I-YI-YI-YI

What takes at least 24 hours, a whole lot of patience and about $10.00?
Need some clues?



And the end result....

One very happy husband!

I owed him some TLC after he has had to take on all the household chores, grocery shopping, dog walking, back rubbing, laundry folding and barely eating the very poorly put together meals I have "cooked" since school started. Everything in my life, this blog included, has been neglected while I have been busy starting up a new school year. Hopefully things will slow down some. Until then, here's to some homemade peach i-yi-yi-yi ice cream! MMMMM!!!

Moooving

Just when I finally begin to relax from moving into our new house it's time for me to head back to work, which is probably a good thing. Wes keeps telling me I need to go to work so I will quit spending my days window shopping for things I want for the house that we just can't get right now. Poor thing comes home, at the end of a long day, to me and my long wish list and crazy D.I.Y. ideas like these:
(He said no to one of these ideas by the way. Kudos if you can guess which one.)
While I'm completely looking forward to a new school year, the real kicker is that after spending my entire summer moving, I found out that I get to move again (insert sarcastic whoo hoo! here) into a different classroom. I spent the whole day moving every pencil, paper and poster and now I'm pooped. This seriously is some kind of sick joke. All this moving has me considering starting my own moving company, which I've already decided should be named Smooth Moves... although someone told me that is also the name of an herbal laxative. Hmmm, maybe my slogan should be, Smooth Moves: We Help With Constipation and Bulky Couches. Anyone else tired of moving or have a clever idea for a company name?

HOME pillows: etsy.com
Framed trivets: IKEA

It's a Bargain For Me!

After canceling my plans to go to the pool today for cloudy weather (of course it's hot and sunny now) I decided to meet my mom and sister for their weekly Friday shopping trip. We went a couple of places today but our last stop, Marshalls, was the best! I typically don't have the patience for Marshalls but today I found the best bargain ever.

As I mentioned earlier, we are slowly changing our dining room into an office/study. Yesterday we had a couch delivered and today I found the perfect coffee table/storage/ottoman at Marshalls. It was already on clearance from $79.00 to $59.00 and when I took it up to the register I mentioned that there was a little dirty spot on the corner and she discounted it down to $30.00!! Yep, over all that is $50.00 in savings!!

Whatcha think?


We are planning on reupholstering the chair that we have in the office with a more neutral fabric so it will match and the pillows we currently have on the couch are temporary until I can find new pillow covers either on etsy or make some myself (which means get my mom or sister to make some for me) but over all I couldn't be happier.



[tray: Target $19.99 / candle: already owned / husband: already had (he's very loving and working hard so we can make this house a home!)]

Remaining Office To Do List:
* reupholster chair (suggestions/recommendations for this?)
* new light fixture
* artwork
* window treatments/curtains
* bookcases for either side of desk
* new desk chair
* lamps

Say Cheese or Cheesy?

Have you noticed that everyone asks about your wedding in the days leading up to it but after you tie the knot no one really cares? No one asks to look at wedding photos (that you spent too much money on) and to be honest, I don't even look at my own wedding pictures that much. We have a beautiful album that our photographers (Lifesong Photography) created for us but I rarely open it up and look through it even though I absolutely love the pictures. We literally have 999 pictures from our wedding with no one even slightly interested in spending two hours of their life looking at them.

I have framed some (about 6 through out our 2300 sq. feet of house) of my favorites along with creating a shadow box of wedding memorabilia pictured here:

but what about the other pictures? How much is too much? Obviously we love all of them but we don't want our house to be a cheesy love fest. What have you done to showcase your wedding without having those pictures be the only framed photos in your house?

Maybe if I post some of my favorite unframed pictures here it will make me feel better:

Our New House!

B.B. (Before Blair), my husband, Wes, purchased a condo in an old renovated Cotton Mill. He really liked the character of the historic Cotton Mill building, the close proximity to everything downtown Raleigh has to offer, and the unique loft floor plan.

When Wes and I met he had been living in the condo for about two years. Two years after that we got married! As we started to think about our future together, we did not see ourselves continuing to live in our downtown condo much longer. While we absolutely loved everything that first attracted Wes to his place, we were ready to position ourselves in a house and a neighborhood that would be a better fit for families, give us more square footage, and a yard big enough for our two dogs, Zoe and Riley.

So in February we were just beginning the house hunting process starting with saving for a down payment. We did not anticipate being ready to move for at least six months, which means we would not seriously start house hunting until at least August when whoops... we found something we loved quicker than we expected and viola, we're now living in our new house.

It didn't always look like this though. The previous owners took on a major renovation and got it completely ready for us. The house was built in 1957 and used to look like this:

The back of the house before:

The back of the house now:

Kitchen Before:

Kitchen Now:

Dining Room Before:

Dining Room (that we are slowly converting to an office) Now:

We are trying to continue the motivation the previous owners had during their renovation and make our new house a home!