My Life in Pink and Green

Sunday Pregnancy Musings...

2012-01-22T07:31:00.000-08:00

1. Yesterday at the gym, I realized I need to invest in some maternity work out pants. My regular pants are no longer cutting it and giving me a weird bump because they are tight in the waist, which is not cute when you are sweating on the elliptical and already a bit self-conscious about having this new body. I'm thinking about checking out Target and Old Navy - any other recommendations?

2. I used the baby as an "excuse" to convince J to get Dunkin Donuts for breakfast this morning. And then I may have eaten 2.5 chocolate glazed donuts, plus a large caramel flavored decaf coffee. But I plan on putting on my too-tight workout pants and hitting up the gym later today, so that makes it ok, right?

3. I think baby boy is growing at a rapid rate, because this week, my back and sciatic nerve have been in serious pain. Doing yoga has helped, but I'm definitely uncomfortable and still not sleeping very good. Little man is hanging out low, low, low because I'm only feeling kicks on my bladder and underneath my belly button. I know he'll move up in the next few weeks, but I think I'd rather have him on my bladder than in my ribs, so I'm happy where he is for now.

4. I'm anxious to start the nursery and I'm in major nesting mode. I literally woke up one morning and was overwhelmed with everything we need to do. We have to relocate my office, sell our guest room furniture and clean out the closets in the nursery before we can start the fun decorating. My nursery Pinterest board has like 100 pins but I'm starting to narrow down my ideas for the room. We are keeping the walls the green that we painted when we moved in, but I want to do a fun bold accent wall where the crib will go. I want to do navy as the main color, with a few pops of fun yellow.

5. My favorite black Patagonia fleece no longer zips up over my bump. This sort of depresses me and sort of makes me laugh. This past week, I've noticed the comments from strangers have increased, as well as 2 unsolicited bump touches (ahhhhh so weird and creepy!!). As much as I like to rock the bump, I'm sort of happy that it's winter and I can still cover it with my winter coat to limit the comments and touches.

6. I love how now that I'm pregnant, J.Crew has been doing crazy ridiculous sales. All their Factory stuff is 60% off this week and I was sort of bummed to look at everything that I don't currently fit into. Then I realized I can still shop for accessories, shoes and CARDIGANS!! So I may or may not have placed an order this morning for a couple of pregnancy friendly items.

Summer in January

2012-01-19T06:24:00.000-08:00

So I realize that it's January and it's about 30 degrees outside, but I saw this at the grocery store earlier this week and had to get it:
Dole's Endless Summer Salad Kit. I'll be honest, I'm not really sure what makes this a "summery" salad. It has a "Summer" Vinaigrette, shredded Swiss and Gruyere Cheeses, Roasted Sunflower Seeds, Croutons and Pepper and Herb Seasoning. But it was AMAZING! I'm sort of a salad snob and I thought that the lettuces that came with the salad were sort of gross (I hate iceburg), so I actually bought a second bag of salad with romaine and other greens and used that instead of the lettuce that came with it.

But all the add-in's were delicious! I think my favorite was the Pepper and Herb Seasoning - it really gave the salad a lot of flavor. I'm allergic to nuts, so I was happy to have the sunflower seeds to give it crunch. I seriously could have eaten the entire bag myself (but I did share with J!)

If you see it at your grocery store, definitely try it! It may be my new favorite salad!

Golden Globes - Best and Worst Dressed!

2012-01-16T05:40:00.000-08:00

I love awards season! And the Golden Globes may be my favorite awards show, I love how laid back and fun it is! Most of the stars did not disappoint last night, so I thought I would share some of my favorites. And then get to some who I thought missed the mark.

Favorites:Jessica Alba - I thought she was seriously glowing! Her skin looked amazing and I loved this lavender dress. I can't believe she had a baby 5 months ago. I may tape this picture to my fridge as motivation after I have the baby in May!Charlize Theron - Loved this, even though I do think it's very similar to other dresses she's worn before. I LOVED her headband, probably my favorite part of her entire look!
Claire Danes - Loved the black and white! The back was to die for as well. Simple and elegant!
Dianna Agron - I thought this was very different, but I still loved it. The cutouts up top were really pretty and I loved all the layers/ruffles at the bottom. Her hair was also one of my favorites. Emma Stone - I liked the two-tone and I thought the belt was actually pretty cool. Loved the beaded cap sleeves. She definitely could pull off a look like this. The only thing I don't like is that her shoes look sort of chunky for such a delicate dress.Paula Patton - Yellow!! This color looked amazing on her with her dark hair and it was so bright and cheerful. It's a color that not everyone could pull off, but I thought it looked amazing on her!Reese Witherspoon - I loved how relaxed and happy she looked! It was different from her normal very polished looks and I liked it! Her hair is great and the red looked so good on her!

Now, my LEAST favorites:
Jessica Biel - YUCK. It was a sloppy mess...her dress AND hair looked blah. You'd think for someone who just got engaged to Justin Timberlake, she'd want to look really good. It reminds me of an old lady's nightgown.
Natalie Portman - I love Natalie, but I did not love this dress. It was too frumpy and didn't show off how cute and tiny she is. I hated the folded down part at the top - it reminded me of a 90's prom dress!Lea Michele - I was not a fan of this and I think it looks too old for her. The top reminds me of a ice skaters outfit.

Who did you think was best and worst dressed?

One of those days....

2012-01-13T10:53:00.000-08:00

Not sure if the fact that it's Friday the 13th has anything to do with it, but today is a crazy day! While I was out on appointments this morning for work, I decided I need to treat myself and the little man to some deliciousness in a cup...
Chick-Fil-A Ice Tea and Lemonade mixed - heaven in a cup!! Oh and while I was there, I couldn't turn down a #1 with extra pickles and CFA sauce. Obviously.

Pregnancy Essentials - The first half!

2012-01-10T05:55:00.001-08:00

I celebrated the halfway point of this pregnancy on Sunday! I can't believe I made it halfway - sometimes it seems like the time is dragging on and other times it feels like it's flying by.

I put together a short list of the things that helped me get through the last 20 weeks and what I couldn't live without!

1. My Sigg Water bottleI will admit - I was HORRIBLE about drinking water before I got pregnant. Like, I would go all day without drinking anything. As soon as that 2nd line popped up, I was craving ice cold water like it was my job. I have a 24 oz. Sigg and I try to drink 4-5 bottles of water a day from it. I carry it with me everywhere and I'm seriously obsessed with tracking how much water I've had in a day.

2. These 2 prenatal workout DVD's...
Suzanne Bowen's Long and Lean Workout - this is a serious workout, even if you aren't pregnant! She does a million squats and leg lefts - it's a great whole body workout and I am typically super sweaty by the end. I LOVE the stretching sequence at the end, it really helps with hip and back pain. I do this every other day and alternate it with this:Shiva Rea's prenatal yoga. This is amazing and calming, but still a great full body workout. I feel like I've gotten the best stretch ever after I finish it. She has different modifications for each trimester. I also like how she teaches you some deep breathing techniques, which I hope will be useful for labor!

Both of these DVD's have really helped because I've had pretty bad back and hip pain since around 11 weeks. If I skip a few days of them, I definitely start to feel more sore.

4. Cardigans. Sort of random, but I've found that dressing while pregnant is all about the layers. My current go-to outfit during this pregnancy is maternity jeans, a short or long sleeve t-shirt, a cardigan and then some fun jewelry. The nice thing about cardigans is that they will work after I have the baby as well, so I don't feel guilty about buying a lot them since I will get more than 9 months of wear out of them. I bought this ruffle cardigan from Target in every color...
Edit - The cardigan from Target can be found here. They also had a lot in my local store, on clearance for $17.99!

Catching up - the first 4 months

2012-01-04T04:21:00.000-08:00

Part of me is sort of bummed that I didn't blog the beginning of this pregnancy, but we really didn't tell anyone except immediate family until I was 14-15 weeks along. But then right at 14 weeks, I woke up one day with a large baby bump, so we figured the cat needed to get out of the bag! ha! So here's an abbreviated version of the weekly pregnancy posts, for the first four months!

Due Date: May 27, 2012

How Big is Baby: Well he started out as a poppy seed and grew all the way to like an avocado I believe in week 16. Currently in week 19, he's a mango!

Symptoms: I pretty much had every pregnancy symptom ever in the 1st trimester. The extreme all day nausea started around week 6, but luckily pretty much vanished in week 13. The exhaustion was seriously ridiculous - I didn't realize a person could be so tired all the time. My weekends in the fall basically consisted of sleeping on the couch and J bringing me food/forcing me to eat. I had some bad food aversions and couldn't really eat anything unless it was a carb. I also had horrible bloating/gas (lovely!), extreme headaches and heartburn (which I still have). Honestly, all these symptoms went away in the beginning of the 2nd trimester, so I can still say that being pregnant is amazing, because I feel great now! Selective amnesia I guess!

Cravings: Eggo Waffles (we literally started buying these in bulk from Sam's Club because I was eating so many of them), Spaghetti-O's, Orange Juice, Ice Cold Water. This is literally what my entire diet in the 1st trimester consisted of. Picture of health right?? Don't worry, I'm actually eating vegetables now!

Sleep: Pretty horrible right from the beginning. Right after we found out, I think I was really nervous/excited so I hardly slept. Then that was replaced by getting up to pee at least 2 times a night. I did nap like a champ though several times a day, especially from week 6 - 10.

I Can't Live Without: My large water bottle, so I can keep track of how much water I'm drinking and leggings, long v-neck tshirts from Target and cardigans (pretty much my daily wardrobe now)

I Miss: Sleeping through the night without getting up to pee a million times, not having any back pain and sushi.

I am Looking Forward to: I'm trying to enjoy the pregnancy as it happens, so I try not to look ahead too much. I think I was looking forward to getting out of the 1st trimester so I could relax a little bit and start feeling better.

Milestones: Making it out of the 1st trimester alive!

Awkward Moments: I think pregnancy is generally awkward all together. All the body changes and weird things that happen to you. It's a surreal experience!

Exercise: I fought through a lot of the nausea and exhaustion and actually did work out in the 1st trimester. I jogged (just recently stopped because it was feeling really weird!) and went for long walks. I also have been doing a prenatal yoga and prenatal pilates DVD every day - I alternate between the 2 every other day. I love them both and I think they are definitely keeping me feeling good, especially when I started getting back/hip pain.

Diet: Whatever I could keep down?

Movement: I guess since this is my first pregnancy, I didn't really know what I was looking for as far as movement. I never really felt any "flutters" except for maybe 1 or 2 times and it could have definitely been gas. But right after Christmas, around the 18 week mark, Baby Boy started kicking the crap out of me and now there's no mistaken all this movement.

Gender: BOY!

Labor Signs: Umm no way!

We are taking monthly photos of my belly growth - I thought weekly was a bit much, especially since you don't grow that much week to week. I wear the same outfit and we take them in the same room for comparison. So here's my 4 week picture (taken the day we found out) and my 16 week picture, so you can see the crazy explosion that my belly has done!Ahh I miss you little flat stomach! Yeeeeeeeah, no denying that I'm pregnant! And I have been asked by strangers if I'm having twins. I love how people think it's acceptable to ask pregnant people ridiculous questions!!

So that was the first 16 weeks in a nutshell!

It's a Boy - Old Wives Tales

2012-01-02T07:54:00.001-08:00

So we found out Baby E was a boy on the 23rd, just in time to tell our families on Christmas - it was a very fun Christmas reveal! I baked chocolate chip cookies with blue M&M's in them and put them in 2 tins for both our mom's to open on Christmas and they all loved it!

The funniest part of the baby being a boy is that J was convinced that it was a girl. He was calling my belly "she" and was constantly talking about baby girls. I really didn't have any mother's intuition either way and honestly had no idea until we got the money shot on the sonogram. When the tech pointed out his little man parts, J's mouth fell open and he literally did not say a word for the entire scan. I was hysterically laughing because he was just so in shock. Of course, now he's obsessed with the fact that he's going to have a little mini-me to take fishing and camping!

Anyways, only a few of the "old wives tales" were accurate for me in predicting that the baby was a boy.

If you prefer sleeping on your left side, you'll have a boy. Right side? A girl. Umm I preferred (and still do) to sleep on my back. And I know it's bad, I have slowly been forcing myself to sleep on my side now that I'm so far along. I don't really have a side preference, I honestly just hate sleeping on my side at all.
Extreme nausea means you are having a girl. This was wrong for me - I had extreme nausea all day from 6 weeks until about 14 weeks. I threw up a few times a week, but mainly it was just feeling like crap and not being able to eat anything. Yuck.
If you're craving citrus, you're having a girl. This was wrong too - I eat so many grapefruits and clementines, it's not even funny. I also was chugging OJ in the 1st trimester like it was my job.
If your skin breaks out, expect a girl. Considering I look like a 13 year old, this was not correct for me. My skin is awful and nothing helps. Luckily it's all on my chin/jaw line so it's not super noticeable, but I still am not a fan, as I normally have very clear skin. I have no "pregnancy glow" at all. It sucks!
If you feel graceful during pregnancy, you'll have a girl. Clumsy? It's a boy. Umm well I'm always clumsy, so I'm not sure if this works for me or not. I am still very clumsy, so I guess it was right.
If you gain weight in your face, it means you're having a girl. I guess this was right for me - so far I haven't gained any weight except for in my belly. Let's hope it stays that way!!
Craving salt? Expect a boy. A little something sweet? You're having a girl. This was right for me - my sweet tooth that I normally have is pretty much non-existant. But give me olives, pickles or salt and vinegar chips and I'm in heaven!
If baby is low, expect a boy. High, it's a girl. This kid is super low, so this was correct. At our last ultrasound, the tech goes "wow, he is right on your bladder" - yeah, I already knew that from the constant kicks he gives me, which are always fun when you are peeing 150 times a day anyway!
If you're carrying in front, it's a boy. All around your middle? A girl. I'm definitely carrying all in front, so this is correct. I hope this continues, you really can't tell I'm pregnant from the back.
If the baby's heart rate is over 140 beats per minute, then you are having a girl. If the baby's heart rate is under 140 beats per minute, you are having a boy. This was not right for me - apparently our boy has a super high heart rate. It's normally right around 160. My mother in law told me that J's heart rate was super high when she was pregnant with him, so I guess he's already taking after his dad!
The Chinese Gender Chart - this was also WRONG for me, which I find very interesting because it's been right for all my friends who have babies and I consider it to be pretty accurate haha. It definitely said girl and there is no doubt this baby is all boy!

For those of you with kids, were the old wives tales right for you?

2012 is going to be a great year!

2011-12-30T06:12:00.000-08:00

So I think it's finally time to explain why my blogging has sucked lately...

We're having a BABY!!

I'm currently 19 weeks pregnant and Baby E is a BOY! He should make his arrival around May 27, 2012 (Memorial Day weekend!) We are so excited (and nervous!)

I had a pretty rough 1st trimester as far as nausea and exhaustion (pregnancy is no joke!) But I'm feeling MUCH better now and I can honestly say I'm loving the pregnancy thing. Little man has recently started with some pretty strong kicks, which are awesome. Oh and whoever said that boys clothes aren't as cute as girls has obviously never shopped with me. He's not even here yet and this kid has several monogrammed and embroidered outfits that are to die for! Yes, we have a name picked already - but we're not sharing until he's born.

So I'm sure that many more baby blog posts are in my future. We just started our registry and are getting started on the nursery soon (much more on that later - our house is about to become a construction zone!)

I've journaled my pregnancy so far in a little notebook, so I may do a little catch up on the first 18 weeks and I'll post a few bump pictures as well. I started showing really early and it's slightly bizarre to have this baby bump already! Here's my bump from Christmas Day at 18 weeks:

Happy New Year!!

Merry Christmas!!

2011-12-24T06:49:00.001-08:00

Hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas!!

Christmas List

2011-12-19T04:13:00.001-08:00

Wow, I'm really sucking in the blogging department! I promise I'll be better in the New Year! Since Christmas is now 6 days away (WHAT?!?!), I thought I would share what's on my list this year. Tomorrow I'll share my favorite gifts that I'm giving this year.J and I decided we aren't really doing presents this year and will both just upgrade to an iPhone 4s right after Christmas. So excited - I think I'm most excited to pick out a cute case for it!Clarisonic Mia (in pink of course). I've heard awesome things about this little brush - and it's the perfect size to fit in my stocking!A calligraphy address stamper - love this one from etsy!I'm not a big coffee drinker, but I LOVE tea, so this is the perfect coffee maker for me and J. He can get his coffee and I can have my tea and oatmeal. A Kindle Fire - I'm all about the tech gifts this year!Yes, I realize it's almost 2012 and I'm asking for a pizza stone - we're a little behind the times on this one. But we realized that we eat a lot of homemade pizza!

So hopefully Santa will put some of these under the tree for me this year. What is on your list?

Thanksgiving Outfit Help!

2011-11-18T07:28:00.000-08:00

Being an OCD planner, I of course, like to decide on my outfit for the holidays far in advance. This year, we are going to J's family for Thanksgiving (we alternate every year), so there will be about 30 people there, of all ages. I love his extended family because all his cousins are around our age and it's fun to catch up with all of them!

Anyways, here's the outfit I have narrowed down for next Thursday:This dress - it's a sweater dress and super soft and comfy. Bonus that it's loose so I can eat as much as I want! EDIT - The dress is from Target! They have a ton of cute sweater dresses right now.
These boots - my knock off Frye boots from Target. I love these because the shade of brown is perfect, they were super cheap and look really cute.
To add in some more brown, this belt around the empire waist part of the dress.

My dilemma is coming in what color tights to wear with it. I'm thinking a fun color, such as navy or burgundy might be fun. But would that look weird? Should I go with brown? Or grey? Or even ivory? I'm not super good when it comes to fun accessories, so I need help!! What's your vote?

Back from Paradise

2011-11-14T14:26:00.000-08:00

So we're back from Puerto Rico. Bummed to come back, but we had a fantastic time! I would highly recommend PR to anyone looking for a quick, fun, easy weekend getaway. Since it's part of the US, you don't have to go through customs or take a passport. We had a 3 hour direct flight both ways - it couldn't have been easier!

Of course, we had awesome (HOT!) weather the entire time! It's funny how you forget what hot weather feels like when you come from the cold fall temps. It actually snowed back home while we were gone - we saw that on the news as we were laying pool side with fruity drinks!

Here was the amazing view from our hotel balcony:And here's what we did all day:Here's the amazing and authentic Puerto Rican food we ate:
(this is Mofongo, which is mashed plantains topped with shredded marinated chicken. It's a local specialty and was delicious!)

We also did some sight seeing in Old San Juan and walked around the fort there, El Morro:
It was a great and relaxing way to celebrate turning 30! And J celebrated his 32nd birthday while we were there as well, so it was a double birthday trip!

Now I can't believe how fast the holidays are coming up! Thanksgiving next week?!?! Craziness!!

Leaving...

2011-10-26T05:45:00.001-07:00

On a jet plane! We are off to Puerto Rico to celebrate our birthdays with sun, sand and relaxation! Can't wait for 4 days of tropical beaches, Pina Coladas and good food!

PS - It actually happened - I turned 30. And the world didn't end. It's been a great birthday so far! I'm very blessed!

Countdown to 30!

2011-10-05T08:57:00.000-07:00

I apologize for being a crappy blogger - I have no excuse this time except for pure laziness. Anyways, it's October, which means it's my birthday month. 21 days until the big 3-0!! That is insane to me, but I'm dealing with it. It helps that we are taking a long weekend trip to Puerto Rico for my birthday. We leave the day after my birthday for 4 days of sun and fun! I've also taken my actual birthday off from work so I can sleep in, get a pedicure and go out to lunch and dinner with J and my parents.

I decided that since I'm going to be 30, I probably shouldn't rock the bikini for too much longer in my old age. Plus, I'm pasty white and out of shape and I'm not sure anyone wants to see that much of me on the beach. So I'm currently on the hunt for a few cute tankini's to take on our trip. I love the strapless ones from J.Crew and Lands End Canvas.Love this green color from J.Crew!

I also found this cute paisley print from Target and I think I may order it this week. I'm a little worried it's too "momish" but I really love the shape and colors. I can always return it if it's a bit too granny when it arrives I guess.

Does anyone else have any suggestions for cute tankini's to wear when you are officially O-L-D?

2011-09-07T13:58:00.000-07:00

Happy Anniversary to Us!

2011-09-05T06:00:00.001-07:00

I can't believe we've been married for 2 years today - the time flew by! We had a wonderful 2nd year of marriage and I can't wait to see what's in store for the next 20+ years!

The Kitchen: Budget Breakdown

2011-08-31T17:13:00.000-07:00

Doing all the labor on our kitchen saved us a ton of money. Like thousands and thousands. I'm extremely grateful that my husband knows his way around power tools so that we didn't put ourselves into debt to re-do the kitchen. We are pretty frugal and obviously shopped around for the best deals we could find, while still getting the items that we wanted and not skimping on quality.

The bottom line dollar for the entire kitchen came to $4,993.33. The budget we set for ourselves before we started was $5,000 so I'm happy we came in under that - by 7 dollars! HA!! Here's an itemized list of the budget breakdown so you can see where that money went:

Flooring & Walls - $768.85 (this includes the tile, grout, thinset, backerboard, tiling tools, baseboards and all trim, spackle, paint, etc.)

Cabinets (stock white cabinets from Home Depot) - $1,551 (we lucked into buying the cabinets during Memorial Day weekend and they were having a 20% sale on all in-stock cabinets. We also opened a HD credit card the same day to get an additional 10%)

Cabinet Hardware, Knobs/Pulls and Screws - $134.54 (we ordered all the knobs off of Ebay for less than a dollar a piece, which was the best price we found anywhere)

Countertops - $1,862 (this includes the templating and installation through Home Depot)

Faucet - $197.00

New over-the-range microwave - $297 (again, we hit up a Memorial Day Sale at Sears for the microwave)

Lighting and Electrical - $249.94 (this includes the new overhead light, the pendant light over the sink (that hasn't been installed or blogged about yet), under cabinet puck lights (again, not installed or blogged yet) and random wiring parts.

Miscellaneous - $360 (this includes the beautiful shelf liner paper I NEEDED and the supplies for the fridge built in, shelving and desk that Jake built (which again hasn't been blogged about!)

So that's how we spent less than $5,000 on a brand new kitchen, from floor to ceiling. It was an extremely gratifying project and it made the months of eating off paper plates with plastic silverware all worth it. We cook SO MUCH more now and I'm baking up a storm as well. It makes me happy to walk into our house and see the kitchen. I told J we're never moving because I'm not ever leaving this kitchen!

The Kitchen: More Photos

2011-08-30T18:25:00.001-07:00

New overhead light = no more gross florescent glow! Good shot of the bamboo shade on the window - still trying to decide if I like it. I wanted to bring in some brown and some natural elements, but for some reason, I'm not in love with it.

In love with the new lazy susan corner cabinet (that corner is where the dishwasher used to be)

Amazing pull down faucet and super sleek integrated sink. Quite possibly my favorite part of the kitchen.

Close up of the countertops and knobs. The color is Talus Oyster and it's a solid surface (Corian). It's tan with flecks of white, browns and greys - it reminds me of the inside of an oyster shell. Corian is pretty amazing - very easy to maintain, inexpensive and there is not one seam anywhere on it. L-O-V-E

Right after the counters were installed, before any of our "stuff" was on the counters. The counter space to the right of the stove used to be where our fridge was, so we gained all that extra storage and workspace. Also, I don't know how I lived without an over the range microwave for so long.

Breaking down the budget tomorrow!

The Kitchen: FINISHED!

2011-08-29T17:12:00.001-07:00

Yeah, so it's probably pretty obvious that during my 1.5 month hiatus, we finished the kitchen. It's 99% done and I couldn't be more in love with it. I won't bore you with a ton of posts of installing the cabinets, waiting for the counters to be installed and all the last details. That's what July and August consisted of. I think our official end date was August 6th, which was when J installed the faucet and hooked the dishwasher back up. We started May 15th, so I'm pretty proud that less than 3 months later, we have a completely new kitchen.

I'm planning on doing another post with a TON of pics, but I'll leave you with a few sneak peeks. I'll also be doing a complete budget breakdown, as well as a post of the few small little projects we still have to do.

The Kitchen: A Fun Surprise

2011-06-25T06:57:00.000-07:00

Let's be honest - my husband is really the one doing this kitchen project. I help when I can, like handing him tools while he's underneath the sink cabinet and doing easy projects, (painting, grouting). But it's him who is leveling the cabinets, drilling the microwave into place, etc.

But I wanted one project for myself and I finally got started on it, now that our cabinets are in place (we're just waiting for HD to come install the countertops at this point). I decided that I really wanted to find some fun shelf liner paper to pop out against the white cabinets. A quick internet research led me to ChicShelfpaper.com. They have HUNDREDS of patterns and I easily found the one that I loved that went perfectly with our semi-beachy kitchen. I ordered it (4 rolls - and I may need more, eek!) and got to work with installing it. I'm about 50% done with the cabinets and drawers and so far, I'm in love with how it looks!The color/pattern I picked is called "Cross Me Seaglass" and it matched our wall color so well. I love the slight geometric print as well, it make it a little bit modern. Here's a close-up - it has various shades of teals, blues and greens with the white background.
Here it is in one of the cabinets - it makes me smile to open them to see this fun pop of color!

And even though installing shelf liner is not back breaking work like cabinetry, it's still a ton of work to measure, cut and smooth out all that paper! I ordered the option with the self adhesive on the back and I've been very pleased with the quality of the paper and how smooth it goes down.

So that's my "fun" contribution to the kitchen! I can't wait to start putting all our kitchen stuff back away in the cabinets!

The Kitchen: Current State

2011-06-20T18:26:00.000-07:00

Things are in high gear and we are making more progress. We're basically at Home Depot's mercy at this point, waiting for our countertops to be templated and then ordered. But here's a quick sneak peak at what you would see in the kitchen if you came over...Cabinets! Microwave! Finished floors! And you can't see it from this picture, but the fridge is in it's permanent spot and the water/ice has been hooked back up!

Hopefully the stove will go back in this week. We ordered amazing cabinet knobs and pulls from Ebay and they should be here Thursday. I think they will really make the cabinets look finished and I can't wait to see them! I also have 2 special projects to share - hopefully I'll be blogging about one of them this week.

We're in the home stretch!

The Kitchen: True Romance

2011-06-08T18:41:00.001-07:00

You know you are well into a renovation when you decide to be super romantic and surprise your husband by finishing all the grouting in the hallway while he's working late. I put my reno skills to the test by grouting all by myself and I have to say, I did a pretty darn good job! And J was SUPER excited and surprised to come home to all that work being done already. That frees him up to do more difficult projects tomorrow, like wiring (do you like my romantic gesture really being a ploy to get more stuff done?)

Pictures soon! It's coming together!

The Kitchen: Grout

2011-06-04T05:35:00.001-07:00

We have grout! We went with a light grey grout and I'm in love with it. We just have to do one more round of de-hazing the tile and then seal the grout and the floor in the kitchen is DONE. Of course, we still have to do the entire foyer and hallway, but I'm celebrating this as one big part of the kitchen being done. Cabinets should start going in soon, which is crazy to me. I really might be cooking in my kitchen by July!

Happy weekend - wish me luck, I'm running in a 10k tomorrow morning!

The Kitchen: Scenes from a Holiday weekend

2011-05-30T17:56:00.000-07:00

Pictures of us scraping old thinset mortar off the floors are very boring. So are pictures of us laying the new concrete subfloor and screwing about 10,000 screws to hold it in. But here's a quick photo montage of what we did on our kitchen project this weekend. We took full advantage of 3 days off to make some pretty major progress (and I still managed to make it to the pool and get some sun!) Upper cabinets have been hung and the tile floor in the kitchen is laid, it just needs to be grouted.

The Kitchen: Floor Demo

2011-05-24T05:26:00.000-07:00

Our first step in completely demolishing our kitchen was to get the gross floor tile up. They rent these machines at Home Depot that pretty much do it for you, but that would be far too easy. My wonderful husband decided to use a "scraper" to get up all the tiles manually - as in back breaking work. However, once he got started, it actually went super fast and easy. We got the entire floor up in 2.5 hours. Starting to scrape after we moved the fridge and stove out of the kitchen.

It started slowly and then all the sudden, we hit a major groove and it went really quickly. Progress!

Goodbye tile! We definitely filled 4 of those big trashcans with all the tile and grout.I was in charge of cleanup...And this was the state of the kitchen after 1 day of working for 2.5 hours. Not too shabby!

Next up - cabinet demo! And a trip to the commercial dump, which was an eye opening experience!

The Kitchen: Before

2011-05-23T04:51:00.000-07:00

So the reason I haven't blogged in a few weeks is because we have officially started our massive renovation of the kitchen. And I'm already over it. We're doing EVERYTHING ourselves, so obviously things move sort of slowly (even though I am impressed by how much we've gotten done so far). We are gutting everything and bringing in new floors, cabinets, countertops, lighting, paint, etc. Luckily we've been upgrading our appliances since we moved in and the only new appliance we will need is a microwave.

So here are our "before" pictures, so you can see the yuck we have been dealing with..Outdated Cabinets, gross white laminate countertops, nasty white tile floors The Floors - my nemesis. White tile with brown grout. We have a feeling the grout didn't start out as brown when it was installed. The tile was in super bad shape and never stayed or looked clean. We have it in the foyer and entry hallway as well, so it wasn't very welcoming. Close up of how gross our cabinets were. We scrubbed them down when we moved in 2 years ago and it didn't really help because there was so much grime and build up. The laminate counters were peeling away from the wall...lovely!

So that's what we lived with for 2 years! I'll be back with our current progress - let's just say the demo is already done and now we're just working on putting it back together...

Gone to Carolina...

2011-05-02T05:02:00.001-07:00

Royal Wedding!

2011-04-29T04:37:00.000-07:00

I've had Royal Wedding fever for weeks now! I didn't wake up at 4am to watch it however, because I'm getting together with a few of my girlfriends tomorrow morning for brunch to watch it on DVR. We wanted to be able to relax and enjoy it - and drink mimosas while we watch! But of course, I'm still glued to the tv and internet today to see all the coverage.

I think Kate Middleton was perfection! Loved everything - the dress, tiara, veil, bouquet! She definitely looked exactly what I pictured in my head for a princess to look on her wedding day.

Stunning!!

I came across this picture and it made me so happy - I love how excited and in love they look!

Best Wishes to the new happy ROYAL couple!

Happy Easter!

2011-04-24T07:02:00.000-07:00

Hello Again J.Crew

2011-04-21T10:40:00.001-07:00

Dear J.Crew,

Could it be? Have you heard my prayers? I've been "on a break" from you since you don't seem to want to offer free shipping unless I spend $150 or more. I even mentioned here that you were disappointing me. But this little lovely came into my email today and I think we might be back on:

Even though it's tiny little wording, I didn't miss it! You actually have a free shipping promo with no minimum order!!! It feels like Christmas or my birthday! I'm not really supposed to be shopping for clothes right now, but I might not be able to resist...

Very Truly Yours Forever,

Kim

Obsession (and a plan)

2011-04-19T08:37:00.000-07:00

Since I'm on a spending freeze while we work on the kitchen, I have really tried to limit even browsing for clothes, since I don't want to be tempted by anything. I even unsubscribed to many of the clothing store emails that I get in an effort to stay away from online shopping (my biggest vice!) Anyways, one must have slipped through because I got an email yesterday with this gorgeous little dress in it:

Via Calypso

I love everything - the eyelit, the ruffled neckline and of course, the pom pom fringe at the bottom! And yes, that is a $250 pricetag. Yikes. I tried to calm myself down by trying to think of what $250 would get me for the kitchen remodel - a new beautiful light fixture over my sink, shiny new pulls for our cabinets or even a new stainless steel microwave. So of course, I DID NOT hit "buy now", but I can't stop thinking about that dress.

So I came up with a plan. It shouldn't be too hard for me to find a similar dress - essentially it's a pretty basic eyelit dress. And when I was browsing at the fabric store last week, I noticed an entire rack of fun pom pom trim in tons of colors. My plan is to find a dress and then sew on the pom pom trim myself for a fun custom summer dress!!

I've started hunting out the regulars (Target, Gap, etc.) in hopes of finding an affordable eyelit dress under $50ish. But if anyone has seen one recently, please let me know! I'll be sure to post updates and the finished product if I can be successful in my mission! Wish me luck!

And so it begins...

2011-04-16T12:12:00.000-07:00

Our kitchen renovation has "officially" begun. It's really rainy and gross weather today, so we decided to take up a bit of the tile in the kitchen so that we know what we're getting into with the subflooring. Unfortunately, the grout and mortar holding our nasty white tiles seems to be quite well made because the tile does not want to come up easily. Apparently back in 1983 when they built our house, they used some pretty good stuff. Lucky for us!

We also discovered some lovely leftover termite damage in the front of our pantry. It was just a day full of surprises! The entire moulding was rotted and the drywall pretty much collapsed as soon as we touched it. Nothing like having some exposed insulation in your pantry! Luckily we're starting this project for real in less than a month, so it will be taken care of sooner rather than later. I knew this project was going to be a PAIN but now I'm starting to realize how much work we're in for this summer....

Wish us luck!!

Friday Thoughts...

2011-04-15T04:49:00.000-07:00

(Source)

Sneak Peak

2011-04-02T18:16:00.000-07:00

of the linens that I made for Easter dinner. Yes, I realize that Easter is a month away, but we're hosting both of our families this year for our first big holiday, so I'm a little excited/anxious. I decided that I wanted to make a runner and napkins to make the table extra special. I found the most amazing seersucker and then a coordinating swiss dot floral print fabric. I made both the runner and napkins reversible of each fabric and I love how it looks mixed and matched. I haven't decided if I want to switch it up and have the runner seersucker side up and the napkins floral. My sewing machine (who I named Betty) is in overdrive with all the projects I've done lately.

I'll be sure to post how the entire table comes together as it gets closer! I'm currently brainstorming place card ideas!

My version

2011-03-29T16:15:00.000-07:00

of the infamous "framed seafan". I saw this project on many other blogs recently, as well as in my latest Restoration Hardware Catalog (for $550!!! Oh wait, it's just been discounted to $439...much better!). I thought it would be perfect for one of the walls in our "dining alcove". We don't have a real dining room, or even a separate dining space. Our super huge living room has a weird alcove that we turned into a dining room by hanging a drum shade and getting an area rug to define the space. We're working with what we have here, obviously. I will say, our next house will have a HUGE formal dining room!

Anyways, back to my project. I found a large seafan on Ebay for $17.95 (with free shipping!) and used a Michael's 20% off coupon to score a 16x20 dark wood frame for $22. We decided to spray paint the seafan with some leftover pumpkin orange spray paint from our Goodwill lamp project from the fall. It helps to tie in some of the orange accents (the lamp and throw pillows) we have in the living room into the dining room, since they are essentially all in the same room. So for a total of $39.95, we now have some custom art in our dining room. Here's the final results!

I love how the veining in the seafan mimics the design in the table runner that is pretty much always on our dining room table. Totally an unplanned thing, but I'll take it!

Hanging on the wall - I promise in real life, there's more of a difference between the wall color and the mat in the frame.

I'm loving the slight nautical/beachy vibe it gives our house and that the orange is a fun pop of color!

What's for Dinner - Product Review

2011-03-28T17:37:00.000-07:00

At my mom's recommendation, I tried something new for dinner tonight:

Philadelphia Cooking Creme - I'm sure most people have seen the ads for this by now. It was on sale last week 2 for $4, so I figured I'd give it a try. Last week was sort of crazy because I was super busy at work with a big event and I'm still recovering, so I was happy to cook with this tonight because it was so EASY! I used the Sante Fe flavor tonight and made the Chicken Enchiladas, which are featured on the back of the carton.

Even with having to brown the chicken, the entire recipe took less than 30 minutes total. I had everything on hand to make it (chicken, tortillas, shredded cheese, an onion and a can of diced tomatoes) so it was perfect! It was tasty - Jake ate THREE enchiladas, if that says anything about how it was. I won't say that I would use it every week, but it was great to make a quick, easy and good meal on a busy weeknight. I would definitely try the other flavors and recipes, especially if it's on sale or I have a coupon.

So if you are thinking about trying this, I say definitely do it. Especially for those nights when you need something fast and easy!

This post is simply my thoughts/recommendations on this product - I was not compensated in any way (not that I would object to receiving coupons for more of this!)

For Japan

2011-03-18T04:51:00.000-07:00

Donate

Benched

2011-03-12T16:16:00.000-08:00

A few months ago (ok, like a year ago), I blogged about how I got a Pottery barn knock off entry way bench and shelf from JCPenny to act as our "coat closet" in the foyer since our house didn't have a real place for jackets and storage. (original post here) Well we LOVE the bench, however, it's taken me quite a while to make it our own. It sat un-accessorized for a year, but I finally got around to making it cute! Especially since it's literally the first thing you see when you walk in our front door, it wasn't making a very good impression. Here's the blah before:

It is great for storing shoes and other stuff like scarves, hats and gloves, but it was just sort of boring. I hated the white cushions on the bench because they got dirty so quickly (we have a dog with black fur!) and I felt like they blended in with the wall.

My first step was accessorizing the top. I found two glass vases that I loved and they fit perfectly up there. Then I turned to Etsy to find a fun print to frame, which I propped up against the wall. My last project came just recently when I got out my sewing machine (I told you I've been busy with that thing!) and made a new print cushion for the top to replace the dirty white ones. Here's the after:

Isn't it so much more fun?

Close up of the top (ignore the lovely nail pops in our ceiling that need to be fixed). I got the famous "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster, but found a seller on etsy who personalizes them with different things. Since J is big into sailing, I thought that one was perfect!

Close up of the cushion I made. The brown and green paisley matches the rest of the colors in our house and will definitely hide all the dirt and dog hair we have going on. I'm pretty proud of myself because I did a cushion with piping, which I think it makes it look more finished than just being plain.

So that's my latest house project - definitely makes our entry way more cheery and inviting!

Beauty Recap: Microdermabrasion

2011-03-07T14:28:00.000-08:00

A few months ago, I bought a Groupon (LOVE groupon!) for microdermabrasion - 2 very discounted sessions that could be used anytime in 2011. It was at a plastic surgeons office, done by the esthetician there. Well I had my first session today and I'm in LOVE with the results!

Obviously I'm not even the big 3-0 yet (7 months! eeeek!) but I definitely have been noticing some effects of aging, sun damage, etc as far as small wrinkles and sun spots. So I decided to give it a try. The procedure itself didn't hurt at all, it was actually quite relaxing. It basically was like a hard core facial.

She started by rubbing a few different creams and lotions on my face to soften and clean it. Then she started the actual abrasion part, which is where she used a small little vacuum device to rub very fine crystals all over my face to remove the top layer and "refresh" my skin by revealing all the new skin underneath. She went over my whole face and neck 3 times. To me, it felt like someone was rubbing a small eraser over my skin - weird, but it didn't hurt at all.

After the main procedure, she did a few more lotions and then did a super moisturizing mask that sat on my face for 8 minutes (total relaxation - I definitely took a power nap!) Then she wiped that away and I was all finished - about 45 minutes total.

I have no redness or anything - she said cause my skin is pretty young, I wouldn't have too much of a reaction to it. She recommends getting treatments about every 8 weeks so I will be going back in May. My skin seriously looks better (even right after she did it, I could see a difference). I just look fresher, not as tired and my skin feels incredible! It's so soft, I love it!

So this might be my new beauty regimen a few times a year as my splurge for myself. I'm a little worried that because I liked it so much, it might be my gateway drug into plastic surgery! haha - just kidding...sort of! Botox anyone??

A Post about trash

2011-03-06T13:13:00.000-08:00

Actually, it's more about trashcans than trash. J and I decided we would focus on our backyard this spring and summer - we want to fix it up and get it to be a little nicer. It's fenced in and pretty big, but lacks any real grass or gardens. It's just kind of blah.

On Saturday, we did a little project that is sort of pointless and unnecessary, but it brings a smile to my face, so I guess that's all that matters. We store our trashcans and recycling bins on the inside of the fence in a little area right by the gate, for easy access to take them out. Well no grass grows in this area, so it's basically a big mud pile for our trashcans to sit in. The lovely before...beautiful huh?

So we decided to make a little bricked in patio area for the trashcans to sit so they stay out of the mud and it just cleans things up a bit.We headed to Home Depot bright and early to get our supplies. Well actually, the first step was that Jake measured everything out and figured thesize of the little patio. Since it's a place for trash to sit, we didn't get the most exciting paver stones or wood...just the basic stuff. Then we got to work!

2 10 foot 4x4 posts, 12x12 grey brick pavers and 6 bags of paver sand. Oh and the 4 large stakes that we used to drive the corners of the posts into the ground.

J measured everything and we decided we wanted to notch the wood so it fit together at the corner, sort of like Lincoln Logs. So he taught me a trick about cutting wood...

He made a bunch of little cuts half way down and then we used a hammer to loosen the wood to make the notch- sort of hard to explain, but it worked really well!

J was in charge of sawing the notches and I was in charge of hammering the pieces out.

The we laid the wood frame out, dug a little trench for it and leveled everything.

J drilled holes and hammered in a large metal stake into each corner to secure it well into the ground. It also makes it look a little bit more finished this way.

We put down some anti-weed paper and then laid out the first layer of paver sand - it was a little bigger and rocky.

Then we did the 2nd layer of paver sand and started laying out the stones.

Almost there - J just testing out the stones to make sure they are level.

Finished! It took about 3.5 hours from start to finish.

And here it is in use with the trashcans! So exciting...ha!

Even though it's a simple project, I'm really happy that we did this. It cost us about $80 in supplies, but we had a $50 HD gift card, so it was really only $30. This project was a lot harder than I expected though and it made me realize I would never be able to make a larger patio - I'm not a fan of all this leveling and measuring, etc.

So not a very exciting weekend project, but something we definitely needed!

Almost ready for Project Runway!

2011-03-03T13:24:00.000-08:00

So this past fall, I took up sewing. I had always wanted to learn so after a few lessons from my mom, I set out to make curtains for our living room. Yes, I decided that curtains would be a great first sewing project - nothing like chewing off more than you can handle right?? It all started because I found this amazing fabric online and I wanted to base our entire living room around it - the colors worked with what we already have going in that room and I loved thelarge graphic print. Normally I'm a neutral and plain-jane sort of decor girl, so this was outside of my comfort zone.

Anyways, it may have taken me THREE months (and 3 sewing machines - I had some technical issues!) but our curtains are now done (well actually, I finished this project back in October, but I'm just getting around to blogging about it). I LOVE the way they came out and they totally make our entire room! I made 4 panels - 2 large ones for our sliding glass door and then a smaller set for the window. I just did plain panels and used clips to hang them, but I'm still very proud! I even lined them with a nice cream twill so they are heavy and nice quality.

Onto the pictures!

The large sliding door curtains closed

And a little bit different lighting, to show them opened.

The smaller window curtains - and a good shot of our painted goodwill lamp! We have small pops of orange in our living room with all the greens and browns. I'll have to do a post about the lamp later.

Close up of the fabric - I'm seriously in love with it! It's a Robert Allen fabric that I found on sale from fabric.com for $6.47/yard!

I ended spending about $50 on all the print fabric, plus the cream twill for the lining. We already had the curtain rods and hooks from our old curtains, so I consider this a very budget friendly makeover. It really makes the room look complete (well, it's definitely not done, but it looks way better!) and I still get excited when I walk in and see my handiwork!

I have done several other sewing projects and plan on taking on some more in the very near future! I'm sure I'll have some more fun projects to share!

Dear J.Crew,

2011-02-23T09:31:00.000-08:00

We used to be BFF's. I apologize for not spending as much time (or money) with you recently, but I'm on a spending freeze for a few months. However, I have a bone to pick with you regarding your "free shipping". Offering free shipping when you spend $100 or more is not FREE. I'm tired of the emails that fake me out in the subject line - I keep opening them to see if maybe this time, you'll just give me true free shipping ON ANY AMOUNT. But no, never. I can't hide a $100 charge from J just to get free shipping, so therefore, I guess we are breaking up. Keep in touch and let me know if you ever reconsider your shipping policies.

Lots of love,
Kim

Ready for Summer!

2011-02-15T18:20:00.001-08:00

Yes, it's February and we still have spring to look forward to, but these warmer days have made me ready for SUMMER! I stole this from Ashley:

1. Any vacations you are looking forward to this summer?
We are spending about a week in OBX in May - my parents have a condo there and we've actually never used it. They rent it out for most of the summer but the weather should be awesome there in May, so I can't wait. We're going with our friends B&S who are expecting a baby in July, so it will be fun to be down there with them before their new addition gets here!

2. What is your favorite article of summer clothing (shoes are included)?
Not sure if I can pick just one - Havianas Flip Flops (the most comfortable flip flops ever) and maxi dresses. Really any dresses...that's basically all I wear all summer.

3. What is your favorite summer drink (alcoholic or non)?
Vodka Tonic - it totally reminds me of summertime. Extra lime. I also enjoy a good Arnold Palmer in the summer (non-alcoholic).

4. Do you tan or burn?
Umm definitely BURN. It takes me a while to build up an actual tan - that usually doesn't happen until late August.

5. Any goals you are working toward this summer?
I want to spend most of my weekends at our pool. Try to swim 10-15 laps every time we're at the pool. Relax. Have fun!

6. What is your favorite summertime food?
Fresh berries, anything grilled, ice cream and popsicles, corn on the cob, fresh tomatoes with salt and pepper.

7. What song most says “summer” to you?
Sublime, Summertime. It reminds me of summers in high school.

8. Any home improvement goals planned for this summer?
Our tentative plan is to start working on our kitchen/floors this summer. eeeek - that means our goal for this spring to save every penny we can!

9. What is one thing you hate to see at the beach?
Jellyfish and RAIN!

10. Did you ever go to a summer camp?
Ooooh yes - the summer before 8th grade I spent 3 weeks at sleep-away camp. I got really homesick. It was also a horseback riding camp (that was the main activity) and I learned that I was allergic to horses there (hello hives!) So obviously it wasn't the best situation. That was my last camp experience.

Happy Valentine's!

2011-02-14T13:41:00.001-08:00

Hope everyone has a wonderful and romantic Valentine's day! We're making a nice meal at home and just relaxing. J did send me a beautiful bouquet full of pink flowers to work - it was such a nice surprise! I picked up two huge yummy looking cupcakes from Whole Foods for us to enjoy tonight after dinner. I'm excited for a low key evening with my husband!

Risotto!

2011-02-02T18:27:00.000-08:00

I heart Risotto. It's probably my favorite food in the world. I make it ALOT (several times a month) and I have to say, I'm pretty good at it, since its sort of a high maintenance meal. Lots of stirring and adding liquid. But it's totally worth it. You can put anything into risotto - my favorite thing is roasted veggies (butternut squash, brussel sprouts, asparagus, etc.)

Anyways, I get a random subscription to All You Magazine - anyone ever heard of it? It's basically a mag about life, recipes, decorating, saving money, etc. Sometimes they have some pretty good recipes, but one in the latest issue caught my eye -- Baked Risotto with Sausage and Mushrooms. Basically it takes the "work" out of the constant stirring of risotto and lets you add in the chicken broth and pop your dutch oven into the oven to bake for about an hour. Hmm I was definitely intrigued, so I tried it tonight for dinner.

It was surprisingly good! It stayed really creamy and the Arborio rice cooked well so it was nice and starchy. I would recommend it, especially if you are feeling lazy and enjoy a one pot meal with super easy clean up!

Here's the recipe (adapted from All You Magazine, my changes are in red):

Baked Sausage and Mushroom Risotto

Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 1 hour, 15 minutes
Yield: Serves 4 (we got a TON more than 4 servings out of this - we'll both be able to take it for lunch the rest of the week)

Ingredients

3/4 pound Italian turkey sausage, casings removed (I used chicken sausage, like the Hillshire Farms precooked stuff cause I had it on hand - still turned out tasty!)
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
8 ounces sliced cremini or button mushrooms
Salt and pepper
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 1/2 cups arborio rice
4 1/2 cups low-sodium chicken broth, warmed (I only used about 3.5 cups of broth and it was plenty!)
1/2 cup grated Parmesan
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley (yeah, I didn't have any fresh parsley, so we went without. We did top it with some extra Parmesan Cheese)

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 325ºF. In a Dutch oven or other large, ovenproof pot with a lid, cook sausage over medium heat, stirring to break it up, until crumbly and browned, 6 to 8 minutes. Spoon sausage into a bowl lined with paper towels and pour fat out of pot.

2. Return pot to heat and add oil. Add onion and mushrooms, season with salt and pepper and cook, stirring, until onion is soft and mushroom juices have evaporated, 8 to 10 minutes. Pour in wine and cook until reduced by half, stirring to release any browned bits on bottom of pan, about 2 minutes. Stir in rice and cook for 3 minutes. Pour in 3 cups of broth and stir to combine.

3. Bake for 20 minutes. Stir in Parmesan, reserved sausage meat and remaining 1 1/2 cups broth. (I only added about another 1/2 - 3/4 of a cup of broth at this point cause it was still really liquidy and it was fine) Cover, return to oven and bake until rice is tender but not mushy, 30 to 35 minutes more. Sprinkle with parsley and serve.

Definitely try it if you love risotto or if you've never had it before and you want to start off easy! I didn't take a picture, but here's the picture from the magazine's website - it really did look exactly like this!

(Source)

OCD Confessions Sunday

2011-01-30T16:46:00.000-08:00

I may or may not have used Jake's super turbo high-powered shop vac to vacuum both sets of stairs today. And it may or may not have been the highlight of my day to see all the gross nastiness come up.

Resolutions...

2011-01-27T16:52:00.001-08:00

I made one resolution for 2011 - to stop worrying so much about the future and live in the present. I want to just relax and enjoy the wonderful things that are in my life right now! I found this quote recently and it's my mantra for the New Year!

source

What I've been up to...

2011-01-24T13:24:00.000-08:00

I have a lot to update on from the last 6 months, so I think a bullet list is in order!

** We celebrated our 1 year anniversary in September and went to Berkeley Springs, WVA for a long weekend. Sort of random, but we had the best time. We rented a little cabin in the woods, brought our dog and just relaxed. We went on several hikes, played board games, took naps and the best part - got amazing couple massages for our anniversary! Berkeley Springs is known for their spas and hot springs, so we actually got a mineralsprings bath (where you sit in a huge tub of the hot, healing spring water), followed by 1 hour massages. HEAVEN!Us on one of the hikes - Spencer didn't want to cooperate for the picture!Our cabin - I spent ALOT of time in the screened in porch reading and napping!

The top layer of anniversary wedding cake after we ate it all weekend - so yummy!

** My "new" job is going great! I really love it - it such a nice change of pace and having weekends back is incredible. I love the company I'm working for and there's a lot of room for growth, which is always nice. I work M-F from 8am to 4pm and I can honestly say that the lifestyle change to basically have my life back was totally worth any fear that I had over money. I'm making pretty much exactly the same as I was at my old job, so it's not even an issue.

** The house projects! The big project from the fall was a new roof. Not very exciting at all, but very necessary since our roof was 23 years old and in bad shape. Probably the most boring money we've ever spent, but it gives us piece of mind at night when we listen to rain or snow and don't have to worry about leaks! Other house projects in the pipeline - the kitchen!! We've changed our plan for the kitchen and of course, made it into a much bigger project. We were going to just paint cabinets, get new counters, etc. Well now, we're looking at gutting everything, new flooring, new cabinets, counters, lighting, etc. We're still in the very early stages and working on our budget, but we're hoping to have it complete in 2011!

** 2011 is the year that I turn the big 3-0. AHHHHH - seriously, how did this happen?? It's not until October, but I'm seriously already starting to freak out a little bit. BUT I decided that I want to go away someplace tropical for my birthday, so I can feel a little bit better about getting older by sipping a fruity drink poolside. We decided on Puerto Rico!! We just booked our hotel for the long weekend and we started looking at flights. Any recommendations would be highly recommended! We're staying near old San Juan for 5 nights in a resort right on the beach! I want to leave like tomorrow!!

** I've become obsessed with working out. Not going to lie, summer and fall last year were sort of a lazy point in my life and it started to add up. I was in the married life rut of eating out and eating too much. So right around Thanksgiving, I decided to just suck it up and start working out again. It took a while to get into it, but I'm finally addicted and pretty much go to the gym every day. I've even started switching it up with classes and different workouts. I became completely OBSESSED with Bikram yoga (hot yoga) this fall and did it every day for like 3 months. Unfortunately, I can't fit it into my budget in the long term, but I still go sometimes. J and I both got into spinning recently, and go weekly. I'm still in my old standby of running and I'm contemplating signing up for some races this spring.

** Our dog is still doing well - she's 3 now and still has the energy of a puppy! We had a trainer come to the house for a few sessions of behavior work and it really helped! It was like the Dog Whisperer and she definitely trained us more than the dog. ha!

Alright, this post just got super long! Just a few little updates in to what we've been doing the last few months - I have a few more fun updates soon!!

6 month hiatus over?

2011-01-23T18:19:00.000-08:00

Is anyone still reading this? Probably not. I really didn't mean to not write anything for 6 months, it just sort of happened. Life got super busy with my new job (that I've now been at for 8 months! craziness!), house projects (new roof! living/dining room completely decorated!) and trips (Florida for a wedding! West Virginia for our anniversary! OBX beach trip for New Years Eve!)

Anyways, I'm venturing back into blogging for 2011! I have a lot of catching up to do, but 2010 was a fabulous year and I'm sure 2011 will be even better. I can't believe we've been married for almost a year and a half - it's seriously flown by. And I'm not a newlywed anymore!!

So if anyone is still reading, welcome back. I will be back soon with updates and fun stuff. And I will be getting better at reading/commenting on other blogs as well!

I'm an Aunt!

2010-07-24T07:17:00.000-07:00

My "nephew" Will was born Wednesday morning (12:47am) and I'm totally in love with him! My BFF K and her husband B are already amazing parents. It was a long labor (15 hours!) followed by about 2.5 hours of pushing, before they realized this boy did not want to come on his own. So unfortunately, K had to have a c-section. However, the real reason for the c-section -- he's HUGE!!! 10.7 pounds! And 21.6" long! So he's basically 11 pounds and 22 inches- not sure if anyone would be able to give birth normally to a baby that big! We were all in shock when her husband came down to the hospital lobby to tell us. He's already wearing 3 month clothes!

K's brother in law is a fantastic photographer and was able to take tons of pictures right after he was born when we were all able to see him for the first time (at 3am!) Onto the pics...

Look at those lips!!

Loooong legs and loooong toes!

Wrapped in a towel after his first bath - I love this one cause I think he looks like a little eskimo!

K is recovering well and they get to come home from the hospital tomorrow. Of course, I've visited them every day since he was born because I'm a stalker. I just can't look at him enough - and he's already starting to change so much every day!

He's about 12 hours old here - love his squishy face! Can you tell he already loves his favorite aunt?

Funniest picture ever - J and I went over Thursday evening and J held him (and was super nervous about it) - Will woke up and gave J this look like "who are you??"

I'm not going to lie, he is definitely giving me baby fever! Ahhhh!

Fun News!

2010-07-17T05:11:00.001-07:00

A while back (probably in like March), my photographer from the wedding emailed me, and she told me that an editor from Brides Maryland magazine had found my wedding pictures on her website and wanted to feature us as a "Real Wedding" in their Fall/Winter 2010 issue. She wanted to know if I was interested - umm did she even think she really needed to ask???? A few weeks after that, the editor contacted me and sent me a 15 page (no joke!) questionnaire about our wedding and had me fill it out. Seriously, I have never written so much about anything in my life. They wanted every detail from planning and the wedding, complete vendor list, etc. It was quite intense and took me several days to finish.

Well I'm excited to announce that the magazine is now on newstands!! And we have a 2 page spread, complete with about 12 pictures and an article that they wrote from my questionnaire all about our wedding. It's pretty surreal to see yourself in a magazine - J and I were in grocery store like a week after it came out and I went over and grabbed it, opened it and we both stood there cracking up. They mailed me two issues, and you know I went and bought several more copies. ha! The article actually went in both Brides Maryland and Brides Washington DC, so it's available all over MD, DC and Northern VA if anyone in those areas wants to check it out.

Onto the pictures! (these are very poorly scanned copies, so you can't really read the article at all, but the pictures came out pretty good)

The cover

The first page - it was interesting to see which pictures they decided to use. Love that they used the school bus one!

The 2nd page - I was so excited that they featured my place cards...the only DIY project we had at the wedding! ha!

So that's my exciting news for the week. J thinks I'm crazy, but I'm seriously considering having the pages framed and hang them either in our room or my walk in closet. Is that weird? haha!

Awards!

2010-07-15T19:19:00.000-07:00

So even though I've been a horrible blogger recently, I did receive two awards from two fun blogs!

Ms. Attitude left me the Blog with Substance Award:

And The Young Southern Prep left me the Versatile Blogger Award:

Thank you so much ladies, your blogs are super cute and I love reading them!

I'm supposed to list 7 random things about myself...

1. I can't go to sleep at night until our kitchen is completely spotless. I wipe down all the counters and use my swiffer vacuum on our tile floors to get every last speck of dirt up. Yes, it's a problem and yes I do need help, but even my husband has learned to accept this crazy OCD behavior.

2. I have a very good sense of direction and rarely get lost. However, I do still have a GPS in my car at all times, just in case.

3. Even though I'm still 1.5 years away, the thought of turning 30 makes me sick to my stomach. I have a serious age issue and I cannot handle getting older. I'm pretty sure I'm going to take off the entire week of work leading up to my 30th birthday and not get out of bed.

4. My favorite time of day is when J and I take our puppy dog for a long morning walk together. Typically during the week this is 6:00am, which is a bit rough, but I still love spending time together catching up and talking.

5. My first car was a burgundy Volvo Sedan that I LOVED. That car has so many memories and I drove it from 16 until my senior year of college, until the headgasket blew and it died. I miss that car so much - I wish I still had it.

6. We are growing 4 tomato plants in our backyard and after months of waiting, we will finally be picking delicious red tomatoes this weekend. I'm so excited! Here's our tomatoes when they were still green:

7. I'm loving my new job more and more every day. Not only am I'm totally obsessed with my hours, the job itself is so much fun! I feel like I'm really getting into it and I'm so excited to start new projects and be successful.

Happy Almost Friday!

Happy 4th of July!

2010-07-04T06:12:00.000-07:00

3 weeks later...

2010-07-01T17:49:00.000-07:00

I'm back! I really didn't mean to take such a long blog break. It just sort of happened with leaving my old job and starting my new one. It's been a pretty crazy few weeks, so to be honest, blogging has been pretty far from my thoughts.

So I successfully put in my 2 weeks and I'm no longer planning weddings. To be completely honest, I do miss my brides. I think about them pretty much every Saturday - wondering how their weddings are going, what their dresses look like, etc. Of course, I think about this while I'm laying at the pool or running errands with J, which is now what my Saturdays consist of. I think I will always love weddings. Maybe there will come a time when I get back into it, but for now, I'm loving my new job and I'm REALLY loving my new incredible 40 hour work weeks!!

I finished up a pretty intensive 2 week training at my new job, and this past Monday, I started my first official day at my new hotel. So far, 4 days in, I LOVE what I'm doing. It's a nice change of pace and I'm learning a whole new aspect of hotel sales. Also, did I mention I don't have to work weekends anymore??? J and I are enjoying relaxing Saturday mornings, complete with big breakfasts, long walks with our puppy dog and trips to the farmers market. It's so awesome to get so much time together. We've been planning some fun weekend trips for this summer, including our first anniversary trip in September. It's crazy to me that we've already been married 10 months?!?! WHAT?

Other than that, we've just been doing more work to our house (always!) and I'm trying to see how tan I can get. The pool and yard work have been helping with that. This is definitely one of the best summers I've had in a LONG time!

So I'll be back more regularly!! Happy almost long weekend!

Belated Baby Shower Recap!

2010-06-09T05:50:00.001-07:00

I hosted a baby shower for my BFF K a few weeks ago and just realized I never posted about the party! It was great - everyone had fun and the decorations came together perfectly! I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves!

The main living room decorations - the 2nd floor railing was the perfect place to hang the fabric buntings that I got!

Presents!

I highly recommend co-ed baby showers - it was very laid back and fun to have boys there! (and a good shot of the paper lanterns we hung under the tent on the deck)

The mama to be! Doesn't she look so good for being 7 months preggo? She's not even wearing a maternity dress!!

The party planners with the mom-to-be (and all the food!)

Present Time!

Close up of the framed drawings that Jake and I gave them for the nursery.

Group shot!

I'd say my first experience with planning a baby shower was a success! Can't wait till the little man is here!

Salmon!

2010-06-08T04:42:00.001-07:00

I really don't like Salmon. It's just a little bit too fishy for me. I much prefer mahi, tilapia, grouper...mild white fish = YUM! But I keep hearing about how amazing salmon (and other cold water fishes) are for you because of the omega-3's. My dad is a doctor and last month he went to this nutrition and wellness conference and he said the only thing they talked about all week was how amazing salmon was. He and my mom are now eating salmon like 3 times a week. So I decided I really needed to get over my aversion to it so that we can start eating it a lot too. I set a mid-year's resolution to try and eat salmon 2 times a week (considering before I was barely eating it 2 times a YEAR!)

Now that it's summer and we can grill the salmon outside, I'm even happier. I think part of my dislike was cooking it myself (J does all our grilling) and having it make our house smell fishy. So outside grilling is perfect! Jake does all the work and all the gross fishiness stays outside. I know, I'm weird.

I bought some salmon filets last night and we got to grilling them. I decided that if I'm going to jump headfirst into salmon, I would need some sort of a sauce to put on the salmon to make it a little bit easier to swallow. So I created my new "salmon sauce":

1/2 C Plain Fat Free Greek Yogurt

Juice from 1 lemon

A whole mess of fresh dill (we are growing dill on our deck, so I just cut a big bunch of it)

Garlic Pepper (you can buy garlic pepper in the grocery store and we're obsessed with it - gives a good garlicy flavor and it's sort of spicy! it's delish!)

Mix together and put it in the fridge for about an hour before you eat, to let the flavors meld together. Here's a crappy picture of the sauce after I made it:

And here's my plate of salmon, which we served with wild rice and balsamic roasted brussel sprouts (which got a bit burned in the oven - oops!)

And I enjoyed the salmon!! I ate my whole piece! The sauce definitely helped, but I did like it. So maybe I will be able to do this whole 2 times a week thing.

But I would love to get some new recipes for salmon. We can't grill it out with the same sauce 2 times a week obviously. So if anyone has any good recipes or ways they love to eat salmon, please share! Bonus points if they are easy and not too fishy for this non-salmon eater!

Budget Friendly Monogrammed Tray

2010-05-31T05:21:00.000-07:00

I've been lusting after those cute monogrammed melamine trays I've been seeing all over the place. In our basement family room, we have a faux-leather ottoman as our coffee table and we really needed a tray to set on top, to store remotes and so we could set drinks down while we're watching TV.

I debating just ordering a tray that I had seen, but the $65+ price tag stopped me. We didn't even spent $65 on the ottoman itself! So I knew I could get creative and make one myself. I was at Crate and Barrel and spied this:

A perfect sized white melamine tray. For $17.95! And I had a 20% off coupon, so my total came to about $14. Major Score!

So then I turned my BFF Etsy to find a monogram vinyl decal to put on the tray. Let me tell you, there are TONS of decals there! I finally decided on a pretty traditional monogram decal which was 8" and only $4! Here's the finished product:

The monogram is done in lime green and I love how it pops off of the white!

And here it is in use on our ottoman. Even J (who was not really all that excited when I told him about this project) admits it looks really good and is definitely useful!

So the grand total of this project came to about $25! Not horrible for an original tray that I "made" myself!

Happy Memorial Day! I'm off to our pool for the day!

Wedding Wednesday: The Details

2010-05-26T07:56:00.000-07:00

Another installment of Wedding Wednesday! Today we're talking about the details - place cards, favors, programs, etc. Our ceremony programs were fans, since it was a late summer outdoor wedding. They got a lot of use! They had a navy backing and then we did half with yellow ribbon and half with green ribbon. My day of coordinator was sweet enough to lay them out on the seats and alternate the ribbon color for me, since she knew I was slightly OCD about that sort of stuff. I just loved the look of them sitting on each seat. We also did menu cards, tucked into each napkin at each place setting. Our monogram and wedding date was up top (we also used that same monogram on the programs). They were backed with bright yellow paper and I love how that popped against our navy linens. We did beer koozies as a sort of informal favor. We decided we wanted to do koozies just about a week before the wedding (we weren't going to do any favors at all), so it was a bit of a scramble to find them last minute. We just had the wedding date printed on them - nothing else - because I thought it looked pretty cute that way. Also, I'm not a super huge fan of personalized ones with the names and some cheesey graphic. They sat in glass containers at each bar for people to grab. The Pillows! My favorite "DIY" project of the wedding - I just didn't do it myself. ha! My wonderful MOH and her mom helped me with sewing about 20 pillows that we placed around the benches at the venue. We used really fun, bright fabrics so they made the benches look a little bit more welcoming. It was nice to sort of make it feel a bit "loungey" around the gardens. After the wedding, I re-covered the pillows in more neutral fabric and now we use them in our family room!

Our place cards were also another favorite detail of mine. I knew I wanted to use wheatgrass to hold our place cards, because I think it looks really fresh and whimsical. I found a seller on Etsy to make the 75 flags for me - she did half polka dots and half stripes, which were attached to lollipop sticks which got stuck into the grass trays. I did the "calligraphy" myself the week of the wedding with a navy sharpie. It wasn't perfect by any means, but I think it carried over with the laid back feel of the place cards and looked pretty cute. We also did 2 large vases of fresh lemons and limes on that table to add some color.
The Ice Cream Cart - such a fun surprise for the guests, as well as a nice treat for a late night snack on a hot night. People seriously attacked that thing when it was brought out (right after cake cutting). It had a whole assortment of fun ice cream treats, like what the ice cream man would bring, and even our older guests were so excited about it!

So those are some of the details from our wedding - Happy Wednesday!

(all photos by Egomedia Photography)

2 Things...

2010-05-25T05:14:00.000-07:00

1. I took the new job!!! I was able to negotiate a little bit on the salary to get it a bit higher, and I decided my quality of life is worth more than money anyways. I'm really excited to start something new and exciting - AND get my weekends and nights back! I start June 14th and I will even have a full week off in between jobs to relax and catch up on life...I'm so excited I was able to work in a weeks long vacation before I start! And we'll be going down to Florida for my BFF C's wedding during part of that week, so I'm even more excited!

2. I decided not to sell my wedding dress. It just didn't feel right - I love that dress way too much to get rid of it. I did offer to let her borrow the dress, and she came over to try it on and it was actually a little bit too tight and too short anyways, so that made me feel ever better! ha! And seeing someone else wearing my wedding dress confirmed even more that I will never sell it. It was so weird to see her in it! so it's still hanging in the back of my closet and hopefully one day it will be able to be used somehow for our future children.

Thanks for all the advice/help on my latest two dilemmas. I really appreciate it!

2010-05-21T12:55:00.000-07:00

I'm really just posting this to try and wrap my brain around some things and writing stuff down like this always helps. However, I would like any advice that anyone would like to throw my way, as I'm having to make a tough decision this weekend.

I was offered a new job today. I was actively looking for a new job (and have been for a few months now). My current job is the wedding coordinator for a large hotel chain (internationally known) in my town. I basically do sales of potential brides, then handle all the weddings once they have booked here, and then I'm the on-site contact for the day of the wedding as well (so I attend/coordinate all the weddings held here - about 60 to 70 a year). I do love aspects of my job, but after 4 seasons of planning weddings non-stop, I was/am burned out. Majorly. The hours are insane. I work 60-70 hours a week in the summer, primarily during the weekends. I work every Saturday, all year long. Most of my Saturdays are 12, 13, sometimes 14 hour days.

I knew all this going into the job 4 years ago, but it's still a difficult transition to deal with never having off on a weekend to spend time with my family, J and my friends. Constantly having to turn down invitations to certain things (weddings, parties) because I can't take off any time in the summer, at all. In the 4 years that I worked there, I have taken 2 vacations, 1 of which was for my wedding and honeymoon and the other was just 4 days off to attend another wedding. So it was draining to say the least.

Not that I don't love weddings, brides, etc. but at this point in my life, I started feeling like I was missing out on a lot. Also, we do want to have kids at some point in the near future, and I didn't feel like I would be able to have kids working my current hours. I also have other gripes about the job - mainly pretty horrible and annoying co-workers. I could probably write 50 blog posts about that.

I am on a salary, with a bonus system in place for upselling clients/brides on better food/beverage/upgrades. The first two years at my job were awesome and I was making more money than I ever have before. That's really the only thing that made the hours tolerable.

Last May, due to the economy, they cut our salaries by about 20% and took away all bonuses. In addition to our (new, lower) salary, we do now get 1% of our total sales for each month. In the winter (slow months), that can be as little as $50 (literally) and in the summer, that 1% can be as high as a few thousand dollars. But the problem is that it's never regular - I never know what my paycheck is going to be before I open it - a little scary to say the least! Especially with having a mortgage and bills...it was insane during Christmas to receive hardly any money! And couple the lower salary with the fact that I was still working over 50 hours a week - there was a major problem. J figured out that my hourly rate was like $1.56 or something crazy like that. Oh, and also to save money, my company took away paid holidays. So now we can either work Christmas Day, Thanksgiving, etc. or not get paid for them. Yeah, sounds illegal huh?

Anyways, I started looking for a new job because I was pretty fed up and really sad about how the job I once loved had become something I now hate. I contemplated starting my own wedding planning business, but that's just not something that would be an option for us financially right now.

So after 3 rounds of interviews, I was offered a new job with another hotel chain in my town. This job is doing corporate events, some marketing (which is my background) and a little bit of sales for the hotel. It definitely does interest me, even though I do love weddings, I think a change into the more corporate side of things could be very interesting. The other thing - the job is Monday - Friday from 8 to 5 every day. No weekends, no nights. Straight normal 40 hour a week job.

Here is my dilemma - the salary. I haven't sat down yet to figure out my exact salary at my current job (since I never have a regular paycheck anymore, to be honest, I don't even know what my salary is!). But this new job is less than I am making now - not by much, but I'm pretty sure it's less.

So I guess my question is - should I accept this new job and the new (probably lower) salary? Is it wrong to take a job making less, when I know my quality of life will be so much better, since I'll have so much more time for my friends and family? I know you should constantly strive to make more, but when does that get outweighed by my own personal sanity of leaving a job that I'm so unhappy at? And then I worry, there are definitely aspects of my job THAT I LOVE - will I regret leaving? I absolutely adore my brides - the wonderful feedback and thank you notes that I have received over the last 4 years is seriously incredible. I'm also really scared/sad to think about telling my boss that I'm leaving - he will seriously be floored and upset. Also, I'm leaving a whole summer of brides in the lurch with a new coordinator taking over their weddings - which I feel guilty about already.

Ok, really I just wanted to get this all out. Trying to wrap my brain around everything. I have to give the new job an answer on Monday. I doubt I will be getting much sleep this weekend.

Babies!

2010-05-19T04:45:00.000-07:00

This weekend I'm co-hosting a baby shower for my BFF K. She's due in July with her first little boy, who they are naming Will. We're actually doing a co-ed shower because she wanted her husband to be involved. So it's really more of a laid back cookout with lawn games (cornhole, bocce ball, croquet) - not a whole lot of traditional baby shower stuff (no cheesy games, etc.). But of course, I'm still going crazy with fun decorations!

We're doing bright blue, bright green and brown for the colors. Here's the invitation we had designed:Taking off from the flag garland on the invite, I actually had a seller on Etsy make three flag garlands out of fun print fabric that matches our colors. This is serving double duty as shower decor, and then we plan to give K the garlands after the shower for her to use in the nursery!I also found a really fun "It's a Boy" banner to hang behind K as she's opening all the presents, also from Etsy.
And because I'm seriously NOT crafty, I also had a seller on Etsy make cute cupcake flags. I debated making my own, but I knew they would come out much better if they were done by someone who knows what they are doing. (horrible picture because I had bad lighting, but they are so adorable!)

I'll be sure to post pictures of the shower next week!

I'm also really excited about the shower gift I'm giving. I didn't just want to get her something off of her registry (even though I'm sure most mom's would disagree with this and tell me she needs practical gifts!) But I went the sentimental route with my gift. My good friend Tara is an AMAZING illustrator - she's done a bunch of children's books and tons of other stuff. She draws and then hand colors everything - her work is seriously incredible. Right after K found out she was having a boy and decided on a name, I had Tara do a custom illustration for me, which I had framed so they can hang it in the nursery.

Isn't it adorable? She drew them based on a photo of K and her husband and then added that adorable quote from Peter Pan. I love how she made the word "will" in a different color, since that's his name. So that is printed to 8x10 and then she actually made me two smaller drawings, one of a sailboat and one of an airplane (both 7x7) for them to hang as a set. They are all done in the colors of the nursery and I had them framed in fun, bright orange frames. I can't wait until she sees them!

Of course, I had to get him some baby clothes as well, since he needs to be the best dressed baby ever. There are tons of really cute clothes for boys! I found this at Janie and Jack (obsessed with that store) and then had it monogrammed (of course!) - I'm seriously in love with this outfit!

How cute is that? I love the little crab!

I also found some other cute little outfits -- an adorable striped Polo onesie:

And I had to buy him his first seersucker - look how adorable that outfit is...

So I've gone way overboard, but I can't help it - he's definitely going to be the most spoiled baby ever!!

Really, Gap?

2010-05-14T07:12:00.000-07:00

This is currently being sold at Gap for $69.50. Seriously? Is this in style? A jean overall dress? For $70?? I feel like you can go down to your local Goodwill and pick up one of these exact same dresses for about $5.

In my opinion, overalls are never a good idea (unless you are an actual farmer, or 3 years old), and making it into a dress is even worse. Sure, I may have rocked something similar in 1991 when I was in the 7th grade, with slouch socks and keds with no laces. But in 2010, are we really going to be seeing this horrific thing come back in style? I just got on board with the whole cotton romper thing (I still think they are pretty ugly and unflattering to most people), but I cannot support this "trend".

Also, on the Gap website, this dress actually has 7 excellent 5 star reviews! So 7 people have purchased and LIKED this thing! They go on and on about how much they love it. That seriously blows my mind!

So am I that much out of the fashion loop that this is seriously popular now, or am I right in thinking this is hideous?

To Sell or Not to Sell?

2010-05-13T06:23:00.000-07:00

Opinions needed please! A friend of a friend saw my wedding pictures a few weeks ago and apparently fell in love with my wedding dress. So she emailed me and asked if I was interested in selling it to her. Honestly, I was seriously floored by this, as I hadn't even really given any thought to what I would do with my dress. I did get it cleaned after the wedding and it's currently hanging out in the back of my closet.

So then I started thinking about it more. Do I want to sell it? I don't know. Part of me does, because, I'm obviously never going to wear it again. Also, I would like another bride to be able to get some use out of it and feel beautiful on her wedding day. But then the other part of me says "No way, don't sell it". Not that I really expect/think that my future daughter(s) will really want to wear it, as it will probably be majorly dated and might not fit. But will I be upset in 20 years not even to have the option of giving it to them? But then, what if we have all boys and it's not even a consideration? Will I regret not selling it then?

I know that I did love looking at my mom's old wedding dress. It didn't fit me at all and had long sleeves and tons of lace, but we did end up using parts of the dress to incorporate into my wedding day details. In addition to the lace we wrapped around my bouquet, my mom also cut a small square of satin from her dress and had my aunt embroider it with my new initials and wedding date, which got sewed into the back of my dress as my "something blue". So I'm worried that maybe when my time comes to show my dress to my daughters, even if it's just to use a small part of the dress, I will be really sad/upset if I don't have my dress anymore.

Also, my dress was not very expensive (as wedding dresses go) because it was so plain - so I have no idea what I would even charge this girl. A few hundred dollars? At that point, is it even worth it? Would it be an option to loan the dress to her, so she could wear it for her wedding, and then return it to me (obviously I would ask her to re-dry clean it). Is that a weird request? Borrowing a dress?

So that's my predicament! Ladies who are already married, would you or did you sell your dress? Do you regret it? Ladies who aren't married yet, would you ever sell your dress? Why or why not? Any input would be great!

Wedding Wednesday: Flowers

2010-05-12T06:55:00.001-07:00

Warning - super long post ahead with tons of pictures!

When we started planning the wedding, I really didn't have a clear idea of the flowers. I just knew I wanted something bright, fun and happy. I used a florist that I work with a lot at work and she is INCREDIBLE. I went to meet with her 1 time and she totally ran with my color scheme and had so many great ideas. September is actually a really hard month for flowers - there's really not too much in season during that time. I really wanted to use my 2 favorite flowers, tulips and peonies, but obviously that wasn't going to happen as they are spring flowers. But my florist came to the rescue and suggested dahlias (which look a lot like peonies as they are both really fluffy and full). We also used a lot of hydrangea because I liked how lush it was, as well as these amazing HUGE garden roses that she was able to find.

I seriously ADORED all the flowers. As evidenced by my reaction when I walked out of the brides room at my venue right after the flowers had been delivered:
Yeah, I was just a little bit excited.

I loved my bouquet, probably the most out of all the flowers. She did a wonderful job on it and it was exactly what I pictured in my head. It was yellow, green and white and I love how it popped out against my white dress in all the picutres. The bouquet was wrapped with yellow grosgrain ribbon and then we used a bit of chantilly lace from my mom's wedding dress wrapped on top of the yellow ribbon.

For Jake's boutonnière, I had found a picture of a really cool bout using a fish hook, and then making the flowers around it resemble a fishing lure. I showed it to my florist and she was really excited to try and re-create it. She seriously did an amazing job - it looked exactly like the picture and J LOVED it. All the guests commented on how unique it was. Here's when I first saw the bout:
And here it is on Jake. She used 3 crespedia (billy balls) and them some greenery around it. She also wrapped twine around the top of the hook too, which I thought was a great touch.

The bridesmaids bouquet were all green and white. They were very similar to my bouquet, only we didn't put any yellow in them, since I wanted them to stand out against the yellow bridesmaids dresses. They were tied with navy grosgrain ribbon.

We kept the ceremony flowers pretty simple, as I wanted the view of the river to be the main focal point. We did do some really fun carnation and daisy pomanders going down the aisle. They were really whimsical and I loved how bright they were.

We held our cocktail hour in the large garden right behind the ceremony site. We also wanted to keep this pretty simple, as it took place in a garden and I didn't want it to be overkill on the flowers. We used silver mint julep cups with small arrangements on the cocktail tables:
The wreaths!! I have to give credit to my mom, who suggested we add floral wreaths all around the venue. It was seriously one of my favorite elements to the wedding! The florist made 10 small wreaths that we hung from railings around the cocktail hour deck, as well as a HUGE wreath that she wired to the large oak tree which was the centerpiece of our cocktail hour, as the bar was set under that tree. This was a detail we added in at the last minute (seriously like the week of the wedding!) but I love the wreaths! The smaller wreaths:
The big wreath behind the bar:
As far as the centerpieces for the tables under the tent, again, I left it up to our florist and she did an awesome job. All the centerpieces were the same, and I liked the uniform look it gave the tent to have every table similar. She used low cylinder vases which she filled with cut lemons and then just did low, full, soft arrangements in the same color scheme and flowers as the bouquets. I loved how they popped off of our navy linens.

So those are the floral elements from our wedding. If you made it to the end of this super long post, congrats!

Busy Busy!

2010-05-10T07:57:00.000-07:00

We spent most of our weekend gardening. Our entire yard is basically a hot mess, so we are trying to make it less ugly. It's a slow process. We have a small fenced back yard (it's actually a pretty large yard for a townhouse) and we spent most of Sunday weeding along the outside of the fence, which is about 40 feet long. Because our house is on the corner of our cul-de-sac, I feel like we need to step it up and make the yard look really good since everyone drives and walks past it.

Once again, I have no before pictures. I think it's because the before is just SO damn horrible, I didn't want to waste my time. I give more credit to J actually - he has seriously been busting his butt working on the yard pretty much every free second of his life. We cleared out about 7 large black trash bags and 1 big garbage can of weeds this weekend. Yeah, it was that bad.

But now - the after!

Like I said, this would be far more impressive with a before picture. Let's just say you could barely see the fence before because there were so many weeds and vines growing on it. I nearly took my fingers off trying to remove an old dead thorny rose bush that had grown in between the board of the fence - OUCH!

Basically we left what was growing there from before we moved in - seagrasses and some rose bushes. We pruned everything back. I hope the roses start blooming soon (you can see the one has started already).

We still need to add a few more things in and we're still deciding what else we want to plant along the fence. We also will be spending next weekend putting in a metal edging all along the mulch to make the garden more distinct. Also, we don't really have grass in our yard, mainly just dandelions and clover. We are still deciding how to handle growing grass in the yard. I of course want to drop some $$$ and just sod the entire thing and J is being more reasonable and wants to try and grow grass ourselves. We'll see.

I also planted all our planters on the front porch - I love how they came out! I went with a dark pink/red and white scheme. I really like how it matches/accents our front door color.

Happy Monday!

Happy Mother's Day!

2010-05-09T04:46:00.000-07:00

(photo by Egomedia Photography)

My mom and I are extremely close. We don't look alike at all (as you can see from the picture), but we are very similar in many other ways. I was lucky enough to have my mom be a stay at home mom for my entire life. She left her job when she had me and didn't go back to work until I went to college. She is the inspiration for me to (hopefully!) do the same thing when we have kids. She is now back to work and has worked her way up within her company to a regional manager. I am so proud of her for being able to be a great mom for all of my childhood, and then go back and have a successful career as well.

She really taught me so much about growing up and I still talk to her at least once a day. Now I call her for cooking advice, sewing help, etc. I don't know what I would do without her - she's the best!

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there!

Photo Wall

2010-05-07T04:57:00.000-07:00

I made a New Years Resolution back in January to get things hung on the walls of our house, which have seriously been bare since we moved in a year ago. It's actually sort of embarrassing when people come over. I cringe when I walk into our living room and see nothing. But I really didn't just want to throw anything up on the walls (that we spent many hours patching and painting!) until I was in love with it.

So I started in our bedroom. We have a weird small wall in between our front window and the door to my closet. It's only about 3 feet wide and it's the first thing you see when you look into the room. I decided I wanted to hang 3 picture ledges and then find silver frames for them. Well, my project is finally done!

I found 2' ledges at Target for $8 each. I really wanted to get longer ones, but the wall just wasn't big enough for that. Then I found a whole lot of silver frames from Kohl's during their super major sale. I got the frames from $2-$9 depending on their size. I got 8 of them, and my total was seriously like $21. That was a good bargain day!

Jake was nice enough to perfectly hang them for me and I got to work on figuring out the frame arrangement and finding the right pictures for them. Since the wall is not super big, I stuck to 8x10 frames and smaller, since I didn't want the frames to overwhelm it or look too big on the ledges. I am so happy with the result!

The completed project! And a good shot of our wall color (it's a very very light blue) and our Target curtains that I'm in love with.

Close up of the bottom ledge. As far as pictures, I didn't want it to turn it into a shrine to me and J. I used a lot of wedding pictures, but I tried to frame ones that weren't just of the two of us. I used a lot of shots of our venue and decor and I actually think it turned out more interesting that way. This ledge shows a floral wreath from our cocktail hour and a picture of one of the brick houses from the venue. And of course, I had to use some pictures of Spencer!

The middle ledge. In that triple frame, I did use wedding pictures of us. I did a semi-montage from the day and used a picture before the ceremony, during the ceremony and our first dance. Then I had to put another picture of the puppy dog up there - she's so photogenic!

The top ledge. This one has two more shots of our wedding venue and then the small middle picture is my favorite engagement picture of us.

Another view of the wall. This is the angle from the bed - so this is what I see when I wake up. It makes me happy to wake up to these pictures!

And I actually did hang something else on the wall in our bedroom! Back in December, I made a fabric covered headboard (this post) and I was on the hunt for what to hang over it. Well, I finally decided on the starburst mirror from West Elm. Not terribly original, but I loved it so I went with it.

Don't pay attention to our wrinkled bedding and mis-matched lamps. And super messy nightstands. Yikes. I need to lower the mirror so it hangs closer to the headboard, but other than that, I love it!

So that's all we have in our bedroom right now. Definitely need a few more things, but I'm making progress. It's all about baby steps! Happy Friday!

Edit: Our Bedding is the Pearl Embroidered Duvet Cover and Shams from Pottery Barn, in the color Sandalwood. Obviously I had to have it monogrammed. I got it on sale last year and it's on sale again right now actually! It can be found here.

Happy Cinco De Mayo!

2010-05-05T15:38:00.000-07:00

Hope everyone enjoys margaritas and delicious Mexican food today! It's actually our 8 month wedding anniversary (yay!) but we're just staying in and I'm making Chicken Tostadas to celebrate. Ole!

Wedding Wednesday: The Ceremony

2010-04-28T06:34:00.001-07:00

I'm lacking in the blogging motivation, so I'm being lazy and just showing some more of our wedding pictures. Next week is our 8 month wedding anniversary (yay!) and the time is seriously flying by.

Onto ceremony pictures!

Don't I look like I'm about to throw up in this picture? We were waiting in the brides room and this was just as my wedding coordinator told me it was time to go. All my girls were being funny and putting their flowers around me. Apparently it wasn't enough to calm me down - ha!

Waiting to walk down the aisle with my dad. My dad was telling me jokes to calm me down and it was actually working since I was smiling. Good shot of my bouquet as well.

This is when I saw Jake as we came down the aisle. I started tearing up and almost lost it at this point.

I absolutely adore this picture - love how it shows the entire ceremony. We were up on a small deck for the ceremony and all the guest sat down in the grass. I liked how I was able to look out and see everyone during the ceremony since we were higher up.
I look bored in this picture, but I think I was listening intently to the readers.
The kiss - we're married!

Walking back down the aisle. Good picture of my dress and the carnation pomanders we had lining the aisles.

Immediately after the ceremony, our bridal party went and had a quick toast - then it was time to party!

(all photos by egomedia photography)

A little Sunday project

2010-04-26T07:39:00.000-07:00

About a month ago, we bought a new dining room set (actually, it's not really new - it's about 40 years old, but it's new to us!) We don't have a seperate dining room, just 1 big room that serves as our formal living room and dining room. I love everything about the table and chairs, except for the fabric that covered the chairs. It's a lovely redish-pink toile, but unfortunately we do not have any red in our house.

We have a lot of greens and browns in that room, so the chairs stuck out like a sore thumb.

They didn't exactly match with the modern print table runner that I always keep on the table --eeek!

So I decided I would take an afternoon and recover the chairs in a more neutral fabric that matched the rest of the room. Since this was going to need to be a budget makeover, I found some inspiration from something we already owned:

That is the worlds ugliest couch, which currently resides in our living room. We got it as a hand me down (just like everything else!) when we moved in last year. It was supposed to be a temporary fix until we got something new, but here it is, a year later, still chillin' in our living room.

We have finally decided it's time for an upgrade and that we would put this baby out with the bulk trash later this week. Since I knew it's time with us was limited, I decided to make use of the slightly less ugly slipcover that came with the couch. I ripped it off and got to work cutting it up to be the new fabric for the chair cushions.

I didn't take any pictures of my progress, but who doesn't love a good before and after?

Before

After

A Full table shot

Looks much better with the table runner now!

So that's how I spent about an hour and a half of my time and zero dollars for a pretty major transformation this weekend. I'm very happy with how it came out - it totally changed the look of the entire room. Now we're just counting down until Wednesday when the city comes to take this eyesore out of our house!

Yes, that is the slipcover-less couch that we have to live with for the next 2 days - told you it was pretty horrible!

Friday Finds

2010-04-23T07:09:00.000-07:00

I've had my eye on these starfish bangle bracelets from A.Tierney for a few weeks. It might just be time for me to treat myself to one! I love the mult-colored one because it could go with so many different outfits.

Happy Friday!

The Story of the Azaleas

2010-04-21T06:37:00.000-07:00

Not gonna lie, for the entire first year we lived in our house, we definitely neglected the outside gardens. We really did nothing to the yard at all except cut the grass. But when this spring rolled around and it started getting warm out, I started itching to get the front of our house to look nice.

I don't have any early pictures that I took of the front of the house, except for the 1 that I snagged off the MLS listing when we were under contract. So unfortunately, I can't truly document how awful our front garden was. Here is the one and only picture:As you can see, we live in a pretty basic, traditional 3 level townhouse. But we're talking about gardens right now, so pay close attention to the monstronsity below the front window - our "azalea garden". Here, I've highlighted it's beauty:It's actually 4 different plants, that have been so neglected that they have grown into 1 plant, as well as being completely covered in ivy and other vines. So they looked really nice, let me tell you. I'm sorry I don't have a close up picture in all their glory.

Anyways, the first weekend it was warm here, I got the brilliant idea that we needed to pull out the azaleas and replant something else there. J was actually working all weekend, so I told him that I would handle the whole project on my own. Here's how our conversation went:

Me: I'm going to rip out all of those azaleas this weekend while you are working so we can start planting something else and make a nice garden.
J: That's a really huge project, you won't be able to do that all on your own.
Me: Yes I will - I'm a beast with clippers.
J: No way - you have no idea how to dig out stumps, plus they probably weigh like 100 pounds each.
Me: I'm doing it...you will be coming home to a completely different looking house!

Needless to say, as soon as I started cutting the branches, I realized this project was WAY over my head and I would never be able to do it all myself. I did manage to take clippers to all the branches and trimmed all the plants back to small stumps. I was very proud of my progress.

J got home later that afternoon and even he agreed he was impressed by how much I had done. However, the hard part was still ahead - pulling those 4 stumps out of the ground. We quickly realized that these probably 20+ year old plants were definitely going to put up a fight to be dug up. That led us to one simple resolution: The Jeep.

Yes, we used J's Jeep Cherokee and rope to pull out all 4 stumps. Unfortunately, I have no pictures of this undertaking, because I was laughing too hard to hold my camera. Let's just say it involved me laughing, J cursing and lots and lots of rope. Probably about 50 different attempts to get all of them.

BUT we now have an adorable and tidy start to a little garden! We have planted 3 small spruce trees so far and I LOVE them. We also mulched the area, which made a huge difference. We obviously still have alot of work to do, as far as more things being planted and also adding a small rock wall around the garden to finish it off. I can't get over how much it changed the front of the house and made it look so much better. A little elbow grease and hard work majorly paid off!

Here are a few afters:

I tried to take a picture at the same angle that the MLS picture was taken. Also - we have painted our front door red (which is a whole post in itself!). We still desperately need to re-paint our shutters - they are so faded!

Closer shot of the trees. They are tiny now, but they should grow to be about 4-6'. I sort of like how little they look now. We want to eventually rip out all of the "grass" and turn that entire section into a garden. An added bonus from ripping out the azaleas - we found a 2nd water spicket hidden behind them! Yay for having running water in the front of our house!

So that's our story of the azaleas. So happy they are gone!

On the hunt

2010-04-19T17:40:00.000-07:00

for silver shoes for the wedding I'm in this June. I have 1 pair of silver shoes in my closet, but I'm not really in love with them, so I'd like to find a new pair. Here is the dress we will be wearing for the wedding:

but they are in a mint-y sage green color. I actually LOVE the shoes that the model is wearing (maybe a little shorter so I can walk down the aisle!), so my ideal shoe would be those, in silver.

A few options I've had my eye on:

That last pair I found on Piperlime and they are on sale for $29.99 so those may be the frontrunner. Any other suggestions on good places for shoes, besides the regulars (Zappos, Shoebuy, etc.)?

Gone Fishin'

2010-04-15T06:52:00.000-07:00

We're off to J's family's river house for a long weekend. I cannot wait for an entire 4 days of total relaxation. Be back Monday night!

Newest Snack Addiction!

2010-04-14T07:21:00.000-07:00

So I think I'm a little bit late in becoming obsessed with this, but I've finally come around to Greek Yogurt. I've tried it in the past and I just couldn't bring myself to eat it - it's just way too bitter for my taste, even the flavored kinds. But I kept reading about how good it is nutritionally, so I wanted to keep trying. This week at the grocery store, I bought this on a whim:

The indiviual containers of the 2% Fage yogurt with the seperate small compartment of honey! OMG! Adding the honey to the yogurt made it DELICIOUS! It totally cut out the bitter taste that I hate. I ate it mixed in with some fresh strawberries and it was seriously the most refreshing thing I've had in a while!

However, the 2% Fage is not exactly the world's most low-calorie snack...it has 180 calories and 2.5 grams of fat in just that small little cup (but it does contain 10 big grams of protien - awesome!). So I think I'm going to start buying the larger containers of the Fage that are 0% fat, as that cuts the calories in half, and then just adding my own honey to it. I'd also like to start mixing in granola to add some texture and crunch in addition to the berries. This is definitely going to become my new spring and summer snack!

Is anyone else in love with Greek yogurt? If you haven't tried it, I would highly recommend it!

Upgrade!

2010-04-13T04:21:00.000-07:00

Our old fridge and our new beautiful, shiny fridge!

(please ignore the rest of the kitchen, it's a work in progress! and yes, we put a picture of our new fridge on the old fridge so we could look at it every day before it was delivered)

We've started the beautification project in our kitchen, starting with getting the last of our new appliances (we already have a new stove and dishwasher). I never knew how excited I would get over a fridge, but that thing is incredible. My favorite part? The fact that I don't have to bend over to get stuff out of the fridge - it's all at a perfect height with the freezer below. Oh and we have ice - a major accomplishment! No more stupid ice trays. Heaven!

The next step is starting to sand, prime and paint our horrible honey oak cabinets white. They are so disgusting, covered in grease and grime. Then we're installing new countertops and a sink and faucet. The cabinets will also get new knobs (they don't have any right now) and then we're painting the walls - still searching for the perfect shade of green. Finishing up our little (ha!) DIY project is new lighting - we're taking down the awful florescent and doing recessed lighting. And if I can convince J, I'd love a hanging pendant light over the sink.

Quite an undertaking, but I'm so excited!

Bridal Shower Planning!

2010-04-12T07:03:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I hosted a bridal shower for my BFF C who is getting married in June. Even though she lives in Florida, we decided to hold the shower in DC because that's where most of the shower guests live. I found a super cute restaurant in Arlington and did a brunch shower - so much yummy food!

Since the guest count was only 15 ladies, I decided I wanted to do a semi-elaborate favor for the shower and did personalized bags for each guest. I would not have been able to do this if the shower was really large - they were pretty labor intensive, but I LOVE how they came out. I got inspiration for the bags here. And here's how my bags came out:

The colors for the shower were turquoise, hot pink and royal blue, so I made 5 bags in each of those colors with each girls initial.

Close up of the design.

I forgot to take a picture of all the bags laid out in our guest room as they were drying. All the girls really loved the bags - I figured they would be good as reusable grocery bags. I found the bags online for 99 cents each, so it really wasn't an expensive project.

We had a semi-private room at the restaurant and just all sat at 1 long table, which I think worked well for people to be able to talk and mingle. I did simple tulip centerpieces down the table and I did do assigned seating because I think it works better that way. Onto the pictures!

Centerpieces - very blurry, but I put pink ribbon around the vases and made little tags that said "Colleen's Bridal Shower"

Looking down the table - you can see the bags hanging on each girls chair. The restaurant also printed custom menus for the shower and you can see the place cards I made.

The other side of the table.

Present time! She got some wonderful gifts!

The bride with her bow bouquet at the end of the shower!

It was such a fun afternoon and several of our friends from college were able to make it, so it was sort of like a mini-reunion! So excited for the wedding in a few months!

Fabulous Friday

2010-04-09T09:12:00.000-07:00

Something small that makes me smile on this sunny Friday:

Trimming some bunches of apple blossoms and putting them in a new milk glass vase I got at Goodwill last week for $1. I love the combination of the pink and green against the white. They look fabulous sitting on our new console table we bought recently. And right now, they are the ONLY thing on that table as I haven't started decorating yet.

Happy Friday - enjoy the weekend!

Spring has Sprung!

2010-04-08T04:19:00.000-07:00

We've been having some wacky spring weather here in the Mid-Atlantic...it was like 87 degrees here yesterday!! That is not spring weather to me, but I guess it's better than snow, rain or cold temps. Anyways, I love how everything is in bloom now! I love taking the puppy dog for a walk and looking at all the nice green grass and flowers.

We are still getting started on our gardening for the year and unfortunately, I was so busy this fall (you know, with getting married), that I didn't get a chance to plant any bulbs. So I'm very envious of everyone's daffodils and tulips coming up. This fall, I will be planting TONS of bulbs all over our yard!

One thing we do have that is in full bloom is our apple blossom tree. It's a super huge tree right in our front yard (it basically takes up our entire front yard!) and it started budding last week.

Well now the flowers are opened and it's so pretty! I wish it would stay in bloom all spring and summer, but sadly, it has a pretty short blooming time - the flowers will start falling off pretty soon. And we are supposed to get a super heavy rain tonight, so that may make it even

shorter. So I guess we should enjoy it while it lasts! I took a few pictures of it this morning after my walk with Spencer.

The view out of the window from our bedroom - looking through the screen, sorry it's sort of blurry!

LOVE the pink flowers!

Close up of the flowers.

What is your favorite part of spring?

Long Time, No Blog

2010-04-07T06:52:00.000-07:00

Wow - so it's been over 2 months since my last blog post. Not really sure what happened, I wasn't planning on taking such a long break. Life just sort of got crazy busy and I lost motivation.

Anyways, I'm back!! For a quick recap on what we've been up to this winter/spring:

*** LOTS and LOTS of home renovation/decorating! I'm happy to announce that after 11 months of living in our house, I have finally hung stuff up on the walls! J was shocked when he came home from work one day to see actual art hanging in our living room - it was a big moment.

*** J has been a busy busy handyman completing all sorts of interesting projects that I suggest. He finished our half bath (that's a whole other post to come soon!), painted our front door red, installed a new mailbox - I could go on and on.

*** We survived 3 back to back blizzards. It was pretty insane. We had over 45" of snow for most of February. We also had a wedding at work DURING the worst blizzard storm - I won't even go into how insane that was.

*** We are hoping to start with a pretty major kitchen remodel later this month and into May. It will involve a ton of painting, installing new countertops and figuring out installation of a breakfast bar to make our kitchen "eat-in". Yes, we're doing it all ourselves!

*** Tax Refunds - pretty incredible! So happy and thankful for that $8,000 first time homebuyer credit. We will probably NEVER get as much money back as we are getting this year. So of course, I'm stalking our mailbox every day for the check. (you can't e-file that return - bummer!) As soon as we receive it, it's getting put right back into the house. We are getting a new roof (yay!), all new windows (yay!) and 2 new sliding glass doors (yay!). Not that we plan on having too much left after all of that, but we'll save whatever is leftover.

*** My BFF K is over 6 months preggo now! It's been SO fun to watch her belly grow and hear all about the baby. In a complete shocker, she's having a BOY! We (including her husband) were all CONVINCED it was a girl. She called me after they found out and made sure I was sitting down before she told me - ha! But I'm super happy for them and I can't wait until the little man gets here in July! They are naming him Will. Love it!

*** My other BFF C from college is engaged! And I'm her Maid of Honor!!! Notice I said Maid - I refuse to be anything with the word Matron in it. The wedding is this June (eeek!) down in Florida and I'm so super excited! Our bridesmaids dresses are gorgeous and I love everything she has planned so far.

*** Work is starting to gear up for a super crazy wedding season. J and I are going away for a long weekend next weekend to get away before I have zero time off. Can't wait to relax with my man and my puppy dog!

That's about all the updates I have right now! Happy to be back writing and reading!

Getting FIT!

2010-01-20T06:26:00.000-08:00

Jake got me the Wii Fit for Christmas! I had tried it a few times and really liked it, so now I'm really excited to have my own! And it definitely gives you a workout - I was pleasantly surprised by how hard some of the games/workouts are!

Christmas morning, my parents came over for breakfast and they wanted to see the Wii Fit, so we set everything up. Well, when you first set the Wii Fit up, it has you go through this "fitness challenge" thing and of course, my family was like "oh, Kim, you should do it first, since it's your gift". So after putting in your height, age, etc., it has you stand on the balance board to test your balance and gives you a "Wii Fit Age". You basically have to balance on each foot and hold it for like 3 seconds, then switch to the other foot and so on. You do this 5 times and it times you for each round and then gives you your estimated "Age" based on how balanced/strong you are.

Can I just say I am the most UNCOORDINATED person EVER! So I knew this was going to be bad news...only it was WAY worse than I thought!!! After I was only able to finish 3 out of the 5 rounds, it then did this very loud and bright countdown to my estimated age, making sure EVERYONE within 20 feet of me knew exactly how out of shape and klutzy I really am. Any guesses on how "old" it told me I was????

57!!!

MORE THAN DOUBLE MY REAL AGE!!! AHHHHHHHHH!!!! That's older than my parents! Jake and my parents were DYING of laughter when that number popped up! I mean, really?? Am I that out of shape and unbalanced?? Wowza.

So obviously I've been using it alot to bring my "Fit Age" back down to something a little bit more respectable. There's such fun games, like snowboarding, soccer, etc. I also really like the yoga. I still need to try the strenght training games, but so far, I'm really loving it!

Does anyone have a Wii Fit? Anyone want to fess up to what age they got from it??

Deal of the Day!

2010-01-12T06:45:00.000-08:00

Ever since the wedding, I have not gone clothes shopping ONE TIME. This is huge for me! I used to order from J.Crew about once a week - it was bad. But we've started majorly saving for some large house projects that we're planning for 2010, so my shopping has become non-existant. I'm very proud of myself and I know J is extremely happy about J.Crew boxes not piling up on the front porch weekly.

However, I was starting to get the urge when I realized I have no winter clothes and I was feeling very blah about my wardrobe. I had 2 gift cards left over from Christmas and my birthday to J.Crew and Banana Republic. They were burning holes in my pocket until Jake told me to go ahead and treat myself to some new clothes since I had been so good about it the last few months. Well he didn't have to tell me twice! I headed out to the outlets yesterday because I figured my money would go farther and I typically always find really good deals there.

After a fairly successful stop at the J.Crew outlet (3 new sweaters and a pair of their broken-in chinos for spring!), I headed over to the Banana Republic outlet. I found 4 pairs of work pants (the pants at Banana always fit me so well) and a few sweaters. I was about to go check out when something caught my eye...

(these are not the exact boots, but they look almost exactly the same)

Flat Brown Riding Boots! Since my shopping hiatis, I have felt a little bit behind in the whole "winter trend" thing and I have been dying for a pair of flat boots to wear with jeans. These were marked $149.99. Hmmm...still a bit pricey for my taste. I pulled out the box anyway and tried them on. They fit perfectly! I flipped the box over to see a $74.99 sale sticker! Score!! Definitely worth $75 in my opinion. I head up to the checkout counter and the girl rings them up. I look at the register and see...

$37.99!!!

Yes, that's right. They were an additional 50% off!!! I got perfect leather riding boots for under $40! If I could wear jeans to work, I would have them on right now. Even Jake was very impressed with my thriftiness (even if it was unintentional since I had no idea they were so cheap!)

Funny how getting a deal like that will make your whole week!! Woo hoo!!

2010-01-11T19:24:00.000-08:00

Yes, we have been married for 4 months now (where has the time gone?!?!) and I'm still obsessed with our wedding pictures.

WHAT is this??

2010-01-06T15:01:00.000-08:00

There are no words for how absurd I think Kate Gosselin looks in this week's People. Is she serious? Who told her this would be a good idea - she has to have publicists and stylists?!?!

Those poor, poor kids...

I'm going to be an AUNT!!

2010-01-04T06:02:00.000-08:00

First exciting piece of news in 2010 - my best friend K is pregnant!!! So I guess while I won't technically be an aunt, I will definitely be an "aunt". She is due in July and just entered her 2nd trimester, so now I feel comfortable sharing the news. Of course, I found out FOREVER ago (she literally called me right after she took the test in November) and it's been REALLY hard to keep it to myself. I told Jake just so I could tell someone and that made me feel a little bit better. But now that it's officially out, I'm just so happy and excited for her!!

We're all convinced she's having a girl, and when she finds out in a few weeks, we could be in for a huge surprise if that baby turns out to be a boy! I have already started shopping for the most spoiled baby ever - OMG there is SUCH cute baby stuff everywhere! And obviously I've been planning a fabulous baby shower in my head for weeks as well!

It will be weird that my best friend in the world will be a MOM in a few months! I'm so happy that she literally lives 2 doors down so I can visit and play with the baby all the time. Plus, since we are still a LONG way away from having kids, it will give me some practice and if I get the "baby bug", I can just go see K's baby for a few hours to get my baby fix.

(K and me at my rehearsal dinner in September)

Yay for babies!!!

Happy 2010!

2010-01-03T06:54:00.000-08:00

2009 was such a wonderful year, but I hope that 2010 tops it!! Here's everything that we accomplished this past year...

*** Bought our first house in May

*** Had the most amazing and fantastic wedding!

*** Went on a fabulous honeymoon to Aruba

*** Started working on updating our house - still a work in progress!

*** Had our first full year of being dog parents, and loving it!

*** J turned 30 (and I turned 28) and I threw the first party at our house to celebrate!

I didn't really make any resolutions for 2010. I just want my family to be happy, healthy and successful in the New Year. We will continue to work on making our house "a home" and hopefully I can convince J that we NEED hardwood floors before the spring! We also plan to completely renovate our kitchen this year, as well as maybe even hang some pictures on the walls! (yeah, we still have NOTHING hanging on the walls - I'm very indecisive about it)

I already have some fun plans for 2010 which I will fill you all in soon! I'm so excited to see what the future has in store for us!

Merry Christmas Eve!

2009-12-24T06:45:00.000-08:00

Things I learned from being snowed in

2009-12-21T11:29:00.001-08:00

with my husband for 48 hours...

*** He makes hot chocolate with water, no milk. I make mine with mainly milk, maybe a tiny bit of water. This caused some major discussions this weekend. I finally got him to agree that hot chocolate with milk tastes MUCH better. Of course, it doesn't hurt when you pour half a bottle of Bailey's in it either.

*** I'm never going to be able to convince him that Lifetime movies don't get old after watching them for 8 hours straight. He is still not a fan.

*** Setting the thermostat to 62 degrees is not acceptable to me when we're in the middle of a blizzard and can't leave the house. It was 57 degrees in our house on Sunday morning - he turned it down hoping it would "save money". I told him I'd rather have a $500 electric bill than freeze to death. I wanted it set to 76 - we compromised on 69.

*** He still thinks I looked pretty even though I barely showered or got out of sweatpants all weekend - awww!

*** He is just as obsessed with celebrity gossip as I am. Case in point: fighting over all the trashy mags I bought on Friday before the storm hit.

*** We didn't want to kill each other TOO many times by Sunday night - a success!!!

We spent about 5 hours yesterday digging out of the snow. We made little tunnels all over the front and side of our house and got all the cars cleaned off. As much as I did enjoy the lazy weekend, I'm seriously ready for it to melt already!! Once you have to start going out in it, it's not fun anymore!

Unfortunately, I had to come into work today - major bummer! At least it's a short week...can't believe Christmas is like 3 days away!!

20 inches!

2009-12-20T09:26:00.000-08:00

Official measure (from our deck) - 20"!!!

Well...

2009-12-19T11:12:00.000-08:00

We got snow! and it's still coming! By 9am, we had at least a foot and now at 2:30pm, I'd say we have close to 15 inches. And it's not supposed to stop until tomorrow morning! I wanted to be snowed in and I'd say we are DEFINITELY snowed in!! They are saying we will have over 2 feet by the time it stops. Wowza.

Our deck at 9am when we woke up.

Our deck at 2:30pm.

Looking out our front door - this was after we had already shoveled it once.

The one downside of not having a covered front porch! A mountain of snow at the doorway! (this was also after we had cleared it away once in the morning as well)

This is also Spencer's first experience with a major snowfall. We let her out this morning and had to drag her back in the house after an hour. She LOVED it!

This was at 9am - the snow is definitely over her head now!

Sprinting around like a mad woman. And yes, I admit, I went out and bought her a sweater yesterday to keep her warm in all this snow!

It looks like she doesn't have any legs in this picture!!

Looking down our road.

I'm totally enjoying being snowed in - I doubt we will even be going to work on Monday!!

Let it Snow!

2009-12-18T08:13:00.000-08:00

We are in the dark purple - fingers crossed we're totally snowed in this weekend! 12"+ of snow would make me a happy girl! I've already stocked up on hot chocolate, soup and stuff to make grilled cheese sandwiches!

Getting there

2009-12-16T06:31:00.000-08:00

We are making progress on our bathroom renovation. It's a long, tedious process and we've definitely hit a few speed bumps along the way. Our current issue is the plumbing for the new pedestal sink we are installing. Apparently the pipes don't work (fit?) with the sink we bought and Jake is going to re-plumb (What??? is that actually a word?) the bathroom so everything fits and looks pretty. Wowza. Please cross your fingers that our house is not flooded by my husband who is apparently adding plumber to his resume.

Anyways, we got all the NASTY wallpaper removed from the entire bathroom with the help of an industrial wallpaper steamer. Our friend Will owns his own painting company and has a hardcore wallpaper steamer that he loaned to us (and actually helped J with - it took the 2 of them about 15 minutes to get all that paper off). Underneath the wallpaper was about 2 inches of horrible wallpaper glue, which looked like boogers. Sorry for the gross visual, but that's what we're dealing with here. See, I told you! This is the walls and ceiling over the sink post- wallpaper removal.

After Jake scrapped all that off, it took 3 coats of Killz to cover the walls and ceiling to get them to resemble anything semi-livable. He then painted the top of the walls in Glidden's "Water Chesnut", and started working on installing the white beadboard.

We're doing the beadboard up 6 feet high. The reason is that all of our bathrooms have built in, wall-recessed medicine cabinets in them and the old owners were nice enough to cover the one in this bathroom WITH WALLPAPER! But not before they painted the entire thing BLACK. So we really couldn't salvage it, so we decided to just rip it out and cover it with beadboard. Here's what I'm talking about...

Here's the hole in the wall after we ripped the medicine cabinet out...

Here's the lovely medicine cabinet in all it's wallpapered glory - it has no idea that it's about to meet it's final resting place at the dump...

And here is that hole covered with the beadboard paneling. And a good shot of the new light J installed.

Now, I won't leave you hanging with just ugly demo pictures. Here's the current state of our bathroom:Lovely beadboard - still need to do the corner trim pieces, but J is working on those this week.

We have real walls and a WHITE ceiling - I really think this is my favorite part!!

The new light. I found it at Ballard Designs, on sale, then an additional 10% off, plus free shipping. Majorly excited about that one! (still have to install the beadboard behind the sink, but we need to work on the plumbing issues first obviously)The non-installed pedestal sink. We just set it in place so we could see what it was going to look like. You can see the pipes behind it - I really hope Jake can perform some miracles to get that to work.

Still need to do the baseboards and the top molding above the beadboard, but I love how it looks with the new floor!

So that's our current progress. We are having family over the Sunday after Christmas, so our goal is have the entire thing finished by then. Do you think we can do it??

I heart this

2009-12-15T07:29:00.000-08:00

Sigh.

Christmas Edition: What I'm giving

2009-12-14T06:26:00.000-08:00

I absolutely love shopping and giving gifts. It's just so rewarding to shop for something that you know your friends or family will adore and I love watching them open it! This year, I did the majority of my shopping online because I just got very tired of the crowds and long lines. It didn't take away from the "the thrill of the hunt" though.

Here's a few things I'm giving this year...

Keel's Simple Diary for my sister-in-law. She journals every day, so I thought this would be a fun gift. It gives you questions, fill in the blank and multiple choice, so it's a nice change from just a blank journal. I found it at Anthropologie.

Also for my sister-in-law (she's the easiest person to shop for!), I found this quirky owl ring on Etsy. I love the eyes and how big and chunky the ring is. She's into unique jewelry and I can totally see her wearing it.

My mom is getting my dad a Wii console, so we got him a bunch of games for it. He loves playing ours everytime he comes over, so I know he will love it.

Real Simple magazine subscriptions for both mine and J's mom. I got these online from Amazon on Black Friday and a years subscription was $5!! I love giving magazine subscriptions for a gift because then the person will think of you every time a new issue comes in the mail. Plus, Real Simple magazine is such a great magazine (I sort of wish I had bought one for myself now!)

My mom collects the Spode Christmas Tree pattern, so I got her the Bread Basket. The size and handles would make it perfect for a lot of different things though, not just bread. I actually found this on Amazon as well, for a really great price and free shipping!

What are you giving this year? Do you brave the crowds to do your shopping at the mall or online in your pjs?

Cookie Party!

2009-12-11T06:42:00.000-08:00

First - This is my 300th post! Woo Hoo! I had grand plans to do a fun giveaway for my 300th, but that may have to wait because I'm not ready...maybe a giveaway for 312 posts or something equally as random? I'll keep you updated!

Second - I went to my friend L's annual Cookie Exchange Party last night. So fun! To me, that's the perfect holiday party. Girls only, plenty of booze and cookies. Plus, for non-bakers like myself, it's a way I can get a few dozen Christmas cookies without baking them myself. J was literally waiting by the front door when I got home last night to see what kind of goodies I brought home. I have to say, this was one of the best years in terms of quality and quantity of cookies. All the girls had been emailing each other the week of the party to make sure that we had a good variety of cookies, and it worked out well.

Since I despise baking, this was of course a little bit of a challenge for me. I searched far and wide for an easy recipe that would still look like I slaved away over a hot stove. My whole problem with baking (and especially cookies) is that it just takes SO long and it's very labor intensive. I hate having to make batches and batches and checking and cooling.... So when I came across this recipe, I knew I found a winner:

Snickerdoodle Blondies (found from Dozen Flours)

2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon Kosher salt
2 cups packed brown sugar
1 cup butter, at room temperature
2 eggs, at room temperature
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons white sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly grease a 9 x 13 inch pan. Sift together flour, baking powder and salt and set aside. In large bowl, beat together butter, sugar, egg and vanilla until smooth. Stir in the flour mixture until well blended.

Spread evenly in prepared pan (mixture will be somewhat cookiebatter-ish.) Combine white sugar and cinnamon in a little bowl. Evenly sprinkle cinnamon sugar mixture over the top of the batter. Bake 25-30 minutes or until surface springs back when gently pressed. Cool slightly.

While still warm, cut into bars with a sharp knife. Yields: approximately 30 servings (depending on how you cut the bars)

Obviously super easy and I love that you just spread them in a pan, bake and you're done. They look fancy and they definitely got gobbled up at the party. Highly recommended, especially for non-bakers!!

Also at the party, we had my friend L's famous Punch. We call it "The Punch". She makes it every year and we literally drink every drop. It's pretty lethal and I definitely consumed 3 wine glasses full last night, which is probably too much for a Thursday night!

"The Punch"
2 1/2 c. Southern Comfort (basically an entire bottle)
2 1/4 qts. 7-Up
6 oz. fresh lemon juice
1 (6 oz.) can frozen orange juice
2 (6 oz.) cans frozen lemonade

Chill ingredients; mix in punch bowl. Add 7-Up last. Yum!

Happy Friday!!

Dear Santa,

2009-12-10T06:33:00.000-08:00

I have been a VERY good girl this year. With Christmas just 15 days away, I know you are really busy with shopping for everyone. So I thought I'd put together a list for you, to make it easier for you to check everything off!Boatneck Ponte Dress from Lands End. Perfect for work because I can throw it on with fun flats and still look polished for weddings!
A silver engraved necklace with my new monogram. L-O-V-E this one from Etsy. Edit: The Etsy seller is courtneyanne Designs
Dory Barn Coat from Lands End. Santa, I hope you already bought this one for me because they are running out of sizes and colors! Better hurry!! (Chocolate Brown, please!)
Real Simple Best Recipes Cookbook. Being a new wife and all, I need something to wow my husband and make him believe that I AM Martha Stewart!
Santa, you are great at bringing me tech gifts. I-pods, Garmins, you name it. This year, you can put one of these adorable little video cameras in my stocking and I will be one happy girl!

Last but not least, a Little Green Clean Machine. Now, my mom said it's just wrong to put cleaning appliances on my Christmas list, but she obviously hasn't seen our old shabby carpet that we can't afford to replace right now. This will help me get those gross stains out so I can stop bugging Jake for carpet installation!

Thanks for reading this Santa. I promise to leave extra cookies out for you and the reindeer if you could slip any of these under our tree this year!

Love,

Kim

Can I please get married again

2009-12-09T09:23:00.000-08:00

if it means I get to wear this dress?

(source: J.Crew)

Absolute perfection! I love everything about it. Don't get me wrong, I was (and still am) totally in L-O-V-E with my dress, but if I could do it all over again, I would buy this immediately.

It's basically the complete opposite of my dress. My dress was form fitting, super structured and a very clean silhouette. This is flowy and romantic - I think it would be perfect for a laid back, beach wedding.

Is our one year anniversary too soon for a vow renewal in Hawaii????

While the Husband is away...

2009-12-08T05:02:00.000-08:00

J is out of town until tonight. He left Sunday and pretty much as soon as he was at the airport, I was scheming to work on a house project that I had to do while he wasn't home. I enlisted the help of my friend B and we got to work. Our project? An upholstered headboard for our new bed.

As as soon as we bought our bed a few weeks ago, I knew I wanted to make a fabric covered headboard for it. I had seen the project on several blogs and it looked easy enough. Unfortunately for me, we are currently completely renovating our bathroom, so Jake refused to take on any other projects until that was done. Silly boy - he should know that I have NO patience and I would find a way to complete this project on my own.

So Monday, while I was off from work, I went to the fabric store and Home Depot and collected all my supplies. Armed with fabric, plywood, a staple gun and plenty of wine, we got to work and a couple hours (yikes!) later, we had a finished masterpiece! And I'm in love with it!!

I didn't take photos of our progress, but of course, I have pictures of the finished product:

I used a tanish-brown tweed wool material because I loved the texture and all the flecks of color in it.

Close up of the fabric.

We did nailhead trim around the headboard, as I had seen done on Emily's blog and fell in love with. Of course, I take a picture of the most messed up corner! But you really can't see the flaws too much and I think I'm going to play with it a bit more to get it to look a little bit straighter.

Now, I didn't DARE try to hang this puppy on the wall myself - that will be a Jake project for this weekend. However, I have no patience and wanted to see what it was going to look like, so we propped the headboard up on the mattress to see it with the bed. Don't worry, I moved it before I went to sleep last night! When it actually gets hung on the wall, it will be lower than in these pics.

Also, I love how the nailhead trim mimics the design on our duvet! Totally not something I planned or even thought about until I saw them together, but I love the way it looks!

A room shot of the bed - please don't judge our mismatched lamps and horrible old bedroom furniture. Oh, and the horribly wrinkled duvet and bedskirt...eek! We're getting there. The bedroom has been neglected since we moved in and we're finally getting around to making it pretty!

So that's my first DIY project for our house! It's definitely addictive and I want to do more! And I'm proud of myself for staying on a pretty tight budget for the whole project - under $50 for everything (including buying a heavy duty staple gun because we didn't have one)!

Cross your fingers Jake loves it when he gets home tonight!!

Cards!

2009-12-07T06:19:00.000-08:00

These are going in the mail today...

I got them from Minted.com and I LOVE them. Jake wasn't as excited - he thinks they are too girly. But everyone knows it's the girls who pick out and send the cards anyways, so I'm sure people won't be surprised by our card. I was excited to use a wedding picture and a honeymoon picture. I'm also proud of myself for getting them done early - well, early for me. I've definitely sent out my cards like 2 days before Christmas in the past.

Are you sending out cards this year? I can't believe there are 18 days until Christmas - Craziness!!

We have tile!!

2009-12-04T09:23:00.000-08:00

The new floor in our bathroom is done! We went with a black and white checked subway tile because I think it will look really good with the white beadboard J is installing next week. Plus I've just always loved how classic it looks and it's good for such a small space.

Just a reminder, here is what we were dealing with before we did any renovations to this horrible tiny bathroom: Bathroom Reno Part 1

Onto the new pics...

I LOVE it!!

Up close shot of the threshold and the beautiful tile. I'm so impressed with Jake's handiwork considering he had to cut all those black tiles to fit. Yeah, he was not a fan of cutting the tile, but he did a good job!

Another view. This was before he glazed it, so it looks a little bit murky, but it looks perfect now!

As you can tell, we also have been busy peeling the BLACK floral wallpaper from the walls. That's a whole OTHER post. But it's definitely coming together and I am so excited to see the final result of all our (Jake's) hard work!!

Happy Friday!