More Home Improvement Stuff + Wacky Weather

This past weekend was another "gettin stuff done" weekend. Yay! On Saturday alone, we hung blinds in our breakfast area and kitchen windows and curtains over the breakfast area window, and then we capped the day off with a 5 mile run! How's that for progress? The kitchen looks so much more complete with the blinds and curtains up, and we actually have some privacy while we eat at the table at night now. Before, I felt like people were staring at us at night through those windows, but not anymore. Now, the only windows uncovered are the little sidelight windows on either side of our front door. I may end up putting some sheer curtains over them in the future though. Here are some pictures of our finally finished kitchen....

So much better!

The navy valence matches the navy in our china and placemats...

Matching blinds and curtain over the little window

Yay!

I'm hoping this weekend we can hang blinds in the guest bedroom and study. Those will be somewhat difficult because they'll have to be mounted a different way, but we've got the hang of this now pretty well, so maybe it won't take too long...

Gabby is the only one who's not happy about the new blinds in the kitchen. She loves to look out of that big window, but it's a little more difficult to do now that there are blinds in the way. Poor kitty!

Pre-blinds

She saw something!

Sunday, I worried about the weather all day because we were supposed to get bad storms and possibly tornadoes that night. Sure enough, I woke up around 1:15 AM to the wind blowing and rain pounding on our windows. The tornado sirens went off about an hour later(which is enough to make me freak out after last April), and we jumped up to go turn on the TV to find out that the bad weather wasn't going to come our way. I may have gone back to sleep for just a short while after that, but soon it was 4:30 and time to get up for work. Luckily, we had no damage at our house (just a lot of rain!), but on the way to work, I heard on the radio that northeast Jefferson County had been hit by a tornado. They specifically mentioned Clay, Trussville, and Centerpoint. Well, hearing that made me panic, so I called Mom and Dad at 5 AM (sorry!) to make sure they were ok. They were, but the tornado came through only a few miles from their house. I think I heard that over 200 homes were destroyed in Clay. Very scary and sad. I've never heard of tornadoes in January, but I guess that's what happens when it's unseasonably warm outside. I'm lobbying for us to have a storm shelter put in our garage since we don't have a basement or really any good spot to hide in our house, but they are pretty expensive. Next house we buy will definitely have to have an underground basement or storm shelter.

I felt like a zombie yesterday at work on such little sleep, and I'm still feeling like it today. I work tomorrow 5:30-2 and Thursday 6-5 and then I'm done for the week. Whew. Friday night, we're having a few people from church over for supper. Luckily, Travis is off for the day, so he can help me cook and clean around here. I know he's so excited! :)

Mom met with her radiation oncologist this morning, and she's hoping to start radiation at the end of this week. She goes back tomorrow to get marked. She'll have 36 treatments total, and they'll be 5 days a week until she's finished unless something comes up. The doctor told her that this is the "easy" part, so we're hoping so!! Hopefully she'll be done by the middle of March!

Well, that's all the "news" I can think of for now. Not too much exciting stuff, but I guess we're just living pretty ordinary lives. I wouldn't change that for the world! :)


Erin

Getting stuff done!

As of a few days ago, we have officially been homeowners for one year now! Looking back, I would say that we really didn't know what we would doing when we began house hunting, but somehow I think we ended up with a good one. We really like living here!

The house has changed a good bit since we bought it, and I would say the changes are all improvements. We've repainted every room (minus the garage), put new shelving up in the pantry and master bedroom closet, installed a new garage door opener, weeded and pulled up old shrubs in our flower beds, fixed the fence in the backyard, and lots of other small projects that I'm sure I'm forgetting. The house has come a long way, but we've still got a lot more projects in mind for the future.

I would classify us as pretty slow when it comes to getting house projects done. I think there are several reasons for this. One, we've never done most of this stuff before. It always takes us a while to figure out how to do something the first time. Two, Travis is a perfectionist, which has its positive and negative aspects. It's a good thing because the finished product always turns out great. But, it's can be a bad thing because the project must be thoroughly researched, planned out in detail, and carried out, all of which takes a lot of time! And finally, we're just busy most of the time. It's hard to get anything done around here when we aren't here that much to begin with! So, those are our reasons/excuses for not getting as far along on the house as we'd like to be at this point.

But, just when I get frustrated and start thinking that we're never going to get anything done around here (because we really haven't done much to the house since the summer), a weekend like this past one comes along and totally proves me wrong. We had a very productive weekend! Several weeks ago, we ordered blinds for most of the windows in the house (minus our bedroom and the living room that already have drapes up). But, we hadn't had any time to hang them yet except for on the small window in our bathroom. Yesterday, however, we hung two in one day! Don't laugh...I was really excited! The back door and the big window in our bathroom now have blinds instead of ugly shades. Yay!! It took a good part of the day to get those hung (remember, perfection is the goal here...), but they look great.

This one turned out dark, but oh well. Back door is complete!

Big window in our bathroom

Hooray!

It definitely would have been easier to mount the blinds if they could've been mounted inside the window like most people's. When it's time to house hunt again, that'll be something to look for BEFORE we buy, and hopefully our next house will already have blinds installed!

Friday night and Saturday morning were dedicated to organizing Travis's study. Up until this weekend, there was still stuff everywhere on the bed, under the bed, on the floor, etc. But, now everything has a place, and the floor is clear. The study is one step closer to being complete!

So nice!

His desk is (mostly) clear!

We also organized the foyer closet and installed a new shower head in our shower this weekend. Don't worry...we made sure that the shower head was the top rated one on Consumer Reports before we bought it at Lowe's on Saturday night...haha :) By the way, it works great....we should have gotten it months ago! :)

Foyer closet + Gabby investigating

So, what's next on the to-do list?

1. Hang the rest of the blinds we bought (6 windows to go!)
2. Hang pictures in the study 
3. Repaint the window seat in the study (it's pink right now...definitely doesn't match)
4. Organize the guest bedroom closet (which has turned into the "junk" closet unfortunately)
5. Hang curtains in the breakfast room, study, guest bedroom, and our bathroom
6. Replace ceiling fans and light fixtures throughout the house (most of them are brassy gold...yuck)
7. Plant new shrubs in our flower beds
8. Plant the dogwood tree that Baugay gave us

Those are the projects we've got coming up in the (hopefully) near future. Should be enough to keep us busy for a while!

I'm sure you're wondering what Gabby and Felix have been up to lately. It would be nice if they would help us out with our projects, but they've apparently got better things to do...

Like snuggling on the bed...

...and watching/catching bugs...

Oh well. They're pretty cute doing what they do, so I guess we'll forgive them for their laziness.

Mom had surgery yesterday to get her port taken out, and it went well, so we're glad for that! She said the area is a little sore today, but not really that painful. Next Tuesday she meets with the radiation oncologist to find out when radiation starts. Here's to getting the last phase of treatment started and finished! Go Mom!! :)

Running is going pretty well I guess. On Saturday, we ran 4 miles in the neighborhood across the street from ours. It may have been a little ambitious because that neighborhood is very hilly, so I had to walk a couple of times, but at least I finished. I know I'm getting more endurance, but we'll see how 5 miles goes this Saturday. Yikes! :) There's still over 3 months til the half-marathon, so I think I'll be fine...hopefully. Travis is still running with me and enjoying feeling more in shape, so I'm very proud of him!

I'm working Thursday and Friday again this week, and then hopefully we'll have another productive weekend. Is it too much to ask for two of those in a row? :)

Hope you're having an awesome day!

Erin

Sweet Victory!

In case you haven't heard (ha!), Alabama won another National Championship last night. That makes #14, and the 2nd time we've won it in only 3 years! I was definitely pretty nervous before the game started since we'd already lost to LSU once earlier in the season. But, looking back, we had plenty of chances to win that first game, and last night proved for sure that we were the better team! Roll Tide!!

We watched the game at Collier and Jessica's house with them, little Baker (who went to bed during the 1st quarter!), and Matt and Maggie. We had a great time! Jessica made some awesome finger foods, so we ate before the game got started. I knew once it started I would probably be too nervous to eat anything. The guys kept us pretty entertained by dancing and going crazy when something good happened. It was funny to watch because they were trying to be fairly quiet so they wouldn't wake up Baker, but we could tell they would've been yelling at the top of their lungs if they could!

Our favorite interview of the night was after the game with Courtney Upshaw..."Hold dat thang, fo!" Definitely priceless. And Coach Saban even looked like he enjoyed his Gatorade bath...at least more than he did 2 years ago when they almost knocked him out with the cooler! It would have been so awesome to actually have been there in person last night, but you can't ask for anything better than watching it with your friends either. And, we're probably at least $3000 better off for not going too. That doesn't hurt :)

The girls...Jessica, me, and Maggie

The guys showed their excitement a little more than we did...

Confetti! :)

#1 again!!

Of course, we left the kitties at home when we went to go watch the game. I tried to take a "festive" picture with them and an Alabama shaker earlier yesterday afternoon, but it didn't work out too well. Gabby tried to eat the shaker, and Felix was scared of it and ran away. Ha! I asked Travis before we left if he was going to leave the TV for them so they could watch the game too (they really do like to watch football), but he said no. What a mean daddy! :)

See, she's eating it!

Gabby loves to give kisses :)

Cuddle time...they're almost too big for that chair now!

Speaking of sweet victory, Mom is finished with chemo! WOOHOOOOO!!! That's definitely something to celebrate. She'll start radiation in a few weeks, but hopefully she'll be done with that by sometime in March. Go Mom!!! Her birthday is also tomorrow, so happy early birthday Mom! I love you so much!! :)

Travis has been running with me lately, and we've been running 3 days a week to prepare for the half marathon I signed to run in late April. He's still trying to decide if he's going to run it too. I'm looking forward to it, but definitely feeling nervous about it.

Travis has a 4 day weekend coming up with Friday as his normal off day and Monday being MLK day. I work Friday but not Monday, so we're hoping to get some blinds and curtains hung around the house. If we don't get them hung pretty soon, I'm just going to have to hire someone and sneak them in while Travis is at work. I'm sure he'd appreciate the help, don't you think? :)

Hope you're having a great day and staying warm and dry! This weather makes me glad to just stay inside at home :)

Welcome 2012!

I can't say I'm sad to see 2011 go. A lot of good things happened, but we also experienced some pretty hard stuff too. Here's a quick recap of last year:

January: We bought our first house! The search was an exciting but long process. We were glad to be able to finally call this place ours. It didn't take long before we started repainting all the rooms...

February: I think we spent all of our free time painting. We were still living with Baugay, but came to the house after work and almost every weekend to paint. We got pretty good at it after a while!

March: More painting + re-shelving the pantry and master bedroom closet. By this point, I was very ready to be done with painting and just move in!

April: We finally moved into our house on the 9th! Thanks to a lot of friends and family helping, it really didn't take too long. I also fell in love with a china cabinet at a consignment furniture store and bought it.  Just when we felt like we were getting settled in after a few weeks, the 27th brought crazy storms and tornadoes across the state, knocking out our power for a week, damaging a lot of our electronics, and taking the life of our friend, Marcus, in Tuscaloosa. I've never felt so many emotions like I did that last week in April, and I hope I never do again.

May: I think it took the whole month to start feeling semi-normal again. It seemed like week after week we kept finding something new that was broken or not working in the house, which just made it harder to feel like ourselves again. We replaced several things, but still had a long way to go. Emily also graduated from high school, so that was an exciting way to end the month.

June: This month can be summed up with two words: wedding stuff. Travis was in Matt and Maggie's wedding. I hosted Alisha's lingerie shower. Alisha also had a couple of other wedding teas/parties. Almost all of this happened in one weekend. Oh yeah, and Travis turned 25...the same weekend. Needless to say, we didn't have time to do much of a celebration. We also installed a new garage door opener, and we went on a much needed family vacation to Fripp Island.

July: I would classify July as another rollercoaster month like April was. We spent the 4th with my parents at the lake house and had a great time. Alisha also had another wedding tea, and we went to PCB for a few days for her bachelorette trip. Somewhere in there, though, we found out my mom had breast cancer, which was initially like a punch in the stomach. She had surgery to remove the tumor the week after I got back from the beach and the week before Alisha and Tyler got married. The best news was that her lymph nodes were clear!! Alisha and Tyler's wedding on the 28th was beautiful and a great way to end a pretty difficult month.

August: August brought us back to a semi-normal routine. We cleaned out our garage so that we could park both cars inside. Mom had her port put in and started chemo toward the end of the month. We also fixed our fence and hung more pictures on the walls in our house. The happiest day of the month was probably adopting two sweet kittens, Felix and Gabby, who aren't so little anymore!

September: Travis and I went to Alabama's first football game of the season and saw an easy win over Kent State. Mom had chemo treatments #2 and #3 and felt pretty up and down. She ended up in the hospital with a fever at the end of the month and had to get IV antibiotics. We watched a lot of exciting Alabama games and enjoyed seeing Gabby and Felix become more social and used to living with us.

October: October brought some cooler weather, which was wonderful. I decorated our house with some fall decorations. Travis had outpatient surgery on his nose to fix his breathing and sinus issues, and Mom had chemo treatment #4 that same week. I ran the Liz Hurley Ribbon Run and raised my goal amount of $500! It was a 5K, and although I didn't run it as fast as I wanted to, at least I finished! Since the weather was so nice outside, we also pulled weeds in our flower beds. Toward the end of the month, I turned 25, we went to the Tennessee game in Tuscaloosa, we bought a new (to us) car, Mom ended up in the hospital again, and we went on our annual bed and breakfast mini-vacation with Ashley and Seth. Whew!

November: Alabama lost for the first time of the season to LSU in overtime. At least we ate some yummy gumbo while watching the game with friends! Mom had another chemo treatment. We had a great Thanksgiving day with the Dvorak clan and stayed out from midnight until about 5:30 AM on Black Friday to shop for a Christmas tree and some other stuff. Alabama also got revenge for that terrible Iron Bowl loss last year.

December: Mom had her 7th chemo treatment. We decorated for Christmas, which the kitties were extremely excited about. We did most of our Christmas shopping online. And, we had a great time celebrating our 4th anniversary and a few days later, Christmas with our families. Felix tried to throw a damper on the holiday by tearing up Travis's hands, but we think he's going to survive :) We ended the year by hanging out with Matt and Maggie and a few other friends on New Year's Eve.

Well, I guess that wasn't so quick a recap. Really, a lot happened in 2011. I'll admit I have mixed emotions about the year in general, but I'm definitely glad to see a new year on the calendar. Here's to hoping 2012 won't be quite so much of a rollercoaster!

I think Travis and I definitely grew up a lot over the last year. Not that we were necessarily "immature", but I feel like we were getting too focused on stuff, especially when we bought our house and starting fixing it up. It only takes something like a natural disaster or a cancer diagnosis to slap you in the face and redirect your focus onto more important things. Since April and July's events, I know I've been more focused on family, friends, and God.

2012 is a new year, and I'm looking forward to it. I've got some goals in mind for this year that I'd like to share. Hopefully, putting them in the blog will keep me accountable, and at the end of the year, I can report on how I've done.

Here are my 2012 goals, in no real order...

1. Keep up with the KSR daily Bible reading schedule. Every year, I start out reading for a few days in January, and then I'll miss a day and never really get on track again. This year, I've got the schedule printed out and lying on my nightstand, and it's also on my computer. It's only a chapter per day, so I've got no excuse...

2. Run a half-marathon. I've done the hardest part already, and that's signing up. I'm running in the Nashville Country Music Half Marathon on April 28th! That's 13.1 miles, and I'm pretty nervous about it. Aimee and Mollie are running it also, so that will definitely make it easier and more fun. I know if I don't run a half marathon this year, I probably never will, so here's to hoping I can finish! :)

3. Send one card per week to someone who is sick or needs encouraging. This is something that doesn't take very much time to do, but it means a lot to the person who receives it. I know I can dedicate 10 or 15 minutes per week to this.

4. Invite someone to our house for supper at least once a month. We've got our house (mostly) in order these days, and we really need to start being more hospitable. Last year, our excuse was that our house wasn't set up yet, but it's good enough. It's always fun to cook for others, so this is something we can look forward to doing.

5. Enjoy the present. That's kind of an abstract goal, but I find myself always thinking about future plans and events coming up instead of enjoying the day and time that I'm in. As 2011 reinforced, we aren't guaranteed to live another day, so I'm going to try to do a better job of enjoying the present day.

At that risk of making too many goals to keep up with, I'm going to leave it at that. Every once in a while, I'll try to update you about how I'm doing. What are your goals/resolutions for 2012?

Gabby enjoying the moment!

She knows how to enjoy life :)

Erin