I'm baack!

So, my computer died and I have just gotten around to replacing it.  School is winding down (we start exams tomorrow) and I am so ready for summer....and part-time jobs... (Okay, maybe not the part time jobs part).

I did get a dining room table, but not the one that I originally wanted.  It is a deep brown (almost black) pub style table that seats 8 very comfortably.  There is a wine rack/storage cabinet underneath because it is supported from the center rather than with 4 legs.  I LOVE this table and will post pictures as soon as I sweep up the tumbleweeds from my dear sweet puppy, Gatsby (who is now HUGE, by the way).

We've had a ton of storms come through this area.  These were the same systems that devastated Alabama and Joplin, MO.  Luckily for us, they lost a lot of power as they crossed over the mountain ranges to our west.  Unfortunately, the system that devastated Alabama also ended up being one of the deadliest thunderstorms in at least two decades in North Carolina, particularly for the eastern part of the state.

We had some damage to our house, but nothing that we couldn't manage.

We later installed a fence (for Gatsby, of course) and a driveway.  We have planted a garden and I am just waiting for our first vegetable to be ready (it looks like its going to be a tomato).

I will post pictures and other things later, but house cleaning is calling me...unfortunately.

Birthdays and Holidays..

In a few weeks, my birthday will be coming up.

I'll be another year older, and coming from someone who tried to cancel their 18th birthday, I'm doing much better with the whole "getting older" thing.

I told my husband that I want a sewing machine for my birthday, but if that doesn't pan out, some of these will be perfect:

[Resolve to Write Kit from downstairsDesigns]

This is perfect for someone like me who never has anything together to write a card when she thinks about it so when she gets around to it, she's already forgotten about it.  I could carry this in my purse and just write a postcard or card and have it ready to send.

[For the Lovebirds Mini Teapot from The Peacock Shop]

This would also be a perfect Valentine's gift.

[Humming Bird Vintage Glass Jewel Estate Style Earrings in Antique Brass from plasticouture]

It's a ten day weekend!

Since one snow day turned into a ten day weekend so far, I'm missing school a little bit.  Here are the results of one snow-crazed teacher:

[The classic student first day jitters book]

Who didn't love this book?

[The teacher's first day jitters book]

We read this in our new teacher training. An unexpected twist at the end makes this a sweet and completely relevant children's book.

[Teachers Give a Hoot from MudHutt]

I love owls.  They remind me of my great-grandmother. I would love to hang this wall plaque up in my office at school.

[Apple for Teacher Sweater at modcloth.com]

I love this shirt for lounging.  

[I Found an Apple from modcloth.com]

I teach chorus and am constantly begging my students to bring refillable water bottles to class.  What is more teacher-ish than a refillable water bottle with an apple on it?

[Happy Apple Plushy Pillow from ShanaLogic]

And I couldn't pass up this sweet looking pillow.  Look at that smile.  It just makes you smile, doesn't it?

Hopefully we'll be back in school on Tuesday after the Martin Luther King holiday.  I'm running out of things to do on my workdays!

Wedding Pictures

David and I are finally choosing wedding pictures tomorrow night.

I'm pretty excited about the whole ordeal.

I've loved the ones I've seen so far and I can't wait to get my hands on some real prints.  This one below of my dad and me is one of my all time favorites.  Literally, we were walking up the aisle telling each other not to cry.  My wedding was not an overly designed wedding.  It was a wedding on a budget, but it didn't feel that way.  The most important thing was that we had FUN.

My dad is a pastor and we don't drink alcohol, so people looking at our reception pictures have always been shocked that we didn't serve any alcohol.  We clearly know how to have fun.

But, honestly, the best thing about my wedding was our photo booth.

I secretly (okay, not so secretly) hope that EVERY wedding I go to from now until eternity has a photo booth.  I have loved photo booths for as long as I can remember.  We used Shutterbooth instead of renting a vintage or other type of photo booth.  To be perfectly honest, I couldn't have been any happier than I was with Shutterbooth.  They provided props as well as two people to man the booth.  One to make sure people were moving in and out of the booth and another to help guests put one photo strip into the scrapbook (they got to keep the other one) and make sure they wrote something down in the scrapbook.  It is still fun to go back and look at people's pictures and what they wrote.  Even though our food was great and the cake was delicious (and I don't even like cake), the photo booth wasn't empty AT ALL during the night.  It was 120% worth the money we spent on it.

Let's be honest, my husband and I are pretty much rock stars.

This would be us trying to fit the entire wedding party into the booth at once.  It was a little crowded.

Today's Etsy Finds...

Inspired by Deathcab for Cutie's lyrics:

"I wish the world was flat like the old days, then I could travel just by folding a map."

A trip to...

Ireland

The Emerald Isle

the second trip...

Kinsale

Kinsale

Guinness Factory in Dublin

Blarney Castle

A friend and I learning to play Uillean Pipes at University College of Cork

Fish market at the English Market, an open air market in Cork

The Rock of Cashel

The Rock of Cashel

[All photos taken by me except the one I am in]

Decoration Inspiration

For a few days now, I've been thinking pretty sincerely about the art wall. As I said before, I'm desperately wanting this dining room table:

It is simple and can be modern or traditional.

This picture goes a little more along the lines of traditional.

Our walls have a dark blue pearl finish on them. (Dad is a painter).

When I started to think about this art wall, I came up with parameters.

I'd like it to look more modern and put together than random.

However, I'm not so sure about the post-modern "grid" art wall.

That is a little too organized for me.

I really like the idea of the random sized frames inside a contained shape.

Then, I moved on to what to put into it.

I considered using some of my photographs.

I thought about fabrics all in the same color scheme.

I'm pretty sure I've decided on anything and everything within one color scheme.

However, I have NOT decided on a color scheme. 

I think I would like for it to include gray and one pop color (maybe red?), but I'm still not 100% sure.

However, I did find this lovely gem:

Art Wall

If you want a piece of art (or a reproduction) and you want it to be unique, this is the place to go.  The curator, Katie, updates the artwork which is displayed in precious frames drawn by Jessica Swift with furniture (also drawn by Jessica) representing rooms from Katie's house.  If you see a piece of art you like, simply click on the frame and it will take you to a page about the artist that will lead you to where you can purchase that piece of art.

Some of my favorites:

Anniversary Print

[$10.00 from OrangeBeautiful]

50's Inspired Quirky Print

[$165.00 from Rachael Taylor]

Live What You Love

[$30.00 from Hijiri Shepherd]

Skeleton Key Screenprint

[$10.00 from Liz Davidson of Lady Lotus]

I'm sensing a pattern in these.

Maybe gray and yellow should be my colors for my art wall.

I'll think on it.

Snowed in...

Okay, more like "iced in."

Living in the south means that the snow only sticks around for a day or less.  After that, it's all ice.

On top of that, 4 inches or so can cripple our area.

After living in Boone, NC (home of Appalachian State University and my Mountaineers!), I feel like 4 inches is anti-climactic. 

[From www.booneweather.com; taken by Kelly McMillan]

[Taken from WSOCTV, our local ABC Affiliate]

So, since we're snowed in, we've had to entertain ourselves so we don't go crazy.

One source of entertainment has been the Verizon Wireless iPhone announcement. If you were somehow unaware of this announcement, see here.

The pre-sales for Verizon customers begins on my birthday.  At first, I thought about how I would manage that kind of birthday present.  Then, I realized that there will be an iPhone 5 release in June or July...and hopefully this one will offer 4G service.  I'm not a techie, but this combined with the fact that my contract isn't up for a while makes me more inclined to wait.  I mean, I've waited all this time...what's a few more months?

My other sources of entertainment have come from less techie sources.

I have been perfectly content to be away from most technology for the past couple of days.  Actually, I think it does good to be away from it sometimes.

If you have snow, I hope you are safe and enjoying it.

If you have no snow, I hope you are enjoying it.

Sorry about the impromptu hiatus

We moved out of the house on Monday evening so that they could come in and work on the floors.

The whole house is taped off and the parts that aren't are covered in dust.

Fortunately for us, they were able to take out 1.5 inches of the "hump" in the middle of our dining room floor. The running joke was that we needed to wait to buy a dining room table until we were sure which legs we needed to saw off and how much...

It was more like a speed bump in the middle of our dining room.

I think they actually found a set of tools underneath that hump in the floor.

Hopefully we'll be back in the house within a week, but there are never guarantees when you're dealing with construction. You never know what could go wrong.

We are signing our contract to buy the house tonight! We are looking at the middle of February for our closing date.  This puts somewhat of a damper on the decorating business.  Unless we buy our new furniture outright, we can't buy it until after we've closed on the house. However, I will share some things I've been looking into as far as decorating goes.

On Tuesday, we had to take Gatsby to the vet for surgery.  He had entropion which is actually not a pretty sight.  So, Gatsby has been called a lot of names the past few days, most involving his shield.  The conehead has done pretty well with everything, not crying at all, but he runs into EVERYTHING with his shield.  If you ask where he is, you will almost immediately hear him coming as he hits EVERY door frame, no matter how wide the opening is.  He has locked himself in the laundry room on numerous occasions because he just can't figure out that his cone can close the door.

At some point, hopefully today, but definitely within the week, I will post some ideas I've had for my dining room.

On becoming a homeowner

Let's be honest.

The idea of "settling down" and "growing up" is actually quite terrifying to me.  After college, I spent quite a while trying to grow up before I finally gave up.  Now that I've given up, adulthood has kind of fallen into place.  Don't get me wrong...I still consider myself an adult by age qualifications only (as I hope it always will be), but I have matured quite a bit since I shook hands with the chancellor and received my fake diploma in front of a filled convocation center.

Now, we're on to the next big adventure. Moving out of the rent zone and into the mortgage one. This is really enough to make any "adult" scared when hearing all these heavy financial terms thrown around that, let's be honest here, make no sense at all.  We just smile and nod and say we understand; then we stare at the papers later, trying to interpret the foreign terms written there.

Okay, so it's not that bad, really. We really did understand what was going on and hopefully we will understand everything in this process. 

One of the hardest things so far has been deciding who would be the lucky one to have everything put in their name.  I won that bet.  Not because I am just a better person than my husband (although, I might try to convince you of this) or that I am always religious about my debts, in fact, unlike me, my husband came into the marriage completely and totally debt free.  Therein lies the problem.  Thanks to Fannie and Freddie and our wonderful government (cue sarcasm) having BAD credit is apparently better than having NO credit.  So, theoretically, a person who has defaulted on EVERY credit line they've ever had could get a loan quicker than my husband who has NO debt to his name.  Illogical, really.  Luckily, owning a home will remedy this situation, but you should take note. The following things (although good) will not get you any credit:

having a savings account

having a checking account

paying bills on time

having deeds in your name (unless there are payments being made to a mortgage, I think).

These things completely go against the notion that it is GOOD to be debt-free and learn how to manage your money.  The lesson here is that you should spend, spend, spend what you DON'T have. (Cue more sarcasm).  Honestly, this explains why our country is in as much debt as we are in.  

Luckily for me, my mom "spoiled" me by making me apply for a credit card as soon as I turned 18.  My friends scoffed at me and rolled their eyes when I would pull it out (for emergencies ONLY), but it has saved my butt.  It is much harder to establish credit today than it was when I was 18, but it is definitely worth it to make sure that the things you are doing are establishing credit and that they are HELPING, not hurting your credit score.  If there's anything I've learned so far, its that having a line of credit is one of the best things you can do for yourself and your current or future family.

Now, we are moving into the next steps of owning our home: contracts. We are working with my parents and the other investor to decide everything that will be included in the contract. This process is not a short, easy one if you were under that impression.  No one really buys a house in a one-hour TV show time slot. It just doesn't work that way. I will keep things updated as we get closer to owning our home!

Happy New Year!!

2010 was a good year for me, despite some of its hardships.

I'm not one to throw away the year gone by or make resolutions (why wait for one day to start fresh?), but I do like to take time and think about the things the next year will hold for me.

I will finish my first year of teaching this year (it's almost halfway over!!) and celebrate my first anniversary with my sweet (although sports-crazed) husband.

We will celebrate Gatsby's first birthday.

We will travel to California this next Christmas to visit my family.

These are all definite on our to-do list this year.

And here are some things from my "bucket list" that I would like to accomplish this year:

Get a Canon Rebel camera. 

I've only wanted one since I first found out they existed...most likely in the 5th grade.

Take a photography class or two. 

I love taking pictures and if I had the above mentioned camera, you would be inundated with pictures.

Perfect a craft.

I knit, crochet, and have dabbled in some paper crafts, but usually, I get distracted and find something new before I really get good at what I'm doing.  After using some of my not-so-honed crafting skills to plan a semi-DIY wedding, I would like to use some of that energy to decorate my house.

And now for my first REAL New Year's Resolution in approximately FOREVER:

My goal this year is to decorate my house (as in, actually decorate and not rely on photos or furniture to define the room).  We took down the Christmas decorations a little while ago and the house is practically barren.  For the next few weeks, I'll be going through some pictures and books to get ideas on a style. We are getting our hardwood floors fixed (it is an old house) next week and once we close on the house (most likely close to the end of January), I'll be able to order the dining room table that I want and I will start in that room.  Clearly, unless my husband and I won the lotto last night, it will take a while to get the whole house the exact way we want it, but have faith...it WILL be done.

I hope the new year brings you more joy and love than the last one and that you can look back and see how great it has been once this one is over!