Dresser Makeover

We have been living without a dresser for over a year now because I chose not to take the dresser I have had since I was a child. It was a tall dresser and I wanted a horizontal dresser, and I was over the ugly wood color and one of the drawers was broken and really loud to move. In comes my hand me down dresser from my Dad. My dad has been cleaning out his house and has had a dresser in the extra bedroom for as long as I can remember, its not a very attractive piece of furniture but when he decided to get rid of it I knew i had to snatch it up and try my first furniture makeover! I sanded it all down and primed it then i decided to go for a gray paint to match our white and gray bedset. I wanted Benjamin Moore's "antique pewter" but i coulnt find it so i settled for a bit lighter gray Benjamin Moore's "Timber Wolf" I found some drawer pulls online for cheaper than i could find in any store so i ordered some round brushed nickel pulls. It all turned out really well and I was very proud of my first try at painting furniture! Here come some before and after pictures. :)

Before: 

 AFTER!!

Whats been Happening

I suck at posting on here, I get that. Sorry. I haven't been  up to a whole lot lately, working a lot. My day is so long and full of work i dont really get a whole lot done once i get home. I havent gotten into a routine still, and its been what, almost 4 months! I feel like a slacker most of the time. :-/ House work is my all time enemy and its always frustrating me. I was so sick of all the STUFF we have that i dont use, dont know where to put, and just sits out in the open with no home that i decided to go through the house and have a garage sale. We planned on having it this weekend and even borrowed tables and got money out for change then late friday night things were still not set up and we hadnt made signs or advertised so we are putting it off till this coming weekend. Hopefully the weather isnt too bad, but my lovely friends wonderful mom let us borrow a nice canopy that we can put in the drive way incase it rains :) I still have to price sticker about half of the stuff and realized there is still a few more areas i need to go through and add stuff to the sale pile. Ive never had a garage sale before so i hope it goes well! We are going to put in on craigslist throughout the week and i might even look into seeing how to get it in the paper, but im sure signs, craigslist, and facebook will be fine too. Also we live on the same street as a busy busy church so i would imagine lots of passerby church goers will stop by. Cant wait to get all this stuff out of our house!! :)

In other news, my dad was getting rid of an old dresser he's had in his house for as long as i can remember that was really beat up and nothing special, but we dont have a dresser and ive been dying to get one so i said we would take it and i would undertake my first furniture makeover!! I got the dresser last week and last weekend i sanded and primed the whole thing, then i went and bought a quart of paint, i decided to paint it gray since we have gray sheets and white bedding with gray flowers on it form Ikea, Im painting our bedside tables while so i thought gray would go well with it all. After two coats the dresser is a bit lighter than i had planned on but it looks so much better than it did!! I still dont have hardware on it, they are pretty spendy so i ended up buying brushed nickle pulls online so they wont be here till wednesday. I cant wait to get it in our room and fill it with clothes!! Once i get it all together i will post pictures! Now i just need to find a mirror to go on top!

In the food world we did find an awesome U-Pick blueberry farm this summer and went twice, first time we got a pound and a half and i made a blueberry buckle and then fresh blueberry pancakes and we ate the rest in oatmeal, the second trip we picked SIX pounds!! Its such a good price and we had a lot of fun picking them, we planned on making jam and wine, but i actually just made the buckle again and some muffins and now the rest are in the freezer! My dear friend Kelsi and I picked blackberries and decided to make jam with those instead of the blueberries, we got about 22 cups of blackberries and made a big of pot of jam and now i have six jars of it waiting in the cupboard...Its been a good summer and we have a fun time going for fresh picked berries! Glad i learned to make jam too! Also, a couple weeks ago a lady I work with brought in some zuchini from her garden and they were HUGE! so i took one home, it was one of the smallest ones and i decided to make zuchini bread, which i never have before, and i got six whole loaves out of the zuchini! It was so good, i gave away four of the loaves and everyone loved it, our two at home went fast too!! Definitly turned out well, I love all the new stuff ive learned to make! And last night i was looking through an old cookbook and found a recipe for Peanut Butter bread, ive never heard of it so i decided to try it today, its nothing spectacular but it ended up pretty good, its good with jam on it too! So its been pretty fun trying new things lately, i just need to start trying DINNERS rather than jams and breads, haha because ive been slacking on making dinner lately, Sorry hunny!!

It's been a while..

I am just bad at keeping up with blogging...im so interested in reading other people's blogs I have a hard time updating mine...it just doesnt compare! Oh well, I dont want to completely desert it so I'm here for a little update.

I started a new job last month, after being at my job for 5 years I was very nervouse for the change, but also very ready and excited. I am now a teller at a local Credit Union and I am loving it! I never thought I would ever want to be or try to be a teller, but its a great step up for me and the people I work with are awesome. The credit union is so good to its employees and they have so many fun opportunities and events. Im finally done with training, but far from done with learning. Its getting easier day by day but theres just so much! Its also a much longer day for me so I've been getting home way later and have just been really tired, so I havent been doing a while lot at home. I'm really enjoying my new job though, but I really miss my ladies at the coffee shop, Inever see them anymore and I miss them!

I do have a couple spray painting projects in the very slow process of being completed...im new at spray painting and its not as easy as i thought, ive encountered a lot of unevenness and running paint....im learning though and ill post those projects when i make myself go finish them. :)

I do have an updated picture of my flowers I planted outside though. They are just growing nicely and look a lot better now...the seeds I planted behind and throughout them have sprouted and are about an inch or two tall, but they are growing fast, and arent dying either..but I dont think they can get enough sunlight so Im not sure if they'll ever get very big. Hopefully though!

Here's a reminder of what they looked like before, right when I planted them:

And here's what they look like today!

100 miles in May

So I had a goal for myself to walk 100 miles in May, as a way to get myself back into a routine of going to the gym, and finally sticking to a goal! Well I finished it! I started out doing really well, I was walking 4 miles every day after work and on the weekends and was feeling more energetic and taking less naps, it was tiring, but I was feeling better overall. Then towards the end of the month i started wanted to skip days because I wasnt feeling up to it or whatnot, and I ended up skipping too many days that I had to start walking more to catch up. Then I got sick and somehow found myself with three days left and 23 miles left to walk. I walked 8 miles two days and on the last day of the month I finished up with 7 miles. I was feeling pretty miserable and was more concerned about getting over my cold I wasnt going to go on the last day, but thankfully my husband convinced me to go with him to the gym and I finished my 100 miles! Im glad I did it, and i feel like I will continue to go to the gym in more of a routine but it will be nice to not feel so strict and guilty if i dont feel like it one day. It was good overall though but Im glad its over!! :D Im still pretty sickly and just want to rest up and get over this cold!

Baby Gifts: Mobile and Monogram Letter

So with the new baby boy arriving that I previously mentioned here, I decided to make him a couple things that were actually done right after he was born, but I havent posted them on here until now. The first thing was a cardboard JoAnn letter 'U', for Uriah, covered in fabric scraps. Another friend of mine, recently had a baby boy and a friend made her one, found here, on her blog, with the letter H for her baby Hudson. So I decided that it was just so adorable I would give it a shot. I bought the U from JoAnn and I already had Modpodge, and since I didnt have any fabric, because Im just starting to be crafty and have never sewn in my life..I thought I would give it a shot with cute boyish sheets of scrapbook paper from JoAnns. Well that was not going to be happening, it was too stiff and unmanagable. So I asked Sarah, the one who recieved the H for her baby, if she had any leftover scraps I could have, because she is quite the crafty sewer :) And she did! Woohoo, so i couple days of working on it here and there and I had myself a cute little U for baby Uriah...

The second project I did was actually super easy, it took me about 45 minutes of just sitting on the couch watching TV to finish it. I saw the idea here, which I found through this lovely blog. So I thought I would take the basic method of sticking white price stickers back to back on white floss and then use a embroidery hoop and paint it blue and tie the floss to it to creat my own baby mobile. I actually ended up finding a baby blue emroidery hoop so I didnt even have to paint it! It was perfect, then i just tie floss to it in varying lengths and stuck the stickers to it, then I tied floss around it in a few spots to pull up and tied a hoop at the top to hang it from the ceiling, it turned out wonderfully and now the baby has a cute mobile to stare at :D Here it is all finished and hanging in their bedroom...

Flowers always cheer things up

I've never had my 'own' yards to plant flowers in, and well technically I still dont, since we are renting and the yard is so small, there isnt even really anywhere to plant flowers. There are a couple pretty Rodies in front of the house, but the rest of the "free space" is so old and dingy looking. But I decided that i would clean up tiny little area by the front door and plant a few small flowers to make it look a tad bit better :)

Last weekend while Kelsi and I picked up those basil and catnip seeds I also bought Black-Eyed Susan seeds. Those are the state flower in Maryland and I thought it might be nice for Brandon to have little reminder of home :) Plus, they're cute.

So I bought a couple little garden tools, a hand shovel and little hoe thing, and some potting soil and also three things of marigolds. I know, how boring, but I love the yellow to red tones and I think they're cute. So today I finally got myself out there and cleaned up the gross ground and added clean soil and planted all the marigolds and the black-eyed susan seeds among and in a line behind the marigolds. Hopefully it will all work out and they will grow, im not the best plant caretaker so I'll learn as I go, but i'd love for them to live!! :D Here are some before and after pictures...


This is the sad little aread before..

And this is after, not the most amazing thing but definitly better, and hopefully even better once the other flowers start to grow..

Painting a Glass Bottle

I had an empty salad dressing bottle yesterday and as I was cleaning it out to recycle it I noticed it was a pretty cute bottle, had a little diamond design going around the top and bottom. Plus, the other day I just saw this cute painted mason jar on pinterest that I really liked, so I decided I would try that with this extra bottle I now had. So I just bought some white gloss spray paint and gave it a few coats this morning, and once that dried I tied some twine around it and threw in some fake Ikea flowers I had in a vase in the bathroom, with more to spare. This is how my bottle turned out, I really like it! And it was super easy and super cheap!

DIY Clothespins and Flashcards

I decided to make a gift for my new favorite little boy who's mommy was having an "after the baby is born" babyshower. Since I kind of overdid it a little with gifts for her before the little guy arrived, I wanted to save some money and make something myself that meant a little more. :D

I saw this cool idea for clothes pins from my new favorite blog and since I already had sheets of boy themed paper and clothes pins lying around I decided to make my own. It was super easy and fun and I even found some free printable alphabet flashcards online that I printed out and then glued onto some thicker paper I already had so they were more durable and more attractive on multi colored paper. All in all it turned out really cute, I think at least, and I hope once the little guy gets a bit older the flashcards will come in handy.

The idea is for it to be hung on the wall and can be used for anything really, displaying his drawings when he's older, learning with flashcards, etc..

This is what the clothespins ended up looking like (Sorry about the poor quality photos, I need a nicer camer!)...

This is what it looks like with the flashcards pinned to it, currently spelling Uriah, the sweet baby boy for who it's intended..
And this is how the flashcards turned out..

Planting Seeds and Making Bread

Today a girlfriend and I decided to go to the Farmers Market and get seeds to grow, then we planned to get clay pots and paint with chalkboard paint so that we could write on the pot what we were growing in it. She already had pots for herself and chalkboard paint and soil, so we got seeds at the farmers market, she got some vegetables to plant in her garden at home, and I got basil and catnip seeds (I thought it would be a nice treat for our lovely cat, and interesting to see how she'd do with it) and some spinach starters. I also bought Black-Eyed Susan seeds to plant in a small patch of ground that is bare and ugly by our front door, but I'm waiting for the horrific downpours to stop (If they ever will) and I need to clean it up and get better soil first. I planted the spinach starters in a pot I already owned and then bought two clay pots which I painted and wrote on with chalk, for the Basil and Catnip. I can't wait to start seeing them sprout. Hopefully I can keep them alive, I'm new at this :)

Our second plan for the day was for her to teach me how to make bread, I have been wanting to do it for a while now, I just never have before. So while waiting for our paint to dry on the pots we starting making whole wheat bread, it was pretty easy and fun to see the changes in it as it rises. While we were waiting for that, we switched back and worked on planting our seeds :) The bread turned out pretty well! And im excited to know the basics now and try more options in the future.

Listening to a Book

I've always thought I wouldnt like audio books, I love having a book to hold while I'm reading, which is why I dont think I'll ever own a kindle or any other eReader. I've also always thought that the voices of the people who read the books would bother me, or their inflections. But I was talking to a friend recently who listened to a book and she suggested I try it while I walk.

So I decided to try it, why not get a book read and miles walked at the same time? :) I downloaded iTunes on my new computer, which I was putting off because I always slow down my computers with tons of music, and I bought an audiobook. I started out with Sh*t My Dad Says, i've heard its really funny, it was pretty short, and I wanted to start out with something amusing. It took my only 2 and a half of my walking sessions to get the book finished. Overall it was an enjoyable book and the voice didnt bother me. I did catch myself zoning out a little and just thinking about other things, but I'd bring myself back to listening and I dont think i missed anything from the book.

Overall I think it's worth listening to a book while at the gym or doing other activities to accomplish multiple enjoyable things at once, the only thing I dont really like is that they are pretty spendy. I usually wont even buy books in a book store because of their price, unless its really worth it :), i'll just find ones I like then order them online for cheaper, so I dont think I'll be buying Audio books too often, but I'm gonna try one more and see if I can actually get a novel done. I think I'll always love having a book to hold though :)

Pedometer

I've never used a pedometer before and I'm not sure how accurate they really are. But once the weather starts staying a little nicer I would love to be able to walk outside and still keep track of my distance, that way I'm not just stuck in the gym on a sunny day :)

I just ordered one from amazon that sounded pretty nice; keeping track of steps, distance, calories, and fat burn, and it calculates your stride based on your height. Im excited to try it out and get outside!

Walking 100 Miles

Since the wedding I have gotten out of my routine gym visits and have had a really hard time getting back into it. I gained back all the weight I lost during the year Brandon was deployed, and its just been getting to me. So as a way to ease myself back into a routine of going to the gym I set a goal of walking 100 miles in May. Hopefully by just walking a little every day I will start getting used to going everyday and get more energy back. So far i've gone every day but one and I've already walked 17 miles, only 83 to go! My soreness is already starting to fade and im feeling a little better and more energetic already. I've taken less naps in the past week than I normally do. :) I'm still doing zumba every monday and wednesday, walking and doing zumba those days is kind of exhausting though!

Im excited to get back into a healthier routine and look forward to sticking to my goal :D

The Beginning

I've had an urge to start blogging for a little while now...I've been following a few blogs lately and they're just fun and inspiring so I'm gonna give it a shot and see how this turns out. I have done a few crafts lately..I love crafts and all but im not necessarily the most artsy person, but its really fun so I hope to continue learning and sharing those, along with all the books I read, my main time filler :)

I haven't been doing as much as I'd like in life lately so Im setting goals for myself and hopefully i'll share them on here and it will help motivate me to stick with them. Lets Begin! :D