Wow! It only took me about 3 years but I have reached a blogging milestone. Yippee for me! Remember in kindergarten, how you celebrated the 100th day of school and you had to glue 100 things to a poster? Well just picture me gluing 100 pieces of Easter candy to my poster board right now.

Mmmmm...100 Peeps, yes please!

 By the way, I just discovered a love for Peeps. What have I been missing all these years? I thought Peeps were some stale, icky, creation BUT they turned out to be DELICIOUS! I spent my Easter Sunday biting the head's off all the ones I got in my basket. Speaking of which, that ol' boyfriend of mine pretty much made me feel like the marshmellow-y insides of one of those Peeps, he actually got me an Easter Basket and hid plastic eggs around the house.
While I was totally surprised I felt like a complete schmuck because I didn't get him one even though I totally thought about it. I figured we wouldn't do anything but he went and smashed that idea to smithereens! Love that boy :)

Our Easter day was pretty uneventful, we didn't do anything with either of our families because they were both doing late lunches or dinners and we had tickets to the Cardinals game. The game was fun except that it was a little chilly and of course started raining but that was no big deal for us because we were under the cover of Homer's Landing, which was definitely nice!

I took a personal day today to work on a grad school project and bum around the house. I pampered myself a little and got an awesome hot stone pedicure and my nails done. But otherwise I have been crossing things off my to-do list...installed a towel bar (more like supervised the installation of a towel bar, thanks Aunt Cyndi!), made ump-teen phone calls...Ashley Furniture for our missing dining room chair parts, home warranty people to schedule someone to look at our oven which won't even turn on :( and trying to get a hold of the people we bought our fridge from to repair the broken LED light. I also accomplished the weekend goal of clearing away our tool table that had been sitting in our dining room for a month and setting up our guest bedroom. No pics of that yet but will get some soon. Things are coming along quite nicely, have a good week!

Yahoo! I just finished painting the 2nd bedroom! After starting last weekend, I got the last wall painted today after school. Chris and I originally bought paint for this room 4 weeks ago when we went on a paint buying spree, we chose Valspar Dreamy Cloud.

 After a somewhat less than stellar experience with our master bedroom color, Oaklands Subtle Taupe, which promised to look like a light smoky gray, but instead turned out more white and way lighter than intended, the above Dreamy Cloud made me want to wretch when I went to start painting last Saturday. Since we were able to get a $5 rebate on each can of paint and we bought 5 cans of paint four weeks ago, I justified buying just one more because it was essentially free with the rebate.

Enter the color I WOULD have painted our bedroom. Olympic Aqua Smoke!

It is perfect, a good mix of gray and smoky blue. I am in lurve with this color. My non-fancy camera did a horrible job of capturing its' beauty but here it is. While I was painting I also touched up the window frames, sills, baseboards, and ceiling. We plan on using this room as our office and it also it home to my closet, since I have entirely too much stuff to share one with Chris.



This weekend I plan on finally getting all the paint put away and clearing off this card table that has been sitting in the dining room for 4 weeks holding all of our tools and supplies. It will be nice to move the dining table to its actual place in the middle of the room instead of pushed up against the wall.

We have our first guests staying at the house on Sunday, my sister and her boyfriend, so the guest bedroom needs to get underway. Luckily, no paint in sight for that room which is actually downstairs. I plan on getting a bed in there, some sheets and maybe a side table. We shall see what comes together when I go shopping tomorrow.

Being a homeowner has really made me cherish the weekends. I downright love spending time in our house, it is just a great feeling. We only have 5 more weeks of school left which probably will go as slow as molasses but it will be here soon and I can spend all the time I want just staring at the pretty walls of mi casa.

Tomorrow marks the third week of living in our casa and things are coming along nicely. Today, despite the heat I got to work clearing out the spare bedroom. We didn't turn on the air this weekend even though temperatures outside reached the mid 80s so I definitely worked up quite a sweat emptying and carrying boxes to other parts of the house. That bedroom is the only one left to paint so hopefully that will get done within the next two weeks....if only I had the energy to tackle painting after school on weekdays, but that seems like a pretty tall order, I'm pretty beat after getting  home from work.

Friday, my extremely handy aunt and uncle visited and helped install a new garbage disposal and kitchen faucet. Our old one leaked whenever you turned it on so replacing it was at the top of the to-do list.

They also hooked up the ice maker and took care of the bird situation in the kitchen. We had some birds nesting in our exhaust fan that was causing feathers and other debris to fall onto our oven...pretty disgusting. And hearing chirping birds in the kitchen is not exactly what I call music to my ears. It was a pretty easy fix, they cut a board to fit the hole of the exhaust fan and screwed it in. Hit the Easy button on that one.

So far nothing else has broken except for some burnt out light bulbs which is just a little frustrating because one burns out, I go to Target by one bulb, replace it and THEN another decides to go out. Did you know Sam's has great prices on light bulbs? I couldn't believe it. I paid $5.37 for one light GE Energy Smart Light Bulb at Target. Yesterday I bought an 8 pack of the same light bulbs (60 watt) for only $2.36! That's less than .30 cents a bulb! I was certain the price was wrong but the price was confirmed at checkout. So go ahead lights, burn out all ya want, I got plenty!

Speaking of good deals, anyone watch Extreme Couponing on TLC last week? Oh man, Chris and I were just amazed. These people were buying $600 worth of groceries and paying less than $20 (in most cases less than $10) for all of it. Unbelievable. Chris was getting a little annoyed however being someone that works in retail. He feels people who coupon to the point of what we saw on the show are abusing the system and to some point I agree...do you really need 36 bottles of Maalox? But coupons are there and so many people just throw them away, it really is like free money towards the products you buy, you just have to take the time to use them. I have been using coupons for about a year now and thoroughly enjoy saving extra money at Target and the grocery store. And I never shop for clothes without using a coupon first. This weekend I was buying candles at Bath and Body Works which were regularly $19.50 each but were on sale 2 for $20. I had a coupon for 20% off my purchase so I picked up a pretty candle holder for free along with a travel size body splash for free as well due to another coupon.

Gotta love free!

Well, the laundry is calling my name, gotta have something to wear this week. Have a good one, I'll be back with more!

Holy moly! I have been a homeowner for a week and half and it has been a whirlwind to say the least. The boyfriend and I definitely worked hard last week, buying furniture, scrubbing baseboards, painting, moving boxes, painting, and oh, did I mention painting?

And I feel like I barely made a dent. I still am living out of boxes from the spare bedroom but finally broke down and got the bathroom together...after sporting a perma-ponytail for a week it was time for some decent grooming to resume.

This may have been my uniform for the week...

Last week was physically exhausting, Chris and I literally collapsed into bed every night around 2am and somehow managed to wake up before 8 or 9 the next morning to wait for deliveries or get started on a project. I really have to hand to Chris who NEVER wakes up early for putting up with me last week. That man was a trooper but it made me so happy to see him working right along side me.

Organized chaos is how I would best describe last week, every day was met with new challenges and successes. We successfully painted the living room, dining room, hallway, and bedroom in ONE day. I don't yet have a lot of the after pictures because things are in such disarray around here but they will be up soon. In between painting, I also painted my kitchen counter tops.

Before...a lovely shade of mauve. BLEGH!

After! Ta-Da!

Close up of the paint.

Giani Granite Paint was used to transform my counter tops. I was surprised at how great the results turned out, even Chris's guy friends commented on how great it looked. It is holding up well so far and it was such an inexpensive upgrade that looks great.  Now to get rid of that drippy faucet and change out the cabinet handles and knobs to something satin nickel and we will be set.

Did you notice that big hole up to the right of my counter top? Yea, that's where my fridge should be and finally I got one in there on Sunday.
In an act of desperation and not wanting to pay an arm and a leg for a new fridge I turned to Craigslist. You never to know what to trust out there but our friends recently bought a fridge from a place off Highway 94 for super cheap and I thought I should give it a try after I saw this French door fridge.

The place was literally someone's garage beneath a strip mall but it was legit...I got this baby, which retails for $1300 for $660! Plus they delivered. I really wanted a stainless French door but price and size ended up being a factor and ultimately I had to settle for this white LG slim series model. It is working great so far except for a burnt out LED light which is being repaired tomorrow.


Have I mentioned that warranties are a wonderful thing? So far we have utilized not one, not two, but FOUR different warranties for different items in the last week. The fridge light mentioned above, we broke a chair to our new dining set while putting it together so that is being replaced at no charge however we have to wait 4 weeks (sad face), our new TV came without screws to attach the base to TV so Vizio is sending those out too (another week wait on that one), and our water heater started leaking gas on Saturday so that home warranty we made the seller's include with the purchase was definitely the right move. It seemed like everything started going wrong towards the end of last week with things breaking but I just had to remember to breathe. My tire even went flat on Monday! What can I say, when it rains it pours.

But I freaking love my new house!

How I wish I could be witty right now and crank out a "night before closing" poem, but frankly, it's late, I'm tired, and my brain can only make lists at this point.

The day is almost here, less than 12 hours and counting until I have my own home. It's crazy to think a month and a week has passed by since I first saw the house. But, the time has come and Chris and I are as ready as possible.

We did the final walk through on Saturday and had a few surprises:

Surprise #1: Look ma, no refrigerator! Seriously, I checked and rechecked the paperwork and could have sworn that the fridge was staying, but apparently I was wrong.

Surprise #2: Lovely orange-y carpet stains from the owner's furniture. Should come out, no biggie.

Surprise #3: A horrendous paint job in the living room that had been hidden by furniture. So now instead of painting two bedrooms and a bathroom were pretty much painting the whole main level. Hooray!

Chris and I made a MAJOR to-do list, outlined by day...hopefully we are not being over-zealous with the amount we can accomplish.

We did buy some basement furniture, a new sofa and loveseat from Weekend's Only for a reasonable $860. We are crossing our fingers that they won't be too big...it turns out we have quite a narrow basement, only 11 feet wide, dashing our sectional hopes. But we're totally happy with what we picked out this weekend and can't wait to lounge. I promise to post pictures soon. In the meantime, feast your eyes on some pics I took during the walk through this weekend, back with more!

Living room/Dining room

Kitchen

Basement Bedroom

Media Built Ins

Basement Wet Bar

Laundry Room

Gym

Basement Bathroom

Master Bedroom

Main Level Bathroom

2nd Bedroom

It is a done deal...my loan for the house was approved on Friday, we close on the 21st at 10am. All of my worrying for nothing! I don't think it has quite hit me that I will be a homeowner in one week. Overwhelmed doesn't even begin to describe how I feel at the moment, thank goodness my realtor had the foresight to schedule closing for the first day of my spring break. I will have a whole 7 days to set up shop before adding work into the mix. Hopefully we will be able to get a lot accomplished, the to-do list is ever growing and so far tasks include:

• Cleaning every square inch of the house before moving a stitch of furniture into the place.
• Painting two bedrooms and a bathroom
• Painting the kitchen countertops (a project I will give more deets about later, but it's gonna be good!)
• Setting up most utilities (which hopefully will get done this week, TV and internet are already scheduled)
• Painting 2 dressers and 2 nightstands for the bedroom.
• Shopping for the basics - food and toiletry items.
• Begin furniture shopping - starting with the living room
• Move furniture and personal items from both Chris and I's current residence.

I feel tired after just writing that list. Our goal is to be staying at the house by the weekend so I can at least be comfortable with getting into a new routine for work.

I went furniture window shopping this weekend and found some pieces but made the big realization that I am having a hard time deciding on what I actually like. I know I like dark woods almost to the point of black but I keep being attracted to dark brown furniture which I think will turn my living room into dark dungeon even with a lot of natural light from the two windows.

I also did some paint shopping and fortunately I know what I like a little more when it comes to paint. The bathroom in the new house is a shocking royal blue...like you walk in and turn into Joey Lawrence, "WOAH!" I plan on toning it down and making it a much more calm shade of aqua blue with brown, tan, and white accents. The bedrooms I am still deciding but they will go from dark chocolate brown and white to something more neutral, a light grey or green is what I'm thinking. The living room, dining room, kitchen, and basement are all a tan color which I am keeping for now.

Pictures will definitely be up soon once we close or buy some furniture. This week of school better fly by because I am ready for vacation!