Easter candy...

...is my favorite!  An now you can apparently buy Cadbury eggs by the dozen!?!?  How did I not know this before?  ...and then you can store them in the fridge, or easily in your cupboard.  Brilliant.  Bring on the twelve packs and the sugar rush. 

Sorry, y'all.  I feel like I'm constantly talking about Cadbury eggs around Easter time.  It's hard for me to resist their chocolately goodness every time I am in CVS.

"Will that be all m'am?"

"Nooooayes. Yes.  I mean no, give me one, I mean two of these Cadbury eggs.  Why not make it three?  I'm here, right?"

They sort of hate me in CVS.  (Not to mention that my couponing hobby turned addiction often requires me to make several transactions.)  I am overly nice to them, though.  If you are a CVS cashier, I will suck up to you like nobody's business!!!

Here are some random things I feel like sharing on this mosey Monday:

• Charlie's healing is coming all well...he can finally move around again, and he even made dinner tonight, which was really appreciated after I didn't get home from work until 6:30 pm.  (And if you are among the people that think teachers are 'lavishly paid' and have way too much vacation time and an easy schedule, imagine me shoving my precious Cadbury eggs up your nose.  Yup.  I went there.)  
• Luna is skinny...I mean bones!  She was fat for a while...

And now she is a bean...

We are upping her food again.  I know you probably think I am a horrible pet owner and not feeding my dog.
"Don't you listen to your dog's needs??"

Yes, I do.  Luna is spoiled as two year old Cadbury eggs!!!  Even when she was fat she was still constantly searching for food and eating things like grass, clovers, woodchips, and rabbit poop.  She is not normal. 

•  I'm still going 3-4 times a week to the gym.  And I look the same.  Darn it all.  I think it may be the Cadbury eggs I eat.
• The weather has been PERFECT in NC lately.  Sunny, just enough rain to keep the grass and flowers beautiful, and a perfect 75 degrees.  What more could you ask for?

Off to get a fix of TV and chill for the night...I could use it!  Is Spring Break here, yet???

Addicted to white :)

We finally took the plunge and painted our mantle white.  I was hesitant to do it at first, but after posting my space on a [the nest].com and asking the general consensus, everyone said that seemed like the thing to do to help updated the space.

So, we cracked out the paint brush!  We think it makes all the difference:

Before:

Progress: (we had to tape the brick because the mantle wasn't removable)

After:

 I think I'm kind of addicted to making things white... I'm armed with a paint brush and dangerous!

What have we been up to?

It has been BUSY!  Whew.  The good news is that Charlie's surgery went really well, and he's now on the mend...on the couch, while I get to wait on him hand and foot. :)  Yay surgery!  He's in much more pain now (and his meds make him very sleepy), but in the future his "pipes" will be so thankful he had it.  Thank you for your prayers and kind words.  Luna is the faithful sidekick good for cuddling and cleaning up any scrap of food he may have dropped on the couch.  I had Friday off work to take him in, and I think I was more nervous than he was for everything... Charlie is such a positive guy.  I seriously snapped this shot 5 minutes before we went in...and I didn't even ask him to smile :D

This weekend was a "weekend in" for us.  So, while Charlie sits here watching the Masters (and there are crazy tornado/thunderstorm warnings outside), I decided I would do an update post on little changes we have made throughout the house that I haven't blogged about and don't warrant their own blog post.  I will warn you, they are pretty boring.  So if you care to see, here are some little updates we've made.  Don't say I didn't warn ya. ;)

Kitchen Nook before:

Kitchen Nook after:  (Curtains: clearance bin at BB&B, $9.99 a panel.  Chair cushions: clearance from Walmart, $5.95 each)

Light fixtures before, straight from the 80s:

 Light fixtures now: 

They are much improved, and they give off soooo much more light, but I'll be the first to admit, they look a lot like boobs.  I mean...really... a giant boob greets you at the top of the stairs.  Thankfully they were "free" from Lowe's (due to cashing in some credit card rewards), so if we choose to change our minds in the future, I'm not out an arm and a leg.   Charlie says he like them, which makes sense because he is a man and probably in his sub-conscious the whole "boob thing" draws him to them.  Oh well!

Laundry room:

 I found this quote from Target and I thought it was a positive reminder to read every day :)  It was free thanks to a gift card from a student (I think they retail for $16).

Some hanging flowers to add color to the yard:  (Yay Walmart!)

FIRRREEEE PITTTT!!!!  North Carolina spring is the best time to have them...and they make outdoor parties really fun!  This was a splurge from Walmart for $39.


I did stop by a few garage sales today to see if I could find a bedside table for the guest bedroom.  No luck.  There were lots of clothes and children's toys.  I did find these beautiful dried hydrangeas, though!  A woman was selling all sorts of dried flowers like a European market in her driveway.  It was beautiful.  (I wish I would have taken a picture).  The hydrangeas are dried a dyed, but they look alive and lush... so much better than the fake ones.  They were $1 and the vase was 25 cents from a garage sale across the street :)

We also decided to paint the mantle:

It took three good coats of paint to get it looking the way I wanted, but it was worth it :)  I'll give you the full update when everything is dried and put back the way it should be!

Spray paint action!

Since we moved in I have wanted to change our fireplace.  I HATE the fireplace doors.  Dingy brass 80s ugliness.  They were installed in '86 when the house was built.  Does that make them vintage? ;) ;)

I dreamed of these for added coziness:

But they are a whopping $184 dollars!  Definitely not a part of the budget....

So, we opted for a quick, cheap fixer-uper that I saw on HGTV.  Spray paint.  Yup, thank you Sabrina Soto!  Here's what we picked up.  First, two cans of Heat Resistant Spray paint and a spray paint attachment gun.  We spent under $20 for everything.

 


First we had to remove the doors...it wasn't as bad as we anticipated (or as online lead us to believe), but it was DIRTY.  Twenty years of dirt, dust, and grime had accumulated between the brick and and door.  Ew!

The most time consuming part was cleaning the doors and taping and newspapering the glass windows.  Here are the doors after all the spray paint has been applied!  (It took two good coats).

There was a bare hole in our wall for about 48 hours...thank goodness for good weather!

Here are the afters!

Again, here is the before, before:

And after! 

I used this website to guide me, but if you attempt this yourself, here are some tips so you can learn from our mistakes:

1.  Un-installing the fireplace mount is easy, it's getting it BACK that's the hard part.  Study everything carefully when you take it apart...and take pictures if you have to. 
2. Do your hand a favor and buy the spray gun to attach to the can.  Best couple bucks I ever spent.
3. Tape carefully and expect this to take lots of time (if your doors have several windows).  Also, remove the paper right away so you can clean the glass and remove any paint that splattered on.
4. Prop your doors up do spray rather than doing it flat (I used a stool that I covered with a drop cloth).
5. No need to use primer if you used the same spraypaint I did.  Rustoleum doesn't require it!

It was a fun, pretty easy project...and I think I'm addicted to spraypaint!

Up next???  Painting (not spraypainting ;) ) the mantle white so it stand out! :)

Yeah, I'm a gym member now :)

And not just any gym, but the YMCA!  It's fun to stay at the YMCA!... okay, I'll stop now ;)

I've never had a gym membership before in my life, and this makes me feel quite "legit."  We've had apartments with gyms, and I've used school/university gyms, but I'm really excited about being able to work out and attend actual classes.  Our YMCA has unlimited access to classes which I do MUCH better with.  I need to be told exactly what to do and when to do it, otherwise I lose motivation quickly (or I become overwhelmed in the weight room).

So far, I've been to two Zumba classes.  Being a newbie was fun, but also quite intimidating.  I made the mistake of raising my hand and saying I was new during the first class when she asked, so the teacher came over a lot to dance next to me.  And this just makes me nervous and mess up more.  Oh joy.  I'll be honest, I drowned for about 1/3 of the first class trying to figure out the steps, and I discretely moved myself to the back so no one could see me. 

I expected Zumba to be fun, challenging, and a lot like salsa--which it was.  I love the music, and I love the Latin flare, but I never expected the people to be so intense and crazy about this class.  I didn't realize that a gym membership Zumba class would produce such a following or people who are so devout.

If you have never "Zumba-ed" before, you know it's no joke.

First there are the zumba shoes.  Yes, lots of people have them, and I don't understand.  They are like a tap sneaker?  Confusing...

Then there is Zumba work-out gear.  People were actually wearing this stuff...

 The girl in front of me had pants that said "I love Zumba" on the butt.  Not even kidding.  Awkward!  Please stop following my blog if I ever by those pants ;)

It's fun, though.  You are expected to "Woop Woop" and shout a lot while you dance.  You do forget that you are working out.



Like I said, it's quite intense.  I'll let you know when I have a six pack. ;) ;)

I'm unique!

And so is my puppy Luna.  Check it out:



I was thinking today about our uniqueness.  Despite being something you are told about since childhood--"LET THE REAL YOU SHINE!"-- it is still hidden most of the time because different is "flawed."  But think about how many of your "flaws" shaped you and prepared you for the path you have chosen today and make you really great at what you do. 

I have tons of "flaws", too many to name, but to give an example, I'm a terrible speller.  Horrid, ATROSHIOUS. (And if you didn't catch that I spelled atrocious wrong, chances are you are, too!  Hehe).  However, my lack in the spelling department made me a really good editor because I really have to pick my work apart to make it correct, and I really honed my craft as a writer, thought organizer, and detail minded reader in high school.  I actually had a job and made money off of helping others edit their papers in college.  Go figure.

And for all those times as a kid I got yelled at for making my games too "over the top" (making stages and destroying entire rooms for the sake of a play or creating an indoor roller coaster--yes, I truly did make one of those), it makes me a really creative, good teacher who can turn any random prop into a learning tool.  Yay, Spanish. :)

So go ahead and straddle the arm of a chair, get those funny looks, and balance higher than the rest! :)

New Furniture!

YAY!  We FINALLY got our new couches.  They arrived on Saturday afternoon, right before we were going over to our friends' house to help them take up their carpet.  That's what friends are for, no? ;)

Anyway, we were SO GLAD to get them!  We had been living on air-mattresses on the floor for the past several months.  It was kid of fun, I'll admit.  Kind of bachelor-pad-o, but fun :)  Still, that didn't change the fact that we were jump-up-and-down excited for our new furniture to come.

Enough ramble, here are the pics.  Here was the room "before," on closing day. 

Here is the room now.  A fresh coat of paint on the built-ins, a fresh coat of paint on the walls, and a place to sit!

 Here are more angles if you are nosy like me :)

 

Here is looking into the kitchen (we eventually plan to mount the t.v.):

 Here is an up-close of how we dressed up the fireplace mantle, it's obviously still a work in progress, but it didn't cost a lot at all.  Everything was IKEA.  It's a Ribba Shadow-Box frame (just $19.99 I believe), and the little votives were only $ .50 each.  We already owned the candles.

And for the record, the couches are VERY comfortable...just ask LUNA.  She is the best judge of this sort of thing.

Still left to tackle:

• Spraypaint fireplace doors (blag!)
• Get a fire tools set so we can actually have a fire!
• Find art for between the windows

Thank you Vicki and Chuck for our awesome housewarming gift! :)