Bathroom Upgrade

In September we'll have been in our house for two years.  Two years and we've painted two rooms.  Hm.  Well, this one room a year thing was not cutting it for me so I stepped it up and did one myself.  

The downstairs guest bathroom.  You know the one that's big enough to fit a toilet, a sink, and well...that's it?

Okay, so it was the smallest room in the entire house.  But it still took me a solid weekend to finish since I picked a dark color and the second coat was a must.

I knew I wanted purple but Matt and I went back and forth about the shade for a while.  In fact, we had two swatches painted on the wall for months.  And then I went ahead and picked something different without painting a swatch.  Ha!

Since I was so rash with my decision, Matt said it was "my" project and didn't help.  But I'm proud of my little room and I adore the color.  I've even finished decorating!  One room done.  Oh, 15 or so more to go.  We're a work in progress people.

I had black and white canvases made of Indianapolis (where we are from), Chicago (my favorite city in the world), and Cleveland (where we live now).

I already had this 'R' I won in a giveaway a million moons ago and now I finally had a place to put it!  I purchased a white frame at a craft store and I was set!

And if you're not interested in seeing pictures of my bathroom, how about this face?

Dining Room Before and After

Over Labor Day weekend, my sister and her husband came over from Chicago to visit.  They hadn't been here since Natalie was born in January so it had been quite some time.  Needless to say we were all very excited to get together!

We had a wonderful weekend full of catching up, playing with Natalie, and of course...food.  I'll post a little more about that later this week.  But their main focus this weekend was helping us paint!  And when I say helping us paint, I really mean doing it all.  I rolled some...but after attempting Natalie's nursery I quickly came to realize that painting is just not one of my strengths.  I'm not ashamed to admit that I pretty much suck at it.  So when my sister offered up her services, I jumped at the chance.

After much consideration, we decided to begin with the dining room.  There is a chair rail in there so I was forced to pick two colors, a daunting task to say the least.  Especially when the husband was no help at all.  Unless you call giving no suggestions but shooting down all of your ideas helping.  Which I do not. 

So I said forget him and I did what I wanted.

Obviously.

Here are some before shots:

Well, they were kind of before shots.  Just picture this without the sheet on the table and it's pretty much how it looked before. 

So how did it turn out?

I am in love with it.  I think the colors turned out just perfectly and I could not be more pleased.  I'd eventually like to paint the tray ceiling the Mahogany color but I guess that will have to wait until next visit, right Jess?

Look Out Below!

A few days ago we had an insane ice storm.  Read: our power went out for over an hour during the middle of the night (don't worry...I didn't miss it...I was up feeding Natalie...stranded in the dark!) and everything, and I mean everything, was covered in ice. 

During the night, I even heard a tree in our backyard fall down.  The ice on the trees made them so heavy and with the wind it was just a disaster.  In the morning, this is what I found:

That is not zoomed in at all people.  This is right outside our morning room.  It could not have been any closer to hitting our house if someone had laid it there on purpose.

Then I noticed this:

 

An entire tree uprooted on the other side of our yard.  Luckily it fell backwards and not toward the house or we would've been in serious trouble.

So now I'm all worried and insistent that Matt build some sort of contraption to go over Natalie's crib which will protect her from falling trees.  Because, you know, if one is strong enough to go through our roof, it needs to be able to keep it from falling on her.

He said no.

Clearly he does not love our child the way I do.

Finally...a Thanksgiving Recap!

Goodness gracious ladies...it has been a long time! I'm so sorry I have been gone for so long. Believe me...it was not intentional. I got a little sickly my last day in Colorado and have progressively gotten worse. It's just a cold...don't worry! No swine flue here...but I am exhausted, sinusy, and just plain old ick.

But I am determined to finally do my Thanksgiving recap! But first...my final day in Colorado! I spent the whole day with bro at work and he showed me around the campus. Too much fun!






My flight home was uneventful and I got to see my hubby so it had a happy ending. We (and when I say we...I mean I) spent Thanksgiving morning baking a pecan tart and pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving at my parents' house. Matt's parents joined us and we had a lovely time. Family game night + lots of food + wine=the best day ever in my book.

I stayed way too late and only got about 2 hours of sleep before getting up for Black Friday. It was not. fun. at. all. Especially when I didn't buy one single thing for myself. But I stuck it out to watch my husband get great deals on tools and electronics. Fun, huh? Yeah. I'm a great wife. Period.

I napped and then enjoyed meeting up with Sonja from For the Love of Stilettos! So exciting! She and her husband came up from Jacksonville and it was so fun meeting them. I think our husbands bonded over sports...shocking :)

I can't wait to have a meet up somewhere warmer!! Isn't she the cutest thing ever? Forgive my grossness. Two hours sleep people...two hours.


The rest of our days in Indy were spent with family and friends and included lots of yummy food. It makes me super excited for Christmas time and more quality hours with people back home.

Since being home...I have been able to put away all of the fall decor, on the inside of the house at least. We are going to get our tree this weekend and I am beyond thrilled! It is the most wonderful time of the year you know!

Leavin' On A Jetplane...

Well ladies...I'm off!

Today is my last day of work until after Thanksgiving!! I am so ridiculously excited about this...you do not even know. Things have been a little crazy around these parts and I sure could use a break. I am leaving for Colorado tomorrow afternoon to visit my brother for a few days...then it's back to Indianapolis for some precious time with the rest of my family for the holidays.

Unfortunately, my dear husband will not be joining me on my trip out west...so keep him in your prayers seeing as he is going to have to fend for himself for 4 whole days without me. I can already see the pizza boxes on my kitchen floor. I will miss him like crazy when I'm gone (in fact I already kind of miss him and I haven't even left yet....weird?) but I'm excited to be able to spend some quality time with my brother. Living across the country...we do not see each other nearly enough.

I am going to be taking my laptop and I plan on attempting to keep up on my blogging from afar...but alas, I cannot make any promises. So I will say ta ta and wish everyone a very happy Thanksgiving!

But before I dash off, I wanted to give a shout out to a few of my bloggy friends! Since I started blogging many, many months ago I have won three giveaways. Yes, that's right. Three! And even though I won them all at different times, I got all of my packages within the last few days! How fun is that? One day, the only pieces of mail we had in our whole mailbox were from bloggers!

So what did I win??

I won this painted wooden letter in the color of my choice from A Journey Through the Waiting Game:


Isn't it lovely?? Please forgive the spot my flash made on the R. It is flawless in person. Maybe she could do two smaller letters for me to put on each side of the R and I could put our initials on our wall!?! Oh the wheels they are a turnin'...


I won this from Shaina:

It's some super delicious granola and a pedometer! Now we can be twins! Please ignore the fact that the granola is already 1/2 gone and I just got it yesterday.


And finally, very fitting, I won this from Dugout Daisy:


Just in time for New Moon...my very own Twilight coaster!


Thank you so much ladies!! You have no idea how special I felt carrying in all of those packages with my name on them! You rock my world :)

Deer!

I'm in a blogging slump...


So here are some pics from my backyard a few weeks ago! We had visitors!

This one was taken inside our house. See how close they were!?! It was a mama deer and her two babies!! So cute!

Mama deer spotted me and they turned to leave. I was able to sneak outside and catch this little gem before they ran into the woods. I love having those woods behind us! We get to see a ton of deer!

Funny story though...
One day we were lying on the couch and Matt said, "Deer, Deer!" I thought he was saying, "Dear, dear!" I was like, "What do you want???" By the time I realized there were deer in our backyard, they were gone :( And what's even funnier is that we never use the pet name "dear" so I have no idea why I thought that. We're more "honey" kind of people :) What about you??