What A Weekend!

Andrew and I have had a very exciting weekend---we bought a car, picked a wedding venue, picked the date for our big day and picked our photographer!

We had been planning to start the wedding process this weekend for a while, and I had made appointments at my top two venues and at a photographer that I really liked. But before we could make it to the first venue I made an offer on a car! We had been looking for a new car for a few weeks but had made no serious offers but earlier this week I found a car that had everything I wanted and was a good deal-- but the decision maker for me was when I showed it to Andrew and he loved it as well. Up until this point we had not found anything we both liked and could afford--because we both agreed that a new Mercedes would be awesome but let's be realistic! We bought a Nissan Maxima that's black with black leather. It has a navigational system, a back-up camera and to say the least it has more features than I will ever be able to figure out but Andrew has spent tons of time in the garage playing with it.

I was so excited that my offer was accepted on Friday but I was even more excited that our families would get to see it while we started our wedding planning! Our fist venue to look at was The OAKES in Centerville. My sister-in-law Amanda found this location a few weeks back for us and I just had to see it! Everything about it was wonderful! The next stop was The American Village in Montevallo. While I have driven by the American Village I had never been inside before but it was just as beautiful as I imagined! After leaving the American Village I told Andrew I did not know how we were going to decide between the two venues. But before I could dwell on the daunting task of picking between two great locations we meet with a photography company we had found- LoveStruck! It's two wonderful ladies who take beautiful pictures and have great personalities. After looking at more of their great work I asked what we needed to do to book them!! I am not sure who was more excited me or them because this was the first actual wedding decisions I had made since saying "yes"!

After visiting the locations and meeting with the photographers we had dinner with both of our families--yes I mean everyone! It was wonderful to see everyone while we were in town and talk about the decisions we had to make concerning the wedding. After all of that Andrew and I headed back home to Annie and Bo. We were worn out but I all I could talk about was the pros/cons for each location. Andrew said we have all weekend don't worry--but me being me I woke up first thing Saturday and started asking Andrew more questions about which location he thought would work best and before 10 a.m. we had made a decision. But before I share the decisions we made I wanted to share some pictures from both locations!

These are the pictures from The Oakes

These are the pictures from the American Village

Sooooo. The decision we made is that we will get married at The OAKES on June 1, 2013!

Projects around the House

Andrew and I moved into our house in December 2010 and for the first couple of months I was totally into decorating. However, once I got the house to a point where it did not look bare and I felt ok with having guest I stopped decorating. Now that I have found Pinterest I am once again excited and have a desire to decorate. Don't get me wrong my house is not going to be featured in a magazine but we have had a BLAST creating new things for our house.

The first thing we did once I had a few projects "pinned" was make a trip to the local thrift store. And this in itself was an adventure because we learned a new term that neither of us were familiar with... the "no price buggy". We found 3 gently used picture frames that I thought would be perfect for a few pinned projects I wanted to create but one did not have a price. We decided we would take all 3 to the register and make them an offer...it's all going to charity right? We made them an offer of $5 for the one frame without a price, the other two frames together were going to cost us $2.79. So we thought $5 was a great offer. But that's not how the thrift store works, items without a price go into the "no price buggy" NO questions asked. So of course I made Andrew make a second trip to the thrift store a few days later to see if my beloved frame had been given a price. He found the frame priced $2.98, however when he tried to checkout the cashier felt that the frame was mispriced. By this time Andrew is grumpy and wanting to leave the thrift store and never return but because he knew how much I really wanted that frame he caused a minor scene. He told the lady he had attempted to buy this frame twice and had even offered more but was told no, he said he was determined to get this frame. By now everyone in line is starring at him wondering why he visits the thrift store so much! So needless to say going to the thrift store was an adventure one that I am not sure if I can convenience Andrew to participate in again.

But with one of the frames we purchased during the first trip to the thrift store I made this cute addition to our bedroom. It was inspired by Pinterest and we love it. Andrew even rigged it so we can attach the dry erase marker. He also had to fix the frame stand because we bought the frame for .79 cents and you can't really expect much. But this is the type of thing Andrew loves! He is super handy, which is a quality I recommend every girl trying to find in their man. If he can build or make something he is happy and I'm pretty lucky because he uses these skills to make lots of stuff for our house! We have made two more awesome projects that I will share later this week!

Going Green and Saving Money!

So I have decided to take my coupon and saving "kick" one step further... I made homemade laundry detergent! I know it's a little odd but I kept reading about the cost saving benefits and how homemade detergent has less chemicals and decided to give it a try.

If you google "homemade laundry detergent" your going to get lots of recipes for both liquid and powder detergent. However, all the recipes call for three standard ingredients that can be found at Walmart.
1. Fels Naptha soap-$0.96
2. Arm&Hammer Washing Soda-$3.24
3. Borax-$3.38

The recipe I used called for 1 cup washing soda, 1 cup Borax, and 1 bar of fels naptha soap grated and mixed together. Really simple!! You use 1 to 2 tablespoons in each load of laundry. The liquid detergents called for the same ingredients but you added water and all the recipes made huge amounts--smallest I found was two gallons. For a family of two (plus two dogs, but they don't create lots of dirty clothes haha) two gallons of detergent would last forever! So I decided the powder detergent was best to start with.

As you can see my total cost for the ingredients was $7.58. This is about the price I spend on store bought laundry detergent with coupons. But the cost saving benefit for the homemade detergent will come in to play the next time I make the detergent because I will only have to buy the $0.96 soap!

Below are a few pics from the project. The pic that looks like grated cheese is the soap. I also did not buy a cute container I used an old water pitcher I had till I find something better.

So far I have washed 3 loads of laundry using the homemade detergent and I'm very happy. I can not tell a difference! I know this might not be for everyone but it was a fun project for me and I plan to continue using it. I also have plans to swap some of our standard cleaning products with homemade products! If you have and good recipes let me know!

Hope everyone is having a great week!

Going to give this another try....

After one year of not updating I'm going to give it another try. The reason I have decided to try again are two fold--- 1) I love reading my friend Brandi's blog and my sister-in-law Amanda's blog and feel it is probably not fair that I get to learn so much about their lives yet I share nothing. 2) I'm engaged!!! Andrew and I are very excited about getting married and I want to include family and friends in the wedding plan process as much as possible.

So here comes the first new post and I must sadly say it is not about wedding planing! My sister-in-law introduced me to the greatest website ever....Pinterest! I have wasted lots of time browsing this this site getting ideas for the wedding and home decorating. One idea that I saw and thought was easy enough for me to complete was a Christmas Card book.
I love creating my Christmas cards each year so I go to great lengths keeping the cards we receive but I never know what to do with them. I did not have a great place to display them so they just sat in my kitchen till the end of the season when I packed up my Christmas stuff and put the cards in a ziplock bag with the year on it.
The idea I saw gave me a free template that I used with just minor adjustments! I made one for 2010 and 2011! You can see the picture below. I think they turned out pretty cute and I now have the idea to create books for birthday and other cards we receive.

Where did January GO?

Wow. I am so sorry that it has been so long since I have updated! But I have a questions for everyone! Where did the month of January go? I remember writing January on documents, but I can’t quite remember what happened. Yes, it has been a crazy busy month. But I can’t complain, life is going well.

First, I have been working on decorating my house. I picked out pillows and an ottoman for my living room. Pictures are below, let me know what you think.

I have also been working very hard on our annual StafFest at work. This event took place last week and I was part of a secret group of employees that did a Flash Mob! If you do not know, what a Flash Mob is you do not watch the TV show, Modern Family. A flash mob is where people randomly break out into a choreographed dance. It starts with a few people, then more people jump in. Go to Alabama Credit Union's FB Page and check it out. We do not have the completed video back from the Videographers yet, but once I have that I will let everyone see it as well. This might look crazy but it was so much fun and was a big hit at StafFest.

I have been super busy with work and decorating the house that I have not had time for much else. But I am excited to announce that I will be going to Philly this weekend…for work. SO yeah, it want be as much fun as going with friends but I am still very excited because I have never been to Philly.

Hope everyone has a great week.

Kelley

New Year's

Hope everyone had a great New Year’s! Andrew and I had a pretty low key night and day. We went to a awesome dinner at a restaurant downtown that I had been wanting to go to for a while, then we had a relaxing day of watching TV, snacking and reading. While most people would have hated this kind of night/weekend I loved it. We had been going ninety-to-nothing for the past few weeks with the move and Christmas so it was very nice to relax and rest. However, we did work on our New Year’s resolution before the ball dropped.

After reading my friend Brandi’s blog and hearing about her “List”, I decided that Andrew and I would make a list of items to complete throughout the year. We came up with 50 things that we would like to do and or see before the year was over. Once I figure out how to work my blog better I will post the entire list on here. However, I will tell you about a couple of the exciting items we decided to do. One is to go one day a week without TV. I know this might sound weird but neither Andrew nor I really like TV but we find our self turning it on every afternoon and watching it after we eat. But there are so many more things that we could do with our time than watch TV and hopefully this will give us the time and motivation to do it.

Another exciting item on our list is to visit three state parks. This is something my family use to do when I was small and I want to get back in the habit. Also, a wonderful lady that I work with goes camping (in and RV) quite often and they visit different state parks and she always tells great stores and how much fun they had. Now I am not saying that we will be camping out at these state parks but there are lots of parks that we can get to and from in a day. If you hear of any great state parks that we should visit, let me know.

Hope everyone is having a great week!

Kelley

Christmas is over and I'm so Blue.

I am so sad that Christmas is over. It is my favorite time of year and I feel like if flew by. That could be due to the fact that this was the first year ever that I did not get a month off to celebrate Charismas and that I moved into my new house not even a week before Christmas. However, the little time that I did have off was spent with family and friends and it was great. Andrew and I spent Christmas together with each other’s families and this required about 5 Christmases in a 2 ½ day period. However, it was a lot of fun and we enjoyed getting to do everything together.

I am in the new house and I love it and the dogs LOVE it! I am still working on getting everything set up but I am getting there. I do have things up on the walls and I did put up a Christmas tree that I have refused to take down till Saturday. I do not want to put pictures up till I get everything how I like it.

Speaking of putting pictures up, I received a great Christmas gift from Andrew. He got me a new camera that does everything! It takes video, you can take special pictures where you pick out one color to stand out and everything else is in black and white. It is awesome and I have been using it a lot lately. So expect more picture from me in the future. I am also about to start on a Photo Book using Shutterfly. If you did not notice with the Christmas cards, I have become obsessed with Shutterfuly and they give great discounts to bloggers and to everyone. Hailey, Andrew’s sister, made a photo book and it is super cute and ever since seeing it I have wanted to make one for myself. So as one of my many New Year’s resolutions I will be making one.

I have not blogged about Annie in a while, so I will update everyone on her life now. She is doing great, she has a wonderful big (but younger) brother who is very sweet to her. Annie is definitely the more bossy of the dogs and she always gets her way with both Andrew and I and with Bo. She is loving the backyard and I am very proud of her going out and playing by herself. She has had another seizure and is suffering from stiff joints during this cold weather but she is doing good. Andrew made her a special Christmas present that she received last night. He made her a “real” bed. I am not talking about one of those regular fluffy dog beds, I am talking about a wooden bed. It is so cute and she seems to be enjoying it. However, we are still working on breaking her from sleeping in the bed. I know most people think it is gross that dogs sleep in the bed, but Annie is not a dog she is a baby. But I am trying to be strong and tell her NO. I will keep you posted on how the training is going both from my point of view and hers.

You can see the pictures below.



Well, I hope everyone had a great Christmas and that you have a good and safe New Year’s. My next post will be about my New Year’s resolutions. I hope to make a list similar to Brandi’s of things that I would like to accomplish within the next year.



Thanks
Kelley