Around the House!

Things are definitely settling in around the house and I am getting ready to pull the trigger on a new couch after viewing some amazing rooms on Pintrest!  I found a few things around the web that I felt were a must have for the house, so I promptly purchased them.  I may have purchased this cute hanging shelf thingy on my phone as we were driving to San Diego on Saturday morning for a race, thank goodness for Etsy and the internet that made it happen but a word to the wise it is not a good idea to have your credit card number saved anywhere on the internet cause with a couple clicks you have now purchased this and this! 

I have been collecting pallets for a wall project that I want to create in our entryway. I have been researching the best/easiest ways to create the vision I have in my head and I am sooo ready to get to work on this project. I also discovered you can buy broken down pallets at Home Depot for $16.99, I am thinking that might be the best route to go.

Just an idea off of Pintrest.

I found this table that I want Super Dad to help me make, I am thinking after my 7^th grade woodshop class I would be a huge help to Super Dad and this would look great in our living room in black.  

Update:  After looking for the link to this table I found this sofa table to go with the coffee table, maybe just maybe Super Dad could help me make a bench for the entry way as well. Oh My Gosh I need to call him right now!

The Sheriff and I spent a good portion of Friday afternoon discussing our landscaping issues and sprinkler system, quickly after our discussion I sent my sister a “HELP!” text, she will be coming over on June 18^th to help us come up with a game plan for the yard.  I am also trying to convince the Sheriff that we can do a lot of the clearing out ourselves to save $$$ and I keep telling him he can buy a chainsaw to do it, he is not biting, gah, yard work is so not his thing and it bums me out because it is mine but I lack the muscles to do some of the projects therefore I NEED him.

I spent a couple hours working on our pool deck chipping away at this broken plastic spacer type thing that needs to go!  It is going to be a long tedious project, so if any of you have a teenager who needs to work off any type of punishment, please send them my way, this is the perfect project to set them straight, I will provide the protective eye gear cause shards of plastic flying towards the face could put an eye out.

FUN!

Black arrows indicate all of the spots that need work, several more are not pictured.

We have had a rug situation for the last 45 days that we have lived in our house and this situation has created a lot of unnecessary drama between the Sheriff and I.  Thanks to a 15% off coupon and five - $10 off coupons I was able to save over $100 and purchased a couple of rugs to help us out.  OMG, the drama was too much!  Hopefully we will not need to revisit the rug conversation for a long time or until one of the dogs or the kid destroys it.

That is it for now!

Going Back to April!

 April 20^th was my favorite nephew’s 11^th Birthday, 11 years ago we welcomed this sweet baby boy into our lives and now he is almost taller than us!  Coincidentally, my Mom was able to get us behind the scene access to the Long Beach Aquarium the same weekend as his birthday so we all met up at the aquarium (along with everyone else and their country cousin) and enjoyed an afternoon of fish fun with the fam!

All I wanted was a nice picture of the three of them!

Jellyfish

A few pictures from birthdays past & present.

Settling In!

We are one month into owning our new home and reality set in when we had to fork over a large chunk of our hard earned money to the bank, the utility companies and our pool guy on the 1^st.  It is crazy to think it has only been a month, it seriously feels like we have lived here FOREVER!  We have settled in quite nicely but still have a million things to do!  This past weekend we hung a bunch of stuff on the walls which made a nice path to all of the boxes hiding behind.  I spent most of Saturday unpacking my stuff and organizing the downstairs closet cause according to the Sheriff, said in a very dramatic tone “I can’t find anything around here”, I held several comments inside and walked away.  I took that as a cue that he needs me to organize things a bit better, umm, ok, I will get right on that, maybe!   

Our upstairs bathroom was in desperate need of a towel rack, I have no idea where the people before us put their towels, the one and only tiny towel rack was across the bathroom so when you got out of the shower you dripped water everywhere in order to get to your towel.  Well, thanks to Cost Plus World Market (I could write an entire post on that store) and the Sheriff, that problem has been solved.  I also bought a new shower curtain and towels to help with the décor in the bathroom because it is in desperate need of a makeover, hopefully we can turn it from drab to fab sooner than later!

Just in case Mr. Pie was unsure where his wet towel goes, it now goes without saying!

Not to air our dirty laundry but….. we had a serious laundry situation going on as in the huge mound of dirty laundry that was piling up in my closet because we had nowhere to put it.  Our one and only laundry hamper was in the garage next to the washer and it just was not working, so I hit the Container Store and bought this gem, our laundry situation has now been solved, I know you were all so worried. 

My friend Kris gave me this awesome candle holder years ago when she was purging at her house, I only used it briefly at the condo, but now it has a permanent home in our backyard and I love it.  Speaking of the backyard, my parents gifted us patio furniture as a housewarming gift.  Again Cost Plus World Market came to the rescue, we bought this patio set, cushions, umbrella, Adirondack chairs and side table there!  I am a tightwad and I wanted to get the best bang for my buck so I have been watching the sales and promotions that have been going on and saving coupons and I have been able to get all of this well within the $$$ allocated for patio furniture.  I am so excited, it is going to help give the backyard a much needed makeover until we can tackle all of the landscaping we need to get done.  Now we just need to head back to Costco and get some more lights for our patio cover!

We bought this for the dog leashes, love it! 

I bought this light fixture for our entryway, I cannot wait for it to come in, I LOVE it so!

and I want this one so bad (painted black) for over our kitchen table but the Sheriff vetoed it so I am on the hunt for something else.

I bought some no frills curtains for the family room from Target, the ones that were there before were dusty and see through and needed to go, I got them ironed and hung over the weekend and I am happy.  We had tons of old “garage” towels, they are now gone!! I was so tired of looking at them, so off to the animal shelter they went.  We had doubles of a lot of kitchen goods, so I took the best of the doubles and donated the rest yesterday.  I have been selling stuff left and right online but I did not want to deal with the small stuff, so gone it is!

Not our family room :(

We still need to buy a lot of furniture and hang a few more things up but in the meantime I am digging our new entertainment center, it is awesome and totally something you would see in a model home. Doh, I don't have a picture of it,  just picture a tv hanging on the wall, a million cords hanging from it, a plastic box on the floor with a DVD player, Apple TV and the cable box sitting on it, yes, soooo fancy!

Thank goodness we do not have an HOA, because our current lawn decorations would definitely not 

be HOA approved.  I am hoping we can get these items moved into the garage soon.   The Sheriff has made great progress on the garage, but one step forward two steps back we seem to be taking every time we work on it, one day it will be clean again.  I honestly have no idea what is in the garage besides a pillow that goes with our bedding that is in a bag somewhere, my guess is we could get rid of it all and not miss it, some don’t agree with me, so we will hold on to whatever treasures are in there for a little while longer. 

That is all for now, we are loving our new house and new neighbors, please keep our pool pump in your prayers as we need it to DIE soon so we can use our home warranty to get a new one and if you are in the neighborhood please stop on by, I cannot guarantee a clean house but we will be happy to invite you in and if you are handy you can help us put together our new patio furniture.  If you are not handy you can have a glass of wine with me as we look at the boxes and wait for the magic patio furniture fairy to put it all together, hmmm, got to go call Super Dad!