Laziness & Projects - Compete with Pictures :)

So while I've had good intentions about blogging for the past week, they've never quite materialized into a tangible post.

I had planned to blog about my current Range Rover love; there's a Land Rover dealership right down the road from us, and I think I'm borderline obsessed with them right now. But, then we went to church Sunday morning and the sermon was on not coveting things, so then I felt bad about dedicating an entire post to how badly I wanted a way-out-of-my-price range SUV that I really don't need.

And then I was going to blog about how Sunday marked exactly 8 years since hubby and I started dating and was going to scan in some old pictures of us just for kicks, but I didn't want to go upstairs and use the crappy/slow computer that the scanner is connected to, so that never came to be either.

But, while I've been super lazy about blogging, I have actually knocked out some projects at the house (it's about time). Since I'm unemployed and have seemingly endless free time on my hands, I've been trying to tackle one large project a day in hopes that I can pace myself and actually get everything done how I want it the first time and not have to be constantly redoing it. This is a totally new concept for me. So I thought I would share some of the progress I have made, sorry if this is ultra-boring and the pictures are crappy.

Project #1 was to get our bookcases set up. I absolutely love books and our's had been packed up for over a month, and it just made me sad. So, here is a picture of our living room that I stole from the realtor's webpage before we moved into the house.
The wooden door is our front door, and the rounded doorway leads to the hallway with the two spare bedrooms. And the space in between is where we put our bookshelves. So, it now looks like this:

Project #2 - hanging pictures on the wall by the stairs. In our apartment we had put a bunch of picture frames up on the wall beside our stairs, and I always really liked it, so we decided to do the same type of thing here. Here is a picture of all the photos in the apartment:


The house has a stairway that comes down into the kitchen and leads up to the bonus room above the garage. I have big plans for the bonus room, but have to do a little furniture shopping first. We'll have to talk more about it later. Here is a realtor picture of the stairs
And here is the wall beside the stairs now:

I actually think I like them a lot better here than I did in the apartment. What do you think? For the apartment I bought the frames a few at a time so they kind of just had to fit into whatever empty space I could find. But here my OCD really kicked in and I sat down for about an hour laying them out on the floor before I decided exactly how I wanted them. I do kind of miss the 'family' and 'friends' words we had on the walls before, but they were those vinyl letters and you can't reuse them, so I would have to find some more. Do you like it better with just the frames or with frames and words?

Yesterday's project was not nearly as entertaining and I don't have a before picture, so it's not at all dramatic. I worked on the garage for about 3 1/2 hours yesterday, and trust me you did not want to see it before. It was still a mess of empty boxes, Christmas decorations, and junk that was wherever it had landed when it came off the truck. We have a TON of Christmas decorations partially because we got married at Christmas and had a bunch of decorations for the wedding, and partially because I love decorating for Christmas so much!

Anyway all the Christmas decorations went into one of the guest bedroom closets, and the boxes went up in to the attic. (Short sidebar, while we're on this, can someone please tell me how we moved from a 1200 square foot apartment into a 2100 square foot house complete with attic, garage, an extra bedroom and about 4 times the closet space, and the house is still full? That's math I can't do.) So, after all of that here's what the garage looked like after:

Like I said, it's really nothing to write home about, but I'm pretty proud of it. The shelves are all organized and I hung up all the rackets and everything. ;)

Next up on the list is the guest bedroom. We have two spare bedrooms, but I'm going to use one as my office/craft room, it has a twin size bed in it just in case we have more guests. But the other room has a full-size bed in it and pretty much nothing else right now. In fact I'm pretty sure the only reason there is bedding on the bed is because my parent's stayed with us the night we moved in. But my brother and his girlfriend (who I haven't seen since they moved to Seattle in April), are coming to stay with us in a couple of weeks, so I want it to look presentable by then. Here is where we're at for now:
The lamp is not staying in there because it's totally the wrong scale, so I'm going to have to find new lamps. I think I have a spare night table somewhere around here to go on the other side of the bed too. Other than that though, I really have no concrete ideas/plans.

I have some antique-white colored shelves that I could put above the bed, I also have some more picture frames and a medium-large black framed mirror that haven't found a home here yet, but I'm just not sure. What do you think would look good above the bed?

At my parent's house I also have an antique bed frame that my great-grandparents bought when they first got married that I could refinish it and use it in this room. I just can't decide if I want to do that or not.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated!

Weekend in Review

We had such a great/busy weekend! Friday afternoon my brother called to see if Jonathan and I wanted to go to Late Nights at the Dallas Museum of Art. Apparently once a month the DMA stays open until midnight and has lots of late night special exhibits, performances, lectures and workshops. We thought it sounded great, so when Jonathan got home and changed we drove to Mockingbird Station and had dinner at Margarita Ranch. The margaritas were delicious and the food was fantastic! I've noticed a pattern though, we eat at a lot of Mexican/Tex-Mex places! I think probably 4 out of the past 5 times we've eaten out it's been Mexican...
Us at Margarita Ranch, not a great picture, because it and the next two were taken with my phone.

After dinner we met up with James and took the train into downtown and headed to the museum. It was probably 9:30 by the time we got there, but it was really cool to be at the museum late at night. They had a feature exhibit on art depicting performing arts, which was very interesting and in the middle of the exhibit they had a flamenco dancing performance. It was such a fun thing to see, and really made me wish I could dance better! I tried to take some pictures with my phone, but it didn't work too well.

We ended up leaving the museum around 11:30 and took a cab back to Mockingbird Station. By the time we got home it was almost 1:00, which for us is way later than we're used to being out, we usually act like an old couple and are home before midnight.

The next morning we woke up bright and early and went to the Farmer's Market in Frisco Square. I really wanted to go because it was supposed to be the last weekend of it until next May, but they decided to extend it through the next two weekends, so I'm really happy about that. There were so many vendors there and not just with fresh veggies. We bought some farm raised and smoked ham, some fresh pasta, and some blackberry jam in addition to our produce.

This is the husband at the Farmer's Market Saturday morning. I don't think he was very happy about having his picture taken, but I've not been taking nearly enough pictures of things lately, and I looked like crap, so I forced him to be a good sport.

They were also having a Jaguar car show in front of the library. The cars were pretty much awesome, and they looked like a bunch of James Bond cars lined up out front. This was my favorite one:



Saturday afternoon I left Jonathan at home to do the lawn, and I went with my cousin Sarah to a lot of fabric markets in Dallas to try and find some lace for her wedding dress! She knows exactly what she wants it to look like, but is having trouble finding it, so she's looking into having it made. We found some really amazing options, kind of makes me wish I was getting married!

After a few hours of shopping we went back to the house and made dinner and watched Confessions of a Shopaholic, which I pretty much hated. I read all 5 books this summer, and I really liked them. I feel like they could have made a great movie, but they totally botched it up. It wasn't even that the movie didn't exactly follow the book, it could have been like The Devil Wears Prada, it doesn't completely follow the book, but is still a great movie, but no.

Sunday after church and lunch, the husband and I pretty much laid around all day watching seasons of The Office on Netflix. It was really nice to be lazy, because we were worn out! Jonathan's been working the past two days and I am still trying to get our house exactly like I want it. I keep moving things around trying to get them perfect. I think it's going to take a while, but we'll get there...

I hope you all had a great weekend too, and I can't believe tomorrow's Wednesday. How is this week already half over?
Jennifer

Random Ramblings

One of my favorite things about moving somewhere new is all the restaurants, but it's also pretty weird when you don't really know what is good and what's not. There are SO many restaurants close to our house and I want to try them all, but a)that would cost a fortune and b)I don't know if I'm quite that brave. Plus I like to cook too much to eat out that much, and there are also some really great grocery stores close by. We've decided that we'll try one or two new local places a week and see if we can find some good favorites.

So, tonight we went to a place called Mattito's Tex-Mex in Frisco Square. Since it FINALLY stopped raining and actually turned out to be an amazingly beautiful and cool (I was wearing a long sleeved shirt and jeans and was fine!) night, we ate out on the patio and it was wonderful! I wish I would have taken some pictures, but I didn't wear any makeup today, and let's face it, no one really wants to see that. The food was also really good! Jonathan had the sour cream chicken enchiladas, which are pretty much his ruler by which all Mexican food is measured; if the sour cream enchiladas and the salsa are good-he likes it. I had some avocado enchiladas with a cilantro cream sauce and they were absolutely fantastic! YUM! I wish I knew a recipe to make them at home! I may have to do some experimenting...

In other news, Jonathan started his new job yesterday, and even though he's still in orientation, he comes home excited about his job which hasn't happened in a really long time. I'm excited for him that he's happy, and I really hope he continues to be!

While at he's at work, I've been at home, REALLY trying to finish up my online classes to get my teaching certificate. With all this moving crap I've been really lazy about doing school work, and after taking a two month hiatus, I really have to get my butt in gear now! I did an entire class in the last two days, so if I can keep this pace up, I should be done within a month! :)

That's all for now, but I promise one of these days I'm going to start putting pictures on my posts again. I can honestly say though, right now I have absolutely no clue where my camera is. I'm also missing some picture frames and books, maybe they're all together?

Goodnight all,
Jennifer

Who I Feel Like Today..

only minus the cute grin on my face! I have been in a not too pleasant mood all day long! I don't want to work on the house, I'm tired of cleaning, unpacking, rearranging, etc. And, I really do love my husband more than anyone in the world, but I have been with him just about 24/7 since Monday, and he's about to drive me crazy. I really feel sorry for him, because he's not really done anything to make me mad, just everything that he says just about irritates the fire out of me.

I blame the weather.

BLAH!

I am however thankful it's Friday today, because with only two exceptions for weddings, it's the first weekend that Jonathan has had off in over a year. Which means that Sunday will be the first time we've been able to go to church together in well over a year. So, here's to hoping I will be in a MUCH better mood for the remainder of the weekend, and that we will be able to find a good church home to go to TOGETHER!

Jennifer

Smells Like Pumpkin Spice

So, we are finally starting to settle in the new house! Finally may be a tad dramatic seeing as we only moved not even two weeks ago and we were back in T-town for four days last weekend. It just feels like it's been forever since we've been settled, so it feels sooo good!!

I thought I had all the boxes unpacked but I think I spied one more big one in garage this afternoon, and there's a box with my great-grandmother's china still in the pantry. BUT, other than those two... Today we started actually decorating the place, which let's face it, is totally the best part of moving!

And, somewhere between all this moving mess we've been in for the last couple of months, it turned into fall!! I feel like I totally skipped August, and can't believe September is a third of the way over, but I'm so excited! I absolutely LOVE fall! I won't get into the wonderfulness of football, and colorful leaves, and boots weather, because I think everyone else blogged on this a week ago, but I'm so happy!

I found a big box of fall decorations that I pretty much forgot existed, and I've been able to put them all out with our regular stuff. Seriously one of my favorite parts of fall is pumpkin spice candles. I LOOOOVE the smell of pumpkin candles and start looking forward to them about mid-July.

I bought a really great Smith & Hawken candle from Target last year that was shaped like a pumpkin, and it smelled absolutely WONDERFUL while it burned, but only about 1" diameter of the middle actually burned before the wick was gone. So, I came up with this brilliant idea to chop up the candle with a butcher knife, (which was not as easy as I thought, and I really don't suggest it), and I would be able to put it in a jar on my candle warmer this year.

I had totally forgotten about doing this until I opened up the box of fall decor and found two gallon ziploc bags of chopped up pumpkin candle. But, for the past two days I've had some of those pieces in a jar on my candle warmer and the whole house smells AMAZING! Yum, yum, yum, I love fall!!

Now it's after midnight and I'm about to pass out on top of my laptop, so I leave more ramblings for another day!

Goodnight!!

Jennifer