Craigslist

I have a love/hate relationship with Craigslist.  I get SO excited when I find that perfect piece of furniture I have been looking for.  I LOVE when I find it, I HATE when it's an hour away or the ding dong person so kindly selling their stuff won't email you back. Even though Craigslist plays with my emotions I still spend a great deal of time checking it.  Here are a couple of my latest finds.

A side table for in the living room or maybe the bonus room.  I fell in love with it because it reminded me of my grandparents house.  They had one very similar and we would always open the doors and inside were games!  I'm not quite sure how I'm going to redo it yet.  Paint, stain?!

A chest of drawers.  I know exactly what I'll be do with this little guy.  Sneak peak: it's going in the kitchen!

Hung up

I can't stand it when all my necklaces are tangled together and it takes 10 minutes just to get the one you want.  Not to mention it always happens when you're already running late.  I can't tell you how many times I'll be digging through the necklaces when from downstairs I'll hear my husband begging for me to "hurry up it's time to go".  To hopefully eliminate this problem I thought I should hang them up so they aren't laying around in a gnarled mess.  I found some "key hangers" at Bed, Bath, & Beyond for a few bucks (used a coupon, doesn't everyone have about 10 of them laying around).  My husband so sweetly hung them up for me in our closet and now I won't have to have a fight against all the other necklaces when I just want one!

Sorry for the grainy pics, I was too lazy to pull out the big camera, so iPod pics it is.

By the way, I had fun making dinner tonight.  Who wouldn't when it looks like a Fair in your kitchen???

DIY Breakfast Table

Some great friends of ours had a table sitting in their garage that they weren't using and they so kindly gave it to us!  Our new house has lots of space and not enough furniture to fill it.  We needed a table to go in the breakfast area and now we have one!  There was nothing wrong with the table I just wanted to add a little to it to help it match the house.

I just did some sanding, priming, and painting and...

My favorite part of the whole table.

Cock-A-Doodle-Doo

Once again Mrs. DeVore is looking out for me!  She found this crazy cool rooster on a thrifting outing and knew I had a couple roosters in my kitchen and gave it to me.  Here is the before:

I thought about not doing anything to it but the gold was not even and was chipping off, so I spray painted it all black and that just wasn't doing it for me so I added some silver spray paint.  I didn't spray directly on it though because I wanted it to just shine a little.  Here is the final product above the pantry door in the new house!

Check out this awesome table a friend gave me!  It was just sitting in her garage and will soon have a new home in my breakfast area.

I'm pretty much in love with the claw feet.  My goal is to have it redone by Sunday.

I'll break your face!

“That's the scary part. I didn't know if I should smile, crack up, scream or run.”

-The Wizard of Oz

This is my life right now.  I'm not complaining, I have an amazing life and I am very blessed but my life is completely and totally summed up with this picture.

We are closing on our first house on Friday.  The townhouse we are living in now looks like WWIII.  There are boxes lining the walls of the downstairs and halfway packed boxes with open lids because I'm trying to be organized as I pack.  Open cabinets and doors everywhere you turn because I don't want to forget anything.  You go to eat a meal and well, there are no dishes because I packed those already.  Paper plates it is- way to go green. Whatever.

On top of the stresses of moving and packing we had an added obstacle.  I of course couldn't marry a complete nerd but had to marry an athlete (who does have some nerd tendencies).  One would think this is great and maybe our kids will be on the little league all star team but you kind of forget about the risks involved with sports.  He had his first softball game of the season for his company league last night.  I was really wanting him to stay home with me to help me motivate myself to pack some more.  

My parting words to him were, "Whatever you do please don't get hurt, we do not have time for that this week."  

Two hours later I get a phone call, "Babe, um, I got hurt."

All I could think was wonderful, absolutely wonderful.  As it turns out the injury was not a twisted ankle or a sprained wrist. It was his face.  The face that I married.  The face that I kiss good morning and good night.  My first thought was I am pretty sure that we go to the doctor for this since it is his head.  As soon as he got home- yup he drove the 30 minute drive home.  The Oscar for the wife-of-the-year award goes to....


  In my defense though I was on the phone with him while he was driving.

Long story short is we get to the ER wait FFFFOOOORRREEEVVVEEERRRR (got there at 10:50pm and walked out at 3:00am) and come to find out the man broke 3 bones in his face. This brings a whole new meaning to the phrase, "I'm gonna break yo' face."  Luckily we both have a bit of a sense of humor and get a kick out of saying that now since he literally "broke his face".  His eye is turning all kinds of colors.  Colors we did not know even existed.  Right now it is a gorgeous deep purple and a light shade of blue.  I never thought I would be thinking the color of the bruise on my husband's eye would make a great paint color for the new house.

They referred us to an Oral Maxillary Surgeon.  We went there today and they were not able to tell us very much because the ER did not give us the X Rays.  This is especially awesome because we specifically asked for them the night before.  We are not the smart folk that think of asking for the X Rays for upcoming doctor visits, but rather to hang a picture on the fridge of the hubs broken face.  So now we get to go back on Friday morning before we close on the house so they can look at the X Rays to see if he will need surgery. 

Buckle up, Friday is going to be Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.

Landscaping

With the closing of our new house fast approaching my wheels are spinning on what to do first when we get in there.  Due to the absolutely wonderful weather we have been having I'm thinking about starting on the yard first.  Our new backyard will be needing a makeover.  It has quite a bit of potential but for now it's pretty drab.  There is a retaining wall that pretty much divides the back yard in half.  It is just made out of some long pieces of wood.  I would love to replace that with some big stone blocks, add stairs to the hill part and make the wooded upper half of the backyard into a "Secret Garden" if you will.  I would really like to make a big fire pit with some seating for lots of fun summer nights with s'mores!  Here are some of my ideas:

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These steps are a bit more extravagent than what I was thinking but they are gorgeous!

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I love the tiered levels here.  This is ultimately what I would like to do so we aren't just staring out our windows at a big gray wall.  This approach is a lot more expensive though. 

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This has nothing to do with what I can do in the backyard I just thought it was sexy very nice looking.... a girl can dream...

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I can't decide if I would want to do an actual fire "pit" like this or a fire "place" like that

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So let's face it...the fire "pit" will most likely be less expensive and then everyone can sit around it and roast their marshmallows.  The fire place is so pretty though.

We are only about 8 days until we get into the new house!  WOOHOO!