Memorial Day Weekend

Whoops, didn't post for over a week... I think we all have those "life is super busy and I don't have time to do much extra" weeks. However, sometimes in the past week I have had time, but I've either been asleep or glued to the book I'm reading. Anyways, this 3 day weekend has been great and I loved it! 

 On Friday, after work I came home to change and then went to get ready for the after graduation party for our county. I am a part of the Drug Free Community Coalition so I participated in this event, the purpose of the event is to give teens a fun, safe environment, drug free, to celebrate and party after graduation.  There was a huge inflatable that was a foam dance party, laser tag, airbrush tattoos, a photo/video booth, game room, DJ, etc.  They also gave out some pretty incredible prizes. I worked the event from 9-2am (well 6-2 if you could set up). Preston also volunteered... we were both wiped out by the time we got home. 

Saturday morning, as you can imagine, I enjoyed sleeping in for a while...which I haven't done in a long time. Then it was off to the graduation party venue to clean, which surprisingly wasn't bad. Later I felt pretty rested, but must not have been since I took a nap that afternoon, which was also glorious.  By the evening I felt motivated to get things done around the house, laundry, mopping, dusting, you know.."the works".  I was satisfied with my cleaning that evening and called it a night shortly afterwards. 

Sunday I had only planned to go to church and then home, but my mom asked before church what my plans were for the day... I didn't have anything I really needed to do since I had finished everything the night before so it was an impromptu trip to my parents' house for the day.  I was able to visit with family and layout on a float in the pool for about 3 and a half hours, score!  After a good amount of time in the sun, I visited with my grandparents for a while and headed back home, arriving shortly after 10pm. It was so great to set my alarm clock later than normal for a Monday morning! 

Monday I was happy to sleep in again, this time until 9:30.  We had Nana and Pawpaw over for lunch, complete with a hot fudge cake, all I can say is YUM! We enjoyed time with them at our house and then headed to the greenhouse. Nana got a couple of hanging baskets and I got a few flowers to plant in our flower beds. After getting home, we got our petunias and marigolds planted and then I enjoyed reading on the front porch.  Preston and I spent the rest of the evening at home and grilled shrimp and veggies for dinner, yum! 

Our Memorial Day weekend was spent with family and much needed time at home, nothing too crazy or exciting, but exactly what we needed.  Hope everyone has a great week! 

Here are some pics from our weekend, if you follow me on Instagram you may have seen these already :)

Spring Flowers: Picture Overload!

Hello, everybody!  I have had so much fun with our Spring flowers that have bloomed, driving up our drive way after work and seeing them just makes my day.  It might be due to the fact that I've actually kept something alive and got them to bloom... or because they are just really pretty, either way I love them!  If you have been around awhile, you might remember this weekend post from when we built our flower box.  It is so great to see our hard work from last fall pay off!  This past weekend, I thought the flowers were looking particularly beautiful (even though more have bloomed since taking these photos) so I decided to get out my camera and practice taking some manual shots... I'm loving how they turned out, now for a picture over load!

Obviously Chloe wasn't in a picture taking mood

Long Weekend Recap

Hello, Everyone... I feel like sometimes I just get in a rut of only posting weekend recaps because I don't have much to say throughout the week. This week has been a pretty low key week so far, but we are adding some fun tomorrow evening, we are having friends over and then Friday and Saturday we'll be in Pigeon Forge. Remember me telling you I was looking forward to the Dixie Stampede Christmas show? Well, we are going this Saturday and I cannot wait! Be sure to check back for detail from that adventure, but for now, this is a post about our previous weekend, one in which I had an extra day off.
Friday evening Preston and I headed to Lowe's to get some an enormous amount of soil so that we could plant our fall bulbs. We had a successful trip and came home with 13 bags of soil, 2 flower pots, and a clearanced halloween garden flag that I will use next year. After getting the soil unloaded at home, we visited with friends and their adorable new puppy, Cujo.
Saturday we had some breakfast and shortly after that Nana and PawPaw arrived and we got started on yard work. We cleared out weeds, planted our flower bulbs, pressure washed the sidewalk, etc. I couldn't believe the difference, I wish I would have taken before and after pictures because it seriously looks SO much better! For dinner, I tried a new recipe and made baked spaghetti, it was different than normal spaghetti because you use cream cheese in it, it was pretty yummy, thanks Pinterest! I made brownies so that we could have brownies and ice cream, but we were all too full. Nana and Pawpaw took theirs to go and then they were on their way back home. We are very thankful for their help and as usual, it was a great visit with them. Saturday evening we ended up getting to go see our friends Cujo again. We enjoyed the rest of the brownies and ice cream and then went back home.
Sunday we went to church and then after a quick lunch we washed my car inside and out. I don't know about you guys, but I love a freshly clean car, I didn't want to drive it anywhere because I wanted it to stay clean, but of course, the purpose of a car is to go, not to just sit in the drive way.
Monday I was off for Veteran's day and I really enjoyed the extra day off. I planned to sleep in, but my internal clock got me up as usual, I did a few things around the house, snuggled and napped with Chloe girl, and got all the laundry caught up. Preston only had to work until around noon on Monday, so we enjoyed the afternoon together. I also went for my car inspection and got my sticker for my car, I'm officially a Virginian now. After a workout at Curves, I made breakfast casserole that we had for dinner and it was so yummy, if I do say so myself!
We had a good weekend and are excited for the next one. How are you guys? Any fun weekend plans coming up?

New [to us] house... so much WORK!

Hello! Just a little warning, this post may be boring for you to read, and if so, just come back when I post something else... but, I am not sure if I have shared or not, but Preston and I are moving into a new (to us) house this month. The house comes in part of Preston's benefit package from his job, so we are being tremendously blessed with a spacious house. This post is for me to be able to remember all the hard work we have been putting into it, I wasn't even going to write about it, but I want to be able to look back in a few years and see how far we've come! So...

The house is an older house, but has recently been upgraded, workers have done these upgrades, not us. Our master bathroom has been completely re done with new floor, bath tub, vanity, and toilet. Also in the upgrades, some walls were painted with a fresh white coat and others were painted colors that we were able to pick (the kitchen, dining room, and game room). Also, new laminate hardwood floors, that I love, are all throughout the house now, except for the bathrooms. The house is looking very nice, but there are some things that we still want to do before we move in. We will be working on some of it this Saturday, our families are even coming to help (so thankful)! I will be posting another post for a house to do wish list that I would like us to work on now, and in years to come.

Now that the renovations have been complete, what have we been doing? CLEANING! Every evening after I get off work I have been going to the house to clean. There were items in the house that we don't want to use, such as dishes, that we wanted to box up and store in the attic. We have got the items in boxes, now we just have to get them in the attic. At first the cleaning was over whelming and I didn't know where to start, so I made a room by room checklist of things to clean. The list had a total of 46 things for me to clean, from cleaning windows, to sweeping, mopping, and dusting fan blades, there has been a lot to do. However, as I have crossed my list off, I now have just 8 things left to clean. I am hoping to get those 8 things done before Saturday so that we don't have to worry about cleaning then.

We've also been working on things outside the house as well. This week, my dad used his pressure washer and cleaned the porches for us. He will be coming back at a later time to clean the sides of the house (brick). Preston has mowed the grass and weed eated as well, it looks so great! I am planning on revamping the flower bed that is there, well, right now it was more of a garden bed.... I pulled some of the things up and have been clearing out the space so that I can plant the bulbs I am ordering. I cannot wait to see our front yard in the spring!

I would also like to make note that in this cleaning process, I have had an in grown toe nail and I had it removed last Friday, the whole nail (ouch!!!!). So I had 2 days of rest that I didn't clean, but other than that, we have been working on it every day.

I know that all of our hard work will pay off, I am so looking forward to everything being moved in and in place (can we just fast forward to that time, please?). I'm thankful for the blessing this house will be to our family and I am excited to see what this house brings us.