Projects and Parents

It's always wonderful to have my parents come for a visit. I wish we could have them around all the time but I'm grateful for the moments I do get to spend with them. This year they came out to North Carolina at the beginning of May. We took a few days to travel into the Appalachian Mountains to Boone and Blowing Rock and to the "Summer Home" of...some rich person I can't currently remember.

Summer Home? Really?

We also visited the Guilford County Courthouse where one of the decisive battles of the Revolutionary War was fought.

Next to the large statue of Nathaniel Greene, after whom Greensboro is named.

We also had the opportunity to go to the Raleigh Temple while they were here. We did sealings, which I had never done before, and it was a very special experience to have my dad there since he couldn't be at my own sealing.


And, of course, no parental trip would be complete without a few projects! My dad helped David and I plant our garden.

Here's a picture of how it currently looks with most of the plants coming up and our new wire fence around it to keep the critters from eating our food.

Our peas, zucchini, and squash

David and dad also decided to tackle the deck. We felt it was too long and was taking up valuable space. David and I had talked about removing part of it and I told David to ask my dad what he thought. So my mom and I leave to go shopping one afternoon and come back to this.


Apparently they had been very busy while we were gone even though every time we called they said they were napping. :)

In the middle of taking apart the deck, I forced the men to take a break and go to a Greensboro Grasshoppers baseball game.

Dad had a really amazing time, apparently.

After the game they went right back to the deck and finished it around midnight.


But look at the great results. I think it looks so much better! (See our main blog picture for the before). Thanks Dad and David. You guys are amazing!


My parents visit and the projects we did with them made David and I want to finish some existing projects that needed to be taken care of. So, we graveled our driveway (look familiar, Dad?). After the gravel was dropped off, David smoothed it all by himself....11 tons of gravel! It took him all day but it's very nice to no longer have a muddy drive every time it rains.


Our neighbor decided to help us out one day and he and David pulled a clothes line out of the ground. Notice the two feet of concrete they had to pull out in the background.


David, being the amazing person he is, also changed out some of the lighting in our house. He removed the (ahem) slightly dated kitchen fixture...

...and replaced it with the fixture that used to be in our dining room.
He then put up a new fixture that we got on CLEARANCE at Lowes. Yay! Isn't my hubbie amazing?


And here's just two random pictures. The first is of David playing video games with his friends. They played the same game over and over again for hours and loved it. I'm not going to lie, it was a little ridiculous.
My wonderful sister sent me flowers the other day and I wanted to share how beautiful they are. I received them almost a week ago and they are still blooming. Thanks, sis!

Charleston, SC

This is late in coming but I wanted to post some pictures of our recent trip to Charleston, SC. Charleston is an interesting city. It has so much history associated with it and the architecture of the churches and homes there is beautiful. Here are two churches in the city. This first picture is very indicative of a regular Charleston street with the palmetto trees and the homes right up next to the road.

One of the places we went while there was a rice plantation. The building you see in the pictures below was actually the hunting "cottage" that was moved to the site after the main plantation home burned down.

The plantation included beautiful gardens and a petting zoo.

We also went to Fort Sumter where the Civil War started. It was interesting to learn the history of the fort, especially since this year is the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War!

Finally, I decided to try out South Carolina barbeque which is made with mustard. It was good but definitely not as good as North Carolina style barbeque.

{FYI: If you are thoroughly confused about barbeque styles in the South, please go HERE

for a brief and hilarious tutorial.}

House Stuff, a Coupon Trip, and a Bonus Pic

A couple of weeks ago I saw a project on a design blog that I just had to try. The blog showed how to paint your ceiling fan. My husband was kind enough to go along with my crazy idea (as he usually is) and even did most of the work.

The original fan was brown and gold and we wanted it to be silver and black to go with the rest of our living room. David took off all the blades and taped up the ceiling with lots and lots and lots and lots of paper so we could spray paint the fan. Meanwhile, I painted the blades black and then spray painted the fan metallic silver. Of course, without the main light in the room we had to do this all in the dark with only a flashlight to see by. I know, we're crazy!



But it was worth it! The fan looks completely new and really pulls the room together. I'm so glad we took a leap of faith and just tried it!

We also recently got a "new" chest of drawers from our neighbors trash. They had this piece of furniture sitting outside for a week before putting it out by the road and I was literally SALIVATING over it. Every morning I would wake up to see if they had put it in the trash yet so I could have it. Again, my husband went along with my craziness and when they finally did put it out by the road he helped me carry it to our house at eleven at night.

It gives us a bunch of extra storage in our office and is a very nice piece of furniture. I still have no idea why they got rid of it but we're glad they did!

I haven't posted a coupon trip for a while and I had a pretty good one today so I thought I'd share.

See all those box tops, Gracie? Those are heading your way soon....I'm determined to win the favorite aunt title if I have to eat pizza rolls for the next month!

I got: 4 boxes of instant potatoes, 3 boxes of golden grahams cereal, 3 boxes of kleenex, a box of the new Kellogg's Crunchy Nut cereal, a bag of dried cranberries, 5 containers of juice, 2 tuna packets, 2 boxes of Glade plug-in refills, 3 boxes of Hot Pockets, 4 Totinos pizzas, 3 boxes of Green Giant veggies, Pillsbury cinnamon rolls, 2 raspberry lemonades, a bag of Sorrento string cheese, a gallon of milk, and 2 packages of Hormel pepperoni.

I spent $41.92

I saved $74.90

It wasn't the best shopping trip ever but we got a lot of things we needed and several items David can use for lunches at his new job. (Yay for a real job, at least until tax season is over).

Finally, here's a bonus pic of where David was the entire Duke/Carolina game:

Yep, he stood in front of the tv and didn't sit down for three hours....and he was not a happy camper when Duke won by coming back from a 16 point deficit.

Just Four Years Ago I Was Standing Alone

Not only was yesterday my wonderful father's birthday (Feliz Anniversario, Pai!) it was also the day that David asked me to marry him three years ago.

Four years ago when I came to North Carolina I didn't know anyone. Strangely enough I wasn't scared. I knew without a doubt that this was where the Lord wanted me to be and I was excited to begin the next stage of my life.

Just one week before I left for North Carolina I was in Washington DC for work. I had a friend take a picture of me near the NC pillar at the WWII memorial. This picture felt like the beginning of my new adventure.


Just last month, David and I were together in the same spot and we took a similar picture. So much has changed in just four years. I'm so grateful the Lord brought me to North Carolina and to David. Even though we are incredibly different in so many areas, we fit because he makes me feel comfortable about being me. I'm so grateful to be married to my best friend. Thanks for asking me to be your wife three years ago! I love you!

(Ok, gross, too much mushy stuff! The things I do for you, David!)

Is it too late to post about Christmas?

OF COURSE NOT!!!!

I found some fun wreaths to make for Christmas, including this wreath that is simply made with pages of a book. It cost me a total of one dollar and looks really nice in our front entry hanging on an old shutter door that used to be in our house.


I also saw this easy Pottery Barn knockoff of a twine star. All I did to make this was find five branches in our back yard, cut them the same length, wrap them in twine, and glue gun them together. (This picture makes it look a little wonky. I promise it looked better than it does here.)





This Christmas season I also was brave enough to tackle our dining room linen closet. Until now this close has been used for gardening tools/camping gear. We had done absolutely NOTHING with this closet. And when I say nothing I mean there was still some dog food in there from the previous owners of our home. So, again, we had done nothing but just shove stuff in this closet to get it out of the way.

Because I think it's a little ridiculous to have such a nice feature as a dining room linen closet I figured I should actually utilize the space as such. So after many prep talks (SO DIRTY!!!) I convinced myself to take two days and do this. I had to clean, clean, clean, and paint (two coats, darn it!). But I'm pleased with the results and having our dining linens in their own closet does save space in our kitchen. Here are some before and afters of the process. I'm mad at myself for not taking a picture before I had cleared out the closet, but what's done is done.


Yes, it was painted pink.

But it was worth it! Here's the after picture. So CLEAN!

One of David's cousins also got married in Washington DC right before Christmas. We drove up there for that and had fun spending time with David's relatives.

Here we are at the national Christmas tree. Um, so I guess I can say I've been there, done that....but the tree (you can't tell in this picture) was blue. It was pretty ugly....I'm just saying.

On the National Mall in front of the Capital:

Here's the happy couple. Can you guess which one David's related to? Nope, not the bride even though she definitely looks more like David than Bubba does.

We're so happy to have Lauren in the family. Other than me, she is actually the only other female in-law in David's entire family (on both his mom and dad's side). I'm happy to have someone to hang with!

Lauren was freezing but she braved the cold to get some pictures of her gorgeous dress.

Here's David being a helper and holding Lauren's muff while she takes pictures. You look so cute, honey!

This post is dedicated to Brittany Haderlie.