Just had to make a special post to dedicate my love to this sectional sofa. I soo soo want this for when we purchase a house – it might become part of the “needs checklist: large enough family room to fit this couch”. I love the color, style, price and the fact that I could fit my whole extended family on it! Thank you Young House Love for the obsession – ps LOVE the color scheme of this room too.
(photo source: Young House Love)
Officially accomplished one of my year goals of reading a book from start to finish! I have finished reading The Hunger Games. Now hopefully I can accomplish my new goal of finishing the other two books by the end of the year.
Not too long ago I saw this awesome idea on pinterest to buy a frame, print off a sheet of paper, and use a dry erase marker to write reasons why you love each other to your special someone. For Valentine’s Day I made one for Drew and I, and we’ve been using it quite often. It’s just a fun little reminder to express to each other that we love them and some of those special reasons – heartwarming or just fun.
Here is the original idea from A Content Housewife:
Here is my version I made for Drew, and how I’ve used it:
To make our version, I bought a 4×6 frame from Walmart for $1 and then I designed the photo/print out myself. Then put inside the frame and found a dry erase marker we had laying around our house.
Our friend Serah asked for a copy of the download to make for her husband, and I thought others would appreciate it as well! To make your own, I included a copy for you to download and print off, and put inside any 4×6 frame! Click here the image below for a high res version!
Growing up with the home styles of the 1990s and 2000s, there was always that extra room on the main level called “the living room,” but oddly enough, based on my experiences, no one did any living in those rooms. My parent’s living room had white carpeting, uncomfortable floral couches, antique accessories and french doors. You might as well put up caution – keep out tape, because that room was off limits to us.
As we are looking to buy a house, I still see houses with those same living rooms and I’ve been thinking about how unnecessary those are unless we use it for something more practical. As I glanced around our apartment, I was reminded how many books Drew has and how it might be cool to turn the living room into a reading/study room. I picture floor to ceiling bookshelves, books coordinated by color (that’s the graphic designer in me), big comfy furniture that you can sit drift away in a good book, and a desk to do some studying at.
With that idea in mind, I browsed pinterest for some inspiration and here is what I found…
Drew will officially be a graduate of Milwaukee School of Engineering on May 26th, and we can’t wait! We are so excited I designed our own unique grad announcements instead of getting the standard white ones that the graduation cap and gown company gives you. We also wanted to update our friends and family about Drew’s job at Milwaukee Tool as well.
I also took some photos to use on his announcement and include a blooper reel, he’s pretty funny and is always making me laugh.
I’m learning patience when it comes to buying a house, here is why…
Once we decided we were going to go ahead to start saving for a down payment for our first house, I began researching like crazy just to keep my excited. However I may have gotten a little too excited because I began downloading all those real estate apps and began searching away. And then I saw a house that I absolutely love, it had the perfect location, perfect layout, awesome touches, and more. Here are the photos…
Problem is, we are in no way ready to buy yet. Number 1: We have no downpayment. Number 2: We just signed a year lease on our current apartment in March for June 2012 – June 2013. As much as I love this house, we know it’s just not the right time for us to buy a house, and it’s pretty much impossible.
So, we began thinking more and looking at our budgets, and we could potentially have enough saved up by spring 2013 to start looking for our first house, so that solves problem number one. But problem number two we are kicking ourselves now, wishing we’d had gone month-t0-month instead of the whole year lease, so we could get out early in case we find that perfect house right way. So to hopefully solve that problem, this weekend I actually contacted our apartment manager hoping we could switch our lease to go month-to-month, it since it hasn’t officially started, because I researched breaking your lease, and that seems like a worse idea. Fingers crossed they go for it!
So here’s the plan: Get our lease changed, in June meet with a lender to see what we all need to do to get to that point to purchase a home in Spring 2013, and make a home-needs checklist. And for myself, instead of researching actual homes to buy, to begin researching ways to improve our future home and other decorating ideas!
So coming up, I’ll be blogging all about our home buying progress along with ideas for transforming a house into our home – along with the usual blog stuff of our daily lives 
So I made this succulent garden awhile back and one of them was super overgrown that I had to cut it back. However I did a little googling and found that you can grow new succulents from their leaves, who knew? You just have to…
1. Carefully remove leaves.
2. Let them lay out to dry for a few days and hopefully the leaf callus-over and start to form new roots.
3. After a few days, put them in soil like this photo and spray them with a mist of a water bottle so they don’t dry out and shrivel up.
4. Keep checking on them for root growth and once they’ve got that established you can replant and grow a new succulent… I’ll let you know if this works!
If this does work, I was thinking of making small succulent gardens for my mom for mother’s day and also for my sisters.
Here are a few resources on leaf propagation (the official term)…
Mr. Brown Thumb
Martha Stewart
Straight from the Garden
eHow
Let me start by saying this, I am not a photographer! But my little sister asked if on Easter we could go take a few photos of them to document this special time. Becky is now only four weeks away from her due date, and we can’t wait for Reese to get here. Pretty sure she is going to get all these good looks from her parents.
Can’t wait for my little niece Reese gets here so we can spoil her rotten!
Yesterday we celebrated Drew’s 22nd birthday. We went to our favorite, Chilis for dinner and then went to Yo Mama’s for some yummy frozen yogurt. PS if you haven’t tried Yo Mamas yet, you are missing out!
Spring made an early appearance this year in March, which I love. However I think it did have a negative effect on the flower bulbs I was forcing from work (Holland Bulb Farms). We did get lots of colorful additions to our indoors, however some refused to open due to the lack of cold temps. But here are some photos of the blooms that graced our apartment – Can’t wait until I have an actual garden!
I also helped my mom plant lots of bulbs in the fall – so I’ve been stopping over at my parents often to take a look at what’s blooming there:
