Project Master Bedroom: Night Stands

Remember how I said Mark and I went to yard sales in my last post? Well we found this baby and his twin right around the corner from us. $10 for a piece for solid wood end tables that just happens to match our bed frame perfectly! 

We have been searching craigslist for end tables for weeks and couldn't find any we liked. Even though we weren't concerned that they necessarily matched our bed, we did want them to be somewhat nice. I was even tempted a couple of times to buy some $50+ ones at target that I really liked... can you imagine how upset I would've been if I had bought those and then found our perfect match for only  a fraction of the price?!? It would not have been pretty. Good thing my husband was there to give me a reality check when those pretty Target furniture displays had me ready to stray from our budget.

 Good things come to those that wait? I think yes. 

Now if only we could find a dresser....

Project Front Yard: Flower Beds

Okay, so I know in my last post I told you how I was all gung ho about finishing the guest bedroom with my new DIY wall decor pieces and all, but you see... the funny thing about projects like that is that they cost money. Money for a bed spread, a bedside table, a bookshelf, etc. etc. So seeing as we didn't have any extra money this weekend to put into our guest bedroom, we decided to do some house projects that only cost time and a little LOT of effort. : )

Enter first picture of the front of our house:

See where the arrow is pointing? The nasty flower bed that is completely taken over by this weird viney plant and shrubs? We've been wanting to clear it out all summer but we've barely spent a whole weekend at home without going out of town or having family plans since we've been married. (Okay that's a small exaggerations. I mean we really have been busy, but the weekends that we have spent at home we definitely decided to do other newly married things instead of clean our flower beds, if you know what I mean.) Today we were both finally home, up early from going to yard sales (I know... I said we didn't have any money, but our neighborhood was full of yard sales this morning so we just couldn't resist) and had no other plans for today! 

The result:

A cleaned out flower bed! 

Now all we need is money to buy the flowers. : )

Project Guest Bedroom: Wall Accents

We've been doing house projects on and off pretty much since our wedding... well pretty much since we bought the house last November. Our latest major projects have been our kitchen (we painted our cabinets and walls, I'll post pictures of that soon!) and our back bedrooms.

We have three bedrooms... The Master, The Guest Bedroom and The Music Room. We tried painting our music room and it turned out awful... I'm almost too embarrassed to show it! Maybe when we finally get around to re-painting it I'll have the courage to post it. Our Master bedroom hasn't even been touched. Weird right? Seeing as that is where WE are sleeping it would seem to make sense to finish that room first, but I guess we've been putting it off because in the midst of our crazy unfinished projects its nice to have a room that isn't in the middle of a makeover, ya know? Anyways, my latest area of focus has been on our Guest Bedroom. We painted it the same day we did our kitchen, with the help of my family, and ever since I've been dying to complete it! We were able to get a cute twin bed from Mark's parents that Mark used when he was little so we painted it white and it looks adorable with the white chair rail! But the room still isn't finished...

I'm thinking the things needed to make this room complete is a small bedside table, maybe a dresser/bookshelf?, and of course some wall decor.

I was at the beach this past Saturday with Mark's family where we went to dinner at a small seafood restaurant with a charming gift shop. I saw these in the store and immediately knew how I wanted to decorate that back bedroom.

The only problem was that these pretty babies were about $20 -30 bucks a piece... tempting but not gonna do it.

So instead I decided to try and make something similar myself. Only I would make the back white to pop against the blue/teal walls and the lettering the same color as the walls.

I bought some plane wooden picture frames and wooden canvases from Michaels craft store and a can of spray paint and went to work.

By the time my spray paint dried it had gotten dark outside so I set up shop on our fireplace!

Stenciling is a MUST for me. I am not an artist by any stretch of the imagination!

I used a pencil to outline all of the letters and then traced over with a small brush.

Ta Da! I think they turned out pretty good. A couple of the letters are crooked or not quite spaced perfectly but my sweet husband ensured me it looked better that way. : ) I'm happy with them. I mean I got three wall pieces for the price of one from the cute gift shop!

I'll post more as the room continues to make progress!

A lesson in obedience

First I just want to start this post by saying in no way did I want my last post to sound like I am not enjoying being married! I love everything about it! Its just that there are challenges along the way, ones that I didn't have before I was married, that I am having to figure out and grow from.

Take yesterday for example...

It was Sunday, "Family Day"... Or at least thats how it was in my parents household. So naturally yesterday I wanted to have lunch with my parents and siblings and spend the day over at their house. My sister and her husband were planning on having lunch over there so to me it sounded like the perfect family afternoon. Not so much to Mark. According to my hard working husband, we had too many things to get done around the house (since we spent all day Saturday at the beach) before he went back to work on Monday. (I have today off!) In that moment that he rejected my plans to go to my parents (the second time I proposed my plan, because sometimes its worth a shot to ask again) I sat there contemplating how I was going to respond. I was disappointed and slightly upset, I didn't see the harm in spending a day doing nothing but enjoying the company of my family. But God also reminded me in that moment that when I said those vows, even long before that really, I had promised to obey Mark and submit to him...even in the little things. So I conceded... I didn't say anything else about going to my parents. I will admit for the first hour or two I had a small attitude and only talked to him when I was spoken to (am I sounding like a spoiled child yet?) but as the day went on God continued to chip away at my stubborness and by the end of the day I was grateful that my husband had insisted on staying home to finish tasks that we had been unable to do the day before.

I was able to clean out my refrigerator, cut coupons, go grocery shopping (saving $45 from those coupons!), finish the laundry, help Mark put up the new blinds we had purchased with the last of our wedding money and even go to the craft store so I could create some wall decor for our back bedroom that we're currently painting/decorating/ trying to completely finish to make it suitable for a guest room! **Pictures to come on the next post!** Mark was able to sort through items from his parents house that had been sitting in our front room and find appropriate storage for them and he was also able to burn boxes that had been taking over our garage for weeks. On top of what we accomplished we were able to save a lot of gas by not making the 30 min trip to my parents and back.

It was a good reminder to me to be obedient to my husband in all the little things. Hopefully next time I'll be able to start off the day with the right attitude and not take all day to realize my husband was right. Because now that I accomplished all of those tasks yesterday I am free to enjoy a relaxing day at the beach with my mom and sisters on my day off! Had I not listened to my husband yesterday I would be missing out on this opportunity!

Virginia Beach, here I come!

I'm Back!

I almost want to delete this blog and start over...

I love for things to be perfect, and lets face it, my first attempt at blogging didn't turn out so well. Months before my wedding I would take pictures of things thinking "I'm going to put this on my blog!" but never made the time to sit down and actually put it up. The pictures accumulated until I didn't know what I should put up first and in the midst of planning last minute wedding details, well, sitting down to write on a blog just wasn't on the top of my priority list.

Over 5 months have past since I last posted on this blog! In that time I married the man of my dreams...my very best friend. He's laying beside me now as I right this. As we've settled into our routines I'm learning even more of what its going to take to become that ideal wife in Proverbs, and I confess, I fall awfully short of the mark. Before I actually got married I had visions in my head of what our daily routine would look like. It included a perfectly clean house, dinner that would make the Iron Chef look bad, grocery shopping with coupons that would save me hundreds of dollars, and weekends filled making all of my pinterest dreams come true! Unfortunately thats been far from the truth! With each day I'm learning just how much work it's going to take to live up to that standard... not the perfect one I made for myself, but the one thats laid out in the bible. And while I thought my days of blogging were officially over long ago, I've been finding myself thinking more and more about how I want to write down these lessons I've been learning.

So, here I am... trying out this blogging thing again. My initial idea of what my blog would be when I started didn't turn out exactly the way I wanted it too, but neither did my first few months of being a house wife! So instead of deleting and starting over, I'm going to grow from here... just as I'm hoping to grow as a wife. I'll let my previous posts serve as a reminder in the days to come that it takes takes time, practice and lots of mistakes before you start getting things right.