Upgrading to new digs

I feel super cool that I just made that the title of this post.  When I shared it with Cameron he laughed at me... how rude ;)

So this post is about us signing the papers for our new rental house!!!!  WOOHOO!!!  We knew pretty early on in our current place that we did not want to stay here.  1. We are busting at the seams (I should post pictures sometime to show you) and 2. At times we have sketchy neighbors that make living here interesting to say the least.

Going in to a rental house we had a list of wants for a new place:
*Neighborhood close to campus so Cameron can bike to class
*At least 2 bedrooms
*Larger living space (our current living room is tiny)
*Accepts pets
*Yard with space for entertaining
*Under $550
*One car garage

The house we signed the papers for meets these needs and provides the added bonus of a basement, and wonderful landlords that are letting us customize the space to us.  In the next couple of weeks as we work to update and paint the house I will share all of the fun details, but for now I am going to share a few photos of how the house looks right now.

As you can see from the pictures it needs definite TLC, paint, and cutting back of the overgrowth outside, but we are SO excited to start work on our house!  We already have paint colors picked out and ideas for the patio :)  Stay tuned for a lot of DIY in the next couple of weeks!

April Photo-A-Day Challenge

Good Morning!  I am currently sitting in the Springfield airport getting ready to board a flight to Indianapolis.  This will hopefully be my last trip to Indy for a while!  I have been inspired to jump on the bandwagon of the April Photo-A-Day Challenge :)

This particular challenge is for "foodie" blogs, but I figure I like food and I just want to share a little bit of myself so this challenge will work :)

Yesterdays was morning fuel and honestly it is usually water, but this morning it was McCalisters sweet tea at the airport :)

The photo prompt for today is childhood favorite, and I chose to make it none food related.  I have been girly from the beginning and I love the color pink!  So to represent my favorite color as a child and now I chose a new top I bought last week from TJMaxx.  I love this pink for spring!

Have a happy Monday and challenge yourself to document life through photos!

Giddy for studies

Hello All!

A group of my girl friends and I are planning to start a study together to serve as a way to grow closer to God, improve our christian walk, and have an excuse to spend at least one night a week with each other :)  We had been bouncing around ideas of study topics we might like to explore and today I decided to venture out to Barnes and Noble and see what I could find.  


There were so many studies I was intrigued by!  I am a serious nerd when it comes to searching for a new study, because there are so many books that get me excited about ways to improve my christian walk.  I thought I would share some of the titles I was interested in, and see if any of you have done any recently or in the past that you would recommend.


"Grace for the Good Girl: Letting Go of the Try-Hard Life" By Emily P. Freeman

"Fresh-Brewed Life: A Stirring Invitation to Wake Up Your Soul" By Nicole Johnson

"Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World" By Joanna Weaver

"Knowing God Knowing Myself: An invitation to Daily Discovery" By Cecil Murphey

"A Confident Heart: How to Stop Doubting Yourself and Live in the Security of God's Promises" By Renee Swope

Do all of these get you as giddy and me or am I just a weirdo? ... Don't answer that ;)

Will you marry me?

On this day last year my sweet hubby asked me to marry him :)  It was a good day!

To commemorate the day I wanted to share with all of you one of the Valentine's Day gifts I made for the hubby :)

When searching for a Christmas gift for Cameron I came across a love coupon book at Barnes and Noble and thought it was a really cute idea, but not all of the coupons were really "us" (for lack of a better way of putting it).  Even though I didn't like all of the coupons I still thought the idea was really cute and stored it away to use at a later date.  When Valentine's Day rolled around, Cameron and I decided not to do big expensive gifts, but rather cute, inexpensive gifts that made us think of the other person.  And in comes the stored away idea of a coupon book :)

To make his coupon book I used 3 sheets of Valentine themed paper, a coupon template, rubber cement, and some ribbon to tie it all together.

I started by making a coupon template in Word where I could right what the coupon was for.  I used Word because I am not computer savvy, but if you have photoshop I'm sure yours would look way cooler ;)  I wanted the coupon part to be able to lay on top of the fun Valentine paper and have the paper visible around the edges so I was able to get four coupon blurbs (?) on one page.

Once I cut all of the coupons out I simply wrote fun activities and ways to serve him that he would enjoy.  This was the best part of making the coupon book on my own!  I was able to really think about the hubby and what would brighten his day :)

I attached the coupon blurbs to the paper, whole punched all of them on one end, and secured the together with a cute bow :)

The hubs thought it was really fun and he's excited to use all of them :)  I may just have to make him another one for a different occasion!

How is it hanging?

Happy Wednesday everyone!  I wanted to share with all of you the jewelry hanger I made for my wall and how I did it :)

After seeing this jewelry hanger on Pinterest I knew that I wanted to make one for myself that fit in with the decor of our bedroom.  I started with a plain wood plaque, 4 decorative knobs, lace, and wire and set out to create a way to organize my jewelry.

Cameron helped me drill holes into the wood plaque and then I applied a few coats of pewter gray paint.

After screwing the doorknobs in to the holes along the bottom of the plaque I set to work with the wire and lace to create a place to hang my earrings.  I wove the wire through the top of the lace and secured the wire in the back by wrapping both ends around a nail.

Now I have a personalized way to hang my jewelry and keep it organized :)  

I fail...

So remember back at the beginning of January when I made the commitment to blog more... yeah about that.  Sorry it has been a month since I've blogged and shown you some of the projects I have been working on in our house :(  My bad.  I also said that I would show you guys the remake of a file cabinet when we finished it, so this post is going to be that unveiling!

Cameron and I were driving around looking at houses for rent one day when we happened upon two file cabinets sitting on the side of the road with a big sign stating "FREE", and I immediately told him to pull over so I could take them home and have some fun.  Almost a year ago I found a tutorial on-line for updating file cabinets by covering them in fabric, but at the time I was planning the wedding and was busy enough with projects for it, that I did not give much more thought to trying it out.  Now that I am what seems like constantly in the mode of trying to make our house more homey and "us" I thought I would give it a try for our office/ guest bedroom.

When we got the two file cabinets home we discovered that only one of them was in good enough condition to cover and use, but there were aspects of the "bad" one that I wanted to use on our final product, so I stole the handles label plates from the unusable cabinet before we pitched it.

Here is the file cabinet at the beginning of the project:

Not the prettiest thing at first, but I really needed a file cabinet for work paperwork so I was determined to make it look fabulous :)

We started by picking out a fabric that we wanted for the front door panels and then moved on to picking out a spray paint that coordinated with the fabric.  Here are a few fabrics we looked at:

Ultimately though we chose this one:

We really liked the neutral background with the pop of purple.  The weight of the fabric is also really important, because if it is too thick the doors will not shut properly so take that in to consideration when choosing a fabric.  We decided to make the purple in the fabric pop by picking a purple spray paint.  With spray paint and fabric in hand we entered in to the project.

I started by covering the doors of the file cabinet (all of the old wedding magazines are finding another purpose).

After covering the doors we used a gray primer followed by the purple spray paint.

I really like Krylon spray paint.  The coverage and consistency are good in my book :)

Once the spray paint was dried, we moved on to covering the doors with the fabric.  But first the hubby drilled holes for the handles I stole from unusable file cabinet.  We just measured a few inches up from the space where we were adding the door labels and centered the handle between each of the sides.

I used a recipe for homemade modge podge from pinterest, roughed up the doors with a light sanding, and went to work.

*Side note: I mixed my modge podge in an empty mason jar which has worked perfectly :) *

It is not a clean process by any means so I recommend doing it outside and being willing to get your hands sticky.  I applied a liberal base coat of modge podge, laid the fabric down, smoothed out the bumps, and applied a liberal top coat.  On the edges I made a crease coming out from the corner, folded the fabric all to one side, and applied more modge podge (and held it in place for a bit) to get the corners to lay as flat as possible.

And here is the finished project:

Up close shot of the handles and labels along with a good look at the fabric.  I love the little gold dots on the neutral background.

It is a fun addition to the guest bedroom/office, and it has provided the storage I need for paperwork while also fulfilling the role of end table for our guests :)

Musings

Happy Monday everyone :)  My day of work was actually good after a refreshing weekend and good talk with a friend from training.  Sometimes it just feels good to share the insecurities and have a friend help you work through them.

This post is three-fold which is the reason for the post title.  These are my musings and a recap of the happenings in our lives right now.  Read on if you want a glimpse of my crazy mind or don't.  This post is for me.

First, remember the post from last week where I introduced you to some amazing flea market finds?!  Well I am happy to say that they are up and making my kitchen happy :)

I was immediately thrilled that I had a place to display some of our favorite mugs and organize the pens in the kitchen, but the area was lacking a little color so I set to work incorporating bright turquoise.  I just mixed one part paint that I had in my craft drawer with one part water and washed it over the "mugs" cup hanger.

It is subtle but I love it and I wanted to share :)

I also wanted to tell you that I have a really fun diy project coming up that involves beautifying this:

We are working on a few finishing touches so hopefully I will be able to share the finished product as well as a couple of tutorials from the process later this week!

The final reason for this post, and by far the most important, is to share what God has been working with me on over the past week.  I have shared on here a few times that I do not love my current job, but I have never shared the reasons behind my dislike.  It is not a dislike of the job that I am doing, because I am a talker and love to meet new people, but it is the way I feel while doing the job.  The devil has used this job to stir up self-doubt, make me feel worthless and weak, and encourage me to tell myself that I will never succeed at this job or any other one that I pursue.  I reached a point before the Christmas break where I broke down in heaving sobs because I did not want to face another day where I was a failure.  The first day back to work after break I cried again because for two glorious weeks I was surrounded by family and friends and felt like me for the first time in months.  

I have shared these feelings with a few people, but mostly I fought the battle by myself because I felt that I should be able to handle it.  Last week Thursday I was driving and a song came on the radio and the one part that stuck out to me was "you were made to fill a purpose that only you can do".  I just started crying and began to see for the first time that the devil was really at work in my hatred toward my job, and that I had the power of the Kingdom of God on my side.  I shared my struggles for the first time with our Financial Peace University class at church, and was so encouraged by the outpouring of support from everyone in the group.  I felt such a huge weight lift off my shoulder, because I knew that God had placed warriors around me that would help me fight the battle.  They are praying for me, encouraging me, and working to remind me that my identity is in God and God alone.  

Now I am working on having a healthy relationship with my job as well as putting in the time with God each day so that I go out into the world with the armor of God on me.  Most mornings when I get ready to leave the house I still get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, but I am trying to rely on the word of God and pray to Him to help me through the struggles.

Thank you for letting me have a post for "me" where I can really put into words what I am battling and solidify my resolve to battle it with God on my side.