Bottoms Up

WEEEEEEEE!!! It's FRIDAY!!!! 

I don't know about y'all but I am so looking forward to the weekend! not that those feelings differ from any other week!! I thought The Husband was going to have to be out of town for the weekend but he isn't! WOOO!!! I love spending time with that man =) 

We have a couple different option of what to get into this weekend - happy hour, margarita-fest...yes you read that right. MARGARITA FEST!!! 

It is all you can drink margs downtown! shut up - I know! I LOVE me some margaritas! The only roadblock at this moment is that The Husband doesn't love to go downtown sooooo maybe we will do happy hour at a Mexican restaurant that serves 2 for 1?!  

I'm definitely going to do my best to convince him to take me to SOME sort of happy hour where I can drink up some margaritas because I'm really feeling that cuisine at the moment!  Maybe I can convince him to take me to the beach so I can soak up some sun AND margs...I won't hold my breath for that one haha!

And while I KNOW this song isn't necessarily about drinking, the title is at least relevant haha! 

HAPPY WEEKEND!!!

Oh, How Pinteresting!

Wooo!! Halfway to the weekend! who's excited!? THIS GIRL!!! 

Great news though - we worked on my craft room this past weekend.  we didn't get it completed which means I haven't started moving my stuff back in or organizing.  BUT I have been paying a lot of attention to storage ideas for all my crafting goodies.  My biggest problem is that I want to be organized which means I want everything to LOOK organized.  If you Google craft rooms, you will see a lot of open shelving - which I love and is part of what we (read The Husband) built but now I want to make sure the storage is cute and not too cluttered.  

We did however, complete the laundry room!!! yay!!! Now I just need a little decor here and/or there and we are finito!!!  I just have to decide what kind of decor I want on the walls, because that is basically where there is room for it.  I was THINKING about getting those paper mache/cardboard letters and spraying them with silver metallic paint and spelling out "laundry" but there is a vinyl that I found that I love that states "laundry today or naked tomorrow".  It is so funny but I don't know if it will work in the room.  

Otherwise, I didn't finish the curtains for the bedroom - no surprise there.  That's about it for me right now - I have lots to share but nothing is completely done.  THEREFORE, today I am linking up with Michelle for Oh, How Pinteresting!

Curtain Update and My Next Project

Y'all are going to be SO PROUD!! I cut out ALL the gray material for the curtains for our bedroom windows and slider.  Now all I have to do is cut out the gold.  I should be able to get that finished by tomorrow and maybe even start sewing!! WHAAAAA?! i know I'm pretty excited and impressed too =)

I posted this picture last night to FB and Instagram:

 

I wanted to know which gold fabric to go with - I had asked The Husband and he preferred A over B.  The majority of people also preferred A over B.  I didn't realize until someone else mentioned something about the pattern that it kind of looks like two DIFFERENT fabrics.  They aren't.  It is two different sides of the SAME fabric...a heads and tails.  Same exact pattern.  

As for my upcoming weekend - the plan is to get these curtains finished and hung.  And finish the craft room....is there an echo in here?! I know, I know - same sad song.  Seriously though we have been talking about it for the past week that I would like to get it done.  He is frustrated because all my craft room stuff is in totes in the office and blocking the closet in there. The Husband is not thrilled with that - nor was I this morning when I had to move a bunch of totes of the way to get a jacket since it was actually storming out! Legit - thunder and lightning style...before work...before 8!! ridiculous!

If we get that finished on Saturday, I am leaving towards gel staining our bathroom vanity.  I'm so scared to do it but I want to so badly!!! I don't love the color of the vanity in relation to the color of the walls. It just doesn't work for me.  I found a tutorial on Pinterest (anyone surprised? no? ok, moving on).  I want to go from this to this - pretty much just like One Good Thing by Jillee did:

 

 Seriously - I can't wait to have this completed.  It will look so much better with the deep gray I painted the walls in the master bath. Unfortunately, I have to order the gel stain because apparently it isn't sold in stores.  booo!!! I am going to trek to some of the local hardware stores and see if I can't find some of the stain recommended in her post.  It is sold through Sears online but not available in stores.  Why must they do this to me?!  Well since that won't get done this weekend, maybe we will finish my plans for the spare bathroom or the laundry room...yeeessssss!!! =)

As always, I am definitely being ambitious in what we will accomplish this weekend.  I know I can do the gel stain on my own while The Husband does something else. The craft room would be a much bigger challenge so I'm going to go ahead and let him take care of it =) 

If absolutely nothing else I am finishing those silly curtains....hopefully.... ;)

Woo - it is almost Friday!!!

My Life As a Procrastinating Crafter

That should PROBABLY be the title of this blog.  Let's face it, I am the world's best procrastinator.  If there was an Olympic sport devoted to it, I would win the gold.  Not only do I procrastinate beautifully, but I STILL manage to meet every deadline.  My procrastination of projects, crafts, and DIYs definitely deserves its own post. 

I did finally start cutting the material for the curtains I want to make in our master bedroom.  There has been something NOT quite right about our master.  I couldn't figure out what it was...so I thought I was going to paint.  The Husband said there HAS to be something I can do differently.  So I thought and thought and thought some more and determined i REALLY hate the curtains.  They are very cheap - and I bought them because we needed something to shut out the world.  Well the time has come to make it better! 

So I started searching for what I could possibly want.  I couldn't think of anything at first because our comforter is very ... ornate?  it is beautiful and I LOVE it. the problem is finding something that is complimentary but not boring.  Here is our set:

 

Its from Kohl's - my parents bought it for us for our second anniversary.  It is a lot more gray than blue like it sort of looks.  so I needed something that would compliment it without fighting against it.  Our bedroom furniture is black and the walls are gray...here's a refresher:

 

This picture was taken like a month after moving in.  A lot has changed.  anyhow - I decided I really hate the curtains; and with how much the temperature differs in our bedroom versus the rest of the house, we knew we needed blackout curtains.  

Off to JoAnns I went with my mom and sister.  This is what I found on clearance:

GORGEOUS! I hesitated .... and carried the material around with me for a good half hour.  I finally decided to bite the proverbial bullet and buy it.  I needed 12 yards....I walked up to the counter and sadly, it was all they had left and there MAY have been 8 yards.  Well that wasn't going to be enough for the two windows and the slider.  So I pouted, and then I carried the material around with me.  There HAD to be another option.  I found the PERFECT contrasting gray material (also on clearance).  It isn't dark gray and actually has a blue/purple undertone to it.  

At that moment I remembered that I saw paneled curtains on Pinterest....but could never find the ones I loved again.  After DAYS and countless hours of searching online, I finally found what I had been looking for - and I will never forget the title - Pimp My Curtains.  This would be my inspiration from The Design Pages:

 

So I bought all the material I could possibly need - plus a little more.  And hey, it was on sale for something like $4 a yard AND my sister used her teacher discount.  WHOOOO!!! 

I was so excited, I took the material in and laid it across the comforter to make sure it would look perfect.  It does. It is going to be magnificent....my problem is that I have been too scared to cut the fabric.  Then I had a mini panic attack because I was worried that maybe I didn't buy enough material.  So after a month - seriously, I bought it Father's Day weekend - and three different counts of the yardage and three different diagrams, with associating math. I finally cut out material for the FIRST slider panel.  That's as far as I got last night but now I am ready to go.  

As you can guess, I don't have pictures of the finished product. Not even close. I didn't even take pictures of me cutting up the fabric - which I totally should have done; a little celebratory or mischievous picture because let's face it, I'm proud of myself.

With The Husband's birthday quickly approaching, I am looking over my to-do/project list and marking the ones that NEED to be done.  It is quite the impressive list. I may be a little over ambitious...don't touch that dial, let's see if I can get it all done! =)

 

The One Where I Realized It Has Been Over a Month!

Crazy huh? I mean seriously - August is in approximately TWO WEEKS! WHAT?! Didn't we JUST celebrate New Year's?

I have been at my new job for two and a half months already.  I stay extremely busy all day.  Well not ALL day - the first 40 - 50 minutes are pretty quiet, me trying to settle in and get a game plan going for the day.  Once the attorneys get here, we are in full go mode.  As you can imagine, I have had a lot of learning to do since I am out of my element in this position.  I'm a legal assistant.  I haven't done anything like that ever in the past - the closest I have come is when I was in high school I was admin for a real estate closing company.  Not the same thing.

So I felt swamped the first three or four weeks.  Now I feel like I have caught on pretty well.  Of course there will be lots to continue to learn as we delve into our cases but I am feeling more and more confident every day.

I am so much happier where I am right now.  Which, oddly enough, is one of the reasons I haven't really had the time to blog.  We have been non-stop since I switched jobs.  Yes I did get a fairly significant pay raise but not only that I have a much better disposition than I did at my last job.  I'm working out 3-4 nights a week, plus I am bowling one night a week with one of our friend couples and my dad.  Then the weekends have been pretty solidly booked for the past two months.

We will be catching up on all that soon.  My life lately has felt so much more complete - I feel so much happier and fulfilled. I don't dread going to work.  In fact, it is generally just the opposite! This past Monday I had taken the day off for a family vacation trip but we had to cancel our part of it because The Husband had to work. I almost went to work!! ALMOST.  =) I ended up spending most of the day with my sweet sister.  Really wonderful day!

So welcome any new comers - and HIIIII to everyone who has happened to stick around.  I want to be more present. I miss blogging and I am so happy that it will be a happier place for me and not such an escape =)

In the meantime, you really need to check this out:

Pentatonix won The Sing-Off (an acapella singing competition) a year ago and they were BY  FAR my favorite group.  I love them even more for The Wizard of Ahhhhs =)

Happy Friday all!!!
 

"It's Just My Collection" - Ariel

Sad news for me, I didn't get my National Running Day run in after all.  I was disappointed but the reality is that it is trying to hurricane around here lol! OK maybe it isn't THAT severe but there is a tropical storm that has been named...and if you look at the weather radar, it looks like Andrea is trying to form an eye.
 

I also had plans with my girlfriends to have dinner.  So I wasn't going to run around in the rain and then try to make it to dinner.  Thankfully we have already set up a run for Friday.  YAY!

In other news, I bought more nail polish.  *hangs head* I know I don't NEED any more! But there are always so many great colors.  It is really amazing that manufacturers continue to not DUPLICATE a color. In my defense, I did go through all my polish this weekend and the ones I didn't like, I threw out.  Most of them were top/base coats I have tried and not liked. There were a couple colors where I didn't LOVE the color and the formula wasn't great and I hadn't used it in over a year...so buh-bye!

So this is NOT a good representation of my nail polish collection:

I made this storage thing ALL BY MYSELF - no for real. The Husband only supervised, and by that I mean checked on it periodically to tell me to do something different.  He even made me hang it with anchors and hole drilling and everything on my own! so proud =) 

This shelf is at least half full already, if not more.  I have a problem.  The Husband laughed at me last night when I had this realization but it's all good! He doesn't mind =) It is part of me taking care of myself and LOOKING/SEEMING put together all the time...or the majority of the time lol. 

You will remember this storage from last summer:

Yeah - also completely full.  and a couple of colors have been tossed - two on the far left top shelf, two on the bottom shelf, and I think one of the reds from the middle shelf.  No seriously - this thing is FULL!  Now you may not think this is a whole lot and comparatively it isn't, but for me - it has grown leaps and bounds in just a few short months!

Anyhow if you follow me on Instagram, you know that I have MORE nail polish that was delivered to me via UPS yesterday!

Yes - FIVE more - but four of them are minis...that makes it better right? RIGHT! haha! Anyhow because of the persistent rain, I will likely be spending my lunch painting my nails.  Oh and the color I have on in the picture above is Essie - The Girls are Out from the Summer 2013 collection.  The four colors in the top half of the above picture are from the same collection so I hope the formula is just as good - I know Essie's can sometimes be iffy but I was really pleased with The Girls are Out.  =)

Oh and I may or may not have bought a neon from Walgreens yesterday. It is from Sinful Color's Poolside Collection: 24/7 and is apparently a dupe for China Glaze Pool Party.  I couldn't pass it up - I have been looking for a great lighter pink neon and I instantly fell in love.  The formula seems good so I can't wait to try that one out! Probably for one of our upcoming beach trips =)

So new rule - i'm sharing it with you so I can be held accountable -
No More New Polish Until I Use Everything I Have Once
The Husband will appreciate that rule

OH and I asked The Husband to text me pictures of my collection so I can update you and you can see just how much of a problem this has become in such a short time haha!

What do you love to buy?
Are you a polish-aholic?

The Hardest Step For a Runner to Take is the First One Out the Door

Today is National Running Day!!! Happy NRD to you =)
I love to run - alone, with the dog, with a friend.  It is therapeutic and helps clear my thoughts and emotions.   Last summer, I started running with my dad.  I had this crazy idea that I wanted to run my second half marathon.  So we started training.

It was HARD.  Especially because - super smart us - decided to start training in JULY! JULY People!! Here in July it is 85* on a COOL NIGHT! To say it was hot and muggy and 'heavy' is an understatement.  My dad likes to tell people that on our first two mile run together it was like trying to run in wet jeans and combat boots.  Yeah, it was tough.

By December we were ready though and I PR-ed =) YAY me! Although it was a hard run...about 10 days before the race, I started experiencing discomfort in my left knee.  Me and my imagination were mentally prepping for the worst. As in a small tear in the tendon or something that would need surgery and/or prevent me from running for an extended amount of time.

I finally went to the doctor in January and she told me I had to actually invest in for real shoes - not just whatever was on sale at Kohl's like I had been.  So new shoes and inserts were purchased.  Since that day in late January I have had no pain while running.  You read that right - NONE!!!

My dad and I started training again and are only up to about 6 miles for our 'long' runs.  We are really wanting to get back to where we are running 8-9 miles on Saturday mornings.  For now, we are happy with averaging anywhere between 10 - 15 miles a week.

Today we are planning on running - if the weather holds out for us.  and I am really hoping it isn't hurricane-ing since, after all, it's National Running Day!

Do you have a running buddy?
Are you planning a run for today?