Blogging drought

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

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

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..

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

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

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

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!