New Floors!

We bit the bullet today and, using the hubby's big bonus for the year, bought new flooring for our downstairs bonus room.  I am so excited to see this room turn into something functional in the next week or so!

We started with a whole lot of stained, icky berber carpeting with a really thin, wimpy carpet pad.  Between myself, the hubs, and two good friends, we got all of the molding pulled off and the carpeting pulled up in about an hour.

Even Zeke wanted to help us tear up the house!

Hey, mom, what are you doing to my house?

When all of the carpet was torn up, a lovely surprise was revealed... a gigantic crack in the concrete. 

But, hey, no worries.  We can fix that.  

So we started to lay down the tile around the door to our walk-out patio.  This will be so nice to have, since the dog does an awesome job dragging mud and gunk from the outside into our house.  The carpet in that spot was disgusting.  We will grout tomorrow.

There you have it: our progress so far.  Not bad for day one, I think, especially since it only took about 3.5 hours to accomplish.  The agenda for tomorrow includes grouting the tile and laying down the underlayment for the 13 boxes of laminate flooring.

Our goal is to have this all done by Friday, so hopefully that can be a reality!

Spring Wreath

I know, I know.  Spring?  Sure... the calendar might say it's Spring, but the calendar is wrong.  I mean, it's been no higher than 36 since Wednesday when Spring supposedly started.  And yeah, I might be on "Spring" Break, but we're supposed to get snow on Sunday night, and the weekly high is projected at 45.  

But I want Spring, dammit.  So I made me a Spring wreath.  Maybe the weather will take a hint from my cutesy burlap wreath and decide to shape up.

Stay tuned... we are buying flooring tomorrow.  My Spring Break job is to put laminate flooring downstairs all by myself. Eek! 

Window Upgrade

I impulse bought new curtain panels today.  The hubs doesn't know yet.  It was a serious impulse buy, but they were just perfect!  They were exactly what I had in mind when we bought the place, but we needed a quick fix for the windows so I bought something cheap.  

And we still had the cheap, brown panels nearly three years later.  Until today, that is.  I picked up these new babies at Target for $20 each.  After seeing them in my space, it was worth every penny.  Hopefully the hubs will understand.

Before:

Blah.

After:

Ah, much better!

I'd say it's a huge improvement.  It's sort of hard to tell due to the sun shining through them, but the panels are just about the same blue as my kitchen.  Perfect!

Gallery Wall

Hello, Blogland!  I apologize for the long over-due post.  Life has been crazy.  But I won't get into excuses; I'll show you what you came here for!

Over the past few months, I have been collecting picture frames when I've found them on sale with the intention of creating a gallery wall in my stairwell.  Well, with Michael's weekend buy one, get one sale, I officially acquired enough frames for my wall.  Total spent: $55.  Not bad, if I do say so myself.

Here she is!

View from the top of the stairs. 

View coming up the stairs.

Top right

Top left

Bottom Right

Center

Bottom left

I'm very pleased with the way that it turned out.  It's so nice not to have a naked wall to look at as you walk into the house!

New Year, New Goals

Happy New Year!  2013 is going to be great!  

I have a few goals for the new year.  I never seem to keep my resolutions, but I think that the two that I'm setting for myself are reasonable:

1. Get fit and healthy.

2. Become more organized.

Goal 1: Before school started back up, I was doing an awesome job working out every single day over the summer.  I even ran my first 5k ever!  And I felt great about myself and my body.  But then school started and I went back to spending two hours of each day driving, followed by getting home and doing more and more work.  I am exhausted when I get home from teaching.  Working out is the last thing I want to do.  But the hubs and I have planned out our meals for the week, along with the corresponding exercise for each day.  I think since we're doing it together this time, this will work.  I also signed up for Weight Watchers again because it worked for me in the past, and I'm hoping it'll work for me again.  My parents even got me new running shoes for Christmas!

Goal 2: I've already started accomplishing this goal.  I totally overhauled both of my kitchen pantries and the fridge.  They look great.  I only have pictures of one pantry, though.

Before

After

I mean, my house isn't always a disaster.  But there are some aspects of my home that I'd just like to be more organized.  Of course, the hubs will have to help with this goal, too.

How about you?  Do you have any goals for the new year?

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, all!  I hope that you and yours had a fabulous holiday full of love and family!

Merry Christmas, from our family to yours!

So you know that new camera I've been fawning and dreaming over for a while?  Well, the hubs got me a new camera for Christmas so I'll probably be posting a lot more now that I won't have to use my phone's camera! He got me a Sony Cyber-shot HD. 

It's very nice and takes much better pictures than my old Cannon with the missing left side panel...  I have done a few crafty things since I last posted, but don't have any pictures of them so... you'll just have to imagine them.  

Here's a few pictures of Zeke opening his presents yesterday: 

Just in case you're trying to count, he got: a squeaky snake, a new Nylabone, a deer antler, two new squeaky balls, and a Kong Wubba.  Yeah, he's not spoiled or anything.  Lord help us when we have children.

We started our day with presents among the three of us, then went over to my family's house for lunch and gifts.  Zeke came along and played with Gemma all day long.  He fell asleep while we all watched It's a Wonderful Life, my favorite Christmas movie of all time.

I look a little tired myself...

All in all, it was a wonderful Christmas!  Now it's off to my homeland (Wisconsin) to be with the rest of my family for the next five days!  

The Best Way to Spread Christmas Cheer...

Is putting up your Christmas decorations!  After going Black Friday shopping yesterday morning (more on that in a moment), the hubs and I put up our holiday decorations, as is our tradition.  This year, however, we did not have Elf on in the background (more on that later).

I needed to make a new wreath for the front door this year, as my old one had lasted three years in the Illinois wind and cold and was on its last leg.  The details were falling off and it just didn't look good anymore.  So I hit up Hobby Lobby's 50% off all Christmas decor sale and scored everything I needed to make my wreath for around $20.

I also made some ornament clusters to hang on the railing leading upstairs:

On a side note, you may have noticed that my entryway is now a different color.  I got so sick of the light blue that one weekend I decided to paint it.  It is now a beautiful, warm beige.

It makes it look much warmer down there, I think.

Anyway, back to the Christmas decorations!

The hubs promised me we could get a new
tree for next Christmas. This one is so
pathetic looking...

I found that adorable little owl at Kohl's on Black Friday for $11.  I
couldn't resist!

Oh, Elf, how I love you!

I had to move my ladder due to the location
of the Christmas tree.  It doesn't really
work anywhere else in the house, but
this'll have to do for now.

So that's all of our inside decorations.  The hubs swears he'll get the outside lights up this week sometime.  

Now, as promised, a note about Black Friday.  My husband has been wanting a "big TV" for at least two years now.  So, me being the awesome wife I am, told him that if he found one he really liked on Black Friday and it was a decent price, he could get it.  He ended up finding a 52 inch Sharp Aquos LED (which basically means it's a smart TV) for $799 at Best Buy.  His parents will give him $300 toward the TV at Christmas, and combine that with the amount I usually spend on him for the holidays and the TV only cost us $299.  I'd say that's a pretty good deal.

Well this monstrosity of a television now takes up a third of the wall in the living room.  It is HUGE.  Maybe it's just the difference between the 32 inch TV we used to have and the extra 20 inches... I don't know.  It's got a beautiful picture and all, but it is gigantic!  I feel like everything I did over the years to make my living room look nice has now been totally destroyed by this behemoth.   I know that this is not a permanent situation since we will not be in this townhouse forever, but it's just too much TV for our little room.  Ugh.

Anybody else find some good Black Friday deals?  Or maybe you too have a husband with a gigantic TV and have some coping skills for me?