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 ;)

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...

via

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!!!

Wonderful Wednesday

Happy Hump Day friends!  Always a good feeling to be half way through the week and closer to another weekend...duh!  

This afternoon, I ran a few errands and then stopped by the mall for some shopping with a little birthday money that was burning a hole in my pocket :)

Ever since our house news I've been dreaming of home decor purchases and immediately thought I should save my birthday cash to buy something for the house - maybe put it towards some new furniture (since we'll have none!) or a new piece of art or decorative something - but B said I should use it to buy some new spring clothes and clothes for our cruise!!

Have I mentioned I love that man!?!  I'm really thankful he told me to do that!  As I've mentioned before, making these big adult purchases in life makes it hard to enjoy shopping or spending money on things I don't necessairly *need*.  So I'm thankful for his 'ok' to make some new wardrobe purchases :)

I've really been wanting some grey skinnies, so I finally got these pretties today at Gap!

Except their grey, like I said!
For the life of me, I couldn't find the grey pair on
their website.

I thought I'd have a little more time to browse around, but I had to make it to a farewell dinner (tear!) for 2 coworkers and traffic was a mess!  On the bright side, I still have some birthday cash left and will hopefully find some more spring/summer essentials soon!

Speaking of pretties, have you heard of One Kings Lane?  My friend Melissa blogged about a deal on One Kings Lane a few months ago, and after perusing their sight I became obsessed!  Their site has tons of pretties!!  This past weekend I made my first OKL purchase...

via

Isn't this bag so cute?  I loved the bright, cheery color!  Again, a great purchase for spring & the cruise :)  Unfortunately, I think this sale has ended, but I'm not positive so check out the link!

As I said, I'm now obsessed with OKL because they have the most amazing items on their site.  Don't get me wrong, some of their stuff is crazy outrageous expensive, even on 'sale'!  For instance...

this metal sculpture on 'sale' for a mere $699.00!  I mean, hey, maybe that's your thing and you have 700 smackaroos laying around to spend on this weird lovely metal piece....not really my style!

Ha, no for real though, look at all these beauties I lurve on their site...

Gunmetal Archbed Bed
I think this bed would look fantastic in our master bedroom!

Lux Candles
I can just see these beside the soaker tub in the master bath!

Mirrored Jewelry Box

Table Lamp

Over time, I know we'll eventually acquire some great furniture, like the above, but for now, I'll stick to browsing around & dreaming through OKL!

And Pinterest!  

If you follow me on Pinterest, you've probably noticed that a lot of my pins lately are going on my "For the Home" board. 

I think we might need this bedding!  I just love these
colors for the bedroom!

How cute is this idea!?!

We will be needing this right inside the garage!

Great for the office maybe?!

I think someone should really pull me back down to reality...my head seems to be floating in the clouds a bit much, whoops!

Before I leave you, I thought I'd share a blog post I really enjoyed reading - 10 Things I've Learned About Sex in 6 Months of Marriage!  Rachel retweeted this link/post the other day & after reading it, I felt like it was too good not to share!!  1 - Major kudos to the author, Lauren, for addressing the sensitive unmentionable topic and 2 - thanks for addressing it so well!!!

Bet that's not how ya thought I'd sign off, huh!?  An article about sex!  Haha, well friends, I'm always full of surprises ;)  Hope your week is sailing along smoothly!

Confessional Friday

It's Friday y'all, you know the drill!  Time for a little weekly confessing with Leslie... so hold on to your seat cause here we go! :)

1 - Birthday week started early!!  Last night, B surprised me with a present I'd really been wanting!

Love!!  Super cute, right?!

2 - You read correctly, I said birthday week.  I'm a firm believer that birthday's are too much fun to just be celebrated for one day.  You gotta spread the celebrating out!!

3 - To celebrate my birthday, I think a lot of, ahem some spring shopping is in order! Brandon doesn't quite feel this is the best way to celebrate...I have some convincing to do.

4 - For being a 'short' week...it sure felt really long.  Even with the 2 teacher workdays at the beginning of the week.  I usually feel like a small mac truck has run me over by Friday nights.  This week is no different, but the couch sure is comfy - I'm sinking into it as we speak :)

5 - Turns out what I thought was a cooking fail, actually turned out to be quite a success!  B loved the granola bars I made!!  And after I got over the peanut-buttery-ness, I really liked 'em too!

I'm going to make some again this weekend - switch up the ingredients a bit.  Not so much peanut butter and adding a little Justin's Chocolate Hazelnut Butter.  They'll still be kinda healthy, right?

6 - Speaking of healthy, I've been craving some good cupcakes lately.  I think I might need to make some for my birthday!  Yes, yes I need to do that!

7 - Surely cupcakes will be good for my calorie counter & my waistline right!?  As I'm sure the Chocolate Peanut Butter Malted Milk Balls I picked up today at Earthfare are!  Oh wait... actually probably not.

8 - I try to not over indulge, but I have to indulge every now in then.  Or else I'd straight up binge!  This week I may have over indulged a wee bit, though.  Darn those teacher workdays and eating lunch out and my chocolate cravings!!  This occurred to me on the treadmill yesterday as I was struggling through a run...

'If you feed your body crap, it will look like crap and perform like crap!!'

You'd think I'd learn this!!  Anytime I go for that piece of chocolate, I'm going to repeat this in my head.  Over and over again!  After tonight and those chocolate peanut butter malted milk balls, that is ;)  And birthdays are an exception right?

9 - House hunting quite possibly might be the death of me!!!  What an emotional roller coaster.  Holy cow!!  It also might be the death of my husband - I could likely drive him to insanity over it :)  Pray for us!  Haha

10 - On an exciting note, we're off to see some houses tomorrow - possibly 4 of 'em!!  Ya never know, we could see 'the one' tomorrow!!!  I have high hopes!

I'm outta confessions and we're puttin' Dexter in!  Happy weakend, y'all!!! :)

Good Eats & Accessories

I mentioned Monday that we tried out some new recipes from Pinterest this weekend & as it turns out...they were pretty good!  They're on my keepers list for sure so I though I'd share the good eats with the blog world :)

Brandon suggested a bunch of dinner options Saturday for us to eat....going out, take out, picking something up at the store....& I just couldn't pick, so I checked out my Pinterest All That is Delicious board & settled on....

Buffalo Chicken Tacos

and

Wendy's Copy Cat Frosty for dessert!

*pictures are not mine....from the sources!*

I will never say no to a taco or to anything buffalo!  

This recipe calls for cornstarch, which I did not have, so I just left it out.  We also switched up our toppings a bit which is a beautiful thing about tacos!  We topped ours with a little ranch dressing, blue cheese crumbles, shredded lettuce, avocado, & a little salsa.  Yum!!

There was just enough left over for my dinner last night....happy belly :)

I love, love, love ice cream so I was a big fan of our homemade frosty!  

This bad boy comes in at only 113 calories, y'all.  You can't beat that!  The website says to put it in the freezer for 4-5 minutes before eating, but in my humble opinion, that's a big fat lie.  It needs a good 45 mins to an hour minimum or else it's really just some delicious chocolate milk :) Brandon's definitely more of a cake kinda guy, so he thought it was just ok, but I fell in love <3

Speaking of love, my sweet blogger friend April over at A. Liz Adventures is hosting a gorgeous giveaway on her blog!!  Noble House Designs has paired up with April to offer up some Irresistible Accessories for a lucky winner & I'm hoping it is moi!!

via

This Red & Pink Vintage Necklace II is calling my name & would look great around my neck for a Valentine's date :)  So go check out the goodies on her page!

Hope your week is turing out blessed, friends!

Friday Confessional

Well it's about that time again....time for some Friday evening confessions, y'all :)  I'm linking up with Leslie at A Blonde Ambition for her Friday confessions as well!

1. First and foremost, hallelujah, good glory, bless......Friday took forever to get here this week!!!  I've never been so excited for Friday!  (Ok that's probably a lie, I'm pretty much always excited for Friday, but ya know....a little extra this week.)

I think I practically sprinted out the building today!

2. I discovered something rather unfortunate last night.... as it turns out, the KitchenAid mixer Brandon got me this past Christmas came with the burnished accessories (not the unfortunate part).  Which means that when I put the flat beater in the dishwasher the first time after using it, it stripped all the polish off (<---the unfortunate part!).

Which ultimately means, when I went to go make some amazeballs meatballs last night (which we ate tonight, yum!), I realized my flat beater was in fact ruined!  I was very, very disappointed.

Good news, though - I used the dough hook to mix the meatballs and it got the job done.  Also, a new flat beater is only $14.99 if you ever need to know :)

3. Toms shoes debuted their ballet flats this week!!!

I need want.  Between Valentine's day & my birthday, I think there's lots of great reasons for me to get these babies!

4. I'd also really like one of these for my birthday...

via

I'm a sucker for a good monogram & this website has so many cute cases!!  I don't even know if I can pick a favorite!

5. Speaking of my approaching birthday - I'm turning the big 2 - 5 this year!  All this really means (besides an impending quarter life crisis!) is that my license will be expiring.  Joy!  This means one day soon, I'll be hanging out with all the pleasantries at the DMV until my number gets called.

I tried getting an appointment - called 4 different DMVs!  But they're all booked til the middle of March, which will leave me expired :(  Boo.

6. Hubs is finally home!!  We're watching New Girl & I'm laughing out loud!

I heart this show!  

7. But, I really heart my husband being home!!  And our Friday nights on the couch :)  And Confession Friday of course!!

8. Happy, happy weekend friends!!!!

Confession Friday: Christmas Edition

It's that time again friends....I have a few Christmas confessions to make so no better time than the present....

1. Brandon & I went ahead and opened our gifts to each other this morning!!!  Oops!  Hah, this is our 3rd Christmas together & we've yet to wait until Christmas to open our gifts with each other!

We'll be with ALL my family this Christmas and it just seems like a lot of pressure to open gifts from one another in front of a crowd.  We didn't get each other anything private, but wanted it to be special and just us.

Look what was hiding under our tree with my name on it!!!!!

Finally!!!  My KitchenAid mixer!!

If you remember this post, I've been wanting a mixer for a while!  Pretty sure I was squealing once I opened it :)

And the cake stand I've been wanting!!!

This was another gift on our registry we never got, but I had been wanting!  Santa did good this year don't ya think!?!

2. I made Mini Chocolate Chip & M&M cookies yesterday!  Don't they look great in the stand above?!?

Pretty sure I ate more of the dough than got cooked.  Soo good!

3. In the midst of all the Christmas shopping I did, I usually walked away with one or two things for myself in addition.  Big oops!!  This happened most recently on a trip to Target...

Exhibit A

And exhibit B

In my defense, it's nearly impossible to not browse the clothing section of Target upon entry.  And this sweater is cute!

4. Speaking of getting things for myself...

These beauties came from Crate & Barrel.  The pictures don't do them justice, but they're gorgeous!  I went in to purchase a gift card & noticed all the ornaments were on sale!  Who can resist a sale?  Not I!  So I nabbed all 3 of these for less than 8 bucks!  I don't know where you're from, but I call that a steal ;)

5. Speaking of our Christmas tree....I just love our Christmas Tree!  It's so pretty, twinkling and sparkling all lit up at night.  Even Benson enjoys it's beauty.

But I'd be a big fat liar if I said I'll be sad to see it go!  Only because the little monster pictured above thinks the tree, it's ornaments, and the presents & bows beneath are his play toys!!

It's like a game: Benson runs and plays in the presents/tree, we yell at/chase him away, Ben runs away, we sit down.  REPEAT!!!  I'm over it!

6. Our tree is looking a little bare underneath since we opened our gifts for each other already.  Guess the big boxes were ours!

7. We've yet to watch Elf this Christmas season.  I'm so sad about this!  I normally watch it about 3 or 12 times.  This will be changed by tomorrow, at the latest!

8. I look forward to seeing what's inside my stocking as much as I look forward to opening gifts!  The stocking is such a fun tease, too, because you can see your gifts peeking out!

9. We don't have children, obviously, but I know there's often a debate on no-Santa vs. Santa.  A friend tweeted this link the other day and I just loved this post!  So yes, we still believe and we will be having Santa in our house one day!

10. Most of my family is either already here or on the way and I'm so excited to see them!!!  They're really the best part of Christmas (well next to Jesus of course!)!!  The festivities begin this afternoon with a fun girly outing to get our nails painted and then dinner with the whole family!!

11. I hope you get to spend your Christmas with all of your loved ones!!  <----That wasn't really a confession, just going with the number thing!

Merry Christmas Eve Eve friends!!!