Moon

On January 20th there was a full moon!

I'm 31!! Yippee!

I turned 31 on January 21st! Among my awesome cards my two favorite gifts were from Larry/Mylan and Shonda!

Shonda gave me a pair of gloves and a scarf I wanted! The gloves are perfect for photographing on chilly days! Her friend, Laura, knits and makes a lot of cool stuff. She sells her creations online as well as at one local store (so far). I will have to look up her online store and make a new post about it in the future so that you can see all of her great creations!

Larry and Mylan surprised me with a purse that I wanted! It's called a Miche Bag.

www.michebag.com

It's really a neat concept! It's a purse that you can interchange the shell of in order to achieve many different looks without having to transfer everything from one purse to the other all the time. Larry and Mylan made a great choice by making my first Miche a black one. Black is a great starting point as any woman would agree.

This is the shell and the insert side by side...

Here is the purse all put together! The insert is held in place with strong magnets.

There are mini, small and big bags. I have the big bag. Plenty of room for all my junk.
Not to mention all of Larry and Mylan's junk which often ends up in my purse too! LOL!

Goodwill

I went to Goodwill today with the intention of finding some jeans. Not much luck. When I have plenty of time I love to go to Goodwill/thrift stores to dig around in all the junk to see what I can find. I do not like to be rushed so I prefer to go by myself really. This is what I found today!

These two are my fave finds! They are made of a material called burnout. It is a thin, light, soft material. You have to wear a cami or a long sleeve shirt underneath because it is slightly see through.

I found some of what I call "dress jeans" which I got for half price at $2!! I call them dress jeans because they really aren't what I consider an everyday "throw on some jeans and running shoes" and go type of jeans. They are a darker color and would look best with dress boots and that sort of thing.

I picked this shirt up for Shonda! I thought it was sort of funny since she just got engaged!
She thought so too!

I found myself this black knit shirt.

I love to scan the books at the local Goodwill because I always find something! The book on the far right has 4 novels in one!! All for $.99.

So my grand total was around $22!

Yippee!

2011 Yippee!

I always love it when it's a new year! Why? Because it's a new year, a fresh start and it means another birthday which means another year older! Yippee! I love getting older! Who would want to stay the same age all their life anyways? It makes no sense. I had a little bit of a hard time with 30 at first but I got the hang of it.

2010 gave me a small gift that I would like to return....10lbs. Ick! So I am determined to get rid of it. My plan? Well I've already quit drinking Coke-a-Cola on a daily basis. I drink it once in a while but not anywhere near like I did before. It was tough to quit. I had caffeine withdrawls of course but with Larry's patience I got through it. My next step is to excersise. Ugh! I am not a morning person nor am I athletic so this is going to take some effort and disapline along with the guidance of Jillian Michaels. I am going to have to get up in the AM and do the work out otherwise it'll never get done.

Wish me luck!!

Ah...One Day...

Ah...The joys of being a home owner. Grr!

I was walking around the house today trying to get motivated to take down the Christmas decor. Yeah, yeah...I know it's January 8th 2011! Give me a break okay! So as I was walking around the house I began to dream about all the home improvements we plan to do one day. Ugh! Expensive home improvements. Nobody ever said being a home owner would be cheap. We bought a fixer-upper.

So this is what I was dreaming about (Please excuse the mess. I never did get motivated to remove the Christmas decor)...

We have two living rooms.
Yes, I said two. I have no idea why but we do.
This is the living room we use. See that wall with the spiral on it? One day we plan to remove that wall to make one big living room space. Ah, I can't wait! It'll be a ways down the road before we do that though because it'll definatly be expensive plus we have other things that are higher on our priority list that must be done first. So I suppose you're wonder what is on the other side of that wall huh?

Well here it is...the second living room.

This room is a room that we don't use. We let Mylan use it to play in. Believe me he gets plenty of use out of it! He in constantly building things and drawing things. It's the one room of the house that I could care less if he makes a mess of it. It's pretty much HIS room. For now anyways.

The only issue we'd have to address is the "header" we have in the second living room (not sure what to call that so we'll just call it a "header"). It has ventilation in it so we aren't yet sure what can be done with that. This will determine whether or not we can simply remove the wall completely or if we will have to leave that header there and make the wall an arched wall. If we have to make the wall an arched wall instead of removing it completely then we plan to match the arch to the one we have in the dinning room above the bar.

A big plus to opening the wall up would be the fireplace that we'd finally be able to use once we get it relined and cleaned!

When we open the wall we haven't yet decided whether or not we should remove this coat closet that is attached to the wall. Our neighbor across the street did it when they opened their wall up. However they made it into a sort of half wall type of thing instead. Not yet sure what we'll do. I wouldn't really miss it though if we did remove it.

Before we ever attempt to open up that wall we must first replace all the windows in the house. The windows are all the original windows. The house was build in the 70's. As soon as we moved in (5 years ago) we replaced the biggest and draftiest window in the house which was the picture window in the living room. Next on our list is the windows in Mylan's room and then all the rest. We like to use Window World for our window purchases. This is an ongoing project...a few windows at a time.

Up next would be our front doors. Not only are they slightly drafty (Larry insulated them so they aren't so bad anymore) but they are ugly and cheap. I hate them. We plan to replace them with a single front door with the long windows all around the door. Ooo! I can't wait!!

Christmas at the Office

Every year my boss asks us girls what we'd like for Christmas. He always wants a list of at least three items. He isn't a fan of giving gift cards. In the years past I've asked for a vacuum cleaner, a purse, a watch, a spa treatment... This year I asked for a Shark Steam Mop or a laundry rack for my laundry room. He was kind enough to get me both!! Some people have said that they think it's a little strange to ask for items to help with household chores but hey that's just me. I like to clean...when it's not a hassle. Those items help to make those chores less of a hassle!

This is the before picture of my laundry room...

And the after picture!

Before my awesome laundry rack I had to stand on my tiptoes in order to reach the puny little clothes rack and hang clothes off of my folding table. Not anymore!!!

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Here is my old mopping method...a Swiffer with a wet rag on the end of it that I wiped on the floor as I sprayed the floor down with a squirt bottle of water. If there was a stick spill or a scuff mark I'd have to get down and scrub it out with my hands because this method didn't scrub things out very well. Occasionally I would get down on my hands and knees to clean the floors a little more thoroughly.
But not anymore!!

We have wood flooring in our house which has always been a little difficult to clean since I can't soak them with too much water or use chemicals on them. With the Shark Steam Mop it's so much easier! Plus, the floors look and feel cleaner to me as wall as dry instantly! No more having to make sure no one steps on the wet floors til they're dry. Also, to see and hear the steam coming from the mop I feel as if the floors are being cleaned much better. There is something about hot water that makes a person feel like something is being cleaned better. Whether it's true or not doesn't matter because they feel and look cleaner to me.

If Mama is happy...Everyone is happy!!

This Mama is happy!!