Weekend Wrap

We had such a great weekend! We managed to get so much done around the house but still had a lot of fun, too. After work on Friday, I headed to Buckhead Church to attend Grouplink- where you can join a small group. I did this once in college and loved it, so I was looking forward to meeting some new people in the area. I think I found myself a great group of girls and can't wait to see them all on Wednesday!

When I got home, sweet Doug had cleaned up the apartment a little, bought a few groceries, and even had flowers for me! What a wonderful thing to come home to! We watched "The Other Sister" (I love this movie!) but had to finish it in the morning because we were both so sleepy...which is the case every night!

On Saturday, we did some more work around the house and then went out on a double date with one of Doug's friends from highschool and his girlfriend. We went to see "No Strings Attached" (we all loved it) and then went to dinner at a local cantina, Tin Roof, which had great food but THE WORST service I've ever seen. We were seated for 30 minutes before our waitress even greeted us...and another 15 before she brought our drinks/took our order. Then brought us the wrong food. Yeah, it was bad. Despite that, we had a great time with Craig and Becky!

We went to Marietta for part of the day on Sunday so Doug could run at the trail. So I went out to eat with my family and then went shopping with my mom. And we made a little trip to get some cupcakes! Gigi's Cupcakes are THE BEST!

I also posted our old TV stand on Craigslist this weekend, and I got several emails about it. I decided to write back to one guy because he also lives in Decatur. We emailed back and forth a few times about it and he decided to come pick it up, so I give him directions and we find out that he lives in our neighborhood! We all just couldn't believe that! So now we have a nice new neighbor friend!

I finished my February book already- whoops! I read "Happy Ever After" by Nora Roberts and of course, loved it. It's the 4th in the wedding quartet and it did not disappoint! I'm going to start "Water for Elephants" tomorrow.
I have been terrible about taking pictures lately, so I will try to liven this blog up a little bit soon! Also, I have several DIY posts coming soon! Our apartment is almost complete so hopefully I will have those pictures up soon!

One more thing - I have already gotten some dresses in for Share the Dress, so if you have some you want to donate, let me know and I will pick them up from you! :)

Share the Dress

Hey ladies! Have any old prom dresses you need to get rid of? I have the perfect solution for you...

One of Doug's co-workers, Miranda, recently co-founded a new charity called Share the Dress. It's awesome and I'm hoping to get more involved with it. I'll let her explain it for you...

Share the Dress is a community outreach project designed to make sure every girl in Rockdale and Newton counties who is financially unable to afford a dress on their own, receives one absolutely free. We have the opportunity to take our project into 6 public high schools. We use everything from flyers to facebook to get the word out to the girls within these schools. There are actually a few schools that have agreed to allow us to come in and personally share the information with the girls. So far, the reception has been great! We do not require any financial documentation, just a high school ID. We would never want any girl to feel embarrassed about their financial situation so we just have to trust and let the girls decide whether or not this is the event for them.

Since Share the Dress will be holding it’s very first event this year we have no idea of how many girls to expect. While we don’t want to expect too much we also don’t want to be unprepared, so we have a goal to reach 150 girls. We would like a 3:1 ratio, so our goal number of dresses is 450. We currently have 100 dresses. We are about 1 month away from our first Share the Dress Event and we are about 2 months away from our second event.

Our first Share the Dress Event on February 26 will reach out directly to one high school. Their prom falls much earlier than the other high schools involved, so we wanted to make sure they had a chance to shop also. The event will be held at Golden Razor Academy in Covington, GA. The girls will arrive and be able to go shopping and take home any dress of their choice. They will also receive a bag full of health and beauty products. After they have made their dress selection, their name will go into a free raffle where they could be chosen to receive either a hair up-do, makeup application, manicure and pedicure, a boutonniere and corsage or dinner to be used on the day of their prom. All of these services have been generously donated by local area businesses.

Our second Share the Dress Event on April 2 will be open to 5 high schools (this is the big one that we need so many dresses for!!). This event will take place at Central Community Church Teen Center in Covington, GA. Their experience will be pretty much the same and each school will receive the above free raffles also. At this event we will have personal shoppers available to help the girls make their selection. We are so excited to have both Miss High School Georgia and Miss Teen Georgia as personal shoppers. We will also have limited alterations available at the events. They will be able to hem dresses and make minor alterations. We still need many dresses for this event as well as donations from salons, florists and restaurants.

If you would like to donate dresses and you live in the area, you can bring them to our dress drive this weekend, January 29 at Central Community Church Teen Center in Covington between 10 and 2. If you live in the metro Atlanta area, you can give them to me, or you can ship them. We do not care if the dresses are wrinkled as we will be steaming each one. We just ask that nothing is stained or torn. You can ship the dress directly to Miranda Tamaska 4466 HWY 138 Stockbridge, GA 30281.

 

Proms were one of my favorite things about high school (a lot of it had to do with wearing beautiful dresses!) and I just love this idea to help girls that normally would not be able to attend. I have had all of my dresses stuffed in a closet for years, not knowing what to do with them, so this is the perfect opportunity to get some extra closet space and help out girls in need!

 

If you are a vendor and can help with raffle items or alterations, please leave me a comment with your email and I will contact you with more information! And if you do send in dresses, let me know!

 

Thanks for listening! :)

    

Guilty Pleasure TV

I'm not all the way adjusted to the early mornings/full time job yet, so when I get home from work, I want to just sit and do nothing. I need some mindless entertainment. Last night was an exceptional night for this. I had the best night of guilty pleasure TV.

First, I started with an episode of Boy Meets World I had recorded on my DVR (best. invention. ever.) Then, I watched Monday's Oprah episode about her new sister. Then, it was time for Glee. It was a re-run, but it was one of my favorite episodes, and that wedding scene makes me cry every time!

After that is when it realllllllly got good. Have any of y'all ever seen Bridalplasty? Ohhh it is so ridiculous! But I love it. I haven't seen every episode, since I only catch re-runs now and then, but last night had to be my favorite so far. Next week is the finale so I will definitely be tuning in for that. I hope Janessa gets the beat down!

After that, Holly's World came on. I used to watch The Girls Next Door because I loved Bridget, but Holly's show is pretty fun to watch, too. My favorite part was when Jayde (Holly's nemesis) asked Holly how old she was turning. When Holly said 32, Jayde replied with "That's like 60 in Vegas years!" Doug and I got a good laugh out of that. It was a great night of television.

One of my very favorite guilty pleasure shows is Pretty Little Liars. I  L O V E  this show. I am absolutely hooked and can't wait to find out more every Monday night. I love me some Ezra + Aria! The age range of viewers for this show is probably 12-18, but who cares. It's SO GOOD!

And one of my other favorites is The Bachelor. Sadly, I haven't watched a single episode of this season yet. It comes on at the same time PLL does, so I chose that and then never found the time to watch the first episodes online. Now that I have my DVR, I need to catch up before the season is over!

So what are your guilty pleasure shows? I know everyone has them! :)

Sew Over It

When I decide to do a project that involves sewing, I seem to always forget how much I want to throw my sewing machine across the room by the time I'm finished. This is what happened yesterday. I had my curtains, I had the lining, and I was excited to make my pretty new curtains. Somehow, I always forget to buy thread. So I had 2 tiny little spools of 2 different colors that I decided will just have to do, and I got started. The longest part was getting the thread ready to go. I was already so frustrated before I even started sewing. But, I eventually figured it all out and started my little project.

If you don't know anything about sewing (like me), there are 2 places for thread. One that you can see on the top, and one that you can't see underneath. Well, I was just watching the thread on top to see how much I could sew before it ran out. So when it finally did, I stopped and decided to finish the rest tomorrow when I could get more thread. As I gathered up the huge curtain panel to see my work, I found that I had been out of (the underneath) thread for quite some time, and that I had been sewing nothing. Needless to say, I was done with sewing (at least for the day). I also realized that I hadn't thought everything through, and the loop that the rod goes through was now on the inside of the curtain. So I spent the next hour with my seam-ripper, undoing the damage.

Since I am very stubborn and like to figure things out for myself, I had ignored the instruction manual and decided to teach myself how to sew. Bad decision! I think it's time I invest in some sort of beginners' lessons!

But today I am going to buy some more thread and finish these dang curtains that I wish would just go away! (Now do you get my clever little title for this post? :)

Other than that little fiasco, our weekend was pretty good. I worked at the Woodstock Bridal Show with my former boss, Rob, to advertise Featherstone's for wedding receptions, rehearsal dinners, bridesmaids luncheons, and bridal showers. (We had our reception here as well as the bridesmaids' luncheon.) We also did this last year, and I always have so much fun! I love to be around anything wedding related, and it's fun to talk with all of the brides and hear about their plans. If you need a venue in the Woodstock area, let me know! I'll hook you up :)

On Sunday, we worked non-stop to finish the apartment and we actually made great progress. My shoulders are sore today from hanging so many pictures and curtains, but I am so happy that it's looking more put together now. Hopefully, we will have the rest done by this weekend and then we can finally RELAX!

One more tidbit- I bought the starter kit of Bare Minerals this weekend and I am already LOVING it! The coverage is much more even than anything I've used before. Thanks for all of the recommendations!

Sorry if our life isn't very fun to read about right now...we're pretty sad about that, too! We're hoping that this weekend will start the fun part of 2011 for us!

Bad Blogger

Between moving, starting a new job, and a blizzard, I haven't had the time/energy/topics to blog. When I do have the time to write, I feel like I have nothing exciting to talk about. We moved. I work. Our apartment is a mess. But I'm too tired to care. See? Not so interesting.

So here are a few of the little things I've been thinking about lately:

• Curtains. Now that we have a huge sliding door in our living room, that room is constantly freezing! So we went out on Sunday to find some energy-saving curtains. We were looking for curtains with some color on them, but pretty much all of the insulated panels were solid colors. But I found some non-thermal panels that I LOVE from Target, that were on clearance. Then, we bought insulated panels to go behind them. But those were dang expensive. So I got the bright idea to make my own. I am still going to use the clearance curtains from Target but I'm looking to buy thermal fabric and sew it on the back...we'll see how that goes!

• I finished January's book, Look Again, last night. I was doing really well with being able to put the book down, until I got about half way through. That was yesterday afternoon. I went home and read until I finished. This book was sooooo good. Easily on my top 5 list. It had everything a good book should: romance, mystery, and a cute cat named Oreo Figaro. It was about a woman who adopted a little boy in the hospital, and 2 years later, she sees his face on a missing child flyer. I absolutely loved this book - go read it!

• After talking to a coworker, I have decided to switch to Bare Minerals foundation. I have combination skin (more on the oily side though) and I think the switch from liquid to powder would help me a lot. I am so tired of being shiny in pictures! Anyone use these products?

• We finally had a DVR installed last weekend, and I don't know how I went so long without it! I love having all of my shows recorded, and Doug loves the ability to do instant replays anytime he wants.

• Once the apartment is clean and organized, I will post pictures! It has so much more space than our last apartment, and we are loving Decatur already. The movers moved all of our furniture in last weekend, so we are  s l o w l y  putting the place together.

Reading List 2011

I have always loved reading, but I have usually limited my reading to summers when I didn't have school work to worry about. See, my problem is that I can never put a book down. I will stay up all night to finish a book, and I just completely z o n e  o u t  from reality. It drives Doug a little crazy and it would mess with my motivation to do school work. But this year, I am trying to change that! I have so many books piled up that I can't wait to read, and I need to make a few adjustments to my usual reading routine to do so.

At my new job, I have had a lot of time to read. I have been getting there pretty early to avoid traffic, so I have about an hour there. Then I read for an hour at lunch. And sometimes during the day if it's slow. Because I have to break it up like this, it's forcing me to PUT THE BOOK DOWN! So here's my list for 2011:

January

(I love it so far!)

February

(The 4th book of the quartet...I've loved them all!)

March

(Just in time for the movie...Reese Witherspoon + Robert Pattinson...yes please!)

April

May

June

(Saw the movie and loved it)

July

August
(One of my favorites...I haven't read it in a few years)

September

October

November

December

Oh, and I read House Rules a couple months ago and absolutely LOVED it. Such a great book!

 

Have y'all read any of these? Any other suggestions?

Ice Ice Baby & an Award

We are still snowed/iced in! It's Snow Day #3 and it may stay frozen until the weekend. Hopefully we will still be able to get our furniture in on Saturday! I am enjoying the time and getting everything organized, but Doug is going a little crazy! He has major cabin fever and sometimes seems like a kid who is stuck inside during recess. If only I had my camera while he was dancing to Glee last night. Ha!

Now onto the award...I got my first blog award from my blog friend, Meghan! Thanks girl!

 

So, this is how it works:

1. Thank and link back to the person who awarded you this award.
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Award 15 recently discovered bloggers.
4. Contact these bloggers and tell them about the award!


7 things about myself:

1. I have lived in Georgia all of my life and I absolutely love it!

2. Until I was a senior in high school, I really only ate chicken fingers. I was obsessed! And they are still one of my favorite foods.

3. I share my birthday with Reese Witherspoon, who happens to be my favorite actress/celebrity.

4. I don't exercise. I'm lucky to have a pretty good metabolism, and I'm just enjoying it while I have it, because I know eventually I will have to work out!

5. I love animals. You probably know this if you have ever read my blog.

6. I don't watch scary movies or go to haunted houses. If I do, I can't sleep.

7. I am a girly girl, but I do have some weird boyish tendencies, like I enjoy building things and power tools. However, my tools are pink :)

I had the hardest time coming up with these things! And picking 15 blogs! So I am just going to do 5... :)

1. Brittany at Blogging Out Loud
2. Emma at Legally Lovely
3. Lesley Anne at Front Porch Sittin' with the Fentons
4. Aly at Analyze This
5. Brandi Nell at Brandi Nell the Southern Belle

Go check out their blogs! These are some of my favorites to read :)



Snowmageddon

Atlanta is covered in snow! Again! I love the names that people are calling it: Snowmaggedon, Snowpocalypse... I love snow, and Doug just doesn't understand my giddy-ness about it. I rarely had snow days growing up. Our county was the least likely to cancel school, so snow days are a big deal around here. Last night, Doug and I went to Kroger to stock up on groceries since we left most of them in Covington, and it was a zoo in there! There were 2 gallons of milk left, and all of the eggs were gone. It was hilarious.

I built us a fire and plan to have several cups of hot chocolate today :)

I LOVE our new fireplace screen! We weren't going to get one, but the first thing Pep did when he got here was climb into the fireplace. So we ran off to Target and got this beauty! We have to keep our highly flammable cat away from fire :)

Our new backyard- I just got this bistro set off Craigslist and I am in love! (It has another chair but it's cut out of the picture)

Pep loves the snow just as much as I do :) He has been here all night.

This weekend was part of the big move to Decatur. Our amazing parents helped us pack up all of our stuff and move it to the new apartment. My parents came on Saturday, and Doug's came on Sunday. If it weren't for them, it would have taken us at least a week to do all of this. So, THANK YOU parents!!! :) Now, our apartment looks like this:

Boxes EVERYWHERE! But luckily, Doug and I are snowed in today (and maybe tomorrow?) so we should be able to get most of this put away! We have to finish by Friday, because the movers are moving all of our furniture in on Saturday. I'm just amazed that we were able to get all of our stuff here so quickly. We have awesome parents.

I hope everyone in the area is enjoying their snow day! Hopefully I'll have pictures up next week of our completed home!



FIRE!

Before I get to the hilarious/awful story about "The Fire"....

My first day on the job was great! I was constantly surprised at just how nice every person is there. I really enjoyed it, and I can't wait until I really learn how to do everything and get into a routine. Plus, it was someone's birthday today and we got to have cake. Delicious cake. The perfect 1st day!

I am trying hard to not let myself get stressed. It took me almost 2 hours to get home, and I was exhausted, so I changed into my PJs and plopped down on the couch...and I haven't been able to make myself get up yet. There are so many things I need to do like take down Christmas decorations and starting packing, and my mental list only gets longer everyday. It's also a crazy week for Doug at work, so we might not move as much this weekend as we hoped! But at least I only have to do this long commute for 2 more days!

Okay, now "The Fire"

Doug was tired and stressed last night after he got home from work, so I forced him to take a bubble bath. I have been telling him for years that it is the most relaxing thing you can do, and I decided that is exactly what he needed last night! So I pulled out all of tricks- bubbles, bath salts, candles, and Norah Jones.

I was in another room cleaning when I heard Doug scream,

"PEPPER'S ON FIRE!!!!!"

I see Pep run past me with wide eyes, and Doug tells me what happened. Pep came in to see Doug, Doug reached out to pet Pepper, and Pep's tail caught fire from the candle on the toilet. Pep has a very fluffy tail, and it was ablaze. But when Doug screamed, it scared Pep, he ran, and the fire went out.

I checked his tail and it only burned half way down the hair, so it never touched his skin, THANK GOODNESS!! After we realized he was okay, we couldn't stop laughing. My poor little baby!

Busy, busy, busy!

Today has already been so busy!! I have set up and closed multiple utility accounts. I booked movers. I changed our rental insurance. I went to doctors appointments. I got a haircut. I ran errands. I packed up my car. And I'm exhausted just thinking about everything I did!

The past 24 hours has been so exciting. Yesterday, Doug and I drove all over Decatur and found our new home! We I fell in love with an apartment complex, and Doug sweetly agreed that this was it! (Doug liked it, too, but I don't think he was quite as giddy as I was!) The complex is awesome. It has a pool, 2 tennis courts, 2 raquetball courts, and A DOG PARK! We must have seen at least 15 dogs while we were there yesterday, so you know I'm going to love it :) Who knows, maybe we will have our own dog to take to the park soon!

So today I have been running around trying to get everything ready to move. Today is my last day of freedom before I start my full time job tomorrow! We have decided that it is worth it to hire movers. We are going to start moving small stuff in this Saturday, and then do the big move next Saturday. So these next few weeks will be CRAZY with a new job and a new apartment! But I am just thrilled to be moving to Decatur.

We absolutely love the area and are excited that we will have things to do on the weekends now! (In Covington, you either 1) eat at one of the 3 restaurants or 2) go to Walmart) In Decatur, there are endless restaurants to choose from and so many great stores to peruse! Yesterday, we ate lunch at an awesome pub that is less than a mile from our apartment!

So today, I have to go to one more doctors appointment, get Pep, drive back to Covington, take down our Christmas decorations (I have an excuse...I haven't been in Covington since December 19th!) and figure out what to wear for my first day tomorrow. I'm excited but nervous! Wish me luck!

Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a safe and happy New Years! Doug and I had a relaxing one, watching football, eating delicious food, and taking little naps so I could make it to midnight! I have a lot more energy now than I did a few days ago, but I still get sleepy easily. My nose is healing up quickly, and besides the black eyes (still!) I'm doing great. However, there was a little complication at my post-op that absolutely traumatized me. 

I went in on Tuesday to get the splints removed that were in each nostril. They are big rubber tube things that look like this

(they are about 2-3 inches long)

So I had those huge things in my nose to hold my septum in place as it healed. Getting one taken out was incredibly uncomfortable and painful. But my doctor took one out, and then started on the other one. But he couldn't find it. (!!!!!)

Yes. It was lost somewhere in my nose. They apparently forgot to stitch it in after the surgery. So my ENT got his foot long camera device and had to search my nasal cavity for it. It took a little while, but he found it and removed it. By that point, I was crying and getting lightheaded and just wanted to go home. My parents got me a huge chocolate milkshake to help calm me down :)

Because of that incident, I have to do another post-op early next week to make sure it didn't mess anything up...so I had to push my start date back to Wednesday for my new job.

Other than that fun experience, the past few days have been pretty laid back. Yesterday was my Mamaw's birthday, so we took her out to a surprise lunch at her favorite restaurant, Ruth's Chris. If you love steak, you must go here! Or if you love chocolate, you must order the chocolate mousse cheesecake! Mmmm...

Right now, Doug is running a 10K in the rain. Crazy boy! And that's all we really have planned for this weekend. We are just spending time at his parents' house until we leave Monday morning to go apartment hunting in Decatur! I am so excited for this! We want to move sometime in January so hopefully we find the perfect place soon.