Weekend Recap

1. I cleaned the house all day Saturday and almost all day Sunday. What made it bearable? Open windows and The Judds radio station on Pandora. We're talking Pam Tillis, Patty Loveless, Mary Chapin Carpenter, John Michael Montgomery and old school Reba.

2. Lee spent Saturday at a civil war reenactment near Goldsboro. He's been wanting to go to one for a while. When he got home, he prepared a slideshow of his pictures to show me, along with stories to go along with each one. It was so cute. I tried to convince him to write a guest post about the reenactment but he says it's "too much work." (This from the man who complains if I don't update the blog regularly.)

3. I got to spend my Saturday night babysitting this little ham:

He's our neighbor's son Levi, and all he did the whole night was smile and look cute. Totally adorable.

P.S. - I downloaded the TiltShift Generator photography app after reading about it on Dooce and am totally in love with it. If you have an iPhone, it's totally worth the $0.99. I'm now convinced that my phone takes better pictures than my humongo camera.

4. I started cleaning out my office/loft this weekend. I've decided that instead of doing a big reveal once it's done, I'm going to do some posts about small projects along the way. More on that later. But this weekend was finally time to part with a lot of the junk that has been cluttering up my space. I was ruthless (or tried to be) about throwing stuff out or boxing it up for yard sale. The biggest hurdle? The three boxes of wedding crap memorabilia that have been sitting in a corner for a year and a half. It's just so hard to trash all of the blood, sweat and tears that this stuff represents:

But I did it. (After saving a few as keepsakes of course.) Out with the old, in with the organized!

5. Sugar thinks she's a mechanic.

Hope your weekend was fabulous!

Birthday Weekend

Friday was Lee's birthday, and I had several small things in store throughout the day, including a gift and Happy Birthday banner on the kitchen island when he woke up, another gift in his truck as he left for work, Cadbury creme eggs in his laptop bag, and this waiting in his inbox:

Then we were off to the river for the weekend.

Sugar had the time of her life, managed to somehow lose her $150 invisible fence collar, and barked all night because she was so excited. She did manage to settle down long enough to spoon with Maddie for 10 minutes:

And after all the little things I did for Lee's birthday, nothing could compare to successful fishing trip:

We ended the weekend with a wonderful meal at Rucker John's in Greenville with Lee's family and Brandon and Caitie.

Hope you had a great birthday Lee!

Birthday Wishes

Lee in his element

Happy Birthday Lee! You've got one more year until you're officially old, but that's ok. Here's hoping 29 brings you a year full of fishing trips, smoked meats, house projects, and Sugar snuggles. Love you!

Bedroom Makeover

The second room in our house that I'm willing to declare complete is our master bedroom. It underwent a serious makeover over Christmas break and now that I'm looking back at the Before pictures, I think it's safe to say that it was a long time coming.

Oprah always says that your house should "rise up to meet you." I'm not entirely sure what that even means, but I am sure that our bedroom was NOT rising up to meet us. Here are some befores:

See what I mean?

When we moved in, we transferred everything I had in my apartment bedroom into the master. Which left us with only one nightstand -- eventually Lee got sick of that and repurposed a TV tray as his nightstand. Pitiful, right? And while I loved the Nautica Highland bedding in my apartment, it just didn't scream "warm and cozy master bedroom retreat" when we put it in our house. Oh, and one whole wall adorned with nothing but a Tupperware tub and a $10 mirror? Niiiiice.

Our first order of business was installing crown molding. We thought it would be a simple little project that would be fun to tackle.

Umm, WRONG. I'll spare you the gory details but let's just say there was lots of math and ladder-climbing involved. But two days and lots of curse words later, the crown molding was successfully installed.

Painting was another two day project (we did the bathroom as well) but it was actually pretty enjoyable. Then came the really fun part -- playing with all the new stuff we had bought and seeing it all come together. Here's where we ended up:

I'm actually glad it took us so long to get around to decorating our bedroom because it gave us time to live in the room for over a year and see what we needed to make it functional. We knew we needed a proper nightstand for Lee and more dresser space (luckily Rooms to Go still carries this furniture line so we just ordered the two new pieces). And I also knew that I wanted a chair or bench in the room as I was having to go into the living room every morning to put my shoes and socks on.

And although I was opposed to having a TV in the bedroom, living in our house for a year with only one TV downstairs totally convinced me that we needed another. I'm so happy that we made that decision -- I love watching the news in there every morning and banishing Lee to the bedroom TV when I want to watch something on DVR other than Survivorman. Plus, we were able to mount it on the wall and Lee worked his magic to relocate the cable and electrical outlets so there were no messy cords hanging down, so I think it looks pretty chic in there.

Here's a rundown of the goodies we used:

• Wall paint: Silver Sage, Restoration Hardware
• Furniture: Rooms to Go Valencia collection
• Chair: Dolce Lounge Chair by Target
• TV: 32" Sony BRAVIA
• Duvet cover, euro shams, boudoir sham: Italian Antiqued Floral in Eucalyptus, Restoration Hardware
• Regular shams: Diamond Matelasse in Silver Sage, Restoration Hardware
• Lamps: Target
• Curtains: Bed, Bath & Beyond
• Curtain hardware: Lowe's
• Orchid, candleholder: Target
• Candle: Restoration Hardware
• Mirror: Home Goods
• Light switch plates and outlet covers: Lowe's

So now, our bedroom not only rises up to meet us, but it gives us a shoulder rub and says "come in, put your feet up, can I get you a glass of wine?"

Now that's more like it, room.

Weekend Randoms

• This weekend included visits to World Market, the flea market, Fresh Market and the farmer's market. That's a lot of markets.
• At the flea market I bought an antique frame for a project I want to try and some Girl Scout cookies (peanut butter patties of course). Not sure which purchase I was more excited about.
• We met Lee's family for a yummy lunch at the farmer's market restaurant and then bought some fresh produce.
• At Fresh Market, we bought fixins for a delicious Saturday night dinner -- chicken venice stuffed with herbs and goat cheese, pesto pasta salad, sundried tomato cheese bread and wine.

• On Sunday we worked off our dinner from the night before with a two hour hike with Sugar at Jordan Lake, complete with a picnic lunch.
• I savored every last moment of Olympic competition as we watched the US/Canada hockey game. I've watched at least 3-4 hours of Olympic coverage every single day of the past two weeks. It's going to be a long two and a half years before London 2012.
• We planted seeds this weekend for our vegetable garden. Well, Lee planted the seeds, and I made a pretty diagram of of what we planted.

• One week later, my wheatgrass is out of control.

• Be sure to tune in this week for my next room reveal.
• This is my 100th post! I've certainly enjoyed my time with you so far, and I hope you have too.

Baby Shower

This weekend I helped throw a baby shower for my cousin Brittany.

I was in charge of decorations. Britt is having a little girl, and has decorated her nursery in lavender, pink and green, so that was the color scheme we used.

I especially love the way the beverage and dessert table turned out:

I made lots of tissue paper flowers using these instructions from Martha and decorated the window with a clothesline of onesies. Pink lemonade with lime slices added to the color palette. And the cupcakes from The Cupcake Shoppe in Raleigh spelling out the baby's name -- Brevyn Joy Harrison -- were both beautiful and delicious.

The food table was decorated with a few more pom-poms and a centerpiece of wheatgrass and gerber daisies in galvanized pails. If you know me, you know wheatgrass is my go-to party trick. It couldn't be easier to grow or prettier.

I also made a banner for the mantle:

Britt got lots of sweet gifts and we played some fun games involving toilet paper, baby food and dirty diapers.

Mama doesn't look so sure about that one...

Finally, here's a pic of the hostesses and the mommy-to-be:

And I'll leave you with this fabulous shot. Isn't she radiant??

We love you Britt and can't wait to meet little Brevyn!

We're Going Down Under

Do you remember back in June when I wrote this post about longing to take a big trip? Well, I’m crazy excited to report that we have officially booked a trip to AUSTRALIA!

We are over the moon about it and I didn’t even have to twist Lee’s arm too terribly much. The trip isn’t until the fall, but I have a feeling it will be here before we know it.

We’ll spend two and a half weeks on what will hopefully be the adventure of our lives: snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef, camping in Kakadu National Park, exploring the rain forest, and relaxing on the beautiful, secluded Heron Island.

And because I’m all about mantras this week, here’s the one that inspired us to take the plunge: