exciting times...

These are exciting times...for the very first time, I am going to be an aunt. I know you're thinking I'm already an aunt, and you're right. I have a niece & nephew on Jeff's side of the family, Brittany & Brandon, and I love them dearly. BUT -- this is completely different.

My "little" brother, Daniel, (he's only 2 years younger, but it seems like so much more than that to me...) and his sweet wife, Brandi, are going to welcome a darling addition to their family in about 2 1/2 months. And this will change lives, people.

It will change their lives -- they will no longer be a couple; they will be called a family. They will not only be "husband & wife", they will become "mommy & daddy" to a precious child. A child who will watch their every move, listen to their every word.

It will change the lives of my parents -- they will not only be parents, they will (finally) be called "grandparents". They will experience the joys of grandparenting which I've heard is so much different than parenting...they are absolutely beside themselves with excitement.

So Brandi's due date is July 23, a mere 6 days before they celebrate their 2nd anniversary. So she is just about 2 1/2 months away...has it really already been 6 1/2 months? That's crazy. And she's just the cutest little pregnant woman -- you'd never guess she was pregnant if you were looking anywhere but her stomach (it kinda makes me sick...). And guess what they're having? Oh, I just can't wait!

We had a baby shower for them a couple weekends ago in my hometown, Lexington (NC). All of Brandi's family is around the area and they have a great support group at their church so we had good attendance that Sunday afternoon. I made little corsages (out of socks & such) for both of them to wear, the mommy- and daddy-to-be. And then the unveiling of "THE PINK" began! Yes, they got loads of girlie, pink stuff, much to my brother's chagrin. But, they are having a girl. That is the natural tendency. They did get a lot of nice things that were NOT pink and he was thankful for that. Let me just say, the child will NEVER be naked for lack of clothes! But how can one resist those little dresses, onesies & jeans that are only 7 inches long?! Oh, and don't even get me started on the shoes!

Tell me...do you think he looks ready? :)

"Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it."

--Proverbs 22:6

hurricane season already?

Not quite, but close. However, we have had some serious downpours here & there, including this one today that kept me sitting in my car in the driveway after I got home from work for about 5 min, waiting for any kind of letup so I could dash to the porch. I got a semi-letup, but still got drenched.

Our yards definitely need the rain, and Jeff was really excited to see it -- he's been fertilizing the yard & such. Well, I think our yard got a little more than it bargained for today! There were some serious puddles in the backyard before it was all over.

We finally got gutters put on the house so the front yard did fairly well through the downpour. We haven't done any kind of landscaping yet so I wasn't terribly upset with all the water gushing into what's there.

I did notice the "flood 'o' mud" running down our street, almost flooding it all the way across. It's lovely, isn't it? They are (blessedly) almost finished with every home on Rose Bud (our street) so hopefully we won't be seeing too much more of that.

**note: I'm seriously embarrassed by how long it has been since I last posted. I have had a lack of time on the one hand and a lack of activity around the house on the other hand. Both have served to give me absolutely nothing to blog about in terms of the house. I'm having to resort to blogging about the rain? For pete's sake! I plan to blog about some things that may not necessarily have to do with the house but are things happening right now in our lives, but I don't want to get too far off "the beaten path" of what I want this blog to be about. So stick with me, folks. I appreciate everyone who still checks the blog from time to time. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I plan to continue this blog for a while.

weekend warriors!

Jeff and I endeavored on a project together this weekend...we were the "weekend warriors"! We redid the inside of the guest closet. We had decided that we wanted to take down the one wire shelf that came with the house and put in a different wood shelf with another shelving unit to give us options. Jeff said we pretty much had everything we needed (with the exception of the hanging rod -- it was a "one-tripper"**) to complete the project so we got to work about 11am on Saturday.

Jeff had drawn out the plan with measurements and everything the night before so the first thing we did was take down the wire rack that was in the closet. We then had to putty the holes. Jeff brought out this hot pink/purple stuff and started putting it on the wall and I. freaked. out. He assured me it dried white...and thank goodness, for his sake, he was right. :) So we eventually would apply 3 coats of putty with sanding in between each coat. And then paint.

While we waited for the putty to dry, we went to work cutting our pieces of wood to create our shelving unit. I got to use a circular saw for the first time...not quite sure if I like that so much, but I did fine with it. My daddy would be proud -- I'm pretty sure Jeff was. :)

I have to say, it was a lot of fun to work with Jeff on this project. We got along great and he mentioned that night after all was complete that he'd had fun with me that day. It was such a great feeling to have knocked this project out in one day. We both went in one more time before bed to just look at it...our creation. Kinda funny. :) See what you think...

Before...

...After

I might post before & after photos of the "stuff" in the closet later...

**"one-tripper" means only one trip to Lowe's was required

daylight savings time...

We're taking advantage of this time of year where we lose an hour of sleep, but gain lots of light at the end of the day. It was so nice to come home tonight after working until 6pm (it's tax season, people), getting home around 7pm and STILL being able to go out and take a walk with my husband. Ah, yes. Even at 7:30pm, when we got back to the house, there was still plenty of daylight left.

And now, they've made so many roads throughout our neighborhood -- some are paved, some are not. We just went exploring tonight. They're building some different styled houses in another section of the neighborhood (Phase 3, no doubt), so we walked down that road to see how those were coming along. Houses are just "poppin' up all over" around here! Even our own street looks so much different than when we first moved in, with upwards of 10 houses now lining the road to our left (only the house to our left was there when we moved in and there were only a couple of lots being graded). Crazy.

Anyway, we're enjoying the daylight, some "together-time" and getting in shape, too. Our ten-year anniversary looms in the not-too-distant future and I suspect exciting things are coming...a trip, perhaps...

"kitty kloset"...

We love our cat...but we love our house being clean more. :)

For awhile now, it has really bothered me that we had Kassie's litter box sitting, in plain sight, in the kitchen. That, to me, is just rude when we have guests come for dinner. And it's just gross.

So my handy husband installed what we're personally calling the "kitty kloset" (spelled with k's in keeping with the whole trend there...Kassie, kitty...). He cut *gasp* a hole in the wall of the hallway where the linen closet in the guest bathroom is and attached a frame that has a clear plastic flap that swings in or out (the same kind of concept as a "doggie door"). We put Kassie's litter box in the closet. Now she has a "doorway" into her "bathroom" and we don't have to see the litter box. It's out of the way and not grossing anyone out anymore. :)

It was a test to figure out how to get Kassie to use it. Jeff put it in Friday (he worked from home, lucky thing) and every 20 min or so he would put Kassie in the closet and close the door so the only way out was through the "doorway". It took her a few times to figure out that it opens if she pushes on it from the bottom. She would figure it out and then forget the next time Jeff put her in the closet. So she finally got used to getting out...now how to teach her how to GO IN to the closet?

We enticed her by putting a few bits of food on the ledge and then another small container of food inside the closet. She was pretty hesitant and actually only ate the food on the ledge; she didn't even try to go inside the closet to get the other container. So we decided we would open the closet door and keep the bathroom door to the hallway closed, and we'd put her whole food bowl in there (we have an automatic feeder that drops food twice a day). If she wanted to eat, she was going to have to get in there somehow! And the only way in was through the "doorway".

She's such a smart cat...she figured that out a lot quicker than the coming out part. What a relief! I'm so glad to have that litter box out of the kitchen! And the "doorway" in the hallway doesn't look near as bad as I thought it would when Jeff first posed the idea to me back before we even moved into the house.

So the plan is to somehow block off the bottom portion of the closet so that when a guest opens the closet door to grab a towel or washcloth, they don't see the litter box. The challenge is to make it accessible enough for us to be able to get to it to clean out, etc.

We're still working that plan out in our minds...

a "heart"-full of love...

Found this cute door hanger for our door at AC Moore (I LOVE that store!)...


"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us."
--1 John 4:7-12


Hope you all are surrounded by those your heart loves this week and for Valentine's Day...

so sweet...

I just had to show you these sweet towels I found in Target on Thursday...aren't they darling?? I'm not one to really get into "decorating" for Valentine's day (I save that for Thanksgiving/fall & Christmas) but when I saw these towels, I thought maybe I'd change my mind about that... :)

Now I'm thinking I'd like to get some kind of "heart thing" to hang on my front door (since I have such a nice front door now). I could definitely have something "lovey" sitting on my coffee table, should I see (or make) something that would be "just perfect".

After all...what the world needs now is love...sweet love...

shop drawers...

Forgive me. I hope you guys haven't given up on me posting any more to this blog... Those of you who know what "line of work" I'm in, you know it's already getting busy for me. That's the true reason I haven't posted in awhile (that and the fact that there hasn't been much going on around the house in the way of projects). I work in a CPA office so I'm up to my eyeballs in quarterly payroll reports, W-2s and 1099s. And it's only going to get worse, so just be aware that my posts will probably be few & far between...don't give up on me!

With that being said, there is one project that's being worked on more frequently than all the rest and that's the setup in Jeff's shop (a.k.a. the garage - where my car should be parked...). You've seen the cabinet structure he's put in place in this post; well, now he's working on drawers to put in for all his "stuff". They're turning out pretty fast because he cut all the pieces first:

Then, he worked on putting them all together, one right after the other:


When you do that, they go together pretty quickly and you end up with this:


Nice, huh? I got him a drawer jig for his birthday in October and it has come in pretty handy with all these drawers he's installing. The drawers give him options and are a nice way to store things since he can pull them out to see what's stashed in the back...you can't always do that with a cabinet.

I'm really proud of how often he's been going out there to work on this project. I know he'll be so glad to have drawers & cabinets in place to put his stuff. He'll have a better handle on where everything is and he'll be able to work much more efficiently on his woodworking projects. What woodworking projects, you ask? Oh, believe me...he has quite a "list" of things...he'll got LOTS of practice on LOTS of different things... :D

drawer pulls...

We accomplished another (very) small project last night...we attached drawer pulls to the 2 drawers we have in the kitchen. Up to now, we've just been pulling on the bottom of the drawer (there's a notch cut out) to open them, but I really wanted to get drawer pulls for them at some point.

Well, we were in Lowe's the other night and Jeff was looking at hinges for some of his cabinets, etc. in his shop. The drawer pulls and knobs were on the same aisle so I just browsed to "see what I could see". I was originally going to go with brushed pewter/nickel because I really like that look, but I found these brushed copper-colored pulls that I thought would look really nice with the mocha color of our cabinets. We got them home and they were perfect!

So last night we put them on and don't they look nice? I'd really like to have knobs (in the same brushed copper) for the cabinets but some of the doors, if you don't keep a hold on them, they bang into some of the other cabinets and the last thing I want is dents in our cabinets from the knobs! Guess we'll hold off on that for now.

I do love those pulls, though!

Merry Christmas!

"In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn."

--Luke 2:1-7 (esv)

...she gave birth to our Savior, our Redeemer...Jesus, the Christ...the Son of God.

I pray your Christmas was full of blessings, surrounded by loved ones and friends...and may we carry this Spirit all through the new year. God bless each of you!

in the Spirit...

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! I've had my decorations up for awhile (since the beginning of December, actually), but I haven't been able to get many decent photos of them for the blog. Lord knows, I've been trying! Sometimes my camera really frustrates me...

But here are a few photos to give you an idea of what the new house looks like with our "old" decorations:

Christmas goodies...

Well, this is a far-cry from anything to do with the house, but I want to post it nonetheless. I've decided to do some baking this Christmas season for various activities and for gifts. We have a few parties we attend every Christmas season and we have lots of friends.

Well, now we have new neighbors! So I thought that some homemade goodies would be a nice way to wish them a blessed Christmas. Here's what I've been up to:

Chocolate Crinkles

(these are Jeff's fave!)

1 cup cocoa

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 cups sugar

4 eggs

2 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp salt

Combine ingredients, mixing well, and refrigerate overnight. Form balls and roll in powdered sugar. Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes. Yield = 3 1/2 dozen

Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Cookies

1 1/2 cups self rising flour

1/2 cup butter or margarine

1/4 cup plus 2 tsp sugar

1 cup creamy peanut butter

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1 large egg

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Mix flour and salt together in small bowl. Mix butter, brown sugar and sugar in a separate larger mixing bowl. Add egg, peanut butter and vanilla. Mix well. Add flour to mixture and beat until it resembles batter. Fill greased mini muffin tin wells with batter almost to the top. Bake at 375 for 8-9 minutes until almost done. Take out and press one mini reese's peanut butter cup into center of batter in each well. Put back in the oven for another minute. Yield = 3 1/2 dozen

I actually made one other recipe, M&M Cookies (with the red & green M&Ms), but I didn't think to take a photo of those before I put them into these bags...

Aren't they cute? I hope they like them.

I found it!

Finally! I found a long lost box in the storage facility today! For awhile now, I knew there were some dishes that I hadn't unpacked and I couldn't imagine where they were since (I thought) I'd gotten all the kitchen boxes out of storage & unpacked them. I even checked with my mom (more than once) to see if I'd brought this one corningware dish/lid I was missing to her house and left it. She said no (more than once).

I was also missing a small pottery piece that I use to hold my splenda packets for my coffee...couldn't find it in any boxes I'd already unpacked. I just had no idea where these things could be...

I went to the storage facility today to get my Christmas "tub" and the tree so I can decorate the house and while I was there, I thought I'd check through the boxes to see what was still left. It was mostly boxes of books (3 to be exact - geez!), but there was a box underneath one of those boxes that wasn't labeled on the side like the rest; only on the top. So I had to lift the box on top up to see what that box said and the label said "Glass Bakeware & Cookware - Breakable!" (pretty much every box was labeled "breakable" cuz you just never know...). A-ha! And when I opened it - ta da! There was my "lost" stuff! Hooray! All is well once more...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving, All! I sincerely pray you all had a lovely Thanksgiving, as I & my family did. We headed to Lexington (NC) on Wednesday afternoon to see my family. My mom & dad, my brother & his wife AND my mom's parents (Gram & Buppa to me!) all live there so we were able to spend some time with all of them.

One thing we got to do that was really neat for me was to take a ride in my Daddy's truck. Most of you know that he has become a truck driver, driving big semis, tractor-trailers, whatever you want to call them...the big mamma-jammas! Anyway, I just think that's the coolest thing and he was able to take me out in the truck while we were home. He has a really nice truck with US Xpress and I was able to get up in it and see where he stores his stuff, where he sleeps, where his TV and everything is...it was just a really cool thing. I enjoyed riding in that tall thing and I really got an education because Daddy told me tidbits about the truck and how different driving it is while we were out.

We usually have our Thanksgiving meal as dinner on Thursday since my brother & his wife have Thanksgiving lunch with her family. I kinda like it that way because we don't have to get up at the crack of dawn to have everything ready by lunch. We can take our time and not spend all day in the kitchen (although it always ends up feeling like that...). Our meal was wonderful. We had a lot of traditional dishes, like green bean casserole and mashed potatoes/gravy, but we also had a couple dishes we don't normally have, like sweet potato casserole and pineapple cheese casserole. We had tons of desserts including 3 pies and a new recipe I tried, Butterscotch Apple Crisp. Everything was very tasty and we all ate WAY TOO MUCH.

Friday, the 3 of us (me, Momma & Gram) headed off to Seagrove in keeping with what has become one of my favorite traditions. I don't get into all that is "Black Friday", but I do enjoy shopping the day after Thanksgiving in the "pottery capital of the world". We had a great time just being together and finding the neatest things. I was able to get some Christmas gifts, as well as a little something for me. :) The fall foliage was absolutely GORGEOUS and I loved every minute of the drive around Seagrove. We actually were able to watch a potter creating what they call a brie baker (you can see for yourself here), so that was really neat for us.

We came back on Saturday night so we were able to be with our friends today in church & Sunday School. That was important to us because we are so very thankful for our friends here, who are really our family since both Jeff & I live so far from our families. We are truly blessed in every aspect of our lives, and we pray the Lord would help us to remember that and keep us content with all that He has given us.

God bless you all throughout the rest of this holiday season!

"And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom...with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him."

--Colossians 3:15-17

documenting the milestones...

Most of you know that I'm a scrapbooker. Well, I finally started the house scrapbook this past weekend (part of the reason I haven't posted in a while). My Creative Memories consultant, Jill, held her 2nd scrapbooking retreat this weekend in Ocean Isle Beach, NC. I was able to go to the first one in April and had an all-out blast so I was really looking forward to this one. We had a larger house this time which means we had more room to spread out. It was so much fun! There were about 14 of us total and we all got a lot done. We ate tons of food, had lots of conversation, scrapbooked gobs of pages/events...and we managed to squeeze a few hours of sleep in there. :)

I got about 13 pages done in the house scrapbook which is not NEARLY as many as some, but I'm very pleased with how all the pages turned out. I took my time deciding on color schemes and how I wanted to showcase each day of progress. That's usually how I scrapbook anyway, but I think I took extra time just because I could (no where to go for 2 1/2 days!). I really enjoyed myself this weekend. I'm up through June 13 in the album; needless to say, I have a ways to go to complete it, but I have a feeling I'll be continuing on with the scrapbook after the house is built, similar to how I've done with this blog.