Ottoman

Well a few months ago we made the plunge and bought a couch for our living room downstairs. We decided to make a fun craft project for ourselves and build the ottoman.

Our couch ended up being chocolate brown with these pillows (that came free with it...I plan on making some fun spring pillows to switch out later on). 

Anyways, I went to the fabric store looking for a cheap upholstry fabric that matched the pillows. This is what I came up with. I then did lots of measuring and cut it into the strips and blocks I needed.

Phil was in charge of the woodworking.

I used the staple gun and put batting around the edges and cushion foam on top.

We wanted to make it a storage ottoman so we can shove toys in it later on (much later on) when we have kiddos. 

For the feet we used wooden balls that had one flat side. I stained and sealed them... and then Phil screwed them onto the ottoman.

I'll show you the finished product in the room in my next post!

Grand Canyon and Vegas

Well hello there! Long time no blog.

I've got a few different things to post about, but I'll start with our trip we took last month!

We loved our trip to the Grand Canyon! In fact we want to go back a couple times and accomplish two goals: Hiking from one rim to the other, and white water rafting down the river. Hopefully we'll get around to it sometime!

It was way more beautiful than I anticipated it being! And of course I cherish the times like that when I get to spend them with the love of my life!

After the grand canyon we stopped by the Hoover Dam so we can say we've seen it. It was large.

Next we hung around Vegas for a night and day. We're not gamblers but Phil did play black jack for about 20 mins. He came into it with $20 and left with $110. Not bad. 

On my next post I'll show you the ottoman that Phil and I built and upholstered for our living room!

All done!

Well...my show officially finished it's run last weekend. It was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed being a dancer. I'll probably do more at this theater. It seems to be the best community theater I've come across down here in Houston! They're having auditions for The Sound of Music next month and I'm considering auditioning for that! It's basically been my goal since I was little to play Liesl. The only thing keeping me from doing the show would be that it runs during Thanksgiving, so I wouldn't be able to go back to KS. Hmmmmm...choices.

Do you know what else I'm all done with? Being a trophy wife....at least for the time being. (Side Note: a police helicopter has been circling my house and neighborhood for 30 minutes now...I'm half expecting a criminal to burst through my window.) I know I briefly mentioned that I got a job before but I felt I should elaborate.

I'm the activity coordinator at The Friendship Center. It's wonderful! I am basically running my center. I plan all of the activities, work with volunteers and the clients, do lots of paperwork, schmooze people into donating things for us AND spend lots of time with the clients!!!! I went to college knowing I wanted to work with seniors and I left thinking I would love to be an activity director of some sort! Well, here I am...and it really is the perfect job for me! My clients crack me up and even my "problem children" as I call them are bearable. They tend to be my bingo players and they definitely have opinions. But we'll work through that!


In other non-related news...

Phil and I are planning a trip to the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas! I'm super excited! We're going to camp at the canyon and hike around for a few days and then spend a day in Vegas. 

In preparation I've started running again. I remembered how I felt hiking in Monterrey, Mexico. It was something like this...

I'm going to attempt to avoid that a bit this time. When I had been running and hiked the mountains in Santa Barbara, CA it was more like this....

I'll let you know how it goes!

Anniversary Week!

This last week we celebrated our 4 year anniversary! Let me just say that I'm happy to report that we are more in love than ever and I think it will only keep getting better! 

This year we were pretty busy all week so we decided to do some sort of small celebration everyday all week long. It was fun to make it a priority all week!!!

The first day we used our grill that my mom bought us and grilled some delicious steaks and corn on the cob! 

On Wednesday we had softball games... so I baked cookies and the whole team got to celebrate with us! 

Phil for some reason thinks paying attention to driving is more important than my pictures. hmmm...

The next day we had ice cream sundaes with homemade hot fudge...mmmmm

Friday we finished our celebration by feeding the ducks at the lake behind our house! My favorite duck has a feather mohawk. Sometime I'll get a picture so you all can enjoy.

It was a really pretty night to be outdoors!

My husband is fantastic! 

Recipe for a happy birthday boy

Today is Phil's birthday and we've had a nice relaxing evening. He's playing James Bond online with a friend right now if you're wondering why I'm not currently spending time with him. It's very important that he doesn't take a break from saving the world just because it's his birthday.

Anyways, every year all Phil wants for his birthday is an ice cream cake that his mom makes. Unfortunately for him I've failed at this cake the past few years. What's so hard about an ice cream cake, you say? I'm not quite sure. I'll go with, "I over thought it".

My favorite part is the homemade hot fudge. Here's the recipe Phil's mom uses:

Ingredients:

1 Bag Chocolate Chips (12 oz)

2 cups mini marshmallows

2 cups evaporated milk (like the PET brand)

1/2 tsp salt

Throw all of the ingredients in a saucepan and heat over medium heat until it thickens. It will take about 15 minutes. Make sure to stir often and be careful not to scorch. 

If you're feeling very fancy you can make the whole cake with your new hot fudge! It makes much more hot fudge than I showed here, that's just what was left over.

To make the cake just layer ice cream then fudge and peanuts in whatever pan you'd like and pop it in the fridge for atleast a couple hours before serving. TIP, make sure you let the fudge completely cool down, it'll make your life much easier. Also I learned that if I take a knife and cut slabs of ice cream and place them in the pan it's pretty effective.

This is my excited face about the fudge.

This is my contemplating-eating the-leftover-fudge face. I'd hate to let any go to waste.

Here's our layered ice cream cake...

and our happy birthday boy!

I love him a lot!

House Picture Smorgasbord

Alright, I know I've kept everyone waiting, but I couldn't bring myself to take pictures of the house when it looked like a pit. So after a little cleaning (as much as I've been able to do so far) I've decided I can finally show off the house a little.

So here we are inside the front door. Notice the yellow is gone. We went with two tones of gray.

Take a look up from the entrance to the second floor

To the left we have the "library" as we like to be snotty and call it. This room was completely wallpapered and was a nightmare to do. But I'm happy. I also chose a green color that you can't see too well in the picture for the walls.

To the right is the formal dining room. It's also green but the lighting makes it look much lighter than it really is. 

Now walk down the hall and the kitchen is on the left! Complete with new fridge that we bought, AND a stainless steel sink to replace the ugly and dirty white porcelain one.

A view of the stairs and hall to the entrance.

Our furniture-less living room. We'll eventually fix that.

the dining nook with the door to the backyard on the right, laundry in the middle, and craft room on the left.

CRAFT ROOM! I love the built in cabinets! Oh and we replaced the carpet in the whole house! Now there isn't questionable yellow and brown spots all over the floor!

The backyard from the porch!

Here's the lake from the backyard! Notice the path around the lake! We love it!

The back of our house!

Okay, back inside. Here's a random view of the master bedroom. Also blue, because it's my favorite color.

Our messy bathroom that I have neither painted nor organized yet. But the closet is huge and great!

Now the view from upstairs to the living room.

The one room successfully converted to a guest room! It is quite empty at the moment. There's another room across from this one that's not pictured.

The only bathroom upstairs that is painted and cleaned.

Hallway to the other two bedrooms, bathroom, and media room.

Here's the little boys room! We're going to leave the paint and see if we happen to have a little boy! (don't get excited, I'm not pregnant)

The spongebob bathroom. Unfortunately for spongebob he's going to be painted over.

The little girls room. Also going to be painted over. It'll probably end up being an exercise room.

the media room! It's pretty much all of our apartment stuff! Eventually I will make drapes for the big window!

And there you have it! I'll put up more picture when I get it decorated more and get furniture! 

Phew! It's been stressful but fun to work on the house! I'm just glad we're all moved in and can take the projects on at a slower pace now!

Headband Makeover

I had a really ugly puffy white headband that I wasn't sure what to do with. It was a hand-me-down and I never wore it. So this morning, in an effort to avoid cleaning the house, I decided to make my ugly headband into something I would wear!

I used some leftover piping and bias tape from other projects, some leftover brown fabric from my rug redo, and lots of hot glue!

It's hard to take a picture of yourself that shows off a headband...this is the best I could do!

And finally, Phil and I had a nice relaxing Valentines Day. We don't really celebrate it much, but we did go out to eat and then played a nerdy board game (called Dominion) together. He also let me watch The Bachelor. I'd say it was a good night!

Festivities

While we didn't dress up for Halloween this year, we did enjoy the Halloween weekend! For Halloween we went over to our friends house to hand out candy with them to trick-or-treaters! It was pretty cute to see all of the costumes.

My favorite part of Halloween as a grown up though is carving pumpkins! So on Friday night we had a date night complete with dinner and pumpkin carving!

BUT before I go into what we carved let me tell you a little bit about this dinner.

Phil was at work on Friday and his bosses boss came up to him and informed him that they were giving him $200 (yes, TWO HUNDRED) to spend on a (yes, ONE) dinner for him and I! Seeing as how our plans were to split a $5 footlong at Quiznos we weren't quite sure where we could go to spend $200 on one meal. Phil asked his boss for suggestions and we decided to go with the most expensive steakhouse we could find! (I may or may not LOVE steak! I think it's because it reminds me of my Grandpa that I love and adore! He used to grill the best steaks!)

So we got all fancy and headed off to Smith and Wollensky's. There we had a starter, two sides, two $50 steaks, and two desserts. Let me also mention that we probably ate less than half of the food, and had two full bags of food to take home! Oh! and it was delicious!

And our bill came to a grand total of:

Yeah. It blew my mind too. But I have to admit it was a lot of fun to order whatever expensive food we wanted! With that in mind, I don't think it'll happen again...and I'm okay with that! It was a good time for the one night! And now I get to check "freakishly expensive meal" off my bucket list! 

Anyways, back to the pumpkins. After stuffing ourselves we bought some pumpkins and went back home to try and be festive. 

I decided to go with a Halloween Owl perched on a branch.

Phil went with the more classic set of skulls.

Have I mentioned lately that I think he's the best man in the world? Yeah, I love him A LOT!

I hope everyone had delightful Halloweens!!!