Thursday, August 5, 2010

100!!!!

I thought my one-hundredth post would be more climactic than this...whoops.

Last Friday morning, Kennedy & I bombed our house for fleas. Then when we got home that afternoon, we spent 6-7 hours cleaning EVERYTHING. (Just an FYI, fleas are gone for now...)

Except I lied to myself because I didn't really clean everything. I cleaned the main rooms where we hang out (Kitchen, Living Room, Bedroom), and piled all our crap in all the other rooms (read: office.)

I'm swimming in junk mail and folders and books and loose change as I type this. I am proud of us though, because those other rooms have stayed fairly clean. Wanna know how I did it?

When I'm in the bedroom and I'm tempted to leave my laundry on the floor, I hear a little voice saying "Why can't you just put those away?"

When I'm in the kitchen and I'm tempted to leave dirty dishes on the counter or in the sink, the voice tells me, "Let's try to keep this kitchen clean, ok?"

When I'm in the living room and I want to leave all my craft supplies all over the coffee table, the voice is all "The dogs are going to get into that if you leave it out."

Where is this voice coming from all of a sudden? My husband's mouth.

Poor Kennedy is stuck with a messy wife.

Also, on a different topic, I'm pretty sure my contact lens prescription is 3 years old.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

The People Under the Stairs

Luckily, I didn't find anyone under our stairs. It wouldn't have been completely shocking, though. It was literally brimming over with STUFF. It became a catch-all for stuff we hadn't found a place for yet.


Does anyone know where I can find artwork to hang in my house? Oh, every piece of art ever created is in the closet under my stairs? Awesome!

So then, ALL BY MYSELF, I hung some shelves in there.

Yes, I did that. Alone. Me. And they're perfectly level.

But it didn't end there. No, my friends, then something amazing happened. 

I organized all our DVDs into leather boxes for those shelves, and separated them by genre.

Jealous?

Then I waited about 2 months before I did anything else. And slowly but surely, things began piling up.
Yesterday, after reading other people's blogs about organizing stuff, I got an itch to finish what I'd started.

Behold! Floor space!


I organized my gift wrapping supplies, and reserved the top shelf for games. Anyone wanna come play Scrabble? I know where to find it! Or perhaps we could have Mancala Hour (name that movie and you get a kiss attack from Elvis.)


It's sad, but I'm in love with this closet now. I think I'll leave the door open all the time so I can take in the organization.

Stay tuned for throw pillow day!



Monday, August 2, 2010

Bad News, Good News

Time for an installment of one of my favorite mind games, Bad News, Good News!

Bad News: Elvis was constipated for the past week because he wasn't drinking enough water.
Good News: He finally started drinking water and did "#2"!
Bad News: He did "#2" in the house, upstairs, in my bathroom, on my bath mat.
Good News: He didn't pee!
Bad News: This time.


What's more insane? How many photos I have of this dog, or how different he looks in each of them?

Sunday, August 1, 2010

It's true...

I lied.

I said I would blog yesterday, but then I didn't. I've been putting it off for over a month (with valid reason!) but I am back, my friends! Who knew life would get so incredibly busy this summer? I thought summer was for laying in my crystal clear pool (thanks to my wonderful pool boy/husband.) Unfortunately (or fortunately, however you choose to look at it,) I have been busy training to become a teacher! I have finished about 120 hours of classes all about teaching, I have passed a test that qualifies me to teach 4 subjects in grades 4-8, and I am busy plugging away at job applications. I am a little worried at how close to the start of the school year it is, and me without a job, BUT I must have faith that I will find something!

So with all of that plus my normal responsibilities, you can see how I have had little time to do household projects, let alone blog about them.

And the truth is, where do I even begin??? I feel like I almost have to reintroduce myself to all 5 of you reading. Thank you for still reading.

Let's just refer to this post as a photo-dump. That way, I do not have to follow any rhyme or reason in this post. It will be somewhat of a stream-of-consciousness picture book. If there has never been such a thing, well here it is now!

Last I blogged, I had just come home from a dear friend's wedding, followed by some fun time with Stephanie & our mother-in-law, Jennifer.

Here we are at Jennifer's wedding. This seems to be the only decent photo we have where Kennedy isn't drenched in sweat. Unfortunately, we tend to lose track of time dancing at weddings and forget to get photos before-hand.

The wedding was beautiful, magical, sentimental, and perfect. Here are a couple of photos of the bride - I hope she doesn't get mad at me for blogging about her....


Jennifer got married, and it was in and of itself a milestone event, but the post important part of that weekend was that Jaclyn & I found a tree to hang off of like animals.


So, good thing! We were starting to get worried we'd never be able to scratch that off our bucket lists.

Next, I jetted over to St. Louis for a fun conference. Here are Stephanie & I with a couple of celebrities!



So that's the abbreviated recap of my past month. The rest was spent in a classroom, learning how to teach. 

Now I can't leave without sharing at least ONE project. I've really been able to get a few things done in the past month, so perhaps I'll share things worth sharing over the next few blog posts. Unless I decide to take another month off.

This one is something I've been looking to do for a while now, but haven't been able to find the right frame. I'd been trying to find an old, cheap framed photo or painting that I could convert into a cute bulletin board for my laundry room. It was really feeling kind of monotone in there for a while, and I thought a cork board would warm it up a bit.

Here's the before thing:



A little paint, distressing, glue and cork board, and I had a nice, new addition to my laundry room! And the whole project cost me $3.00 (for the frame.) I already had the paint & the cork in my house!


Now that my busy season is winding down, I have a long list of household to-dos to do (how'd you like that?). Expect more updates - CHEAP updates!

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