december 2012

The last month of 2012 looked a little like this...

I look forward to Southern Comfort egg nog each year.  

With a few sprinkles of nutmeg and cinnamon, it's like dessert!

While my mind is now focused on desserts, I should also mention that I love hot chocolate!

What's better than sweets?

Diamonds!

Hubs surprised me with these little pretties for our one year anniversary.

I'm a lucky girl.

He also bought me this!

Kidding!

It's one of the private/corporate jets that CJ details.

Hubs has a talent for making older planes look new, no doubt.

He's taken his knowledge of all things paint related along with his eye for detail and applied it to refurbishing older furniture.  He's so talented!  

Below is an old sewing table that he made over and gave as a gift to his sister and BIL for Christmas.

When he's not busy at work or looking for his next furniture project...he's building fires.

We love our fireplace - I think we make one three or more nights a week!   

For the record, I do things too!

Pictures of me folding laundry, cleaning the bathroom, or unloading the dishwasher just aren't very cute.

Pictures of food are more interesting!

This Chicken Cordon Bleu Recipe is easy and yummy.

This Beef Stroganoff Recipe was also very good.

This recipe for the best sandwiches ever is one of our favorites.  We crave it!

Have I convinced anyone that I slave over the oven day in and day out?

Maybe?  Yes?  Good!

By the way, if you truly are convinced, you are probably one of those people that fall for the "free cruise" phone calls with waves crashing and seagulls squawking in the background.  

What does consume a lot of my time at home is rounding up puppy dog hair.

This picture was taken after spending only fifteen minutes with my Furminator.

Because this little puppy dog seems to have a hair turnover rate of about 3 seconds.

Oh, and keeping Polly out of the fireplace...and out of everything else for that matter!

Wait!  AND keeping Bill off of our laptop.

No matter how much trouble they cause, we love our fur kids.

They sure do keep us laughing!

Look at this picture closer.

See that squirrel?  

So did Bill.

Polly missed it.  Honestly, she probably didn't care.  

She'd rather watch television than nature any day.

We also had a great time preparing for Christmas.

I really enjoyed wrapping presents.

CJ really enjoyed framing his face with tinsel wreaths in restaurants.  

What would any month be without pizza?

Not a good one!

We visited Slice a few times.

The Rockefeller pizza is yumm-o to my tumm-o.

Oh.

And...

My brother asked his girlfriend, Mary, to be his wife on Christmas day!

I am so excited for them!

As if that wasn't enough excitement, my cousin Victoria met her little girl on January 1st at around 11 am!  

So, that's our December. 

xo

august 2012

You know those days when you feel mentally maxed out?

Last week I felt I had too much on my plate.  It was as though I was a kid in the cafeteria being served heaping spoon fulls of junk that I didn't want, all while saying, "no thanks!"

There were times when I wanted to scream or cry. 
There were times when I wanted to scream and cry.
Instead, I prayed.
And I remembered to be still.
Psalm 37:7-9, James 1:19-20

Sometimes you just have to roll with the punches. 

In other news not related to me taking a visit to Crazy Town...

We've been refurbishing a table and eight chairs that my wonderfully sweet SIL gave us.  We're going to use it in the dining room at our new house.  No before and after photos yet!  I promised the hubs we'd wait until we're all done.
But here's one with primer on it!

Hubs and I made this cute little wall art.  It didn't take long at all.  

Because he loves me.

Ah, next week.
(I'm already getting anxiety about leaving my angel dog)

 Last weekend my Aunt Jo, Uncle Bill, and cousin Victoria came to Birmingham.  I was so excited for their visit!  I hadn't seen Victoria in a long time.  We had lunch at Cheesecake Factory and went shopping.  We had a blast!!

Olympics!
We've watched a lot of gymnastics and swimming and I may or may not have done google searches for pictures of Kate Middleton at the games.  Go USA!

Even when life's frustrations seem overwhelming, there are sweet little blessings sprinkled in the mix.  That's what makes this short time here all the more special, sweet little blessings.

Almost the weekend!

xo

Hubs and I both enjoy making old furniture new. 
Some would call this refurbishing. 
I call it refabishing.
We're constantly looking for our next masterpiece.
CJ's grandmother gave us this old sewing table and we could not have been more excited to give it a face lift.  It may be one of my new favorite pieces.  It's darling!

The only required prep was a good sanding job on the top.  We used Krylon's spraypaint with primer then applied a couple layers of polyurethane to protect it.  The handles were less than $5 at Wal-Mart.  Ta-da!

Note:  When looking for inspiration or instruction I always, always use this trusty site.

It's been so nice outside, I decided to pull out my green thumb and plant a few flowers and herbs.  I plan on making another trip back to our home improvement store for even more pretty flowers and fresh herbs.  Ahh, can't wait to add fresh mint to my tea!

These two have been enjoying the weather...

I've enjoyed the view...

It's Saturday now and we have two birthdays to celebrate today!
Happy Weekend!
xo

voila!

We are finished with our furniture painting project! 

It took us three weeks, but we were very careful to follow all of the directions. 

Our hard work paid off. 

It feels like we have two new pieces of furniture.

I'm so proud of us!

We lost two screws to the drawer pulls, that's why they are on the dresser and not on the drawer.  I couldn't bring myself to stop by Home Depot after work today - that's a Saturday job!

The bedroom got a makeover.  I'm sort of in love. 

Pier 1 Matching Frames

New Duvet.

New Curtains.