I love...

spontaneous, side splitting laughter induced by watching America's Funniest Home Videos

adding frosting to every dessert to make it just that much better

wearing slippers on really cold floors

Thunderous rain

What do you love? <3

Paint and weeds.

Here's a sneak peek at the color of our den.  YAY!  It's catches the light really beautifully.  It was hard to capture on film the way it reads in real life, and every picture I took seemed to look a bit different.  But here it is next to the window and what was left of the natural light:

This gives you an idea of how it plays off the green...

The room is an utter mess and disaster, so you'll have to wait for everything to come together to see the full effect.

In other news, Charlie checked out this book from the library...

It's eye opening.  Lawns are so tricky.  And I never knew there were so many kinds of grass.  I just thought grass was grass.  But oh no...and to top it off, our lawn is quite a disaster and weed haven.  To be fair, to the average passerby, it doesn't look that bad.  It's green (ish), cut, and kempt, but there are weeds EVERYWHERE.  It drives me insane.  Literally insane.  And after reading a few chapters, I came to find out that putting fertilizer down when you have weeds is a really bad idea.  It just makes them grow more, too.  Oops.  You also can't put any weed killer on your lawn for 4 months after you put down fertilizer.  Double oops.  And I was weeding wrong.  Shi...oops.  

We met the neighbors across the street the other night, and talked with them for about 20 minutes.  They are from Ohio and sweet as pie.  I was so afraid they were sitting in their little perfect house with their perfect lawn judging our yard and staring at our weeds hoping that a trade wind didn't pick up little weed-lings and carry it onto their organic grass.  But they were really understanding of our situation and told us that it would take a few years to get it back, but we would.  Whew.  At least they know we are trying.  :)

I'm crazy....

Charlie went to karate...

and I decided to paint.  Yes on a random Thursday night I painted our entire den.  Why?  What else was I gonna do?  High gas prices kept me from driving 30 minutes out to conversation group.  It seemed like the cool thing to do. ;)

Here was the original green that we went with for the back of the bookshelf that we painted this past weekend.  It's called "Green Monsoon"

And the accent color we chose was called "Silver Leaf"--kinda sliver, kinda grey, kinda blue, kinda green... a neutral combination of our home colors.  It doesn't read exactly right on the screen I feel.

I'll take after pics of the room when I have better light!

Duets

My husband and I are huge nerds.  What can I say?  We sang duets tonight.  Literally.

I am such an awful singer, too.  I always got made fun of in church choir growing up for messing up the tune...  I can keep a beat, but I often pretty much always hit the wrong notes.  (Which is ironic considering I spent a great deal of my life involved in music:: piano, flute, choir, handbell choir...)

Still, regardless of how awful of a singer I am, I still love it.  I love music, I love harmony, and I love to sing.  I sing all the time...but I bet none of you will ever hear me.  It is only in the comfort of my home, and in front of the one person who loves me and my awful rotten voice, that I feel like I can belt it out.

So tonight Charlie and I sang love duets thanks to youtube karaoke...it was fun.  And goofy.  Among the hits were Can You Feel The Love Tonight, Endless Love, Elephant Love Medley, and Bop to the Top.  Yes, we did sing High School Musical....  try it sometime.  :)

Here is a personal favorite I like to try to sing...have at it!

Floating shelves!

I've been obsessed with them for a for a while now.  Remember this post?  I referenced the gorgeousness of YHL's floating shelves in their old house's dining room:

Source:  www.younghouselove.com

Katie Bower, the writer of another Blog I follow always has a similar look which I love:

Source:  www.bowerpowerblog.com

 I knew that they both bought them at IKEA, so this past weekend, when Charlie and I stopped by, I knew I wanted to take a gander.  We ended up getting the same style Katie has, except in white, to blend in with our molding.  They were only $14.99 each.

Here Charlie is, literally whistling as he works ;)  I wanted to give you an idea of the before.

And here Charlie is using his i-Phone as a level.  Gotta love technology.

And the final result:

I love displaying our beautiful China that is hidden so much of the time...and it's about as expensive as art would be.  I'll have to play around with the setup and more pics when I have better light :)

Book of the moment

Our small group has some homework for the next couple of weeks....  reading this book!  A member of our small group said he read good things about it, so we were excited to get it on the Kindle.  Yes, we're high-tech like that.  ;)

It's about finding your "soul print" or the uniqueness of you and letting it shine.  The book is unwavering in its foundation that God's personal interaction with people creates the possibility of change; redemption, restoration, growth and understanding of who we really are. 

It's good so far.  The first chapter compared knowing who we really are--made in God's image-- with Michaelangelo's David.  Michaelangelo said that David was always inside, but that he just had to remove the excess stone around him to reveal the masterpiece.  Kind of like the way God works on our heart, no?  It reminded me of being in Italy in 2006, when I walked down the wide hallway to the David, bypassing all of the other sculptures that never broke out of their stone, partially formed works of art.  Concealed, broken, unfinished, but never meant to be that way... just like us.

This book seems strong and impassioned so far, and I appreciate that.  Should be a good read!  I'll let you know when I'm finished how we liked it (Charlie is reading it, too).  Have any of you ever read this book?  Any Self Help books you love that inspired you?

Painting!

WE FINALLY BROKE OUT THE PAINT BRUSHES THIS WEEKEND!  :)  I feel like doing that makes you "own a house."  You feel like you are customizing it, making it your own, and giving it your personality...it was so fun!  The best part?  We sold some pet gates on Craigslist we no longer needed giving us some extra dough to fund everything...and then some :)  I love the internet.  Here were the painting supplies we picked up from Lowe's.  We already had some to get us started. 

P.S.  I am now the biggest proponent of Frog Tape ever!!! Works so much better than regular painting tape!

So what did you paint first you ask?  Here was our canvas.... our "what the heck is going on in here?" den.  It wasn't gelin' for us.  It kind of turned into a catch all, and since our furniture is STILL being custom made, we are literally watching the TV on mattresses on the floor.  What's on the shelves?  Random stuff that we didn't know where else to put!   

 

The room needed some pop.  And we thought what better place to do it than the built ins?!  The fireplace needs work (we know!), and please ignore ugly black lumpy chair, he's not staying, but those little cubbies seemed like the place to start for our first painting experience.  Yay paint.  Remember when Young House Love painted their built ins?  It may just be that I secretly want to be them (mildly kidding), but I do think they are on to something.

Our color pallate for the house are turquoise-blue, green, and yellow.  And then we came across Green Monsoon at Lowe's (Valspar).  It was the perfect compliment to the turquoise look.

Haha.  Doesn't it look like I'm painting it puke green?  Try it in more natural lighting (oh, and please excuse the mess during our in-flux room makeover!)

And here is the final product:

That was fun...I'm already planning the next painting project :)  It really relaxes me!