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I came home on Friday to find a package sitting by the front door. I knew it was this lovely personalized sign that I ordered from Sweet Savannah! The bottom says, “Est 2008″ since that’s the year we got married. I immediately put Tyler to work and had him hang it up in our kitchen. Of course he’d do anything for his last name!

We’re still not sure what we want to put on top of our cabinets yet. It won’t be chicken, roosters, & wine racks like I notice that a lot of the homeowners here do with their kitchen (Mom, your kitchen’s an exception!). We also need new high stools for the island since the ones we currently have are wobbly and from IKEA.

I love our new table we purchased from Fry’s about a month ago. I thought this would actually make us want to eat dinner together instead of using the coffee table and watching TV at the same time. We’re still working on breaking the habit. We bought our sectional couch from Macy’s on Labor Day weekend but didn’t get it until 4 weeks later. It’s microfiber and the only thing I hate about it is getting shocked when Tyler would lean in for a kiss or hug after getting up from the couch.

We’re taking a break with our house projects until after the Holidays. At the end of this month we have our anniversary and both of my parents’ Birthday AND Thanksgiving too.

This morning when I left for work it was almost 7:08AM and I knew that meant my Dad was going to be coming any minute down the street in his school bus. Every time I see him and recognize his bus number it’s too late to wave at him.

This morning I saw a bus coming down the street. I rolled down my window and hysterically waved then realized it wasn’t #82. A second bus comes down as I’m going up the street and I’m determined that this is my dad’s bus so I wave again out the window and it’s NOT #82!! At this point, I’m feeling really stupid and like somebody who gets really excited over school buses. Jeez! 

So then I see another bus coming and I’m thinking, “OK..this has to be him seriously!” and wave again. And it wasn’t him. . . Now I’m gonna be the crazy woman that all the school bus drivers are going to be talking about at the bus yard! It’s okay with me if my Dad wants to pretend he doesn’t know who this crazy woman is. I don’t blame him.

Remember all those drills we had on the bus? How to exit the bus calmly and ask the bus driver all the silly questions we had. My dad’s friend, who is also a bus driver, had the best answers to some of the questions.

Kid: “What happens if the bus rolls over and starts on fire?”
Bus Driver: “Well, the first most important thing you need to do is get the bus driver out of the bus!!”

Kid: “What happens if a nuclear bomb hits us?!”
Bus Driver: “Then I want you to all look under your seat and there will be a green pill. Take it!”

I admire the bus drivers & teachers for having to come up with the best answers to these cute kids’ questions!

Got any fun or interesting bus stories to share?

Plan B: Craigslist. After only a few minutes of searching, I immediately found one I fell in love with. We went over to the owner’s house and purchased it from him. We felt bad for the guy that lived across the street – he was supposedly having a garage sale and had been sitting outside for a while hoping people would come by and no one did. I’m sure he didn’t enjoy seeing his neighbor sell a fireplace in less than 5 minutes.

The fireplace was dirty & almost a yellowish color. I swear I thought I took a “before” picture and unfortunately I didn’t… so there’s a picture of what it looks like after we sanded it.

We had paint from a previous project – Behr Premium with Paint & Primer in one. The longest part of the process was hot gluing the marbles on. Before we even did that we placed the marbles on first to see how many we needed for each side and to make sure they were even. Poor Tyler, I accidentally touched his finger with the hot glue gun. Then at the end, I did it to myself! Hot gluing can be messy & frustrating but that didn’t matter anymore after we were finished.

We only spent $100 on this project and that was spent on the fireplace and marbles from Michael’s. We’re in love with it! We’re thinking about getting wood and painting it the same color then put it on to add more thickness to the top. I’m already excited to hang my Christmas stockings up and now Santa Claus can come and leave us presents. It sucks we don’t have room for our Christmas tree in this area. Enough with the Christmas talk. We’re now satisfied with our faux fireplace and fire pit in our backyard that we finally used recently and I absolutely love the smell of burning wood!

Usually other homeowners with this kind of space would build in a desk and use it as a place where to put bills and go on the computer. We have 4 bedrooms so we converted one into an office for both of us.

When we first moved in I was disappointed we didn’t have a fireplace. What were we going to tell our children about Santa Claus? He needs a way in to leave them presents. I know there are a lot of other ways for him to come in but I like the chimney method.

Tyler and I went to Home Depot the other day to get an idea of what we would need and the price of everything. We already painted the backsplash the same color as we did with our TV area in the family room. Since we already have a bold color, we decided the fireplace will be white. I love the idea of displaying candles. We have some marbles that I want to add on to give it an elegant look.

I hope we finish this project this weekend and not get distracted. Stay tuned!

Tyler and I spent Saturday evening carving our pumpkins and roasted our pumpkin seeds with brown sugar & cinnamon (yummy recipe here).

We went to Fear Farm with my parents and spent $18 bucks for 4 haunted houses which I find a good deal since I know there are some haunted houses that are $15 for 1 haunted house!

The first haunted house I was dragging on my Dad for dear life since it was pitch black for a while. I almost peed my pants when there was a “bad guy” riding on a horse and bolted at me. No joke! I know they’re not allowed to touch us but they still did an amazing job at getting in our face but not crossing the line by touching us.

Have a wonderful Halloween week! Finally Halloween is not in the middle of the week this year.

We tried getting rid of Tyler’s forehead lines before taking pictures.
He swears he’s stuck with them forever.

- I cannot go to bed unless the door is closed & locked and the closet has to be closed. If it’s not closed I’m going to wake up in the middle of the night screaming thinking that there is someone in closet and force Tyler out of bed to close it. Fortunately he never remembers doing this the next day.

- The window blinds has to be faced down because I would rather have stalkers, robbers, or serial killers get on a ladder to look down through the blinds than easily look up. Sometimes I have Tyler go outside to assure me he can’t see through them.

- I cannot wake up the first time the alarm goes off. I’ll set the alarm an hour before I have to wake up and reset it every 5-10 minutes and then I’ll finally get up! This drives Tyler crazy!

- I have long hair so that means it takes longer to dry my hair. After I shower & put make up on I always crawl back in bed and sleep for 10 more minutes to air dry my hair a little bit before I blow dry it.

- My current food obsession is a fried egg sandwich! I love the yolk!

Do you have any obsessions that are random?

Remember our striped wall last month? As much as we both liked it – I hated how it was making the room look so dark! Friday night we stayed up painting. My parents and Gil, a family friend, came over and we started drinking. I eventually got tipsy and we couldn’t finish painting or else the stripes would have not been straight at all!

We were at Michael’s the other day and came across these huge letters. We decided on Luxe and wanted to make it our statement so we spray painted them white and hung it up so it’s the first thing people see when they walk in.

A co-worker of mine didn’t want this bench anymore and gave it to us. We absolutely love it & wanted to use it for our “mudroom” by the entrance. We painted it a creamy white color.

We had these frames that we found while unpacking. I went to a scrapbooking store in town and came across some really cute paper for 85 cents per sheet. I love how they look! I love it & can’t wait to do more with the wall. Overall we spent around $50 in this room so far.

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Before Picture:

I’ve had this desk since I was a teenager. We decided to paint it since there were nail polish stains – what can you expect from a teenager?!

After Picture:

I was going to get new knobs but then thought we would save money and painted them light blue. I found a frame I had and decided to frame wrapping paper & spray paint the wall art (stencil) onto it.

We purchased the wall art from Target last year on sale – I love Umbra products! We spray painted them black & then taped card stock that I had leftover from college behind them to give it color.

I was so excited when I found a cute small chalkboard that I forgot I had. Tyler worked at a framing company before & brought it home one day since they were going to throw it away. I painted the frame hot pink so it has a nice rustic look to it.

I discovered all these canvas boards that we purchased in college. I had some money to use and could only be used at the bookstore. So when the school year was coming to an end I went crazy and bought a lot of boards thinking I would want to use them in the future. This is one of those moments where I want to thank the old college Steph for doing that! It still doesn’t make up for the college Steph spending all her loan money on ridiculous stuff and now I’m paying it off.

Saving money & re-using things can be a lot of FUN!