Life with the Moffitts

Pantry remodel

2011-11-14T21:28:00.004-05:00

I know the title of my post makes our life sound so exciting ;) But really, we "remodeled" our pantry and love the results. Check out the before and after pics below.

See-through door.. check out that mess

Lots of stuff on the floor

New view

Can shelves and broom hanger (dog food, trash & recycling on bottom)

Shelves on the left now - the vertical storage is my favorite! And we have a basket that fits perfectly underneath for more storage (hard to see in this picture).

Empty shelves so you can see what it looks like

Driveway day, part 2

2011-09-10T19:35:00.005-04:00

Today we finished the driveway (!). It only took about two additional hours of work. We ordered 5 tons of gravel this week from Georgia Landscape Supply in Marietta - I wish I had taken a picture of the guy dumping it, so cool! Per Emily's request, we were happy with the price of our project (compared to hiring someone, or pouring a driveway), the edging stones were from Home Depot and cost around $230 ($1.99 each and we bought 106 I think + tax), and the gravel was $240 ($34/ton + $60 delivery + tax). You'll notice in the pictures below that we ended up bumping out the left side of the driveway. Matt parks over there to the left so I can squeeze by on the right and pull up in front. After we had finished the first part of the driveway, we realized the cars wouldn't fit! (did we measure? no :)) Simple fix though.

Next up is the walkway,.. and soon everything will be absolutely covered in leaves anyway.

5 tons of gravel

Finished!

Driveway day

2011-09-03T16:38:00.004-04:00

Does anyone still check this? ;) Here are before/after pictures of what we did today! Took us probably ~7 hours. We need to buy 5 more edging stones to finish off the end. We are going to be ordering a new gravel load in the next few days, 4-5 tons, and I will *try* to remember to post the next after picture. We're so excited about it. We'll also be redoing the walkway soon (in case you think it looks ugly here, because it does).

Before

After

4 months of news?

2011-05-13T19:17:00.004-04:00

What have we been up to? We sure do stay busy. I'm never very motivated to blog because I love reading blogs and everyone seems to be a better writer than me! Definitely not one of my strong points. I'll just give you some events to update you..

This spring we went to Asheville to visit Andy and Crystal! We are so sad they moved but had a blast visiting them and loved our time in Asheville (pictures below).

We held a yard sale at our house and, just like I thought, our house was a perfect spot for it. We pretty much had people nonstop from about 8:30-2pm and made a ton of money and most importantly got rid of a ton of stuff!

I "remodeled" our guest room because I didn't like how it had turned out the first time I decorated it. I love it now! Maybe one day I'll show you a picture.

Matt got a new job! He is teaching rock and roll music to [mostly] kids and loves it. He has over 30 students already!

I went to Augusta to take pictures of my sister for her prom (I was going to put a picture below but another reason I'm a bad blogger is that they are on my camera and I don't want to get them off now) while Matt went camping with all of the Moffitt men. My sister looked beautiful!!

We stopped attending Northside Church and have started going to a church much closer to home and so far we love it. We are trying out the Sunday School this week to see how we like the young adults.

Emili came to visit! But I didn't take any pictures :(

I planted my garden a while ago and it's not thriving so well this year. I am sure Matt is right and we need to cut down some of the rather large tree branches hanging over it preventing most of it from getting sun. Maybe in time for next year we will do that. We've been working around the yard a lot.. I think it's looking pretty good!

Last weekend we went to Dad's Garage (Saturday night 10:30 Theatre Sports show). We have been many times but just wanted to give it a mention to say you should go. I love living so close to so many amazing things to do. We were laughing so hard my stomach was hurting. And if you go, be sure to invite us :)

Biltmore winery

My husband, the singer

2011-02-06T10:59:00.003-05:00

Last weekend Matt and I went to Tennessee for him to sing at his grandmother's church. This is an annual tradition of ours. Just wanted to share a picture this morning.

(and ps, as amazing of a singer as Matt is, he 'failed' on the expert level of Rock Band on the Wii yesterday.. pretty sure that game is not designed for actual musicians!)

Taking back the closet

2011-01-12T19:13:00.005-05:00

Greetings from the Moffitts on the evening of snow day #3 here in Marietta. I have been working from home this whole week and Matt's school has been cancelled so far. He was supposed to start this semester on Monday so it has basically just extended Christmas break for him. I'm jealous but he is going crazy, haha. We have managed to get out of the house a little bit.. Monday night we walked to QT and both yesterday and today we walked to the local hardware store. Slippery walking though.. today was the worst by far and resulted in me landing pretty hard on my left hip/leg.. bruised and sore! Falling isn't new to me though, I'm so clumsy.

Today from what we could tell the main roads were a little better than yesterday and the side roads were worse. I wanted to share with you a new project that has just come up which involves the HVAC people - yey. (Not.) Today our furnace stopped working and it started getting colder and colder! Honestly it wasn't a huge deal because we were fortunate enough that the 3rd place we called was able to come out right away. So Mr. Coolray man came and diagnosed the problem and semi-fixed it for now. Apparently Mr. Estes that was here last year didn't really know what he was doing (who knows if anyone you hire actually does something right, even this new guy!), and we didn't have enough air being sucked into the unit and it was slowly killing itself. So for now, he cut a big hole in the return (or something) to get more air to it. The more expensive part (thankfully not toooo bad, but still hurts) will be that we want him to go ahead and create another return up here in the house. It's going to be in the front room under the couch. The silver lining is that he is going to get rid of this:

Looks like your typical hall closet, right?

Nope! This is going to be gone - yey!!!

And a few snow pics.. uploaded the wrong one of the house, but you get the point

Our street, day 1

This is a terrible picture but I thought it was funny and cute so that's why it's here

A portrait of a messy but very productive day

2011-01-08T20:52:00.004-05:00

You can also add trying the new chick-fil-a spicy chicken biscuit, giving my husband a haircut and cooking dinner to the list below..

went running - usual 3 mile loop

went to home depot to get paint samples - also notice newly stained coffee table top! one of those blues will go on the bottom

folded ~4 loads of laundry.. still have to put away..

started cleaning out our 'office' aka catch-all room, yes that is an improvement

Some items from the 'office' - yard sale here we come!

rotated the mattress and washed our sheets

and now, back to the mint chocolate chip cookies waiting for me in the refrigerator.. time to bake!

Another whirlwind Christmas

2011-01-02T21:20:00.008-05:00

You may remember last year at Christmastime we drove to Michigan, Chicago, Tennessee, Atlanta and Augusta. This year we had more exciting plans. Our original plan was to head to Germany for I think 8 full days of travel around Munich, Berlin and Nuremberg, and skiing for a day in the Alps(!). Well everything was planned out, tickets were purchased (airline and eurail) and hostels/pensiones were booked. I ended up getting cold feet a few weeks before we were supposed to leave because there was so much in the news about terrorism around Europe and especially in Germany, with 'attacks imminent in Nov/Dec.' Sounds like a fun vacation, right? Even though many people said 'it won't happen to you,' that was SO not worth the risk for us. So, tickets were changed, returned, cancelled, etc and we ended up in Maine in the good ol' USA. Yes we lost a little bit of money, but now we even have $220 vouchers (each) on Delta to use within the next year.. not sure where we are going yet.

So, Maine. We decided to take a luxurious ski trip in Maine since we had already planned on skiing in Germany and were really excited about that part. We flew up to Portland on Sunday the 12th. First we sat on the airplane for 2.5 hours before it took off.. the irony was that it was snowing in Atlanta and the plane had to be de-iced before it took off. We finally arrived in Maine around 8pm and picked up our rental car. We had a 2.5 hour drive up to the ski resort which turned into 3 hours. We were starving because we were supposed to land at 5 and grab some dinner but we landed around 8 instead. It was POURING rain when we landed and on our whole drive.. we finally found a McDonald's (never tasted so good, haha), and also stopped at a Walmart in the middle-of-nowhere-Maine around 11pm to pick up groceries for the week. We finally got to our hotel around midnight, after a 3ish hour drive in the pouring rain.

Monday we slept in a little bit and headed downstairs for our breakfast. We had booked a package in the nice hotel at the base of the slopes with breakfasts included. The pros/cons of skiing this early in the season were that only about 20% of the mountain was open (~30 out of 150 slopes) but there were practically NO people at the place so we didn't have to wait for anything. It was awesome. No one in the rental place, no lift lines, no waiting for meals, no waiting for hot tubs, etc. First day of skiing was so-so.. still raining a tiny bit so really no one was out and we got our feet wet going down a few slopes. The second day all of the rain had turned the snow to ice and it was terrible. I skied one run and hated it and went and sat in the hot tub. Tuesday night into Wednesday they got about 3 inches of snow so the skiing on Wednesday was much better. I only skied 3 days but Matt skied Thursday morning as well.

Thursday we drove back to Portland to explore the coast for a few days. We went to Portland, Bath, Reid State Park, Kennebunkport, and many lighthouses. Maine's coast is just as beautiful as you would think and we saw many rocky shores and very cute little towns. The weather was perfect for exploring around the coast, sunny with blue skies and about 25-30 degrees with no wind (which is key to staying warm). I really loved the shopping in Portland (where we bought most of our Christmas gifts since we had planned on buying them all in Germany.. oops). They were all about 'buying local' and supporting local artists which I thought was very cool and the art and everything they were selling was fantastic and not overpriced.

After we returned from Maine, I still had another week off of work (17 days total!!). I used that time to enjoy myself at home and prepare some more for Christmas. It was fantastic :) We spent Christmas day with Matt's family at his parents' cabin in Jasper. Of course everyone knows that it snowed on Christmas day; we got 5-6 inches up there! It was so beautiful. We got up to the mountain around 11am and it had already snowed enough that the roads were closed at the top of the mountain and we had to wait to be shuttled up in a truck with chains on the tires. We were a little worried that we were going to be stuck there but the day after Christmas we were able to be shuttled back to our car (with the chains) and drive down the mountain to get home (so I could go to work on Monday).

And finally, we went to Augusta last weekend for our 'Christmas' there. We had lots of fun with my family which included staying awake until midnight for New Year's ;) haha. I wasn't sure if I would be awake or not. Here are some pictures for your enjoyment:

Our hotel at Sugarloaf

Me with Sugarloaf village and mountain behind

Mountain, before we got a few more inches of snow

On the lift

Most of the way up the mountain, no one there! and you can't see the top or bottom!

My favorite pic I took. Reid State Park about 40 min north of Portland.. that's Matt in the pic

candlestick bowling :)

Portland Head Light - so pretty!

Snow in Jasper, GA - molly sniffing the reindeer

Moffitt cabin in Jasper

Brothers sledding - notice helmet cam + cookie sheet

the girls made cookies :)

molly getting into the winter spirit

Furniture pictures

2010-12-01T21:03:00.004-05:00

Ah two posts in one day. Here are the promised furniture pictures. We got the chair and bench/table from my dad and I also included pictures of our front room. Last year for Christmas, Matt and I bought the other bench you see under the windows. That was the first piece of furniture for this room, and now - 1 year later we have lots! Still more to do of course but we have come a long way. The coat rack in the corner is one of our newer pieces too.

Thanksgiving

2010-12-01T20:00:00.005-05:00

It's been over a month since my last post.. that sounds about right. I'll just post about recent happenings. Last week for Thanksgiving we kept our tradition of traveling in two different directions in the southeast.. first to Augusta and then to Tennessee. Tuesday evening I had dinner with some of my girlfriends from college - what a treat! I had a blast with them. We talked and talked until it was getting late and I headed home and Matt and I then drove to Augusta at 10pm. We got there around 12:30. I took Wednesday off of work (obviously) and we enjoyed some time with my family and going around downtown Augusta. We even got some great free furniture from my dad! (yeah.. I'll try to post a picture.. maybe tonight!). Thursday we enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner with my family and let me tell you, it was the best Thanksgiving meal I have ever had. We didn't really do any different foods than normal but everything was delicious!! And my sister made the most delicious pumpkin cheesecake who's crust was made with Lorna Doone cookes - yum!

Thursday evening we drove back to Atlanta and spent the night at our house before heading to Tennessee on Friday morning. We spent Friday and Saturday morning with Matt's family in Estill Springs and then on Saturday drove up to see his mother's family farm. It was neat to see but a little sad for Matt since some homes have now been built on it (it was sold years ago when his grandfather passed away). Saturday we drove back to Atlanta and enjoyed an evening of decorating for Christmas! I had so much fun with the tree. We always get a real tree and I just love it (even if it is from Home Depot).

Also in the midst of the holiday, our laptop broke :( Or.. we killed it. I won't embarrass us with the story though. But I am now blogging to you from our new itty bitty netbook. It's pretty cool.. HP Mini. Does everything we need it to do. We used our 8 year old desktop in the meantime (the computer I got to take to college with me) and I think we will get a new desktop in the next few months so that we can have CD / DVD functionality back. Thankfully the guy that tried to fix our computer will be able to get everything off of it because I had a lot backed up, but not any of the pictures I have taken since I got my new camera.

Everything else is pretty normal around here.. we stay very busy and enjoy every minute of it. We have lots of Christmas-y activities this month to look forward to. I cannot believe it is December! Here are some pictures for your enjoyment:

Wineries with Moffitts

More at the wineries

Love.

My sister on the tank at the park near my mom's house. I used to come here when I was little.

the deliciousness I mentioned above

my mom (right) and my aunt - sisters

sunset over the lake in estill springs, TN

old Beard family farm

nope.. it's not leaning a little ;)

i put these little birds around our tree every year.. matt's mom made them for our rehearsal dinner

Fall

2010-10-25T18:46:00.002-04:00

Can you tell that it's Fall? We can!

See, there used to be a yard here. Pay attention to the leaves.. not the sorry excuse for bushes that will hopefully grow next year ;)

Grass peeking through..

..and it's only going to get worse!

Turning 60

2010-09-18T21:10:00.004-04:00

A few pics I took at Matt's dad's 60th birthday party at their mountain cabin:

Checking in

2010-09-08T19:28:00.002-04:00

It seems like a lot has been going on lately and then when I go to write a blog post, there are too many random things to write about.

First off, according to my blog, this post marks my 100th post! Exciting? Not so much.

I'll go in chronological order with everything else.. last week I joined a gym!!! I have debated over doing this for years and finally had the guts and motivation to do it. There is an LA Fitness across the highway from work so I went over there and got a free week to try it out. Ideally I would like to go twice a week and mostly I joined for the classes. Because other than the classes, I run outside and I can also use the few machines in the small (tiny) gym at work. So for my first, free, week I went to a "Body Works Plus Abs" class which left me unable to move for about 4 days, then I went to use the elliptical one evening, and then I went to a Pilates class. I loved it all! So on Friday I joined (pretty sure they took me for a little bit of money, I'm a terrible negotiator, but I'm still happy with the deal). I went last night while Matt had band practice to another round of "Body Works Plus Abs." This time with a different instructor. I liked it and stretched a TON before and after so today I feel much better! I'm good on the exercise/cardio side so I want these classes for the 'toning.' And Matt is going to hold me accountable for going twice a week :) At least I enjoy it so that will make it easier!

This weekend for the long weekend Matt and I went to Kiawah Island with Matt's brother Andy and his wife Crystal. We had a blast, even if it did take us 7 long hours to get there! I have been going to Kiawah my whole life and it's always fun to be there with all of the fun memories. I have taken a lot of friends there over the years and I just love all of the memories. We spent many, many hours on the beach and of course went to Gilligan's for dinner one night which we always do - yum! They have the BEST hushpuppies! I also started a new book and have really loved spending time reading again. An almost 400 page book and I'm almost done (quite an accomplishment for me for the past few years). I'm looking forward to finding more books that I enjoy so I'll keep reading more.

Monday night when we got home we had to move all of the furniture out of our living room because... new carpet came on Tuesday!! It's so beautiful! At least it seems so beautiful after having ugly, smelly carpet for 1.5 years. It's SO soft too compared to what we had. I will post before and after pictures soon. We finally got everything moved back in today and I just think it looks great. I've been waiting for this 1.5 years.

Can you believe there are only a few months left in this year? I can't! Halloween decorations are already in stores! Hope everyone is enjoying the cooler weather - get outside and take a walk, it feels great!!

The joys of homeownership

2010-08-18T16:44:00.006-04:00

The American Dream: homeownership. I guess owning a home represents what so many people work hard their whole lives for. (Well it used to anyway.. now they will give a mortgage to anyone). But I'm not here to get on a soapbox, just to share with you some of our latest home tidbits. There is one medium-sized project that I have been looking forward to us getting taken care of in our house. When we bought the house, we knew that some framing around our back french doors was rotten and that it would need to be replaced. We also knew our carpet was worn and dirty and slightly ripped and would need to be replaced. (I did clean it twice with a steam cleaner machine, so not too dirty, but definitely want new carpet). Luckily, cost-wise, we only have carpet in one room. And as much as everyone wants hardwoods and I love our hardwoods, I also love having carpet in this one room. It feels very home-y to me and I know once we have kids I will want carpet there because that is where we spend the majority of our time and kids need carpet to fall on. Plus if we spend a fortune matching hardwood floors, I would have to pay a few hundred dollars more to buy an area rug to throw on top of them anyway.

So, first project: getting the framing fixed around the french doors. We called probably 10 people / places over the span of 2 months before we finally found someone to do the job. People wouldn't return our phone calls, estimates were too high, etc. Finally, finally we got a guy to do it who was recommended to us by one of my coworkers. He did a really great job on the whole project and then in the end left all of the scrap wood pile laying our backyard and couldn't take it away! What are we supposed to do with it?? Well I would also like to tell you the cost on these projects. People aren't always willing to share the cost of owning a home with each other, but just so you understand that it's so much more than just the mortgage (as I'm sure most of you know anyway). This particular project was $1419. About what I thought it would be.. I was guessing around $1200. So $1419 plus a pile of wood - joy.

Project # 2: now that the framing is complete, we can get new carpet! There was no point in putting it in before because they would just have to rip some of it up to get to the damaged part of the floor. I had a figure in my head for this one, one room of carpet = $800, right? Sadly, no. Well I guess we could get cheap-o carpet and pay $800 or less. We found one we really like, middle of the road carpet that we'll be putting in. I will be sure to post before and after pictures once we get it installed in the next few weeks. We chose to go with the carpet we liked but with a shorter fiber and standard pad since this is only our ~5 year house and not our 'forever' house. Cost of project: ~$1350. Yikes.

Project # 3: reupholster the steal of a couch we got on craigslist. Couch = $80. I thought.. can't cost more than $400 to reupholster, right? Man I am just a bad estimator. Apparently it's at least ~$500 for the labor and then you have to buy fabric and it's been suggested that we need new cushions for $150. This is not an urgent project but we'll probably be taking it to another recommended place in a few weeks and cross our fingers that his estimate will be a little lower. Plus before we bought the couch I thought that we would buy two matching chairs and they would be $200-$400 each so maybe the couch cost is not so far off anyway.

Though the framing project was a 'need', and I know the other two projects are 'wants', it's still expensive. But I still love our house and all of the projects we have taken on to make it our home. If you want to talk about 'needs' though, how about the thousands of dollars we had to spend water proofing our basement, replacing our air conditioning unit, having plumbers snake our drain, having electricians fix our wiring, etc etc. Thankfully we are blessed and fortunate enough to be able to afford all the projects that the house brings with it. But that doesn't mean I don't stress over it :) I think we'll stop after these 3 projects and take a little break before getting into anymore.

Hope you all are having a great weekend full of fun house projects or no house projects!

Morning Glory Muffins

2010-08-16T21:16:00.002-04:00

My friend Meg got me hooked on a few baking / cooking blogs (thanks Meg!) and my sister suggested one or two also so I'm not sure who this blog comes from. I typically just 'star' the recipes I like in my google reader and search them later when I want to make something. This recipe was put up the other day and I just had to make it. While I can eat the same thing for breakfast morning after morning for years (going on 2 years or so now on my current breakfast - a mixture of two cereals from Aldi), Matt prefers to mix it up and likes a different breakfast weekly. That presents a challenge every week when I'm going to the grocery store and say "what do you want for breakfast this week?" Because he can never decide :) haha. So lately I've been in the habit of baking something if I find a fun recipe. It serves my need to bake and his need for new breakfast items without fattening us up too much baking sweets.

This recipe sounded so weird I just had to try it. It has apples, carrots, zucchini, applesauce, coconut, pecans, pineapple and normal baking ingredients (including wheat flour!). Weird, right?? I made them last night and they are tasty! I think the best thing about these muffins is that even though they have all of those fruits & veggies in them, you can't even taste them at all. They just taste like normal cinnamon wheat muffins or something of the sort. So they seem to be super healthy without tasting weird! I didn't take any pictures but mine pretty much look just like the ones on the blog. If anyone bakes them I would love to know what you think of them. (So far 3 out of 3 people that have tried mine loved them) :)

http://www.mybakingaddiction.com/morning-glory-muffins/

Minneapolis and house work

2010-08-13T21:28:00.004-04:00

Last weekend Matt and I went to Minneapolis to visit my very best friend, Emili. We have been friends for 21 years!! wow! We had a fantastic time and I put up a few of my favorite pics below. We ate amazing food, kayaked for a few hours on the lakes, and rode bikes all over the city. The funniest thing about the bikes was when this guy told me it was dangerous to be riding on the roads. I guess he didn't know that it's the law for bikes to ride on the roads and that Minneapolis is the #1 biking city in the US.

Also pictured is a shot of the guys fixing our door (rotten wood around the frame and floor - SO glad it's done!) and one of our new couch. I'll explain below.

Ok about that couch - in Minneapolis I found the coolest couch for our front room (which is still only half furnished). We have the same store in Atlanta, BUT the couch is $1800. So it's a no-go. But it did inspire the couch that we scored for $80 off of craigslist. You can see the two below. The top picture is the one we wanted and the bottom picture is the one we got. We are definitely getting it reupholstered, I'm already in contact with two different stores about it. We want to do a similar fabric to the green one that we love. We really like this couch, it's so fun and vintage :) I think that the picture doesn't really do it justice. I will post an after one as soon as it's reupholstered.. not sure how long that will take.

We also replaced our kitchen faucet the week (the old one got water not only in the sink but on you as well) and did a few other small things around the house. As much as the list is never-ending, I really love improving our house little by little! I also love all of the cheap finds we have found for our front room. It's really coming together and I love how it looks so far.

Happy weekend!

2nd Anniversary

2010-08-02T17:40:00.003-04:00

Happy 2nd Anniversary to the love of my life, my husband who doesn't read my blog and who I can always be silly with.

This past weekend

2010-07-28T19:09:00.007-04:00

This past weekend Matt and I went to Augusta to visit my family. The pictures below are from our bike ride on the Augusta canal. Followed by some pictures from Arabelle's 1st birthday party.

My sister with our bikes

You are probably wondering why I put this picture in here. Do you see the top next to the wine bottle there? Do you see the hole in it? Yeah, I tried to open the screw top with a cork screw :-/

Before the cake

During the cake

And after the cake - too bad I didn't get a picture when she picked up the whole plate and put it on her face!

ps - i still am terrible at editing things on here to make them look nice. and apparently me moving these pictures around made them not save the full size image on here. i'm not going to redo it so sorry you have to look at the small ones!

Pictures Lately

2010-07-19T22:06:00.007-04:00

I have been trying to practice a lot with my new camera. I pretty much suck at it so far, but here and there I get a picture that I like. I definitely need to learn and practice more though! Here are a few that I like (in no particular order because I'm not going to spend a lot of time moving them around):

Matt and Arabelle in Boone

Glenn Bolick at Heritage Day with wood-fired pottery

Wood-fired pottery

Flowers that Matt picked for me

Christmas tree from an old Christmas tree farm (so cool!)

Old school house and Christmas tree farms!

On the walk up the mountain. Moffitt men and their dogs.

Thomas and Molly playing

Me playing with Steph's camera. Glad to be in a picture finally!

Matt & Andy grilling

Molly :)

First zucchini from the garden

Zucchini bread! yum!

Birthday dinner at Fellini's

Birthday at the zoo

Friday night at the cabin

2010-06-20T21:52:00.002-04:00

Matt and I had a pretty fun and typical weekend. Friday night we had dinner with some friends and talked for 3 hours which I love. Saturday got up and ran 4 miles. That's the farthest I have run since my marathon. I have been running without my knee brace lately (just 3 miles) and I've been fine. My knee felt fine during the 4 mile run but ever since has been tender so not sure what I'm going to do for the Peachtree.. if I'll wear my knee brace or not. Going to keep training to find out. The 4 miles didn't go so well with the heat and heat index around here so hopefully it'll cool off just a little bit so I can get in some good runs.

Today we had our normal routine of church followed by lunch (homemade pizza - yum!) and a trip to Aldi & Kroger. Wish I had taken a picture of the pizza, I forgot. Tonight was the youth Choir Tour Homecoming show at Northside. Matt's dad takes the kids on a choir tour every year and this year they went to New England and made their way back for the show tonight. It was great as always! Back to the grind tomorrow, here are a few pictures with my new camera ;)

Choir tour

I like this picture :)

I like this picture too but it's a little blurrier than I thought it was. Matt's brother John with Arabelle

Our little girl snuggled up with her dad

Fresh green beans

2010-06-16T18:29:00.003-04:00

I'd love comments on how you fix fresh green beans. I have found that if you boil them / fix them on the stove that it takes FOREVER to get them how I would like them. I also like them with a little olive oil and salt and pepper thrown in the oven on broil for a few min. But I think there are better ways than both of those, so please help :) We have all these yummy fresh green beans in the garden and I need some ideas!

Some pictures, as promised

2010-06-14T19:51:00.005-04:00

Well I've been testing out the new camera. I don't claim to be a pro and never will be, but I think I'll be able to take a few decent shots once I learn how to use the camera better. In the mean time, here are a few random ones I have taken while practicing some stuff, and they are not photoshopped since I don't have photoshop :)

New camera is on its way

2010-06-09T17:55:00.003-04:00

Surprise - my blog still exists! I haven't had much motivation to post lately and one reason is that I'm so excited about my new camera that I have wanted to wait and take a few shots of the garden and stuff to show.

No other big news, normal things - stuff at the house breaking and paying to get it fixed. Loving living in Marietta. And gardening - most everything is growing and we have even eaten some of it! More to come.

Hopefully once my new camera arrives (1-2 weeks) I'll be a little more motivated ;)

Until then (or sooner)...

So far this weekend

2010-05-01T20:38:00.004-04:00

- celebrated Crystal's birthday

- celebrated Chrissy's birthday

- bought a birthday present for an upcoming birthday (bff!)

- went to May-retta Daze & farmer's market on the square

- changed locks on front door and side door (finally both doors close properly and we have keys for both doors - and the keys match!)

- pulled some weeds

- gave Molly a bath

- did all the dishes

- did all the laundry

- watched Weeds & Gilmore Girls

- checked on, watered, and weeded my growing garden

... time to read People magazine and drink some wine :)

2010-04-26T20:24:00.003-04:00

I feel like I don't have a lot to say, but perhaps some of you still have me in your google reader (I am obsessed with google reader) so maybe you'll read this ;-) Speaking of google reader, I have added baking blogs to mine (thanks to Meg!) and have loved saving the recipes I one day hope to try out. I have only tried one so far and oh.my.gosh it was unbelievable. My first time making homemade ice cream with my ice cream maker I've had for 2 years! I made a lemon ginger snap ice cream. Had to cook everything the night before, let it chill overnight and then put in the ice cream maker to churn the next day. Best ice cream I've ever had for sure.

I have been trying to do a few things around the yard but it seems that every day I have available for that it ends up raining. Well we finally beat the rain last week and planted our garden. We have the perfect spot in our backyard - a rectangle of cinder blocks that used to be a one car garage (who knows when) and is now our garden. I planted more vegetables than I even like to eat but I'm curious to see what will thrive and what won't, especially considering I have a black thumb. If all goes well, those of you I see often might find yourself with some free vegetables. And one day when I feel like getting my camera cord out, I will post pictures to make up for the lack of pictures.

Speaking of pictures, one of my goals for this year is to get a fancy camera which I plan on getting for my birthday and then I will of course be motivate to post more pictures and save them in a better way.. I hope.

Matt is almost done with his spring semester at Kennesaw so in his break between spring and summer he is planning on getting some yardwork done. Here's to gutters that will be buried and maybe some new bushes! And some more tar on the roof to hopefully fix the little leak that happened in the ceiling when it rained yesterday. Luckily nothing too major, but it does mean our roof sucks. I'm told that a new roof is about $5k-$15k and that Matt could do it for under $5k but we all know I don't want to spend that kind of money! Sheesh. It's a 'new' roof when they remodeled the house in 2007, but they put a 3rd layer of shingles on the roof and you are only supposed to put 2 layers and then strip it off to put the new layer after that. Who knows what is going on under this layer!

New carpet in the living room will be coming in maybe a month or so (especially now that we have a black spot and a red spot where Molly has eaten pens.. needless to say we have a baby gate now for her).

Until next time..

Life lately..

2010-04-07T21:44:00.002-04:00

Has been filled with activities for Andy and Crystal's wedding this weekend!! All the pieces are coming together and we are so excited. The Bachelor/Bachelorette parties are tomorrow evening followed by rehearsal / rehearsal dinner Friday and of course Wedding and Moffitt after-party on Saturday ;-) Going to be a fun-filled weekend. John, Steph and Arabelle got into town today so it's finally feeling like everyone is coming in and this is happening. Hopefully I'll post some pictures after the fact.

Matt and I have been trying to motivate ourselves to complete our yard projects during this summer. Garden, driveway, burying gutters, etc, we'll see what gets done and I'll try to post some pictures along the way.

Work has been busy lately with learning lots of new things, conference coming up, and 9 auctions going on tomorrow. I know that doesn't make any sense to you but just believe me when I say it's a lot.

Matt and I (well, me especially) have loved playing handbells with our church this spring and look forward to it next year also. We played in three services on Easter and it's so fun to be playing music again! (If you didn't know, I was a big band nerd in high school, played baritone along with a few other instruments and loved every minute of it.)

We are really enjoying the small group we have become a part of but have had to miss the past two weeks so hopefully we'll be back at it next week. We also don't get to attend Trinity as often as we would like (the church we like) so hopefully that will improve eventually.

Enough for tonight, need to get to bed soon. Just didn't want you to forget I had a blog, haha ;-)

Blogging drought

2010-02-23T20:18:00.004-05:00

Sorry I haven't blogged in a little while.. if you even care ;) I just looked back at my last post and saw that I wrote that we were going to watch The Hangover -- HILARIOUS! Wow we loved it. Anyway you probably know how beautiful this past weekend was. We took full advantage of 65 and sunny. Saturday morning we walked a mile to the French restaurant and ate outside in the beautiful weather for brunch - yum!! Then I ran some errands and came home and washed both cars (Matt's Jeep hadn't been washed in 3+ years.. since I've known him) and then we installed Molly's electric fence. So we have those little flags all around our back yard. Now begins the training.. you can't just slap the collar on the dog and let them loose, you have to train them to understand what is going on and why. She seems like she is kind of understanding it. Today I kicked the ball around outside and sometimes when it went outside the fence she wouldn't go and would wait for me to get it. Other times she would run right after it (at other spots in the fence). While training, you keep plastic pieces on the collar so it doesn't shock her but it does beep. Then as training progresses you change out the plastic for the metal.

We also bought two rugs for our empty front room in the past few weeks. I ended up not liking the first one but I bought it on craigslist so I can't return it so now I'm trying to sell it. The other one just arrived today and I love it!! The room is slowly coming together and I'm realizing I can do it for cheaper than I thought (though still costly.. especially when you buy something expensive you don't want). I'll post pictures soon I hope.

This week is full of preparing for the wedding shower for Andy and Crystal on Saturday. I'm so excited! We are so close to wedding time now :) Matt and I haven't been to a wedding in quite a while (actually since the day my Civic was totaled). Weddings are always so fun!

Molly needs to go outside so I can't write much more.. I did want to say though that we went to our first small group tonight! Apparently it was cancelled and we didn't know that, but the hosts graciously invited us in and we chatted for about 45 min. We really like them a lot and the guy apparently owns the Christian music studio in Atlanta or something (Matt has always dreamed of going there if that tells you anything) so it's quite the match for us for small group! We can't wait until next week! Although we are excited to be home tonight to catch Lost ;-)

Sickness and Snow

2010-02-12T16:36:00.002-05:00

It's snowing outside.. a lot! We definitely have at least an inch which is a lot for Atlanta! It's still coming down pretty hard like it has been for a few hours. And on one of my days off (today) when I actually get a chance to watch Oprah because I'm at home, they don't play Oprah and play snow news!! Geez. "We're all going to die! Go buy milk and bread! Don't leave the house!" Oh well. I'll get a cozy evening inside with my hubby watching The Hangover. Fine by me!

So I have ended up with about a 3.5 day weekend. I woke up yesterday morning with a really weird headache. It wasn't sensitive to light and sound like a normal headache, but instead hurt whenever I moved, talked, moved my eyes, etc. Like blood throbbing in my head. I went to work (really had to do a few things) and worked from 7am until 10:30am when I went home to try to rest because my head wasn't getting any better. I laid in bed until about noon and never fell asleep. I was under my electric blanket and having lots of chills. Checked my temp and sure enough - 101.3. After a little research I thought that maybe I had the beginnings of the flu (no body aches yet). So Matt took me to the clinic at Walgreens and I got a quick flu test. Negative. (Thank goodness.) The rest of evening I just took advil and rested and tried to eat some. I slept about 10 hours last night and actually feel pretty good today. I guess it was a 24 hour bug. I woke up with a little bit of the headache but nothing like yesterday. Hooray for being well again! I think that must've been why I was so tired all week, I guess my body was fighting off the virus. Today is my flex day, which is good for recovering, and I ran a few errands and checked a few things off of my to-do list. Now just need to get the house cleaned some more.

Happy snow day!

Updates and money saving tips

2010-02-08T21:08:00.008-05:00

This weekend we went to Callaway Gardens with my dear friend Chrissy and her husband Chad. Way #1 to save money: go to Callaway when it's free this month! Also good because I really didn't think it was cool enough to have spent $18/person to go there. But we did have a nice time in the cold and seeing the butterfly garden and eating loaded baked potato pizza (yum!!).

Me and Chrissy and Matt as butterflies

Way #2 to save money: homemade popcorn! (Thanks Chrissy!) Matt loves popcorn (and I hate the smell of it) and it's expensive. Chrissy and Chad have always popped their own popcorn and talked us into trying it. Very tasty, healthy and cheap!! And it doesn't smell bad :)

Way #3 to save money: give your husband a haircut. This is one of my favorite things to do, not only because it's fun but because I'm good at it which I can't believe. (He also has curly hair which hides any mistakes, how convenient.)

Here is Matt post-haircut, you can see a before picture in the Callaway Gardens shots

A few other things.. movie recommendations: Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. If you like foreign films, which I do. They are in English, and perhaps not foreign films, but they are set in Europe and star Julie Delphi who is a French actress. I like her movies!!

We got Molly a dog bed now that she is almost one year old! Last night we left her out of her crate for the first time (while at home) and she did awesome and slept on her doggy bed.

And on to some cuteness, below is a picture of me with my friend Alice's twin boys at one month old. How precious!! And while I was over there semi-helping her, I realized that that could be my life one day since twins run in my family. They are not super common, but my grandmother was a twin and there is another set of twins somewhere on my mom's side. Scary thought ;-)

Speaking of babies, congrats to Scott & Laura Beth on the birth of their baby boy John today!

Poor Molly..

2010-02-05T20:44:00.003-05:00

She is subject to my torture. Have you seen the Dentastix commercial with the "doggy dentures"? I just had to share..

Here

New favorite place

2010-02-01T18:25:00.004-05:00

So my family was in town this weekend and I thought it was about time that we tried out this place I have heard a lot about. First (last summer) Matt's aunt comes over and tells us we live about a mile from the best French place in town. Then I had another friend come over and tell me the same thing. We finally tried it this weekend, and we DO live a mile from the best French place in town! It's called Douceour de France and oh my gosh I can't say enough about it. It's in a little old house (read took a while for a table of five to be seated) but it's so cute and quaint. On Saturdays they serve breakfast and lunch from 8am to 3:30 (brunch!). I had a crepe with nutella and bananas and some baguette. They are also a full bakery and sell all kinds of cakes, pastries, baguettes, soups, etc. Go there - and invite us ;-)

(Did I mention how much I love where we live??)

In other news, I just ordered an invisible electric dog fence for Molly. I bought it online for only $88 and it had rave reviews and sounds super easy to use. I will let you know what I think about it after we get it in place and start using it. Matt was against it at first but at $88 vs hundreds or thousands of dollars for a real fence, he finally gave in ;-) All you have to do is get it set up and bury it and train the dog. One of the comments even said they just used their edger to make the "trench" to put the wire in. We don't plan on leaving Molly outside much, just to basically let her go out to the bathroom by herself (and to keep her from using the bathroom in our neighbor's yard.. no one lives there now but someone's bound to buy that house sooner or later).

And now it's time to do some dishes, laundry, and watching The Bachelor (don't judge) :)

Couponing 101

2010-01-27T19:56:00.003-05:00

For those of you who don't care to read about couponing, feel free to move on and wait for my next post. For those of you that do, I know I said I was quitting couponing, and I did, and I am less stressed out which is good. Matt and I have also analyzed the couponing and found that we don't really buy a lot of things that you could use coupons on. Sure there are the toiletries and cleaning supplies. But food-wise, I don't really buy much food in a box other than pasta and maybe some canned veggies, so I didn't use a lot of the deals that were out there.

But I do know from reading blogs, that couponing can be ridiculously successful. Things like buying $200 worth of groceries for $3. Now that is something I could get in on. I was so not good at it though. I would maybe save 30% and then have a lot of things I didn't even want. Now I have a chance to learn how to do it better. Here. I will be attending the class that is in Marietta and would love some company!! It is only $10. I actually do not plan on couponing again after this class though. With me working and running a household, I have determined that it is too much for me. However, one day, Lord willing, I will be staying at home with kids and then I can coupon with my new found skills.

Who wants to come with me?? :)

Empty room

2010-01-24T20:45:00.002-05:00

The first room when you walk into our house is still quite empty (I am pretty sure I have blogged about this before, and the bench we bought for Christmas). Now I have my eye on this chair:

Two of them, to be exact. They are not that expensive (comparatively) so I'm wondering if I'll be able to talk Matt (and myself) into buying them. They are on overstock.com where we also bought the bench. I have to give a little love to overstock.com here. We got free shipping on the bench. And right now their website says $2.95 shipping for your whole order (meaning my order of 2 pieces of furniture!). Sure it's probably built into the price somehow, but doesn't "free" always make you feel better anyway?

This weekend has been fairly low-key and kind of a downer due to the rain. We didn't really do anything Friday night. Saturday I had a Wesley board meeting thing from 9-3. Last night we went out to dinner at chick-fil-a (a treat for us!) and then went to Dad's Garage at 10:30. Dad's Garage is an improv comedy club in Midtown that I have been to probably about 5 times. I haven't been in a few years and have been trying to convince Matt to go. He was never up for it. Then, we went to the famous comedy place in Chicago called Second City, and I told him that I didn't think it was any better than Dad's Garage. So he agreed to go last night and it was HILARIOUS! I laughed so hard, and was still laughing when I was trying to go to sleep last night. I was so tired, laying in bed, and kept thinking about the show and laughing out loud. I highly recommend it, and we'd be happy to go with you ;-) My favorite thing they do is TheatreSports which they do Saturdays at 10:30pm. It's similar to Whose Line Is It Anyway? if you ever have watched that show.

Today Matt didn't have to sing at Northside so we opted to try the 11:30 service at Trinity (we usually go to the 9:30). We saw so many people we knew! How funny. It was awesome, and very nice to take one car to church with your husband and to actually get to take communion together instead of Matt having to jet out to get to Northside after the sermon.

It's time for me to go perform "surgery" on Molly's toys. (I sew them up over and over until they can't take it anymore.) I've been putting it off long enough. Have a great week!

Craigslist! what's your bid?

2010-01-17T22:47:00.006-05:00

I just posted a ton of things on craigslist and thought I would give anyone who reads my blog first dibs if you see anything you want ;-) And, um, if you gave us any of these for our wedding.. I'm sorry!!

This is the modem you need if you sign up with evil Comcast. I'm selling for $40 with power source & cables.

Platters from a studio in Athens, GA. $65 together or $50 for the oval platter and $25 for the rectangle. Rectangle retails for $54 and oval retails for $95.

Sea Shell platter, selling for $10

Picture speaks for itself. Retails for $100, I'm selling for $50.

Check this link, selling for $100. http://www.crutchfield.com/S-kYiq5Ydhj2i/p_500CDA9807/Alpine-CDA-9807.html

Gorham crystal water goblets, 11oz. I have 3 of them, selling for $20 for all.

Mossimo maroon leather shoes from Target. Super cute, never worn. Size 5 1/2. Selling for $5.

Spongebob and Finding Nemo pillows, selling for $7 together or $4 each.

We also have a few more things I haven't posted yet including a VCR and a Playstation 2. Let me know if you want either of those!

Movies

2010-01-16T08:06:00.004-05:00

I wonder if anyone who reads my blog shares the same movie tastes as me? I have a rather strange taste in movies. I absolutely love indie films and weird films that other people don't find as catchy. I love most chick flicks and the little kid movies (Up, Finding Nemo, Lizzie McGuire Movie, High School Musical, etc). I also love science fiction movies (I loved Avatar, despite everyone hating the story line and loving the graphics, I just loved the movie as a whole). I thought I would recommend a few and maybe if you see them, you can tell me what you think ;-)

Recently I saw these two and absolutely loved them:

The Answer Man - Jeff Daniels and Lauren Graham. Jeff Daniels is a famous, reclusive author and Lauren Graham is a new chiropractor and single mother. I shouldn't even try to write some sort of review or recap because I'm terrible at that. I'll just say I loved this movie.

Waitress - Keri Russell. This movie was way better than I was expecting. I thought it would be a corny chick flick but there was so much more to it.

Nine Months - Hugh Grant and Julianne Moore. Call me crazy, I know this movie is old, but I have recently rediscovered it and it is absolutely hysterical. I can't believe how much this movie gets me laughing. Cheesy, yes, but hilarious.

I'll write more later on movies I love, maybe someone will get something out of them ;-)

(ps - I have no clue why my posts give me different size fonts when I always select the same size. I could go fix it in the html but I don't care enough)

Church shopping

2010-01-10T11:41:00.002-05:00

I've been feeling a little more at ease lately, as if I haven't super over-committed myself. I'm sure that will come back, although I hope not. This at ease, extra time, feeling has contributed to my three blog posts within one week ;-) We'll see if the trend continues.

I wanted to post about our church shopping experience. Matt and I attend a large church in Buckhead that has a lot of good things going for it. We love the people, love the young adult group, and Matt gets paid to sing their in their awesome choir. However, there are a lot of things we don't really like which I don't want to mention here and offend anyone. So for the past year or so, we have been on and off attending two churches. We began our church shopping by visiting another church in Buckhead which we had heard good things about. We fell in love with the pastor and didn't try any other churches out (until today). The big thing is that I want to hear an incredible sermon that moves me and I desperately want to find a small group to plug into. I feel like we are not doing enough spiritually, I want more.

So we found the awesome sermon in that church but still didn't plug into a small group. Today we tried a new church in the Marietta square. It had a lot of things going for it (including the potential for small groups around where we live) but Matt didn't like the music and I didn't care for the sermon. Going to that church convinced me of how much I like the other one we had been attending. So, we will go back to that other one with the amazing sermons and get plugged into a small group. There are three that are semi-close to where we live (they divide them by parts of the city) so we will be trying out one soon I hope!!

Today will be a good day, consisting of seeing lots of friends and four babies :) Just need to stay warm!

Happy Saturday!

2010-01-09T13:38:00.004-05:00

Hope everyone is enjoying their Saturdays. They say it is (or was this morning) in the teens but I feel like it's warmer today than it has been in a while with all the sunshine and no wind. The wind is what kills me.

Matt is having his first band practice in the basement right now! Success! He is practicing with some new guy to play in that guy's gig at Smith's in a few weeks.. they sound pretty good down there. I'm baking some sugar cookies.. had a craving. Already got my grocery shopping done for the week and halfway done sealing the tile and grout in our shower. So far a good day :)

Also wanted to say a bit of thanks and congrats for my coworker Alice who had her twin boys this week! They were born on January 7th and mom and babies are doing great - Andrew and Lucian. I can't wait to meet them!! We should be headed to the hospital tomorrow to see them. Their pictures look like a spitting image of mom and dad, beautiful baby boys.

Tonight is my company party. We don't have a Christmas party, but every year in the beginning of January we have an Anniversary party. Gas South just turned 4 years old! It should be a lot of fun, good food and good conversation with coworkers and spouses.

I think I mentioned a while ago that Matt and I signed up for Netflix. We have been loving it. Saw a movie last week I think worth mentioning. It's called The Answer Man with Lauren Graham and Jeff Daniels. I thought it was fantastic!! You should check it out.

Also, in the biggest news ever (haha), we dropped Comcast finally!!!! We have Clear internet and so far I love it. We pay $15 less per month for the same speed, except we are actually getting two times the speed we are supposed to get, so that's awesome. So long, evil Comcast.

Back to enjoying my Saturday...

Oops.. it's been over a month..

2010-01-04T18:25:00.010-05:00

Time flies when you're not posting ;-) The holidays have come and gone and I'll give you a little summary of our Christmas holidays. I was off of work from Friday the 18th and returned to work on Wednesday the 30th, yes it was awesome. On the 18th Matt and I drove to Ann Arbor, Michigan in order to be there for my brother's graduation. We passed the 11 hour drive by listening to Harry Potter 7 on audio CD! Charlie graduated with his masters in Industrial Engineering with no less than an A in any class - way to go, Charlie!! My whole family went up for the event. Ann Arbor was a very cool city. Here are some pictures:

Charlie and I in front of one of his class buildings

Mom and sister

Me and dad

Charlie, Matt and I

Ok I know you can't really tell from this picture, but Jeff Daniels was the commencement speaker which was really cool

Graduated!

So after the graduation on Sunday evening, Matt and I drove to Chicago (it's only 4 hours from Ann Arbor so why not!). We enjoyed two full days in the city seeing the sites and also visiting with my friend Jeff who is pretty much the only person I keep up with from high school. Jeff and I have known each other since kindergarten (I think) so it's really cool to keep up with him and he showed us around Chicago.

Matt and I in Chicago! (in front of Navy Pier)

Matt and Jeff in front of the yummy pizza place we ate at

Somewhere in Chicago

Snow!

Me in front of the "Cloud Gate" bean sculpture (notice the cute boots I had to buy because I didn't bring any waterproof shoes for the snow). Also, you can see a little bit of the snow in the top of the picture, the top of the sculpture was covered in snow and looked really neat.

Then on Wednesday Matt and I made the 11 hour drive back to Atlanta to spend the evening with some of his family for Christmas. Thursday we were up early again for the drive to Augusta! We spent Thursday and Friday in Augusta for Christmas with my family. We had our usual tradition of going over to our neighbor's house for Christmas Eve and then my aunt's house for Christmas lunch. And we got to spend a lot of time on Christmas with Emili too :)

Playing Beatles Rock Band at the neighbor's house

Christmas at my Mom's house

Cousin picture L to R - Charlie (brother), Zack (cousin), Erin (Zack's wife), Erin (sister), Kristen (cousin), me, Matt

Emili and me.. and Molly. Molly's first Christmas! Look how happy she is ;-)

Saturday morning we woke up and drove to Estill Springs, TN - 5 hour drive (one of the very exits we had passed on Wednesday)! We spent Saturday and Sunday in Estill Springs for Christmas with Matt's immediate and extended family. Sunday we drove back to Atlanta, home sweet home, after about 36 hours on the road (all worth it).

Christmas in TN - all of those gifts were opened in about 6 minutes, it was hilarious!

I spent Monday and Tuesday off of work at home recovering from our trip. I had a chance to clean, relax, and take down the Christmas decorations (always sad). And this past weekend, with having Friday off for New Year's, Matt and I worked on the house a little. He has been working on the basement and has done a phenomenal job preparing the basement for his music stuff and band practice. I did a little tiling in the bathroom to finally finish off the tile work that is in there. I also plan on sealing the tile in our shower this week so for now we are showering in our guest bathroom.

This is what Matt and I gave each other for Christmas - our first piece of furniture for our empty front room. I will also be getting a pillow or two for the top.

Tiles before being finished (and before painting and medicine cabinet too)

My handy tile work after (the top pieces)

One side of the bathroom

Basement "before" picture.. even before we took out the walls and floor

Basement "after" - the man-cave Matt has been working on for months and months

I'm sure there are many things I am leaving out since it has been so long. Let's see.. Biggest Loser starts tomorrow! I finally started running again! I have gone twice in the past week and that was the first time in 2 months since the marathon. My knees are not happy about it but I will press on. And yes I went running on Sunday when it was about 30 degrees out. Andy and Crystal are getting married in about 3 months!! We are very excited for them and can't wait to partake in all the wedding fun :) I have watched Julie and Julia about 4 times in the last week - MUST SEE. Seriously, I love it. We saw Avatar this weekend which is also a must-see. We opted to see it in 2D and I'm glad we did even though I'm sure 3D would be awesome as well. And here's to hoping I post again soon. Happy 2010!

Vampires, babies and ice cream

2009-11-22T19:43:00.003-05:00

This has been a good weekend. Pretty lazy, and good. Friday night I was so lazy and didn't do anything on my to-do list. I fell asleep on the couch at 9:45. Nice. Woke up Saturday at 9am (in bed.. had climbed in bed at 12:30am) andddddd proceeded to sit on the couch again :) Lazy-d around most of Saturday except I did wash a mountain of dishes. Then Chrissy and I saw the new Twilight movie, New Moon, on Saturday evening. Oh my gosh it was good!! Much better than the first. And the funniest thing was listening to the tween girls freaking out over seeing the guys without their shirts on and stuff. Then Chrissy came over to our house and we had some bbq for dinner and hung out. So good to see her! (Sorry we missed you in the afternoon Lindsey!!).

Last night I successfully fell asleep on the couch again probably around 10:30 and then climbed in bed about an hour later. This morning Matt and I helped out the young adults at church and we served and sold some coffee. We are doing this Land of 1000 Hills coffee at church, Fair Trade coffee, that benefits victims of genocide in Rwanda. It's pretty cool, you can read about it here.

This afternoon we drove around Atlanta visiting two new babies! John Tate Holvey and Will Vasell. John Tate lives in Douglasville with his lovely parents Jaime and Joe. Jaime and I worked together at Bluelinx and formed a close relationship over going shopping every day during "lunch." It was mostly just looking - not buying, but we definitely went to Target and Cost Plus World Market a lot! Matt and I drove back from Douglasville and headed over to Buckhead where Will lives with his parents Peter and Angel who are our friends from church. We met them probably a year ago and have really enjoyed getting to know them over the past year! John Tate is 6 weeks old and somewhere around 11.5 pounds and Will is 3 weeks old and somewhere around 10 pounds. Both very beautiful boys!! I had not been around a boy baby in soo long. We were very happy to see all the babies and parents today. No pictures though :(

And on the way home we stopped at the [interesting] Food Depot to get some mint chocolate chip ice cream which I just ate for "dinner." Yum :) (We had Shane's for lunch and have been overly stuffed and I had a craving for ice cream so I can call that dinner, right?)

Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!

One day I'll be a better blogger.. maybe

2009-11-17T19:03:00.004-05:00

I think I am not such a good blogger! But if you are still reading I guess that's a good thing. Let's see.. latest house projects: I finally painted our front room which took me probably 15 hours. It looks so much better! Still no furniture in it but I think that Matt and I are buying a rug for in there for our Christmas presents to each other. I guess that will mean still no furniture but we'll have a rug! We also now have electricity in our basement!! One step closer to Matt being able to have band practice down there. Now he just needs a PA system. Props to Matt for wiring the whole basement and all we had to do was call the electrician to hook it up to the house power (we didn't want to risk the danger of doing it ourselves). Sad news though is that the electrician found some work that needs to be done due to the awful way the remodelers wired our house (surprise, surprise).

I have been busy busy with finishing up our Christmas shopping. I would say we are about 90% finished! This is a first for me. Now I just need motivation to finish the last 10%. And speaking of Christmas, I have already started to decorate our house. I know it's early but I bought all these decorations last year and am very excited about them. No lights or tree yet, just some fun things around the house. Tonight I will be watching Merry Madagascar at 8pm. I am very excited about it :) Oh man I just looked it up and it is only 30 minutes. I thought it might be an hour, oh well.

I want to mention these new workout videos I bought. I bought some new videos when I knew I wouldn't want to run for a while after my marathon. I got two videos by Jillian from the biggest loser. Oh My Gosh! If you are looking for a good workout, this is it! I got 30day Shred and something about trouble spots. The 30day Shred is really good and only 20 minute sections. The trouble spot one is 50 minutes and I totally stopped it about 30 minutes in. You can tell if you do it all, and often, you will look incredible. I just use them a few times a week though. So there's a little advertisement from me.

I think that's it for tonight.. I need to do some cleaning, having people over on Thursday night :) Hope you all are enjoying this Thanksgiving time! I am very thankful for my wonderful husband, puppy and house!!!

Finally some pictures!

2009-11-17T18:29:00.005-05:00

Ready to run! The thing on my left shoe kept our time and the thing on my right was to eat :)

Emili and I before the race

Our names, so people can cheer us on!

Burt #4.. or 5? Our pumpkin this year

Crystal and I after we carved our pumpkins

Halloween - Matt was the Operation guy and I was Julia Child

Crystal, Andy & Thomas on Halloween

Molly got to borrow the angel wings :)

Finally spray painted those lamps. Nowhere to put them though! And I bought that lamp shade but it is way too small.. gotta return it.

The end to couponing?

2009-11-04T19:19:00.002-05:00

My streak of erratic posting will continue for tonight. I do have some pictures to post but don't feel like hooking my camera up right now. So just some thoughts for tonight.

Firstly, I think I am going to stop couponing. Oddly enough, I seem to be spending more money now than I did before I began. I do realize that I am getting more for my money but I am just getting frustrated with it. I used to spend $60 a week on our groceries which included food and items like paper towels, toothpaste, etc. After couponing, I was spending probably $70 on everything plus buying a newspaper for $2 every Sunday plus I was doing the Grocery Game which was costing me $15 every 8 weeks. I know that's not a lot but it adds up. As does the time spent on the couponing. A few weeks ago I decided to ditch the Grocery Game in favor of Southern Savers. Still did not have a lot of luck and the time and frustration was wearing me down. I used to cook meals for us at least 3 times a week and have definitely not been doing that! So for now, I will quit couponing and go back to what I was doing before of buying things that are on sale. However, I will still probably check southern savers for any printout coupons I can still take advantage of (turns out a lot of the ones I used can be printed offline anyway). Maybe I was doing something wrong, I have no idea, but I'm going to give a trial run to my old ways and see if it makes life better.

Second, we joined Netflix! So far we have watched one movie and watched it in several 20 minute increments. (Adventureland - definitely recommend it! Coincidentally it was filmed at Kennywood which is where I rode my first roller coaster - The Jack Rabbit.) We put the movie in the mail yesterday morning and had another DVD back today. I have no idea how they do that. Maybe the mailman sends them a message saying it's on the way?? haha. Anyway I have disc 1 of season 3 of Curb Your Enthusiasm waiting for me - yey!

Third, babies. My friends' lives continue to be consumed by babies. Jonathan Knox Tate Holvey was born about 4 weeks ago, 10+ pounds! John William "Will" Vasell was born on Sunday at 9+ pounds. Also on Sunday I attended a baby shower for my friend Alice who is expecting twin boys in February (if she goes full term). So excited for everyone!!

Fourth, I am halfway done with my Christmas shopping! It's a good feeling. And I think I may have just found some good deals at one of my favorite stores so I hope that will help me cross a few more people off my list :) What do you want from me for Christmas??

Fifth, speaking of Christmas, I am dying to put up all of the items I bought after Christmas last year! Is it too soon?? Maybe as soon as we eat the rest of our Halloween candy then it will be time.

I will try to put up pictures soon. I have a few from the marathon and some from Halloween - including one of Molly wearing angel wings!

Weekend in DC

2009-10-28T20:17:00.002-04:00

You may have already read my marathon update, now here is an update of everything else. Emili and I flew to DC on Friday night and stayed with Emili's friend from college, Renee. I had met Renee before and she is a sweetheart. Friday we stayed up later than my normal bedtime and probably went to bed around 1am.

Saturday morning we slept in (10am!) and then headed to lunch and met up with another one of Emili's friends from Augusta. After lunch we headed over to the race expo to pick up our bib number and see everything they had there. They had a ton of running clothes, running food, etc, and some really cool "Marine Corp Marathon" clothing items that were way too expensive. I didn't buy anything but it was neat to see everything. After the expo we relaxed at Renee's apartment until we went to meet up with some of my family for dinner. I have an aunt, uncle and 3 cousins that live in Reston, VA so we met up with my aunt, uncle and one cousin for dinner that night in the city - so fun! I hadn't seen them since my wedding so it was so great to see them and I'm sad I forgot to take a picture with them :(

Saturday night we got our things ready for the morning and went to bed pretty early. For a Sunday recap, see previous post. One thing I forgot to mention was the Marines that were everywhere for the race. They were all of the volunteers: water, cleanup, hand out medals, etc. It was so cool to see them all serving that way. Also, Emili and I wore our names on our shirts and people would shout out our names and cheer us on which was really cool! Sunday after the race Renee made us a delicious lasagna dinner with some veggies. So in case she reads this, thank you thank you!! She was an amazing hostess.

I knew I would forget some things in my marathon post, also forgot to mention race day weather. It was chilly in the morning but in the low 60s throughout the race and so beautiful, blue skies! We even got a little sun burned.

Monday morning we woke up and headed out for a massage!! It was fantastic :) Followed by lunch at Cosi (yum!) and a tiny bit of shopping. Then it was back to Renee's apartment to gather our things and head to the airport. Emili and I had the same flight back to Atlanta and then she caught another flight to Minneapolis after having dinner with Matt and I. It was a perfect weekend!

Now I can get back to a routine of not running, haha. Time to keep up our house and get things done around here. This weekend is of course Halloween. I think I am going to be Julia Child. I'll have to post some pictures next week :) What are you going to be for Halloween?

Marathon recap

2009-10-28T20:00:00.003-04:00

Although it felt like it would never come, our marathon has now come and gone. After 18 weeks of training I was ready for it to be over with and very excited at the same time. [Note 18 weeks of training = 15 weeks ending with a 20 mile run and then running 2 or 3 times in the next 3 weeks after that before the race.. oops] One concern I had the whole time was that my knee(s) wouldn't hold up through 26.2 miles (yes it's 26.2.. I had someone ask me if it was 7?? haha). Want to know how my knees did? Here is a recap for you from what I remember correctly:

5:30am - wake up, it's race day!

6:20am - out the door to walk to the metro

6:45am - walk out of the metro right in front of the Pentagon and walk 1 mile to starting area

7:20am - drop off bag and wait in line for porta-potties

8:00am - cannons go off and the race has started!

8:20am - Emili and I finally cross the start line

Miles 1-8: running (on the roads) through beautiful forests / trees all changing colors. Also, scenery is dotted by men and women *ahem* relieving themselves on the side of the road into the forests. I guess they didn't want to wait in the lines. Emili and I are running 4 minutes, walking 1 minute, over and over. We also started by Arlington Cemetery.

Miles 8-10: Running past Georgetown University and through Georgetown - it was so cute! Still going.. been through a few water stops and eaten a few things.

Mile 11: We found Renee, our awesome cheerleader!! Took a picture with her and her sign (see facebook profile pic). Running by Potomac and Jefferson memorial.

Miles 12-15: Running through Hains Point. Everything is flat from here on out (although the hills before weren't bad at all). We made 13.1 miles in under 3 hours (I think we might finish in under 6!)

Miles 15 - 20: Running around the Mall. We pass Washington Monument, White House, the Capital, etc. We have to "beat the bridge" and get to mile 20 by 1:15pm in order to be allowed to finish the race. It's probably about 12:30 so we're fine. We find Renee's roommate Meryl who walks with us for about a mile and then we find Renee again right before the bridge.

Mile 20: We "beat the bridge"! Now, we have been going slower.. Emili has been power walking while I jog slowly.. on and off. by mile 20, my knees are done.

Miles 20-26.2: Walking. Slowly. The whole time. (along with everyone around us, haha).

Mile 26: Almost there!

Mile 26.1999: Ok time to pretend to jog again because you are 10 feet from the finish line

Mile 26.2: Done!! Done!! we did it!! Oh and our time was 6:29. So much for finishing in under 6 hours, blame that on my knees which were in so much pain.

It was an amazing experience and I'm so glad I did it. I will never do it again thanks to my knees but it was awesome. A fantastic way to 'celebrate' me and Emili's 20 years of friendship. I may do a half marathon sometime though.. :) And Emili ran after having been 'diagnosed' with bronchitis last week so way to go Emili!

You can check out some pictures here. No laughing - you didn't run a marathon. It was great how many photographers they had out there!

Marathon update again

2009-10-13T21:59:00.002-04:00

How has my training been going? Well, after my 20 miles, I didn't run for 9 days until today! oops. I took a few days off for my legs to heal and then "blame it on the rain" didn't run for a few more. I ran 4 miles today which went ok but I took Molly with me and that always makes the run more difficult.

In other news, I wanted to let you know that you can track me while I run my marathon! Aren't you excited? I tracked Emili when she did her first marathon (and maybe her second, I can't remember) and it was really cool to know how far she had gone throughout the day. First you go here and sign up. You can receive email notifications or text messages. It will take Emili and I about 6 hours to run the marathon so if it starts at 8am (I don't even know.. probably 8) then we will finish around 2pm.

In non-marathon related news, anyone watching Biggest Loser? Did you see how they did not vote Tracey off tonight? What the heck! This is one of my least favorite seasons so far.. hopefully it will get better.

A few pictures

2009-10-10T21:25:00.004-04:00

Having trouble getting these in a decent order so here they are anyway:

These are the lamps and mirror I am going to spray paint for our house. And Molly checking things out. (I'll post After pictures whenever I actually do this)

Our new light fixture in our front room! We took down the ceiling fan that didn't work and barely gave off any light and put this one up. I love it!

View from the top of the Strand theatre in Marietta Square, we went exploring tonight

Little M sleeping in the sunlight

A few of my coworkers and I after our Ekiden relay race in Piedmont Park

Finally we have guest bedding!

Randomness

2009-10-05T21:26:00.007-04:00

It's been a while so I guess this might get lengthy! Stick with it if you wish :) So you know how they say that dogs and children are a lot alike? I've thought Molly has been pretty easy so far until one incident last week. We woke up in the middle of the night, around 3am, to Molly crying so Matt went to check out the situation since she had been having an upset stomach. The next thing I know Matt is getting me up to come help him because Molly has made a "mess" .. all over the crate.. on our wall.. on the carpet.. keep in mind she was in the crate the whole time. So Matt gave her a bath at 3am while I tied a shirt around my nose so I could breath and went to work. I don't think I'll mind it as much when it's my child.. that was a lot of work for a dog but it had to be done so oh well.

I don't really know how to transition out of that story. How about, speaking of cleaning the sheets Molly sleeps on, I finally got bedding for our guest room!! And thanks to Ikea, it is not the one I originally wanted. After 6 months, Ikea is still out of that bedding. So I picked a different one finally and made the bed all pretty. I will post some pictures soon. Speaking of new things..

I got my new car! Thanks to my sister for letting us drive her Jetta around for the last month, we now have two cars again. On Saturday I got a 2009 silver Honda Fit and it is so cute :) I feel like it is very 'me.' Pictures to come. Speaking of me..

I ran 20 miles yesterday. Yes, 20. That was the big week for marathon training and it ramps down quickly now until the marathon which is less than 3 weeks away!! I tried a run/walk method and ended up finishing the 20 miles in 4 hours 13 minutes which was fast for me and I enjoyed every minute of it! I am in pain now (and yesterday afterwards) but that will go away.. I'll just take a few days off to recuperate. Speaking of not running for a few days..

This week John, Stephanie, Arabelle and Parker are coming into town! We haven't met our niece Arabelle yet so we are looking forward to that (she is almost 3 months) and Molly hasn't met her dog cousin Parker so that should be fun to watch! We keep wanting to socialize her with lots of dogs but haven't made it to the dog park yet. Speaking of traveling..

I was in Augusta this weekend to get my car and my mom has sold her house! She and my sister will be moving into my grandmother's old house where she grew up. It's super cute but small so that will make Christmas fun and cozy when we're all there. Speaking of seasonal times of the year..

The HoneyCrisp apples are in the stores!! You MUST try them. I know they are way more expensive than other apples. I paid $2.99/lb today for 5 huge apples which cost me I think $9.39. And it will be worth every cent. I am so looking forward to eating one tomorrow. They are seasonal in the fall down here and not in every store but I located them in the Publix by me today. Go buy them - trust me!! Speaking of me liking to eat apples straight from the cold refrigerator..

It's 67 in our house! Quite chilly for me but we'll try to keep the heat off as long as possible. Not that I would turn the heat up much more than that, but just to take off the edge.

I guess this wasn't as long as I thought, just turned out more of a long train of thought, with no pictures :)

Marathon update

2009-09-20T22:48:00.004-04:00

I realized I haven't updated on my progress on the marathon in a while. I believe we are five weeks away from marathon day. My running has been going well and I have been doing probably about 75% of the runs that I had originally planned. My current distances are something like 5 miles on Tuesdays and 9 on Wednesday. Then I am supposed to run 5 on Thursday but can never seem to motivate myself to run on Thursdays so that is usually the 25% that I skip. The farthest I have gone so far is 16 miles, although I was supposed to go 18 this past Saturday. I ran the 16 with Emili (who I am running the actual marathon with) when she was in town over Labor Day weekend. It was so great having her there running it with me to see how it will be on the actual day and I think we both motivated each other. We also run at the same [slow] speed which is perfect. Our time for the 16 was 3 hours 40 minutes.

I didn't run the 18 miles on Saturday due to all this rain, but I did run 9 miles in the rain last Wednesday so I'd know what it's like to run in the rain, as it's always a possibility that it will rain on marathon day. I am taking Friday off of work in hopes that it won't rain and I can get in a long run since I have another activity on Saturday keeping me from running Saturday.

Actually since the 16, the farthest I've run is 9.5 so hopefully I'll be ready for my 20 mile run in 2 weeks :-/ Once you get going though it's pretty easy to just keep going. As long as my knee holds out!! I am still glad I'm doing this and still enjoying it but I'm ready for it to be over with so I can have my time back. I want to work on my house!

In other small news, I saw Julie and Julia last night and it was an absolute must-see!! I laughed so hard all the way through. I'll update on other things soon I hope..

Have a great week!

"Be the change you wish to see in the world"

2009-09-08T21:35:00.007-04:00

This past weekend was very fun and quite a flashback, as well as very touching. Friday night the Virginia Tech band, 300+ Hokies, travelled to Augusta, GA to play their show at my high school as a tribute to my friend Ryan who was killed in the Virginia Tech massacre. Our stadium was overflowing with love for Ryan and with too many people to fit. Before the game, the Hokies, my high school band, and our opponent's band all took the field to play the Star Spangled Banner. Then during halftime my high school band (which my sister is part of) played part of their show followed by the Virginia Tech band's performance, including the "Hokie Pokey"!

I also got to see a few old faces from high school as well as my high school band director. It felt really surreal to have everyone in that space together, especially to celebrate Ryan. "Be the change you wish to see in the world" encompasses everything Ryan stood for. I have some pictures down below of the evening.

On Saturday, Matt and I went to test drive a Honda Fit in replacement of my poor car. We have word from insurance that it is totaled but are still waiting on the final call. And waiting to find out how much they are going to give us for it. We are planning on getting a used Honda Fit. I *love* them!

Yesterday I got to spend the day with my bff Emili and we ran 16 miles!! It was really fun to have her here since we have been training separately for the marathon. I can't believe the marathon is almost here.. less than 2 months. Emili and I have been friends for 20 years so it's a pretty cool thing to do for our 20th anniversary ;-) And sadly we didn't take any pictures together this weekend, what's up with that?

Here are some pictures from the football game:

VT & Lakeside on the field for the Star Spangled Banner

My sister Erin in the band! Can you see her smiling at the camera in the middle?Lakeside & VT together, Lakeside is the dark corner and VT is all the whiteMy mom with a VT freshman band member. Everyone was so nice!

Lakeside band halftime showVT band halftime show. They're huge!

VT doing the Hokie Pokey. I wish I had taken a video. See the huge sousaphone section?

Thankful

2009-08-29T23:11:00.005-04:00

As you can see we have had an eventful weekend. Last night we headed to Athens for Matt's friend's wedding rehearsal & rehearsal dinner (and wedding today of course). Matt was the soloist for the wedding. We had a great time last night and stayed in the Hampton Inn which was actually a really great stay. Until this morning when we tried to go across the street to the Walgreens. We went to turn left across two lanes of traffic. First lane stopped for us to get by so Matt went.. car coming very fast in the second lane. We both saw it, I screamed very loudly. The most terrifying thing ever. We are both fine and walked away without a scratch. I can't believe it. I am so thankful for our safe car that saved my life and probably Matt's as well (I was in the passenger seat). You can see the 3 airbags that deployed and saved my life. Windshield cracked, passenger windows shattered. So thankful. Thankful for my husband. That was about 11:30 this morning. We spent the next two hours getting the car towed and being picked up by Matt's friend Steven who drove us around town as needed until Matt's parents arrived around 2 to take us to the church so Matt could sing in the wedding at 3. So we are down to one car for the week.. debating on getting a rental. The car will take a few weeks to repair (IF it's not totaled) but in the mean time my sister is letting us borrow her car when we go to Augusta next weekend and bring it back with us. Thank you Erin!!!

Us at the wedding

Also thanks to Matt's parents we made it back to Atlanta in time to see a live show with Alton Brown from Good Eats. It was so awesome! A little too long for us though.. after 3 hours we finally left b/c we are so exhausted. Looks like it's time for bed now.. please learn from our mistake not to turn like that when someone lets you go!! (of course we have heard that too but who pays attention to the warnings?)

How to clean your house in 30 minutes a day

2009-08-27T20:33:00.003-04:00

I feel like there is an article with this title in every women's magazine I read. And rightfully so since we are always searching for the magic answer to keeping the house clean. I have come up with a new way for our household. I'm on week 1 and so far so good.. but we'll see how it's going in a few weeks :) So I split my house into 5 chores.

Empty trashcans
Laundry
Family room & dust the house
Kitchen
Bathrooms and floors

Sunday through Thursday I tackle 1 chore each night, then I get to stop. So anyway that's my plan and I'll let you know how it goes. It doesn't keep the house 100% clean all the time but it keeps it clean enough and enough so that I could clean up the rest pretty quickly if someone was coming over.

In other news, there were terrible storms around here last night. The power in our guest room and office was knocked out. It didn't trip any circuits in our breaker so we are kind of at a loss for what to do. We tried some stuff with the breaker today to no avail so we are going to call an electrician in the next few days. Hopefully it will be an easy fix. The list of things we have fixed gets longer and longer...

Tomorrow morning I am supposed to run 15 miles. I have new socks and new shoes that I am really excited about. However, it's supposed to rain tomorrow morning, all morning :-/ And my left knee has a nice case of runner's knee. I'm reading up on it online as to what to do but ultimately I'm sure the best thing is to take a break from running, which isn't an option. Either way I have tomorrow off of work :)

Happy almost Friday!

Nothing too exciting to report

2009-08-22T18:44:00.002-04:00

Hmm.. Saturday evening at 6:45. Looks like I'm not doing a whole lot! This week was pretty uneventful, but I did get my haircut which I always love. Every 4 months I get it chopped off and then let it grow until I can't stand it anymore and then chop it off again. I prefer it short like this but it's far too expensive to keep it this way. Also went and saw Bobby Lee Rodgers again.. I think it's the 11th or 12th time we have gone to see him but the last time was probably a year ago. He was amazing as always but since he didn't go on until around 11 and it was Thursday night, we had to leave before he was done. I got in bed at 1am and up again at 5:30am for work on Friday.

Last night we took it pretty easy since Saturday mornings are my long runs. 13 miles this morning! That's half the marathon!! I think I actually went 12.9 and it took me 2 hours 52 minutes. I am an incredibly slow runner (that's 13.3 min/mile) but today felt great and I really enjoyed the run. This week I added in Chastain Park in my route which I loved. Matt rides his bike along with me to keep me hydrated.. he'll go buy gatorade when we run out of water.

Then we came home and took short naps.. short because my dad came into town and hung out with us for a few hours. We just ran some errands to get some things I needed and then he took us to Gabriel's for dinner! SO yummy. Especially the mint brownie. So now I am stuffed. Oh and speaking of dessert I made peanut butter cookies last night.. definitely had 5 of those today. It's a recipe that I have made my whole life with my mom and they are yummy.

We don't really have any plans for tonight.. personally I want to fall asleep right now. Might go see a movie but then I'd probably fall asleep. Ahh exciting married life, haha. But I am perfectly content staying home most nights, I'm very much a homebody. So here's to another night of relaxing.

Blogging shortage

2009-08-16T17:50:00.006-04:00

I think I need to be more diligent in my blogging. At least I haven't stopped but since I'm not writing as often my entries become way too long! But if you are still reading I guess that is a good sign :) Let's see.. past two weeks..

Matt has been out of school between semesters (he starts back tomorrow). He has been working on the basement and also on his applications for Kennesaw and Georgia State to start on his bachelor's degree in January. He'll be graduating with his associates degree in December!

Two Fridays ago we had our annual Gas South Family Fun Day. This year it was held at Piedmont Park (was last year too) and basically my work day consisted of Matt and I hanging out with my coworkers and their family's from 10-2. Greatest work day ever.

We had a good number of friends over here last Saturday night for a potluck dinner. I don't have any pictures but I think Scott was taking some so maybe he'll post them over here. It was great seeing everyone and lively having two babies around the house! Mary, Tammie and the Mackowski's stayed later and we played a game called Acquire which was really cool if you are in the need of a new board game ;-)

And last night was the coolest thing of all. We saw Paul McCartney live in concert in Piedmont Park!!! Definitely the best concert I have ever been to. We weren't supposed to take cameras in, so we didn't, but of course a lot of people there had them. So these aren't my pictures but below are some of what we saw. He played for 2.5 hours which included 3 encores. (I really hate encores by the way.. just keep playing the music!) The song I enjoyed the most was Live or Let Die.

We were closer than this :)

And a video of Live or Let Die. I realize it's completely poor quality but you get kind of an idea of how exciting it was. (I didn't take this video). They also had fireworks above / behind the [HUGE] stage for this song that you can kind of see.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcjVnl1Kxq4 <-- I don't know how to embed the video in my blog!

Not quite as exciting as Paul McCartney, but today Matt and I went to Patagonia to get me a new winter coat! I only really like one of my coats and none of them are very warm. I realize you don't need too warm of a jacket here in the south, but if you are me then you do. They are having a huge sale so this was 50% off!! Thanks to Crystal for telling me about the sale!

This should keep me nice and toasty all winter :)

Our First Anniversary!

2009-08-03T20:11:00.010-04:00

This weekend Matt and I have been celebrating our first anniversary. We both agree it was a perfect first year to start out our marriage. Sunday, August 2nd was our anniversary and we started it off by sleeping in! We woke up ready to go exercise, ate breakfast.. and then went back to bed, haha. We woke back up around 10:30 and got ready for the day. After dropping Molly off over at Matt's parents house, we began our day with Taco Bell for lunch. Sounds funny I know but we both love Taco Bell and never eat it so we had that on our anniversary.

After Taco Bell we headed downtown to go to the aquarium. I used to go to the aquarium all the time when it opened and it was fantastic, I would always go when it wasn't crowded. One time that it used to not be crowded was Sunday afternoons. Apparently that isn't the case anymore. It was ridiculously crowded. And we ended up spending more money than we could have. I found out too late that if you buy a combo ticket (aquarium + Titanic exhibit) online it is $31.50. If you buy the ticket at the aquarium it is $34. If you buy the aquarium ticket outside and the Titanic ticket inside, it is $35 (which is what we did). What the heck? The Titanic exhibit was great but the rest of the aquarium was really too crowded to enjoy.

Us at the aquarium
This is awful, this is one of those obligatory photos they make you take to try to get you to buy them. Now you can view them online. This is us on the Titanic! We try to skip these but sometimes they just make you.

After the aquarium we walked across the street and checked into our hotel, Hilton Garden Inn Downtown Atlanta. As I opened the door to our room I was overwhelmed with the smell of cigarette smoke - ew!! I called downstairs and we got a new room right away, thank goodness. It was a really nice room and I'm glad we stayed down there. We relaxed for a while and then got ready for our dinner out at Lola. Lola is a restaurant I found online in Buckhead that specializes in bellinis and tapas. I loved it! I really can't wait to go back! We also had a couple on their first date sitting directly next to us so it was kind of funny to listen (I couldn't help it). "What's your favorite food? Seen any good movies lately? How many siblings do you have?" hehe. One thing I really liked about the dinner was that it lasted 2 hours and usually we are in and out way too quickly. After dinner we ate the top of our wedding cake! It was actually delicious!!

Ready for dinner!

Getting ready to eat the cakeYear old cake!Yum!!
What the cake looked like last year

This morning we slept in and then went and did some shopping. We found some great deals at Atlantic Station including a super cute pair of shoes for $2.99 :) After shopping we headed over to Matt's parents house to pick up Molly. Apparently she spent the whole time looking for us and whimpered a lot. Poor girl, we were so excited to see her. Now it's back to semi-reality. I have one more day off then it's back to work on Wednesday.

$2.99 shoes :)

Oh and for our anniversary Matt got me two gifts, one was a wall clock, pictured below. Apparently that is the 'new' traditional first year anniversary gift. He also had one of my grandfather's paintings framed but it is still at the framers so I can't take a picture yet.

We also went to Amicalola Falls on Saturday:

Molly also made the trip up and down the 400+ stairs

And last but not least, one year ago..

Exciting times!

2009-07-20T20:25:00.003-04:00

Hmm it's been a few days since I've posted. First bit of news - new air conditioner!! This new one works so much better. It was just installed today so we officially had 12 days with no AC in July in Georgia. I didn't mind it so much but Matt did. It will be nice to be able to fix my hair again though, haha.

This past week was quite exciting! This bit of news is bigger than the air conditioner and should have come first - Matt's brother John and his wife Stephanie had their baby girl last Thursday night! Mary Arabelle Moffitt, to be called Arabelle. Here are two of my favorite pics:

She definitely has Stephanie's eyes!

Going home today!

Like a lot of birth stories this one had twists and turns and we are very thankful for a healthy mom and baby and can't wait to meet our new niece!

Last Thursday we also saw Harry Potter 6. In my opinion it was definitely the best movie made so far. Even though they of course left stuff out and changed stuff around a little bit. One thing I really like was that some of the parts I pictured while reading the book were shown exactly the way I had pictured them. Pretty awesome. Now I am wanting to re-read that book and re-read book 7 as well since I don't think I have read 7 more than once yet.

Friday night I headed up to Matt's parent's cabin with Crystal and spent the evening/night with Matt's mom, Andy, Crystal, and the dogs. Matt had a gig in Alabama and came up on Saturday. Saturday was filled with relaxation as the cabin always is. Also, Matt's parents are adding onto their cabin right now and it was decided that Andy and Crystal will be getting married up there, possibly even on the deck! It's so beautiful and such a perfect idea for the two of them.

Sunday we woke up bright and early (6:15!) to get back to Atlanta so I could run my 9 miles. This is the farthest I have ever run and it wasn't easy. The running part wasn't too bad at all actually but my knees and my hips didn't take it so well beginning around mile 7. I also didn't have enough water for the run. So this weekend when I have to run 10 I am hoping my body will take it and also Matt is going to bike ride along and bring extra water for me.

I know this is getting long.. keep reading if you want to. Today I bought Matt's anniversary present and gave it to him. Our anniversary isn't until August 2nd but I got him something I wanted him to be able to use on our beach trip (looks like we'll be going.. I hope!). I got him a suit from Brooks Brothers (major clearance of course). He did not have a summer suit and would have to wear his wool one whenever we did stuff in the summer. I had to give it to him early so he can get it tailored by Brooks Brothers (most of it is included when you buy) except I didn't know that when you buy a 'real' suit that you can only get the size pants that come with the suit. So the pants are 3 inches bigger in the waist than he needed and I'm hoping that the re-sizing of those will come with the included alterations. Now all he needs are some super fancy shirts.. couldn't afford those with my gift :p

I suppose that's enough for now. I'm going to go enjoy the AC curled up under a blanket with a book.

Quick Update

2009-07-12T21:42:00.002-04:00

Just a quick update since I realized I haven't posted in a few days. Past few days of events:

Thursday - air conditioner goes out

Friday - AC man says the whole unit is shot so we have to buy a new one. That evening we go out for my birthday dinner to Gabriel's which is a restaurant near the Marietta square owned by Paula Deen's cousin. It was so delicious!! I can't wait to go back and take people with me :)

Saturday - wake up and get birthday gift from Matt. He got me a heart rate monitor / watch / stop watch thing for my running. I ran 5.5 miles that morning (was supposed to run 5.. took a wrong turn and ran through 2 construction sites) and used my new toy, it was so cool! Came home and finished cleaning the house in preparation for our house warming party. The party was a success except for the heat.. man was it hot. Thanks to everyone who came out and was a good sport about the heat!! Food was delicious and friends were great, it was a fun party that I forgot to take pictures of :( It was a great birthday too :)

Sunday - Took a nap, went to Target and got a new purse and a new lunch box, went wedding dress shopping with Crystal (the store was awesome!), then had dinner at church with Matt and Andy and Crystal so I could then watch Matt play in the M.A.P. band at church (service project / week-long thing going on at our church right now).

Coming up this week - buy a new AC unit and have it installed!!

4th of July fun

2009-07-05T17:57:00.003-04:00

This long weekend began with having Andy and Crystal over for dinner on Thursday night. Matt smoked some pork and I made some baked potatoes to put the pork on. Along with some creamed corn and biscuits it was delicious!! We slept in a little on Friday but when I woke up Matt told me that sometime after I'd gone to bed our kitchen sink fell! We have one of those undermounted sinks under the granite and apparently it wasn't installed currectly (surprise, surprise). Nothing really surprises me in this house anymore. So anyway we realized we couldn't fix it ourselves and have a guy coming Monday afternoon to hopefully fix it. It was previously just glued to the granite with no extra hooks to hold it on. So this guy is supposed to somehow drill into the granite and get the sink re-attached.

My mom and sister got here Friday afternoon and we surprised my mom with cooking her a nice birthday dinner (her birthday is actually today though). Matt smoked some baby back ribs and I made some steamed carrots and homemade french fries. Erin and I made a yellow cake with dark chocolate frosting all from scratch. Everything was delicious!

Saturday morning we woke up super early to get to the Peachtree road race. This was my 4th year running it and it never lets me down. Matt, Erin and I ran in time group 9 and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be to start that late. Erin and I ran together except at the end I let her run ahead of me. My time was just under 71 minutes which has been about where I've run it every time. After the race we all headed to Matt's aunt and uncle's house for some delicious food. We had a good crowd of Moffitts there and it was really fun. We didn't do much else on Saturday except all take long naps :)

This week is full of preparing for our house warming party. Here's to hoping it all comes together!

Pre-race (you may be able to see the sink falling apart in the back..)

Post-race!

Let's talk money

2009-06-29T20:48:00.005-04:00

I am currently re-working our budget for this year. If you remember, it began in January as my New Year's resolution. I.. took a break.. for a few months and am starting back again so I decided to make the new budget (which includes house and Molly) go from July09 - June10. It works out well since we get our new salaries this time of year at my company. I had plans to revamp my budgeting model I put together but once I started I didn't feel like doing that anymore so instead I just reworked the categories and numbers.

Now, I know this is a very simple financial question and one that I can find the answer to on the internet, but I am always looking for good advice from friends. What do I do with our savings?? Currently I contribute to my 401k but beyond that the money just sits in an account and makes a little interest. I want to plan a specific amount to save every month and actually put it somewhere useful. So, what is the next account or whatever you go to after a 401k? I have a Roth IRA that I haven't contributed to in about 2 years :-/ Is that where it goes next? Or should we buy CDs or something? Any amateur financial advice is greatly appreciated :)

We have been continuing work on the basement in hopes that it will actually be use-able someday soon. This weekend Matt put in a new door (one that can't be easily broken into like our last one) and we also took up all of the old linoleum tile from the floor, cleaned the floor, and so far have painted one coat of this water proofing stuff on it. Once the second coat goes on and dries, we are clear to put our cheap rugs down there and move stuff down there - yey!! Here is a lesson in construction work - Matt got a piece of wood in his eye this weekend while working in the basement - NOT wearing protective goggles of course. It was really bad yesterday (Sunday) but we didn't think it was worth it to go to the ER and thought it was a scratch that would heal itself. This morning it was still bad so he went to the opthamologist this afternoon and sure enough there was wood in there (I couldn't see it when I looked yesterday). So he's all better now and it only cost about $50 out of our flex spending account so all in all not that bad except for the pain he went through!

We will be busy cleaning the house for the next two weeks to get it ready for our party. I also want it clean this weekend because my mom and sister are coming to stay - time for the Peachtree road race again!! Speaking of running, I have stuck to my marathon schedule so far which is really exciting. Three miles Tues-Thurs last week and then 6 miles on Saturday. It feels great!

Now for some pictures that I haven't posted yet. These were taken on Father's Day at Matt's parents house.

Molly in the plantsMatt working the grillMe with Molly in the plants. I was trying to get a perspetive of how small she is because when her cousin dog Thomas lays in the he takes over them and she gets hidden in them.

Marathon Training, Day 1

2009-06-23T21:21:00.003-04:00

Today marked the start of Emili and I's marathon training. Three miles.. about what I typically do anyway. The run wasn't so good today. I learned that I can't run an hour after eating dinner. I think I'll have to do a small snack after work and then a light dinner after my run. I also bought one of those water bottle carrier things that go around your waist and sit on your back. I guess on a guy it would sit on the hips but on me it sits around my waist and makes me feel like I can't breathe as deeply. Any tips?? I think I just need to get used to it. This is what I got:

We are also trying to get our house ready for our house warming party. Turns out a ton of people are out of town that weekend. Oh well. It will still be awesome :) We can't fit a ton of people in our house anyway. This weekend I am going wedding dress shopping with Crystal!! Very exciting, I can live vicariously through her trying them on. I only tried 5 on and wish I had tried on more, just for the fun of it of course, not because I didn't like my dress.

Not much else to report on. Happy Tuesday!

2009-06-14T21:43:00.005-04:00

I wanted to post some pictures from this past week. I am excited that I feel like I'm in a place where I am not go-go-going all the time. Hopefully it will stay like that for a while. Like I mentioned before, this past Thursday was my flex day off of work and I spent it cleaning, having lunch with Lindsey and Chrissy and visiting Amelia and new baby Anya. It was so great to see everyone!

Anya - what a cutie!!

Friday night and Saturday morning I finally painted the guest bathroom. We love how it turned out! Before and after pictures:

(This is a before shot.. kind of hard to take pictures of this bathroom) I know you can't tell from this picture but this bathroom had holes all over the walls and pencil markings and stuff

After!

More after.. I love our mirror in here. I am also going to hang a few pictures probably.

Saturday after lunch my dad brought my sister over to stay with us for the night. I had to take her to Lawrenceville this morning to catch a bus to Affirm which is a Lutheran week-long summer camp that I used to go to. It is Erin's third year attending. The woman signing people in asked me twice this morning about me riding the bus too. Just another day where I am mistaken for a high schooler. I suppose my waking up at 5:45, not showering or wearing makeup probably contributed to that.

In other news, Matt's gig at Smith's Olde Bar is tomorrow night - hope some of you can come out! And I sent out an Evite for our housewarming party on July 11th.. if you didn't get it (and think you should have) then I probably don't have your email address so let me know!

Peachtree Road Race

2009-06-11T21:52:00.002-04:00

I think this is my fourth year running the Peachtree. I LOVE it! Today I got my number in the mail. I was so excited. Open up the package, and I'm in time group 9! What the heck! Terrible luck. Time group 9 is for the casual walkers (last time group) but you can still get placed there if you are a runner. The start time for time group 9 is 8:56am whereas the actual race begins at 7:30. I will be running with Matt and with my sister. They have not received their numbers yet but even if they are ahead of me they have to come back to time group 9 and run with me. And when I say 'run', I mean try to dodge the walkers :(

Any walkers out there want to exchange numbers???

More babies!

2009-06-10T20:45:00.003-04:00

Not too much new to report around here. As my home life becomes a little more quiet (thank goodness), my work life gets a little crazier ('little' being an understatement). Tonight I bought the paint for the guest bathroom and I can't wait to paint it! That is the final touch for in there. I will post before and after pictures when finished. Matt is at band practice tonight preparing for his upcoming gig at Smith's Olde Bar. If you are interested in coming we would love to have you! The band is supposed to bring 30 people in, so I hope that many show.

Tomorrow I have a flex day off of work and I am having lunch with two of my favorite people downtown. Lindsey and Chrissy often have lunch together because they work so close together but since I'm 20-30 min away this is a treat for me to get to go see them! And afterward I am going to visit Amelia and new baby Anya Giuseppina who was born on Sunday morning. I can't wait!! And even as all of these babies are being born, it is almost a daily occurrence that I find out about a new pregnancy (congrats to Scott & Laura Beth's second baby on the way!).. they can be found on my blog list on the right. What an exciting time in everyone's life. I hope our friends are still having kids in a few years when we start so they can all be friends ;-)

In other news, it looks like my sister will be coming to stay with us this Saturday evening before catching the bus to camp on Sunday morning. So she will get to meet Molly! I am thinking about breaking out the ice cream maker for the first time and putting it to good use.

Molly is starting to grow.. I can tell she is getting heavier. She is getting better about letting us know when she needs to go outside. She is such a funny dog. Chasing her tail around, always wanting a belly rub. We are fortunate to get such a sweet puppy. She is currently dreaming.. I can see her twitching in her sleep.

No pictures for you tonight. The only new ones I have of are things I am posting on craigslist to sell. Too bad no one has contacted me yet!

Hope you are having a great week!

T-minus 12 days until marathon training begins...

Falling off the wagon

2009-06-07T16:16:00.005-04:00

Falling off of the wagon of budgeting and couponing. Not that I don't have plans for us to return. First the budgeting went a little.. not that we are spending all kinds of money or anything, it's just that we have stopped entering all our receipts into the nice little spreadsheets I made. Next, the couponing. I used to get my coupons [for free] from work on Monday morning out of the Sunday paper that waited there for me. Well guess what? They stopped delivering the Sunday paper to us! So for weeks I did not have my coupons. Now I am just committed to buying the paper every Sunday which is a waste to me because we don't read it. (A waste as far as the newspaper goes. I'll just have to recycle it.) But today I have two copies of the AJC to rip into and file those coupons!

So my new goal has been that by July 1st we will be back in the swing of all of it. And of course when I say 'we' I mostly mean me. Matt helps by entering his receipts but I'm the couponing / grocery shopping one.

Ok onto a little of what we have been doing lately. On Tuesday night we threw a baby shower for John and Stephanie (we being Crystal, Nancy and I) but it was held at Matt and I's house so lots of cleaning!

Wednesday night Matt and I went to see The Decemberists at The Tabernacle. While it was a good show I have to say it was not worth the money we paid for it. Oh well. The theater was WAY oversold and it was definitely 100 degrees in there. Everywhere you stood they told you you couldn't stand there but there are no signs anywhere saying that. And there was not enough room in the theater for everyone. The night ended with a homeless guy busting us out of a parking lot and then demanding $5 from us. Matt drove away while the guy chased us.. a little scary. And we never did pay for the parking which I feel bad about but what am I supposed to do now? We weren't going to try to pay with scary man there.

Molly over at Maw and Paw's house

Cousin Thomas shared his basket of toys with Molly

Matt and I have been trying to work on the house a little this weekend. Oh and speaking of the house, the basement is (almost) finished!! The professionals came in on Wednesday and did the waterproofing. While there is still a lot of work to be done, this takes care of a huge chunk of it.

This is far from what we envision of the basement but we are getting there

Molly time all the time

2009-05-31T19:35:00.003-04:00

We have had Molly now for oh about 30 hours and let me tell you about her so far. She is a very sweet little girl, very loving and very clingy! She has already figured out that we only want her to be in the kitchen for now yet she still follows us out of it. She loves all her toys we bought her and her treats. She scarfs down her food in about 30 seconds and we hope we are feeding her enough (following the directions on the bag!). I have been by myself with her since about 3:30 today and it is difficult to get things done. I want her to stay in the kitchen but when I try to go clean another room she just follows me. So I have to stay in the kitchen. There's not much I can clean in the kitchen because I have to carry things to other rooms. If I put her in her crate she just cries a lot. Although I did do that earlier for about 20 minutes to get a few things done! She seems to be scared of being outside but is getting better with it. We have gotten her to run around out there with us.

Anyway, I just got a call from Matt and he is on his way home! So I can finally get some cleaning done I hope :) Looks like we'll have to tag team this effort for a while until she figures things out. Oh and on a positive note, she slept for 6+ hours last night!

Trip & Puppy!!

2009-05-30T21:56:00.006-04:00

Ok, busy busy. Quick synopsis of the rest of our trip. After Boston we headed to West Hartford, Connecticut to visit John (Matt's brother) and Stephanie (his wife). We spent a few days exploring West Hartford and spending time with John and Steph and baby-to-be-born in July. It was great to finally visit them and see their new home and where they have been living since August. They left the day after our wedding last year to move up there. From Hartford we took a Greyhound bus to New York City. The bus ride was actually great and easy and dropped us off about 8 blocks from our hotel which was about 1 block from Times Square. We spent 3 days in NYC seeing the sites. This was my third trip to NYC and Matt's first so it was more for him to see everything. Except we did go to the Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island and that was my first time going to those places. Ellis Island was pretty cool.

We have had a very tight schedule since we came back. We ventured out to Snellville to meet Ann Marie who was 8 days old at the time. I spent one evening doing some shopping for Stephanie's baby showers and Matt's birthday (which is tomorrow). Now we have a busy weekend full of birthdays, babies and cleaning!

Also, we got a puppy today!! We have been planning on getting one but waiting until after our trip was over. Now that it's over and we're back, we found just who we were looking for (pictures below). We found her online and went to the adoption day outside of Petsmart today to get her. She is an Australian Shepherd puppy (possibly a mixture though) and is about 10-12 weeks old. We named her Molly. She is already quite the handful. We left for about an hour and a half to go to dinner and put her in her crate for the first time. Came home and she was out!! She climbed out the top.. apparently we had the thing upside-down. She is scared of being outside for some reason, we are working through that, and has yet to use the potty outside. In fact, she just peed in her crate. So much for them not using the bathroom where they sleep. Although she doesn't know that she sleeps there yet but will figure that out tonight.

Anyway sorry you don't get more details on the trip and all but it would be more than you want to read, I promise. Instead you just get some pics and some pics of Molly. Enjoy!

Matt with my aunt Janet and uncle Frank by the Old North Church in Boston

Matt in the pew "for strangers and wardens"

John Adams house at Peacefield in Quincy

Matt and John at the Sam Adam's brewery in Boston

Matt and I in Connecticut walking up a mountain trail. Matt is holding the rock he found.

Times Square! Sensory overload

Dinner 'picnic' on some rocks in Central Park

Walking across the Brooklyn BridgeStatue of Liberty

Our cozy hotel!

Molly outside

There's our girl

Home again, home again, jiggidy jig

2009-05-25T22:21:00.002-04:00

Just a quick note to say that Matt and I are back from our trip around New England and I am now procrastinating going to bed because that means it's back to work tomorrow! We have a ridiculously busy week ahead of us but I hope to post pictures and more recaps within the next few days. Hope you enjoyed your 3 day weekend, I have enjoyed my 10 day break!!

New England Trip, part 1 - Boston

2009-05-18T22:01:00.004-04:00

Greetings from Cohasset, Massachusetts! Matt and I flew into Boston on Friday evening and have been staying with my aunt, uncle and cousins. I won't be able to put pictures up this week but will when we return home.

Saturday we walked the Freedom Trail which is a 'trail' that you follow all around downtown Boston to see different historical sites. It was really interesting and Matt was in heaven. We took the T into the city from Braintree which is a town nearby Cohasset where they live.

Sunday we went to church with my family and then spent the afternoon driving around Cohasset. It is the typical New England town you see pictures of. Small, absolutely gorgeous right on the water. Huge beautiful homes. Small cute downtown. It has been chilly up here, moreso than for this time of year up here. Low 60s and around 58 today with clouds and rain. Last night we watched the Benjamin Button movie. I have to say I was not impressed with it.. I wouldn't really recommend it but it was ok.

This morning we got up and had some Cohasset bagels :) I had a salt bagel which I love and I don't know why they don't serve them in the south, I have only found them in the north. Matt, my aunt and I headed into Boston to walk around the Harvard area and go to this fun burger joint. After lunch we headed to the John Adams house in Quincy (house at Peacefield). Went on about an hour tour, it was awesome. If you have not seen the John Adams HBO mini-series I highly recommend it. It was very neat seeing this house after having seen that. Tonight we headed to Mary Lou's which is a nearby coffee shop that my cousin is obsessed with. I had a thin mint iced coffee - yum!! And tonight we watched videos of me and the cousins from when we were younger. It was hilarious and a little embarassing.

AND.. today I was receiving updates all day long about the Harlans! Scott and Elizabeth's baby girl, Ann Marie, arrived today! (Picture on the 'Scott and Elizabeth' blog on the right ->) 8lbs 1oz. I can't wait to see her! Happy Birthday Ann Marie!

That's all for now. Tomorrow we head to Hartford, Connecticut to spend a few days with Matt's brother John and his wife Stephanie!

2009-05-11T20:29:00.005-04:00

I haven't forgotten that I have a blog but I haven't had much time to post on it either! Not only are we trying to work on the house but we are back into full swing of activities and seeing friends. Last week Matt battled a cold all week while he studied for his finals (he has his last two tomorrow and then he is done with spring semester!). Like a good wife I took good care of him and then got the cold myself. It was especially great because it hit me on my weekend. Before I started feeling bad on Friday night, we made spaghetti with homemade meatballs - YUM. It was my first time making meatballs and it was really fun! Definitely will make that again. Saturday morning we went to Matt's parents house around 8:30 for breakfast and I drank a Theraflu before we left. I was out of it all morning and finally realized I drank the nighttime Theraflu by accident. Made for a nice afternoon nap though :)

Saturday night we went to a dinner for the young adults at our church. It was fun to see everyone outside of church! We saw most of them again on Sunday night at Bible study and found out that Peter and Angel are pregnant! I'm betting it's a girl ;) For Mother's Day we went out to lunch with Matt's parents and gave his mom a bottle of homemade vanilla extract. Amelia told me about this recipe that I have been dying to try. All it is is vodka and vanilla beans. I made a cute bottle out of a beer bottle and a wine stopper. The vanilla extract has to 'mature' for 6 months and is then ready for use. It is supposed to be better than the stuff you buy so we'll see in 6 months! For my mom, I mailed her two loaves of my famous sourdough bread.. actually Matt's grandmother Mimi's famous bread but everyone around here just refers to it as Julie bread.

And finally, more house pictures.

Our medicine cabinets are finally installed!

But we had to cut through our bedroom walls to get them in. Apparently it's easier to re-drywall than that get a stud out of our bathroom.

Our bedroom is finally clean! I hope we can keep it that way.

Any ideas for what to put above/behind the dresser?

And I have been painting some of the guest room furniture. Can't wait to get that all together!

And finally some pictures

2009-05-02T11:36:00.009-04:00

Seems that I have gone missing from here lately.. just trying to get settled around here. And I finally found my camera cord to put pictures up! I know you don't want to just read boring words :) We have been working a lot around here lately and doing a lot of fun things too. We went shooting last week and did mediocre considering we never go.

Here is Matt shooting skeet

This is me shooting last year.. I didn't get any of me this year but thought this would be funny to see. Don't judge my stance, I think I was just posing for this, not that I really know how to hold it anyway.

Thursday night we celebrated Crystal's birthday over at Matt's parents house. We had a yummy dinner followed by ice cream cake! Can't beat that.

Last night we went to little five to see Man Man and Cursive play at the Variety Playhouse. I have to say it was a pretty impressive show. Man Man was absolutely hilarious to watch and Cursive was amazing! I would recommend seeing both of them if you ever have the opportunity.
Also at work I secretly planned a double baby shower for Michael & Brittany and Amelia & Nathan. So sneaky. It was great, they had no idea. Wish I had a picture of their faces :) They are both due in late June and we are so excited for them!!
And now for some house pictures:

This is the kitchen before it was cleaned
Before
And after (the first time the counter has been cleaned off since the day we closed on our house)
After (still need to hang some stuff on this wall)
Here is Matt preparing to install our recessed medicine cabinets. Cutting out the drywall.

Here is the finished project! Or at least that's how it looks today. This is way harder than it looks but we are progressing slowly. I will post the real 'after' pictures once they are finally installed (one for each of us).
These are the bookshelves I am so excited about! If you get the crate and barrel ones they are $129 each. We paid $140 for all 3 of these off of craigslist :) Still need to fill them up.
Full room view (ignore the clutter)
This is the mirror I hung this morning in our bedroom. I'll get a better picture of our bedroom when we are all finished.
And this is the organ pipe I hung this morning. I also tried to get the dining room in the shot so you could see it. We still need to recenter the light fixture above the table. Also this room has yet to be repainted.

Hope you are all enjoying this beautiful weather!

Sad times at Ikea

2009-04-20T22:23:00.002-04:00

Last time I went to Ikea I fell in love with this duvet cover:

I had this other bedding I was going to use in our guest room (the green room) and come to find out it was Full instead of Queen (oops!). Perfect opportunity to buy this bedding I love! Well I drove all the way to Ikea to find out that they are out of it and won't have it for 15 weeks! That's almost 4 months! I left Ikea with a few other things I needed, love that place, and came home to do some research on where I could get this comforter. I had hoped the Ikea in Minnesota, Michigan, Massachusetts, Oregon or Washington would have it and I could get a friend to buy it and mail it to me. Turns out that every Ikea does not have this item in stock. Next stop - Ebay. I found it! Paid for it and everything. Then I got an email from the person saying they didn't have it and they were sorry they didn't take their post down. They sent me my money back. It's a sad day for me and Ikea. Now I have to wait 4 months to have the guest room I am envisioning. And I am not a patient person.. :)

After the duvet cover fiasco, I decided to get the kitchen spic & span. I even took before and after pictures to show you. However, I currently cannot find the cord or reader to get the pictures off of my camera. Oh well. It looks good and feels good to have a whole room [mostly] clean around here!! And here I would like to say thanks again to Scott H who saved all of my pictures on my camera!! They all deleted themselves for some reason and he got them back for me :) It is much appreciated.

Hope you had a good Monday!

Settling in

2009-04-19T11:47:00.002-04:00

We are moved in! There are a few odds and ends left at the apartment but we will get those soon. Paying movers, though expensive, was definitely the way to go. Money well spent! It took the movers 4 hours. We are still unpacking and settling in but I did get to cook yesterday and was able to semi-easily find clothes this morning! Yesterday I made another batch of granola bars (this one had coconut, white chocolate and sliced almonds - yum!). For dinner I made white chicken chili with cheesy cornbread muffins. Finally feeling a little bit back to normal :)

We had to have the Comcast guy out yesterday because we couldn't get our internet to work. I signed up about a month ago to take advantage of a great deal they had going on but didn't get to test the internet until we had the computer over here on Thursday. Didn't work of course. It turns out that it was turned on but that it only went to one outlet in our house. We have at least 6 cable outlets in our house and apparently only one of them is hooked up. It was the outlet in our den.. not the office like we needed. So Matt and I spent a few hours last night relocating that cable. Luckily we did not sign up for cable television as well or we would have to do some serious work on those wires to get the tv into our den. However, according to the Comcast guy yesterday, whoever turned us on in the first place had given us cable and the guy yesterday turned it off! Oh well. At least we now have internet :) even if it is with my enemy Comcast..

Matt's family came over the first night and brought us dinner and wine. It was much appreciated because we were famished and weren't going to try to cook and too busy to stop to get dinner!

Today I have to get some shopping done as well as continuing to unpack and clean. Let's hope the rain stays away. Yesterday was so beautiful but today is not looking like a repeat. Hope you enjoyed the weather yesterday!

New beginnings and old memories

2009-04-15T21:10:00.003-04:00

Two years ago tomorrow, April 16, 2007, you may not remember what happened, but I'll never forget. I was at work, Bluelinx, just working away the morning. I checked CNN online like I do almost every day. Top news story was the shooting at Virginia Tech. I think at this point only the first two people had been killed and the massacre had not begun. It saddened me but I didn't think too much on it after I had closed it. After all, I only knew one person that went to VT, so what are the odds? Come to find out that night that my good friend, Ryan Clark, was one of those first two.

Ryan and I met our freshmen year in high school, we were both baritone players in the band. We grew so close over those four years. I used to drive him all over town and to so many band functions. I even started referring to my car as "our car." Ryan was absolutely hilarious. I'll never forget his laugh or his good heart. Every summer Ryan volunteered at "Camp Free to be me" which is a camp for handicapped/mentally challenged children. I have so many happy memories of Ryan and a blog post doesn't feel like it does my memories any justice but I thought you all should know what an amazing person he was and how my life was changed two years ago by losing him. I didn't see him as much after high school as I would have liked but I always knew he was there and would always have that smile for me. You can read more about Ryan here.

Here is a picture from high school of our friends in the band room. Ryan is front and center:

So tomorrow is a day to remember Ryan and a day for new beginnings as Matt and I move into our new home. Say a little prayer tomorrow for all of the families of the Virginia Tech victims.

Just when you think you're starting to settle in..

2009-04-13T21:26:00.002-04:00

Life gets more interesting as it goes on. Things are changing around here. For the better? Probably. I've never been great with change but since I know that about myself I try to look for the positive in everything. Stay tuned throughout the summer to hear about all the excitement! (No I'm not pregnant.. that seems to be the first thing people ask you when you are married and say things like this, haha).

One big change coming this week: Moving Day! Moving day is officially Thursday.. officially 3 days away. I can't believe it - we have had the house for 2+ months, I thought this day would never come. The more time I spend in our house, the more I can't wait to live there. It is so darn cute. Pictures will come as we get settled I promise. Better yet, you can come see it for yourself when we have a housewarming party :) I am aiming for sometime in June but I may stretch it out and have it on my birthday in July just for fun. Matt and I have been boxing up everything we can at the apartment and trucking it over. Including taking the paintings off of the walls in the apartment. That makes it look so empty! We are moving everything that is not furniture and the movers will be handling the furniture (praise the Lord!).

My mom and sister came up last week to check out the house and help us out. It was fun finally getting to show it off to my family! We got a lot done. The house is now move-in ready. There is more to be done of course but we are on a break until we move in. Also, in case you need a basement/water update, Matt has had 4 companies come to the house to give us quotes and it looks like we will be going with Trotter who comes recommended, is the cheapest, and who Matt felt like knew their stuff the best.

Easter was spent with Matt singing in all 3 services at church. I attended the 9:45 and then went for coffee with Andy and Crystal before we all headed to lunch at the Spaghetti Warehouse. Afterwards Matt and I worked on the house of course. Except we actually came home early and I went running and Matt went kayaking! It was such a beautiful day. So here is a story for you: I went running around 5:30 and Matt was headed out shortly after to kayak. He was supposed to call me to come pick him up either from the take out point that I knew or the one I didn't know how to get to. Well 6:45 rolls around and I am watching the Masters and starting to get worried. I repeatedly call Matt's phone only to be sent to voicemail each time. I head over to the take out point I know of and he is nowhere in site. I called Andy to find out how to get to the other place. On my way, I finally reach Matt who had of course dropped his phone in the water and just now gotten it working (7:30). Because I am a worrier, this was all terrible for me and of course I started crying when he answered the phone. He could not call me from someone else's phone because he didn't know my phone number. So what have we done since then? Recited my phone number over and over again. I do not want this to happen again!

I have also been looking over our "budget." Like I think I mentioned before, we are doing well with what we have budgeted but everything else comes out to more than I thought we would spend (let's just say Home Depot should be very glad we are a loyal customer). Trying not to freak out.. it'll settle down just like everything else, right??

The next week will be spent unpacking, canceling apartment utilities, trying to feel settled for the first time in 2+ months, etc etc!!

1 payment down, 359 to go

2009-04-03T22:04:00.007-04:00

Happy Friday! We've all made it through another week. It has been a pretty productive one for Matt and I. And I did take pictures! I'll get to those in a minute.

A few exciting things happened this week. The first being that we paid our first mortgage payment! And to top that off, we paid our last rent payment (hopefully ever..)! Not fun that we had to pay both in one month overlapping but it is very much worth it. We are also currently doubling up on bills but that will end in less than a month. And the other exciting thing from this week is that Emili and I registered for our marathon!! We are officially running the Marine Marathon in Washington, DC in October. Emili sent me an article today from the website that listed famous people that have run the marathon and I'm proud to say we'll be running along where greats like Oprah and Al Gore have run before us. (Sense the sarcasm? Although I do love Oprah.)

I feel like lately all we have been doing is spending money but that is what I expected with the house. The good news though is that we have been sticking to our monthly budget, exclusive of house expenses. It feels great to know that! So one day it will go back to normal. About that water in the basement.. Matt had a guy come today and look at it and they quoted us $20k to do all kinds of things to the house. ha. Definitely not going with that guy and definitely figuring out something different to do. I think we are going to install french drains ourselves. I don't necessarily mind the extra work and extra money that will need to be spent for the basement, I am just sad that Matt won't have his music room right away like we had hoped.

In other exciting news, Andy and Crystal (Matt's brother and his fiancee), are moving back to Atlanta tomorrow! We are so excited to have them back down here with us. I am excited to get back into wedding mode and help Crystal with whatever she needs.

Ok time for some pictures. I took these to show you the painting, curtains and blinds. Just pretend like the rest of the mess in all the pictures isn't there because it won't be by the time we move in in 2 weeks.

Remember this picture? I posted it a few posts ago. No more primed walls!:

This is the view from the kitchen into the living room. Notice blinds on all the windows, as well as curtains on the french doors. Those are super cute curtains but you can't really see them in this picture. (also, if you see brush strokes on the blue wall on the top that is only because that part is still wet in this picture, it will dry correctly)
This picture shows more of the kitchen color as well as where we put the new piece of furniture (in the back there, with the green bag on it)
This shocking picture is our guest room. It's hard to capture this green with my camera correctly. You just have to trust me that it looks good and that I have a plan in here!

This is the master bedroom color along with the roman shade there. We are also hanging curtains on the french doors you can see to the right. You may also wonder about those sinks.. had to move them out of the bathroom to paint so this is their temporary home.
And finally, this is also the master bedroom. This is the inset part of the wall that we painted the darker color from the living room. I love the contrast! This wall faces the wall with the roman shade from the previous picture.

I will post more pictures after the move and after we are settled so that you will believe me that it will all look awesome :)

Hope you have a great weekend, we have a pretty good one lined up!!

More random ramblings

2009-03-30T20:57:00.004-04:00

I still don't have any pictures for you but I will take some tomorrow I promise! This weekend was spent working on the house and we got a TON done! On Saturday most of the Moffitt men installed our alarm system which I am so excited about. I painted for 10 hours, I never knew I could power through physical work like that. The kitchen, living room, laundry room and hallway are all done being painted. I also put up our curtains in the living room and they are awesome! I have one more coat to go on the guest room as well as the entire master bedroom & bathroom.

I did some shopping for the house tonight. I got fabric to put on the backside of our roman shades so they won't be see-through. I also found some rugs that I love at Home Depot that are cheaper than I thought we would get rugs for. I have to get Matt to come with me to help pick them out. And right now I am supposed to be packing up the apartment.. oops :)

So I have been intrigued by this idea lately of trying to cut my own hair. Everyone says don't do it. I'm sure I agree with that. So while I am not going to give myself a full haircut, I did thin it out today by myself and it worked like a charm. Hopefully that will postpone my next haircut a little bit, who knows.

(By the way, I have Dancing With the Stars on in the background. I do not watch this show at all but I just turned on the tv so I could blog. Seeing how our remote is broken and we don't have cable anyway I am leaving it here. This is one of the most terrible shows I have ever seen. I do enjoy seeing people dance though.. who knows). Oh, they have two British judges, that makes it a good show, right?

Tomorrow I have off of work and will be painting all day long again. My friend Kelly is coming to help me!! Should be a fun day and hopefully I will have the guest room and master bedroom all done by the end of the day, as well as the privacy liners put on the shades.

Today I got home from a long day at work and found some huge sunflowers from my hubby :) I love getting flowers. What's funny though is that I keep them even after they have wilted and he finally throws them away weeks later. I just love looking at them! It will be nice to have some free time to work on our yard in the future and make it pretty too.

Enough rambling for tonight. Pictures to come.. Happy Monday!

OH almost forgot to mention. We watched What About Bob? on Friday night. Man that is a great movie!! Everyone should watch that :)

What a weekend!

2009-03-23T22:10:00.003-04:00

I am blogging not from the comfort of my own home but from a hotel in Houston. But I'll get to that later.. warning of a lengthy blog post. A lot has happened in the past few days, I'll attempt to keep it brief.

I'll begin with Thursday. Thursday night Matt had another gig and along with his band playing, his brother Andy and his girlfriend Crystal were in town for a few days, so Andy joined in the playing. Matt went down to the venue early and Andy and Crystal came to hang out with me and enjoy a bottle of wine. Matt was supposed to play around 10:30 but ended up playing after midnight so it was a late night. The gig went really well and I had a lot of fun with everyone!

Friday morning, after going to bed around 1:30am, I woke up at 7 with Matt. He had to go to class and I was taking a flex day off of work so I could go paint at the house. I got to the house and started working around 8:15am and worked straight through until about 1:30pm when Andy and Crystal came to help. Matt showed up around 2:30 and we got a ton of work done! It definitely goes so much faster when there is more than just me painting!! I have pictures, but like I said I'm in Houston and I don't have my cord so I will post them later. We got a ton of painting done but still were probably less than halfway done with it all. I can't believe how much time it takes.

We headed home after painting to clean up and get ready for the evening. Andy and Crystal came over and we headed to the Spaghetti Factory. It was soo yummy. Then it was on to the [last] Ryan Adams concert which was held at the Fox. It was even better than I thought it would be! I always forget what an awesome building that is and the acoustics weren't bad like I thought they would be. After the concert we all headed home and said bye to Andy and Crystal knowing that...

They would get engaged on Saturday!!! It was SO fun knowing beforehand.. I think it's only the second time that I have known about an engagement beforehand. Saturday morning Matt and I had wanted to work at the house but we were exhausted. We slept in instead and got ready and packed to head up to the cabin. But first we went to see Spamalot! I have been waiting for 5 years to see that show and it was well worth the wait. I got the tickets for free from a coworker who didn't want to go. It was absolutely hysterical! If you haven't seen it and you like Monty Python then you should definitely check it out. That was also fun because we got to see our good friend Kelly who works at the Cobb Energy theater where it was held :)

So after the show, we headed up to Matt's parents cabin for a night of celebrating. We got to hear Andy and Crystal's story in person and see the ring (forgot to take a picture, it's a blue diamond, very cool!). The girls girl-talked inside about weddings while the guys all headed outside with the grill. Lots of wine and too much food later we got to bed at 10pm.. nice to get in bed that early. Woke up at 7am to head back to Atlanta and make it to church at 9:30.

Worked on the house all day after that and then packed up for Houston. I am here for a conference for work.. should be perfect for what I am training for at work, but I was sad to come alone. I tried to convince Matt to come (not to the conference of course but to Houston with me) but he needed to stay for school and house and band stuff. My trip started off nicely with the guy sitting next to me throwing up a lot before the plane even moved on the ground, then a bumpy plane ride, and the cab driver driving me the longer route (extra $10, thanks a lot). Here's to hoping the conference is good! Pictures from the house to come in a few days.

OH one more house thing, Matt found 3-4 inches of stagnant water sitting under our hardwoods in our basement. Yey. More to come on that.

And one final thing, in other Moffitt news, I know I have mentioned that John and Stephanie are expecting a baby in July but I don't know if I have mentioned that it is a girl! So Matt and I are expecting a niece in July :) Can't wait to meet her! And no name yet, they are keeping it a secret. Additionally, if you are one of our friends then you are probably pregnant and if you are pregnant, it is a girl. We are somewhere around 15 girls (and counting). Don't drink the water..

Progress?

2009-03-15T20:38:00.003-04:00

Most of this weekend has been spent attempting to get the walls at the house primed. I am sad to say we are not quite finished priming but happy to say we are almost there! Friday night after working at the house we watched Wall-E which was a pretty cute movie. It was interesting because there wasn't a lot of dialogue in it since it mainly follows robots, but I thought it was really well done. Saturday morning Matt and I slept in which was much needed!! I have been averaging about 6 hours of sleep, not enough for me, so I slept 10 hours Friday night. We made it over to the house around noon on Saturday and worked until about 5. This is what a lot of the house looks like right now (hideous):

Can you imagine having those white walls? yuck! And this is the piece of furniture we bought at TJ Maxx a week or so ago:

Love it!

Saturday night we went out to the If Coffeehouse to see Greg's band play and see some friends. It was a very neat coffee shop and a fun night all together!

This morning I woke up around 8 and hopped in the shower and when I got out I realized I didn't wake up to sign up for the Peachtree road race!! I freaked out and ran to my computer. Online sign up began at 7am this morning and I had all kinds of reminders everywhere so I wouldn't forget.. I was exhausted last night and didn't think about it. I got online around 8:15 and at first couldn't get to the website and was told they were experiencing a high volume of people but there were still spots available. Ok so there was hope. I finally got to the form and filled it in, hit Submit, and then "Error"! Dang it. So I kept filling out the form over and over and getting the same error. I looked it up online and realized that everyone was having the same difficulty and people were posting about it. I found the secret on the posts: keep hitting refresh over and over and you'll get in. Sure enough - confirmed! So I signed Matt up as well. This was the first year the Peachtree registration was online and everyone knew it would mess up. Sure enough. I wonder what they'll do next year. My sister will be running it with us as well, should be fun!

After church we worked on the house all day on the walls again and then I ran a few errands. Came home and made granola bars (my first try - hope they are good!) and have been cleaning. What a mess. We have people coming into town this weekend and the following weekend so I have got to get this apartment at least visit-able. Anyway, almost time for the Amazing Race to come on...!!

New running shoes!

2009-03-12T21:39:00.006-04:00

So tonight I was supposed to work at the house finishing up the baseboards but Matt had to go do a photo shoot for his band. (If I ever get a picture of that, I'll be sure to post it). So I went shopping instead! First I went to Fleet Feet which is a store with all running stuff where they look at your feet, measure them and watch you run. Turns out I needed a whole size bigger than I had and also needed a 'stability' shoe because I turn my feet in as I run which is probably why my knee is messed up. I also got some of the good socks.. I have a lot to learn about all this running gear. I have been buying Mizunos for a few years, but I got Asics this time:
Afterwards I went to Ikea with the intention of looking at rugs, curtains and shelving. The rugs were great but not big enough. The curtains were all right but see-through. And they didn't have the shelving I need. So what did I do? Bought a new quilt for the bed. Something I semi-needed but not really. I wanted something to add to the bed for summer when our down comforter is too hot. We'll see what Matt thinks of it when he gets home. This is what it looks like now (still gotta get the wrinkles out and make the bed right):
Oh also, for the marathon, Emili and I are definitely running it together! Looks like we are aiming for a November-December time frame. Which means I will start training later in the year, around July or August. But in the mean time starting in May-ish I will do proper training for the Peachtree 10k. I just keep running it every year without training for it which is dumb. Wish me luck!

Spring is coming!

2009-03-09T21:09:00.012-04:00

Welcome to my new blog layout! I finally figured out how to change it!

I am beginning to feel like there is no light at the end of our work tunnel, but at the same time I am able to see how far we have come and how much we have accomplished over at the house. My goal is to have the baseboards completed and the walls I am going to paint prepped and primed by the end of this weekend. That is a LOT of work but I think I can do it. Only 3 more rooms of baseboards left and then 7 rooms of prepping and priming walls (2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, laundry room, kitchen, family room & small hallway).

With the incredible weather it has been nice to be able to work in the house with all the windows open letting the sun shine in later in the evening because of the time change. Still trying to get that musty smell out of the house. Speaking of incredible weather, I believe I have finally convinced myself to run a marathon!! I have been wanting to run one for a few years but keep using my knee as an excuse. (I hurt my knee when I ran the Peachtree for the first time, 10k, without having trained for it. Now I run with a knee brace.) But really that is just an excuse and I know I can do it. I will most likely be running one somewhere with my bff, Emili, but if not then I will run the Atlanta one on Thanksgiving day. I figure it will take me about 6 months to train (2 months to finish the house and then 4 months to actually train) so that puts us at September or later for the marathon. I'll keep you posted as to when I actually start the training with my progress.

Tonight we mostly just worked on the house for an hour or two. Matt is on spring break this week so is working over there every day, all day. I also went to Kroger tonight and got $56 worth of groceries for $26! It was awesome :)

Now, onto the weekend. Matt and I spent the weekend in Augusta. It was such a nice weekend! We got there Friday night around 8 after 3.5 hours in the car. If you know where we live, picture it taking almost an hour and a half to get from our apartment around 285 to I-20. It should not take that long.. it's about 25 miles. We slept in Saturday morning and then went over to my grandmother's house where my mom will soon be living. (My grandma passed away a few years ago.) It needs some work but it brought back a lot of memories seeing it. I haven't been over there in probably six years! Also, I can't believe it but I really did think some of the rooms were bigger. Funny how your perception changes from being younger.. I really thought they were bigger.

After going to my grandmother's house, me, Matt and Erin went over to my dad's house and hung out in the backyard by the lake for a while. It was so nice out there! We stayed about an hour and headed back to my mom's house to get ready for my cousin's wedding reception. My cousin, Zack, got married to his wife, Erin (not to be confused with my sister Erin), at the beginning of January in Hawaii so this was the reception in Augusta. It was held at the country club where Erin's parents live right on the river in this outdoor pavilion and it was so beautiful! It could not have been a more perfect day for that. It was really fun to see all of my mom's family and some people from our church as well. Not to mention the newlyweds and their Hawaii wedding pictures :) I think the funniest part was when Matt asked the 14 year old bartender girl for a glass of wine and she held the corkscrew over the bottle before looking at Matt all helpless like "can you open this?" Here are some pictures for you:

Pavilion

Me and my cousin Kristen (sister of the groom)

Me & my sister Erin

Me and Erin on the cool chair/rocker

The newlyweds! Zack & Erin

Sunset - what a pretty day!

Just doing our part to stimulate the economy

2009-03-04T20:45:00.002-05:00

A quick look around our apartment tells me that this is definitely not where our focus is these days. And of course a quick look at my latest blog posts can tell you what the focus is. The projects are moving along and we have gotten a lot accomplished. Yet Matt and I are still stressing about how we are not going to have everything done by the time we move in. Now I know you are thinking so what? I keep telling myself we don't need to have all this done before we move in, most people don't get to fix things before they move in anyway. And realistically I know we'll be fine and we will continue working once we are in, I just wish it was all done. I guess really I just want to see the finished product :) All moved in and finished. Right now it feels like that day will never come.

I have begun my second coat of paint on the baseboards. Our gutters went up on the house yesterday. Matt has begun demo in the basement tearing some of the walls down. He also finished putting the insulation in the basement ceiling (house floor). I didn't know before we moved in (Matt knew but somehow I didn't catch it) that our whole house had no insulation in it. Walls and everything. No wonder he was so intent to get it in the attic and basement! Matt also fixed the big hole in the wall and I have almost finished with the blinds. One thing we are excited about is a new piece of furniture we just bought for the kitchen! We got it at TJ Maxx which I have to say is my new favorite store. I will post a picture of it once we get it out of the Jeep so you can see it. Soo cute. I will also try to remember to take pictures of some of our accomplishments soon so you can see the progress. I am pretty proud of us for all this work we are doing ourselves. The only thing we have paid someone to do is the gutters and right now that's the only thing we are planning to hire someone for.. for now.

Other than that things are going well. Work is good for me. I am actually going to Houston soon for a two day conference. I'll tell you all about it after I go ;-) Matt's school is going really well and his spring break is this coming week so he will be able to get a lot done over at the house. We also are continuing to plan our New England trip for this May. Not sure if I have mentioned it before but we will be going to Boston, Hartford and New York City. I just booked our NYC hotel tonight on hotwire. I am very much looking forward to this trip!!

March is a very busy month for us so hopefully a lot more posts to come about what we are up to! Oh and we got our wedding photos now, the whole set! Very exciting :) We have all the rights and everything. That was my dad's Christmas gift to us!

We are getting closer and closer to the warm weather I am craving. Hope you enjoy your 75 degree weekend!

Everyone needs 4 computers

2009-02-26T18:46:00.002-05:00

Well no one needs 4 computers but sometimes that's just the way it ends up. Matt and I got a new laptop today! We have my desktop that I got before I went to college so it is 6.5 years old. My macbook is 5 years old. Matt has an old laptop that doesn't even work and I don't know how old it is. The desktop is still running strong but my macbook has this fun problem where you can use it for an unspecified amount of time before it freezes. This could be while you are starting up the computer or right when you've finally nagivated to the website you wanted to go to. We were told to try to re-install the whole system from the CDs that came with the computer but of course the computer froze in the middle of that so oh well.

Matt used the laptop a lot for school (as did I when I was in school) so we wanted to get one he could have for that. And it's just nice to be able to sit in the living room on the computer as I am now. I wanted to get an HP laptop because my HP desktop has lasted for so long and is still good. Well I was going to paste a picture in here but I can't get it to work. And I don't really feel like taking a picture of the new laptop right now.

One of the coolest thing it can do so far is to video chat through google chat. I can do that on my desktop computer but I have to hook up the webcam & microphone whereas it's all just ready to go on this computer. Isn't that funny how that is the next wave of communication technology? Soon we'll all just be talking to each other through webcams. For all I know everyone is doing that already and I missed the boat until now. I always see the little camera by everyone's name on gmail chat but just assume that people don't actually use it.

In other news, I haven't been to the house since Sunday! I think I am having withdrawals. This week has been very busy but this weekend we will spend a lot of time at the house. Beginning with tomorrow morning for me - I have tomorrow off of work! I'll work at the house for a few hours in the morning and then Matt and I are going to the High Museum for his Valentine's Day gift I got him. Then it's back to the house for most of the weekend (yey!).

Nothing else really new besides helping host a few baby showers. I love planning and cooking and making people feel special :) Since I cleaned the apartment.. somewhat.. yesterday, I now have time to go read, so until next time...

Going to Home Depot? We'll see you there

2009-02-22T07:59:00.005-05:00

It's been a few days.. so what have we been up to? Does this answer your question?

We have gotten a lot accomplished on the house in the past few days. I finally finished prepping all of the baseboards to be painted and have primed about half of them now. I also bought most of the blinds for the house and installed 5 sets so far. The first set took me at least an hour or two. It was pure misery. But apparently there is a steep learning curve on those things because I installed the next 4 in about the same amount of time. I am also stoked because I found some roman shades for $20 at Home Depot.. obviously they are not real roman shades but they are exactly what I was looking for for our bedroom.

From the picture above, yesterday Matt blew insulation into the entire attic over the entire house. If you buy 20 bags of the blow-in insulation from Home Depot you get the machine for free for a day. We had bought one bag that Matt had pulled apart by hand and it was awful. So he talked with the guys at Home Depot about the machine and they told him this deal. It is really a two man job - one to blow it in and one to keep reloading the machine but Matt did it all himself, what a trooper. Running up and down the attic stairs to refill the machine. We even got to return 2 bags in the end that we didn't use.

We went to Home Depot 4 times yesterday. We did try Lowe's last weekend and I actually didn't really like it so we are now true Home Depot shoppers. So about those baseboards.. not sure how bright the white is that I am going to paint them but the primer is pretty bright. In fact, if you look closely you can tell it doesn't match the door frames and windows. I am inclined to paint the door frames as well but the prepping would take me another week. Knowing me I'll probably go through with it, but we'll see.

Also, does anyone have a reciprocating saw we can borrow?