I'm Alive!

Last time I posted I was eagerly awaiting my trip to Houston. Well, I made it down here and I am having an absolute blast!

I won't be really posting about my trip until after I return home in another two weeks because my time here is precious and I want to spend it with the people I love and not my computer. As weird as it's been not checking my email email five times a day and reading all my favorite blogs (and logging into Pinterest!), it is so important to unplug sometimes and focus on what truly matters. For me, right now that means working on all the little projects that will make our house into a home and spending time with Will, my beautiful SIL, and our pups.

In the mean time, here are a few sneak peaks of what we've been up to:


P.S. I'm blogging from my phone for the first time, so sorry for anything that looks really weird!

Fur Children

It's Wednesday! You know what that means, right? Only three more days until I get to see these faces:

My Boomer boy likes to snuggle. He is going to Freak. Out. when he sees me (if he hasn't forgotten me by now).

Miss Scarlett is much more independent. She likes to sleep on our tile in front of the couch. I guess she gets hot and this is a good way to get cool. Heck, I don't blame her. Some days I would like to do the same thing.

On another note related to the dogs, Will tackled a big problem area for us this weekend. Scarlett (and I'm sure Boomer does it too, but she's the main one) like to run up and down our fence line barking at our neighbor's dog. She gets pretty in to it and has even ripped a few chunks out of our fence. I don't think she's being vicious and I don't think she would try to fight the other dog, but she really wants to "get to know" him. Anyway, because it's been so rainy and the grass has been worn away, she would come in muddy every time we let her out. Poor girl has such short legs that her entire belly would be muddy and she required baths almost every night. We want to eventually put in a new fence and a raised flower garden, but that's not happening for at least another year. Our plan was to put a gravel path along the flower bed, but Will went ahead and filled in the area that probably won't have a flower bed but would be useless for anything else. It's right next to our patio and it's only (maybe) three feet wide.

Before

You can see that the dogs had run down all the grass and left mud. Patio is on the left.

During

I *think* he dug out what grass was left and then covered it with landscaping paper and gravel.

During

Although judging by this picture is doesn't look like he dug out the grass. Hopefully that won't be an issue, but if it is, it shouldn't be too hard to fix.

Photo bomb! After

Much better! The thin grey line you can see at the bottom of the photo is the drain thing for our gutter (which is attached to a post at the end of the porch). I think that's where he stopped the gravel. Will said it's helped tremendously with their getting dirty every day, so it was completely worth a little effort.

These are just the photos he took with his phone to send to me, so I'll take some better shots when I get down there.

And here's a photo of Miss Freska, because she deserves her own recognition, too.

She loves sleeping in windows. Will fixed her this little place in our office so she would have a place to lay during the day.

Are you working on any quick outside projects?
Do you have any fur-children? What are their names?

Summer Plans

Five days from now I will be in Houston with Hubs and our fur children! To say I'm excited is a bit of an understatement. To pass the time we've been apart I've come up with a pretty hefty to-do list for us to complete while I'm down there. I'll be able to spend a little over three weeks, so I want to get as much done as possible. Here's a mostly final list of what I want to accomplish:

Master Bathroom ·         Remove medicine cabinet- I really dislike medicine cabinets. Although this will remove pretty much all of Will's bathroom storage, we'll find a way to make it work. ·         Remove towel rack above tub- perhaps replace with a pretty glass shelf or two? ·         Patch wall ·         Prime ·         Paint- I'm thinking about a light grey color ·         Remove paint from around tub/cabinets- when the previous owners painted the bathroom teal, they left little specks of paint all around the edge of the tub. Hopefully these will come off with the assistance of a razor blade. ·         Hang one/two glass shelves ·         Add some apothecary jars for bath salts ·         Line drawers and cabinets ·         Move towels to under Will's sink- they’re currently in our bath closet. I’m thinking of moving Freska’s litter box in there and I don’t like the idea of having clean towels on the shelve above that ·         Buy long shower caddy- the shower head is up pretty high, so our little one is almost too high for me to use ·         Spray paint hardware- this will be a big project we eventually tackle for the whole house ·         Add film to window- right now it has blinds, but I like the idea of having the natural light coming in at all times but we definitely need the privacy. You can see into some of the neighbor’s windows when you’re standing in the shower (yeah, I made that mistake the first time I took a shower there. I finished up pretty quickly). Living Room ·         Picture frames in living room- I’m going to buy six big frame from Ikea for a collage wall ·         Make faux-Roman blinds for back door- there were blinds on the back door when we moved in, but Will did something and they broke. I really want to incorporate some fun and colorful fabric into the room since it’s pretty much all grey, black and white at this point, but I’m not spending the money on throw pillows right now. I’ll need about a yard of fabric for this project, but I think it will add a lot of visual interest to the room. Kitchen ·         Canvas in kitchen/living- I picked up a huge canvas at Michael’s last month. I’m not positive what I’m doing with it yet, but it will go on the blank wall behind our breakfast table. ·         Label jars in pantry ·         Back of pantry door- shelves- I haven’t 100% decided if I want to do this or not. I like the idea of putting all my spices in a shelving unit on the back of the pantry door and clearing up almost an entire cabinet. But I also like having spices handy and right by the stove. Also, at this point we don’t NEED another cabinet (but I suspect when we have kids we’ll need the extra space ·         Hang some cork tiles in cabinets Outdoors ·         Potting bench ·         Paint front door/ shutters- we’re doing them black (we have white trim) and I want to paint our house numbers on the door, as well. ·         Take out boxwoods/plant something- this may or may not happen. My dream is to have two or three hydrangea bushes growing in front of the house, but I still haven’t figured out if they’ll grow down there. Plan B is to take out the boxwoods and plant a regular flower garden. However, it may already be too hot to plant something, so this might have to wait until the spring ·         Hanging plant on deck- we’re not spending much money on landscaping this year, but it would be nice to have a plant or two on our deck. ·         Rain barrel- We have been really lucky so far and haven’t had to water our grass yet. However, if it’s anything like last summer we’ll have to within a few weeks. ·         Compost pile- this is something Will’s in charge of. I wanted to just get a few pallets and build a box that we have to turn, but Will did some research and discovered that compost piles can get extremely hot (hot enough to start a fire) and vetoed the wood idea. He is also against using a plastic bin because he worries it might melt. I haven’t really told him about everyone else who uses plastic containers for compost, so we’ll see if this actually happens. I would like to get it started now so we have some dirt for planting next spring. Dining Room ·         Rolling cart- I found an awesome cart at a thrift store last month and I can’t wait to turn it into a drink cart for our dining room. It could be a little tricky though, and needs quite a bit of TLC. Office/ Craft Room ·         Paint- light blue? I really have no idea what color I want to paint ·         Hang curtains ·         Paint desk ·         White cubby- getting this from Ikea ·         Generally put it together- this room is going to be travel themed since we’ve acquired so much stuff from our travels that doesn’t necessarily fit in with the rest of our house. For instance, we have no wood or brown colored stuff in our whole house (I’ve never really liked brown very much), but a lot of our souvenirs and some pictures we have are brown, so we’re going to embrace it for the office and bathroom that it’s connected to. Laundry Room ·         Hang ironing board rack ·         Touch up paint- my little brother helped paint this room, and as much as I love him, he’s not much of a perfectionist and I didn’t have time to fix it over spring break. ·         Art in Laundry room ·         Rug in laundry room ·         Glass bottle for vinegar (we use as laundry softener) Garage ·         Hook/baskets to wire shelves Guest rooms ·         Hang ledge shelves ·         Add some décor ·         Make them pretty Master Bedroom ·         Make headboard- already bought the foam for this ·         Finish sunburst mirror- just need Will to help me saw off some of the ends that are too long ·         Spray paint hardware- again, they’re the nasty gold ·         Replace switch plates ·         Paint chair- I picked up a chair from a thrift store a few weeks ago. It’s not a permanent solution but it will work for now and can be moved to a guest room later ·         Hang 2 pictures above night stands Other Ideas: ·         "love more" sign for above front door ·         Make laundry soap ·         Video tour of home- this and the photos are for insurance purposes ·         Photograph and document house ·         Foreign coin and cash display- for the office ·         Toilet paper roll flower

Whew! That's quite a list. I but since I'll have only spent four weeks over about six months in my house, I have to make every second count. Plus, Will will be working all day so that gives me plenty of time to work on projects and still spend time with him in the evenings. And let's face it, although Will is AWESOME about doing all the little honey-dos I ask him to do, decorating and "froufing" a house and going to Ikea are not his favorite things to do and sometimes it's a little easier if I can do them myself without having to worry about him. I'm so excited to get working on some of these projects (I've been planning for months!), but most of all I'm just excited to be with my family again. We have some fun dates planned and I'm planning on milking all of our time together for all it's worth.