Blessings

It's been hard not talking about the biggest thing going on in our life, but I can finally share with the world (or at least 9 of you awesome followers) that The Husband and I are expecting our first child early next year! Our little bundle of joy has blessed us in so many ways and I can't believe it's already been three months.

Baby S. is set to make his or her appearance on or around February 14, 2012. Yes, Valentine's Day. The Husband and I got engaged on 2/13/08, so that is definitely a special time of year for us, but I sort of hope the baby doesn't arrive on V-Day. First of all, we already have two different sets of friends who had their babies on the same day, so it would definitely be a shared birthday. Loving my own birthday as much as I do, I would hate that for our little one :( Also, while we have never been big V-Day celebraters (ors?), I hate to think that we'll never have our own little romantic night out, just the two of us, again. I would never want to leave our little one alone on his or her birthday, just so we could have some alone time on, what some consider, a "Hallmark Holiday."

So that's the news going on in our world. What's happening with you?

Happy 4th of July!

I am still at working, trying to get everything finished up before I head out for 10 days of vacation with The Husband and our little ones - Finn and Samson! We are heading up north for the week and we are super excited!

I hope everyone has a safe and happy 4th of July! Enjoy the warmth, the time off work, the celebration, the fireworks, and the time with friends and family :)

The Husband keeps saying "Winter's almost here!" I keep wanting to smack him. In my mind, Summer just got started and already he is talking about winter. Part of me thinks he is doing it just to irritate me :)

Either way, I do feel like Summer is speeding by without taking a breather and it makes me so sad! I can't believe it's almost July. We are heading up north for our yearly get away to Grand Lake and Cross Village and we arer SUPER excited! Both of us are looking forward to long days on the water, boating, the sandbar, exploring the small towns and just relaxing. This is one of my favorite weeks out of the whole year and I'm so glad I get to spend it with The Husband. Last year, he could only take a few days off for the 4th, so I continued to Cross Village on my own. However, this year he gets to join in ALL the fun! :)

Life in our household is still chaning day by day and we are anxious to get away and just enjoy each other, away from all the hustle and bustle (and stress) of our jobs. We both work long days and are pretty much dead to the world by the time we get to spend a few hours together at night. We can't wait to just relax and enjoy...

Mish Mash

Sorry for the absence, but after The Husband's health scare and my (unexpected) 6 day vacation from work, it was hard to get back into the swing of things.

*Work seriously kicked my butt last week. On Thursday, my computer got a nasty virus and wouldn't let me get online, which I need to do for some of my job responsibilties.

*The virus got fixed on Friday morning, but I still had quite a few issues that needed to get ironed out. Computer issues + the half day we got on Friday due to Good Friday (that I had forgotten about) = this girl working a full day anyway (but scoring three hours of overtime - YAHOO!). It was a long week!

*Our first party went smashingly well back on 4/16. It was great to have everyone over and actually still have room to move about. Our old condo was so small and it was difficult to have more then four people over at a time, especially if they have kids.

*It has been raining non-stop (at least that's how it feels) forever! I know I should count myself lucky since it seems as if the rest of the United States is being bombarded by tornado after tornado lately, but I just really wish the rain would stop! I am ready to work on the outside of our house. Plus, I just really want our yard to get a chance to DRY OUT!

*The Husband got me a Pandora bracelet for my birthday. Before I received it, I wasn't sure if it was my taste, but I think I will love it the more beads I add. They have beautiful glass beads that I LOVE and that will help make it more my style. The only problem now is that my two measly beads keep sliding all over and end up next to the clasp :)

*As previously mentioned, there have been tornados and other forms of devastation all over the world lately. Seriously, what is going on?!?! I feel like the world is getting back at us for slowly killing it. You know what I mean? All the hurricanes and tsunamis and earthquakes...and now tornados? I am in disbelief that 13 people lost their lives in Tuscaloosa yesterday. I feel so saddened and helpless.

*I really, really want to go back to Disney World! My parents took our family last April and it was the first time I had been since visiting back in 1999. It was The Husband's FIRST visit and he LOVED it! Seriously, he wanted to buy into the vacation club! Anyway, I am trying to find a way for us to go back, on our own. I am hoping they will offer free dining again over the holidays, because I would love to show him what the World looks like all decked out for Christmas!

*It is almost the weekend and I couldn't be happier! The sun is supposed to be out and in full effect on Saturday so we might actually get to do some outdoor work. Rain until Friday morning, though, so we'll see how much everything dries up!

Hope you are having a great week!

Our new digs: Christmas edition

Here are the before pictures of the house and the after pictures of what we've done so far. We've painted the 3 bedrooms, painted the kitchen, replaced the floor in the kitchen, pulled out the carpet in the living room to expose the hardwoods underneath, and replaced the carpet in the family room.

Before:















And after, starting with the master bedroom:
























There's still lots of work to be done. After the holidays, we want to take down the wallpaper in the family room and paint the fireplace brick (red) and the walls (a tan color). We also want to paint the living room, foyer, upstairs hallway, 2nd bathroom. We have a HUGE main bathroom that we'd like to update as well. So you can see, lots of projects. Closet doors still need to be painted and hung back up, curtains need to be hung. The biggest project we have in our future is to gut the kitchen and really make use of all the empty wall space and creat a warm, functional gathering place.

Hope you all enjoyed my first house tour. MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Christmas cards vs. Our new address vards?

I always have such high aspirations of being this Martha Stewart-Betty Crocker-Ty Pennington wife, but I can never quite get there. I work long days in a city that's about a 40 minute drive from where we live and by the time I get home and either cook dinner or eat dinner with The Husband, I have no energy and it's pretty much bedtime. I subscribe to Better Homes & Gardens, I read tons of blogs that give such good decorating/home improvement/cooking ideas, but the reality is, I'd rather spend those few precious hours (sometimes minutes) after work with The Husband before he falls asleep (which is usually the way it works in our household. I'm a night owl, he is not).

We got married on 12/27/08 and last year would've been the year to send out our first family christmas card with a wedding photo on it. Well...we missed that bus. Now we have moved into a new home and I'd really like to do a christmas card with pictures from all the fun stuff we did this year, as well as a photo or two of our new home. However, I haven't gotten on the ball yet (did I mention I work 10 hour days?) and now I don't know what to do. I've designed a couple and have been happy with the result, but because we are thinking about including a picture of the house with our new address, we;d have to get a folded card, not just a flat one. I've designed one I really like at Shutterfly but, while not expensive themselves, we'd need to order around 100 cards, maybe more, plus postage = more money then I'd like and money that we should really be putting toward the house.

Here are some of the cards I found at Shutterfly. We have a lot of friends/family who do not celebrate Christmas, but I still want to include them in our seasons greetings, so we prefer to stay away from the "Merry Christmas" cards.


I love the colors and style of this card.
This card is my absolute favorite. I LOVE the saying and the monogram! Plus, it has enough room for us to put pictures of all the fun things we did this past year on the front and then room for a picture (or three or four) of the new house! Plus, this song ("What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong) played while The Husband and I did our candle lighting during our wedding ceremony.

Absolutely LOVE this card. The message is so simple and the perfect way to send our friends and family joyous holiday greetings.

Again, I love the colors of this card and the message is so simple, yet is exactly what we want to say.

Some flat cards I've found that I really like, but not sure will work for including our new address (They don't give you a lot of room to add anything more than your name):
So cute! Love the colors, love the message and LOVE the picture of the two little ones. Adorable!
Super cute!
Adore this one with all the fun colors and it's a very cute way to let your family and friends know what you've been up to this year. I love it so much, I think I might have to try and make this one work for our card. I'll keep you posted!

So what do you all think? Is it better to do a holiday card with our new address...or would it be best to just send out store bough christmas cards and through in a card that has our new address? I know store bought is so not Martha Stewart of me, but with time closing in and our "house want" pile growing bigger and bigger, what's a girl to do? Or do you think we should wait until after the holidays and send out a "We've moved" postcard? What do you think?