Early Birthday Celebrations

This past weekend we ventured home to Jacksonville to celebrate my Boppa's {grandfather} 8oth Birthday! While in town we also celebrated {if you want to look at it that way} my demise through my twenty's. . . 24 I know seems young to most people but not when you still perceive yourself as 18! Really, it's not that bad {I guess}. I'd much rather be dreading my progress through life as apposed to my child's... Honestly, probably one of the biggest cons of having kids. . . Watching them grow up TOO fast. So we'll wait. For now. . .

Anyways, enough of the Blah Blah Blah . . . Friday night we had dinner with TG's parents at Outback. It was so delish! Never lets us down! I celebrated my Birthday with a 2000 calorie bloomin' onion :)

Saturday night we went to dinner at Blackfinn {a new restaurant at Town Center} with my family and friends Kelli & Jeff! I'm a lucky girl to have such awesome family and friends in my life and with them counting the years doesn't seem too bad!

My Beautiful Mother - I'd be lost without her guidance. Her love is unconditional and she's been by my side {ups and downs} the last 24 years! {Notice the little princess in the background!}

My amazing Brother and his girlfriend Alex and Babe {looking silly}

The whole gang

The baby sis! Isn't she gorgeous :)

Me and Kel

Momma & her girls! :)

Refinished Mirror

I've been privileged enough to have inherited a couple very special items from my great grandmother {Maggie}. The mirror above is one of her many beautiful antique pieces that I'm lucky enough to have {with a little modification} in my new home! All of her furniture is filled with memories of different 'Journeys Through Life', different homes it has resided in, different family members that have had it in their possession. And now after all those years and all those memories it's part of my home and will be there till the time I turn it over to my children. Clearly, I'm not just referring to this amazing mirror. I've also inherited her amazing antique dining room table and chairs, an antique side table with extensions, and a beautiful antique chair. Each of these items will become part of our "Journey Through Life" and we plan on making many of memories around these very special items!!

I won't be able to make quite the {modifications} to all the furniture I've inherited, but luckily I had free range with this mirror and I took it from one extreme to the other :)

First, it got a very good sanding . . . Looked as if gold wasn't its only previous color.

After sanding and cleaning, I taped it off with a plastic drop cloth and painters tape.

It got one good coat of Glossy Black paint. The best part is that in some places you can see the gold coming through different wood grains.

I'd say for about $2.99 it got a major face lift . . . {Notice in this picture the lighting in the kitchen hasn't been changed!!!} Post on lighting to follow VERY soon!!

Our house is sort-of coming together and I'm happy to say that I have officially unpacked boxes in our new home!!! We plan on moving in {with the help of family} the first weekend in March!! So I'll be a very busy bee the next 2 weeks gearing up for the big day!! Hope everyone had a wonderful day off {if you were lucky enough to get it off}. I on the other hand was not lucky enough to have the entire day off but I did get to sleep in a little later than normal this morning, and to me that's all it takes!!! Everyone enjoy their week, I plan on intensely enjoying my last week of being 23. Yeah I realize I'm getting OLD. 24 go away I'm not ready!

Valentine's Dinner

A Valentine's Dinner, {extra} special for an amazing husband who has worked endlessly the last couple months to give me the most wonderful home! I'd say he deserves a little wine-n-dine every once in a while!

Our Candle-Lit dinner! :)

Chocolate Covered Strawberries

Homemade {Monogrammed} Chicken Pot Pies!

Homemade Heart-Shaped Strawberry Shortcakes

If I hadn't of just sent the hubby with boxes full of miscellaneous kitchen items {including the cook book with these recipes} to our new house I would have posted the step by step pictures and recipe for the Chicken Pot Pie and Strawberry Shortcakes.... I promise a blog post eventually with the recipe, because they are SOOOO worth sharing! :)

Lighting, Lighting, Lighting!!!

So I'm very exciting we have finally picked out and purchased the majority of the lighting for our house!! I must say I am truly a lucky girl to have a husband who appreciates good lighting as much as I do! {Might have something to do with his career choice} Most people might think we have lost our mind replacing all the lighting in our 'brand new' home, but for Todd and I it was something we needed to make {our own}. Usually when it comes to decisions {especially decorating decisions} Todd lets me take the lead and make the choices. Typically I'm describing something crazy I want to paint or how I want to cut the tree {beautiful curly willow} down in our front yard and use all it's branches around our home {my latest unusual idea}, and he's thinking I've completely lost my mind. :) But in the end when the final product is all said and done he nods and gives a something like 'that's actually pretty cool'. Needless to say, I'm super exciting and can't wait to have them put up! The not so visually stimulating lights {although VERY important in the overall feel of our home} aka recessed lighting or can lighting is not pictured below, but we will be adding 12 {or so} cans in the kitchen, living room, and master room. Oh it's going to be so BRIGHT and I just can't wait!!!

We've picked out two of these to hang in the center of the kitchen (replacing the existing horrid fan} along with 4 can lights.


This will also hang in the kitchen over our breakfast table and will tie in to our dining room and foyer.

This is our dining room chandelier. This took a little persuasion. Todd had envisioned a more ornate vintage style chandelier for the dining room and I wanted nothing to do with that look. Which is very strange as typically anything vintage and ornately over-the-top I LOVE. Not this time. I had a vision and after explaining to Todd that it has a very rustic potterybarn old feel to it. He agreed. Doesn't take much {again I'm very lucky}. Funny thing is we just got the new potterybarn catalog delivered to our new house {I'm sure in hopes of us purchasing lots and lots!!} and hanging above one of their awesome dining room tables was a round chandelier almost identical to the horizontal one I picked out. If Todd wasn't convinced before from my vivid description he now was completely on board! He'll never admit it, but he anxiously waits for me to get done looking at the Potterybarn catalog so he can get his turn! :)

This is the foyer light. The majority of our home is one BIG open space. Our dining room opens right to our living room and living room opens right in to the kitchen. I want the rooms to feel separated in the decorating aspects but I also want them to tie in to one another. So I wanted the lighting in the 3 rooms to tie together perfectly. Lucky for me the chandelier that I love came with an entire line! :) Again, very happy girl!

Small picture, I know. I guess this website didn't want me to copy it's images... Oh well. This is the light we are going to use in the master bathroom. We'll be ripping down the over sized, everyday mirror that now hangs in our bathroom and replacing it with two framed mirrors. And above those will have two of these pretty little things! I love bright silver and every other lighting fixture in our house is antiqued bronze {tying in to the rubbed bronze hardware throughout the house} so I wanted to at least have some bright silver fixtures and the master bathroom was the lucky selection! I promise to post on our bathroom renovation {along with all the other renovations} once it's complete!

I picked this to hang in each of our hallways. Wouldn't have been a first selection of mine, but this little guy was a 'perk to the job' and seems like a good -free fit!! As the hubby and friend like to say FREE.99!!

Well there you have it, all our lighting - Lots of decisions! I also picked out a chandelier to replace the fan in our bedroom {can you tell I hate fans with a burning passion???} but I couldn't find a picture of it online so I'll have to wait to show you once it's hanging in our bedroom!! I'll also take pictures of all the lights above, hanging in their new spaces in our 'new home', hopefully sooner rather than later. Everyone enjoy their weekend! Mine starts tomorrow :) I'm headed home to celebrate a special birthday {best step-dad around} tomorrow, then back to Tally Friday with a little stop in Madison to watch the nephew play the drums in the school talent show! Followed by yet another weekend of countless hours spent working in the house.... 4 more weekends till move-in day!!! :)

Cleaning glue off wood floors. . . .

NOT FUN!

The bruises on my knees and the amount of pain in my legs and lower back will hopefully be worth the hours spent trying to clean these hard wood floors! I spent a good 6 hours Friday afternoon scraping {on my knees} ever inch of the office and hallway. A special 'thanks' to the super informative wood salesman who told my husband all he needed to clean the glue of the floors were these {super greasy} wipes. He made it sound easy. And a special 'thanks' to my husband for taking him completely serious and not worrying about dripped and spilled glue as he moved from room to room! {I guess I can't be too mad with babe, after all he did manage to lay about 1500 sq ft of wood floors} So I've been sucking it up, and with the help of some awesome family members we've made major headway in cleaning these floors {every single inch of them}.

To any one reading this and contemplating laying floors in your home, do yourself a favor as you lay the floors down and notice splotches of glue WIPE IT UP WHEN IT'S STILL WET!!! {Don't let it dry and sit for weeks} OOOPS

This is how the floors looked in the office before I started cleaning them Friday. Now granted this was a {SUPER} bad spot . . . But I wanted you all to truly understand what I meant by GLUE EVERYWHERE!!!

I used a 4 step process to cleaning these floors . . .

1. )Scaped endlessly with plastic spoon {hey it's what we had available at the house, and after multiple blisters on my fingers my M-I-L bought us some plastic square scrapers . . . MUCH BETTER}

2.) Todd bought some Urethane remover {after giving up on the greasy wipes} made by the same manufactures of the glue we used to lay the floors down. I thought this would help tremendously, WRONG. So after scraping the big pieces of dried glue up there is a white greasy residual left on the floors and this cleaner is supposed to help with that.

3.) You can't leave the Urethane on the floors for a long period of time so the next step was washing it off with soapy water {yellow bucket}, following by clean wet rag and lastly dried completely with towel.

4.) As if that wasn't enough, I then used my super AWESOME Bona Wood Cleaner {thanks to Todd's parents} to mop all the floors and finished with a coat a wood polish. Ahhhhh . Seriously this task is so repetitive and tedious it was enough to make me scream . . . But I kept it together. And the outcome is so WORTH the pain! :)

BEFORE

AFTER

Construction Site Make-Shift Dinner

Todd and I are tired of grabbing Subway sandwiches on the way out to the house, so Friday night I told him I would make dinner out at the house while we were working. . . One problem I have yet to move my kitchen utensils, pots and pans, appliances and anything else needed to make a dinner! So luckily I had some aluminum foil on hand and was able to create some {make-shift} pots to cook our dinner!

Actually pretty comical {notice the pretty granite :)}

Our pot for asparagus!

Pot for pork chops!

Dinner for two {ala construction site} on our lovely make-shift dinner table, loaned to us by Aunt Boo!

A little recap

Last weekend my parents and brother came to visit and help work on the house. It was their first time visiting me in Tallahassee so we wanted to do something fun Saturday night {after a hard day working}. Todd & I took them to the top of Hotel Duval to Level 8 for an aerial view of Tally at sunset!

Me & BuB

Momma!

Me & BuB loungin' in the lobby!

3 goof balls!

We had a very good visit although too short, much needed! We can't wait till they are back the first weekend to help us move in to our {First House}!!