Snow!

We got a few inches of snow Thursday night and Friday. It made it very hard to go to work but it was so pretty!

Lily liked playing in the snow, too!

Thankful Thursdays

I'm thankful for:

• people (including my dear friend, Lisa) who are using their God-given talents to help all of the people in need
• that rescuers found another survivor in the rubble. What an amazing miracle.
• for the snow falling on the ground. It'll be a rough drive to work tomorrow but wow is it beautiful!

His Hands

A new favorite song. SO thankful to know that how no matter how much my hands mess up, HIS hands will always protect me.

"Established" Sign

I can officially cross out a project on my project list! I'm very happy with the way it turned out - it's not perfect but I made it!

It's hanging on the wall in our entry now!

Favorite Shopping Spots @ Kelly's Korner

We're sharing our favorite shopping spots this week on Kelly's - I can't wait to see where everyone likes to shop and hopefully find a few new favorites!

Mike laughs at me because I do enjoy shopping but I very rarely buy anything unless I have a coupon or it's on sale. I think it's funny too but my Mom did the same thing when I was growing up so I got it from her and I've found that I enjoy my "deals" so much more than anything I spend more money on.

As for my favorite places to shop.... most of my clothes are from two places:

and

I like the styles and the prices (especially with those sales and coupons!). Not to mention the fact that I can actually find pants that are long enough for me at Gap - yay for their "Tall" option online! :-)

I also like H&M but we don't have one where I live so I only get to go when we visit family.

If I weren't worried about prices so much, I'd frequent these places quite a bit more often:

I got my favorite coat on sale from J. Crew a few years ago and want to get another one in a new color eventually but I have to wait for my size in the right color to go on sale. :-)

And who doesn't enjoy the spunk that Anthro's clothes bring? I think they're so fun!

Thankful Thursdays

I'm thankful for:

• food on our table
• a roof over our heads
• clothes to keep us warm
• our new bed and all the room that comes with a king size mattress
• my wonderful family
• another weekend that's almost here
• people who are able and willing to help so many people desperately in need
• that so many families, who have been waiting to be with their children are now together. I'm am glad such joy can come out of the earthquake in Haiti

Thankful Thursdays

I'm thankful for:

• warmer weather. Funny, I go from being very anxious for cooler weather when it's hot, to wanting warmer weather when it has been freezing. Amazing how 40 degrees feels like summer right now. :-)
• the manners my parents taught me when I was little and that little things go a LONG way.
• continuing to make our house feel like a home.
• amazing blessings from and for friends
• getting to see my family this weekend

DaySpring signs

How fun is this!?! DaySpring has a way that you can customize any sign you want with the name, quote, color, etc. that you want on it. There are TONS of signs to pick from, too!

Go check it out!

Decorative Sign (Style 1039) Sign 16"w x 7"h x 5/8"d $39.95 DESIGN APPROVED

The Current Project List

• refinish Poppop's chair
• make sunflower pillow (like this one) for the living room couch. My artistic painting skills aren't that great so we'll see how that turns out.
• make a cake stand like this one - such a fun and brilliant idea and yay for saving $$!
• refinish this table
• paint the basement room floor
• finish a scrap book for my my Mom's and my two week trip to Paris/England/Ireland in 2004 (yep, that far behind...)
• finish scrap booking our road trip from the summer
• make a "snuggie" for Mike
• make a bath robe for Mike
• make a sign with our last name & "Est. 2007" on it to hang in our little entry. I've been meaning to order one but, due to my indecisiveness, can't figure out exactly what I want it to look like so I'm doing it myself. That way if I don't like it, I have only myself to blame. :-)
• make a new headboard for the KING SIZE mattress we bought yesterday
• make a bedskirt for same said bed
• make a curtain for our bathroom window (don't worry, the window is actually a bunch of glass tiles but it needs something to soften it up a little)

Resolutions

Yep, I'm a little late getting these up but Kelly is hosting a "share your resolutions" day today so it works!

2010 Resolutions:

• Read my Bible more.
• Loosen up a little - I like things "just so" and need to remember that everything doesn't need to be that way for me to relax and just enjoy.
• Work on not talking about me so much. I feel like I talk about my stories and experiences all the time. I think it's my way of trying to relate to people and make sure they know I understand to some level but I want to listen more.
• Read more books.
• Finish more house projects.

What are your resolutions?

Thankful Thursdays

After a two week hiatus, I'm back and have SO much to be thankful for but what else is new? :-)

• a wonderful Christmas break with Mike's family
• (missing the snow that could have caused delays in travel to and from Vancouver)
• a double date night with my parents when they were in town
• so many fun memories that have come flooding back while watching the family video DVDs my Mom (and Dad) gave me for Christmas
• knowing that one day I'll be able to ride horses with my Poppop again one day and not just hear his voice and watch him on a video on t.v.
• a good start to the first week back at work
• my wonderfully loving, funny, intelligent, caring (and so much more) husband who just rocks
• getting little house projects done here and there
• new motivation to have a "do it now" mentality
• that tomorrow is Friday. I know I say it all the time but good grief the first week after two weeks off is rough!

The Unfinished Room

Our unfinished basement room is aching to be finished. Well, more like I'm aching to finish it. :-)

We use the room for storage right now and after a few months, a tornado looks like it hit the room so I really want to get it finished so it can serve as something other than a "dumping ground".

Here are the plans:

I want to paint the floors with a checker board pattern. I thought I wanted to do black and white but the more I think about it the more I think a grey and cream would work better with the rest of the basement. Once that's done, we'll find a rug to warm the room up a little

Two of the walls will be the khaki that's in our bedroom and the extra bedroom in the basement, one will be red just because I like the color, and the fourth will be a chalkboard wall (or at least a good portion of one of the walls).

From there, we'll move Mike's computer desk and other computer stuff out of the alcove in the main part of the basement so he can have a room to play and work with all of that stuff and I'll set up a little table and area for my scrapbooking/crafts. The best part is, we won't have to clean up when we're in the middle of something like we do now- we'll just close the door!

We'll also keep the closet area as our storage area. I want to build a bunch of shelving in there to help keep things organized.

Now to paint the floors, frame and drywall the walls, build shelves, paint and move everything in!

MORE House Stuff

I'm sure ya'll are tired of seeing stuff about our house but I have so much fun making our house a home and this is my way of documenting everything we've done. (So thanks for hanging in there with me!) :-)

My sweet Mom was walking up our basement stairs the other night and we heard a big crash. When my Dad and I ran upstairs we found the floater frame that used to hold this picture on the ground in three pieces so I ran out yesterday to get a new, sturdier version of the floater frame.

When I was out getting the new frame, I saw three aisles of home decor stuff on clearance at Hobby Lobby and this little wire basket was perfect for on top of the toilet. $3 is hard to beat.

My next little project is to find frames to hang above our side tables in the bedroom since we hardly have anything on the walls in there. The catch with that is that I wanted to move the lamps to the outside of the table but Mike found a great solution! (see below)

See that little white box thing? It's a switch on the end of an extension cord so those "hard to reach" switches are a little more accessible. Mike only got one so we could make sure it would work but it does so we'll get another one and then we'll stick them onto the back of our side tables so we can easily turn on/off the lamps next to the bed. I know it sounds lazy but when the temperature outside is in the single digits the last thing you want to do is get halfway out of bed so you can turn the lamp off. :-)

My parents stayed at our house on their way to and from Texas last week and they brought this mirror back from Poppop's house. I asked Mom what she was going to do with the mirror and she asked if I wanted it. Of course, if it came from a family member's house then I love having it around and since she didn't have plans for it other than to keep it, I got to keep it. (my grandpa found the actual mirror and asked a guy to frame it, when he went to pick it up the guy had chipped around the mirror to make it fit the frame rather than make a new frame to fit the mirror and because of that story, my Mom wanted to keep the mirror)

Now I need to figure out where I'm going to hang it!

I'm working on another post to show you my plans for our unfinished basement room. I'm VERY excited about it!

(the post below is new, too, by the way)

Why Didn't I Think About This Earlier?!

One of my New Year's Resolutions is to spend less time on the computer and more time with Mike, focusing on things that need to be done around the house (or just fun things I want to do), and spending more time with my Bible (something I really need to work on).

SO, today I was organizing some things in our office and found my old camera. I decided to see if it still worked since our "new" camera is currently on it's way to somewhere so the flash can be fixed and low and behold, IT WORKS! (we got the new camera because the old one decided to not work consistently) All this to say - I have pictures to show you. Nothing all that great but something to look at other than words. :-)

First of all, we got more snow last night. Here's the view out our front door today. We're supposed to get more later this week...

Here are my two favorite gifts this year: the first two pictures are of a "book" that my Mom gave me and each of my brothers. She has spent the last two years scanning all of our old family pictures and then having our old VHS tape converted to DVD so that we all have copies of every family movie and all of the pictures of us growing up. I'm only 3 discs in to the movies but they are so funny to watch. I love hearing my Poppop's voice, too, oh how I miss him!

I also got cowboy boots. I haven't had a pair since I was little and was so excited to find a good pair for a GREAT price. My Mom and Dad ended up buying them for me and I can't wait to wear them with cute skirts and dresses this summer. (now to find those cute skirts and dresses...)

Hope ya'll are enjoying the last day of your breaks! (assuming everyone is going back to work tomorrow...)