to sleep! I was terrible at reading text books in college, haha, heavy eyes ensued almost immediately!

Anyways....I would read a chapter here and there and I did finally finish!  It was SO SO good!  I can't wait to see the movie now!  (Yes, yes, I realize the rest of the world has already seen this! I'm just slightly behind.)

I already have two other books on my "to read" list.

I've loved all the Jodi Picoult books I've read and I've heard this one was another great one!  I want to read all her books, but for now this is the next one of her's I'll read.

A few years ago, Oprah interviewed Wes Moore.

He shared his story of how as he was growing up, making great strides and accomplishing great things, another man from a nearby neighborhood by his same name was doing the complete opposite.  I'm a firm believer that our choices lead us down a certain path which is exactly what this book is about. I love the quote on the front of this book...a chilling truth and a tragedy, one name and two fates.  I can't wait to read it!!

Any of y'all have either of these books??  Care to share?  ;)

I sure do love my husband, ya'll.  And I would do just about anything for him!!  Except maybe this...

Brandon wants to be a SMURF for Halloween!!  Really?  Really!?!  Painting myself blue, or any other color, is probably the last thing on Earth I want to do.

I mean, I'm a fun person and I like Halloween and eating all the yummy candy getting all dressed up!  But I don't. want. to. be. BLUE!!!  Body paint just does not sound like a good time to me!  

HELP!!!  What else can we be!?!?  Please, I beg, someone give me a good idea so I can change his mind!

Happy (almost) midweek friends :)