Friday Favorites!!!

Woohoo for Friday! I missed last week, so here are 2 weeks of favorites!

1) Dining Table - We finished the dining table last week! All I had to do during the week is put a few coats of poly on it, the rest was finished over the weekend before last. I am so excited about the table and we both love it so much! I'm glad we decided to build our own!

I'm in love! I love the table, I love the chairs...it's exactly what we wanted!

2) Girls Night - I got to go out for Hibachi with Brittany and Anna last Wednesday night. Brittany is moving to TX Monday, so I'm very thankful for the time we got to spend together. Of course I didn't even think about taking a picture. Oh well, at least I have the memories and another delicious dinner option!

3) Day off - I took last Friday off to finish up some projects, catch up on chores and prepare for visitors. We had our best friends from MD coming to visit last weekend and we hosted my Dad's birthday dinner Friday night. I got a lot done!

4) Wolfpack Hoops! - We're still dancing! Yep, we made it to the Sweet 16!!! I'm SUPER excited about this! Not only are we in the Sweet 16, but we took out a #1 seed to get there! We've already beat Louisville this season, we can do it again!!!

5) Smiths Visit! - Some of our favorite people came to spend the weekend with us. It was a short weekend, but we had a great time with them! We showed them around campus and a few other places in Raleigh. We even showed them some houses, just in case they wanted to move a little closer. ;-)

 Such a handsome boy...he almost makes me want my own...almost!

 We got some howling cow! I tried to share mine with the wolf, but I just looked dumb.

 The Smiths!

 Zachary loved running around campus!

 Of course we had to show them the wolf ears!!!

 Z had fun running back and forth while we were talking.

In the Free Expression Tunnel...so many memories!!!
 
6) My Job - I'm incredibly thankful for my job and for my awesome boss. Josh had a class in Atlanta this week and I asked by boss if I could travel with him and work remote. She had no problem with it. The hotel we're in has so many places for me to work. In my room, in a little courtyard, several places in the lobby and a quiet little place on the second floor. Here are a couple of my favorite "offices" from the week...

This is in the lobby by the fire. It got quite warm, so I didn't stay here long, but it was nice.

This is in the courtyard...probably my favorite spot. It's so peaceful out there. :-)

7) Being close to family - We're only a little over an hour away from my Daddy now! He is watching Bailey while we're in Atlanta this week and she gets to play with her little sister! She's enjoying being at her Papa's house and I know she'll be exhausted when we pick her up!

8) Daddy's Birthday - Another perk of living close to family, I got to host Daddy's birthday dinner! We had family over for steaks, baked potatoes, grilled veggies and of course dessert! My aunt came and it was my first time seeing her in way too long! Daddy even put our dining chairs together while I finished preparing food! I was so busy trying to get everything together (Daddy showed up 2 hours early...haha...I did not get my lack of timeliness from him) that I forgot to take pictures. His actual birthday was this past Tuesday...Happy Birthday, Daddy!!!

9) Kila - This lady deserves her own number. :-) It's been way too long since I've seen her, but I got to visit with my second favorite pup when we dropped Bailey off at my dad's house! She climbed right up in the car and sat in both our laps before we were even able to get out. I have pictures, but they're on Josh's phone. She's just as sweet as ever! She was a terror as a puppy, but she's so calm now...almost 12 years later!


10) Akeem - Since we're in Atlanta this week, we got a chance to visit with an old college friend. We went out for dinner, then he showed us around some really cool parts of Atlanta that we would have never found on our own! One of my favorites was the Goat Farm...such a cool place! We went out for ice cream too. All in all, Thursday was a GREAT night!

11) Atlanta Adventures - We've had a lot of fun while we've been here. We went to a speakeasy type of bar one night with some of Josh's co-workers. You have to get a secret code that changes every night in order to get in. Then you go inside this phone booth, enter the code, and a secret door opens. It was REALLY cool!

We've also had some great and unusual food! We went to The Vortex and I decided to get adventurous. I got the Fat Elvis, which is a burger with peanut butter, fried bananas and bacon on it. It was definitely different, but actually very good! Josh disagreed. haha. Don't worry, we've had some amazing normal food too. I had one of the best steaks I've ever had one night. One of my favorite parts of traveling is food, so this has definitely been a great trip in that aspect! I'll try to post more about Atlanta with more pictures later. I have several pictures, but they're on about 4 different devices at the moment. I'm not up for dealing with that right now!

12) Maze Runner - We started listening to Maze Runner on the way down to Atlanta. We listened to it some more on the way to meet Akeem and it's getting really good!

Breakfast Nook Dining Table

Choosing a dining table for our breakfast nook was not an easy process. We knew we wanted a farmhouse style table. One big problem we kept running into with finding one to go in our nook was the size. The farmhouse tables tend to be pretty ginormous. Our breakfast nook is definitely not built for a ginormous table. I searched high and low and I kept finding huge tables with huge price tags. Josh talked about building one off and on for a while. Since we had so many projects to work on already, I just wasn't hearing it. I'm a do-er. Josh is a it gets done when it gets done-er. I didn't want a dining table when it got done, I wanted it now - so I kept searching for a table to buy. Well, after enough looking, I decided maybe building was the best option. Josh was going to be leaving for Nashville a couple weekends ago and I decided - meh, maybe now is a good time to build a table. He won't be home to force me to slow down, so why not? I was going to surprise him with it, but I can't keep secrets from him and I ended up hinting that I may work on a dining table over the weekend. Fail. 

Here are a couple

This is Pottery Barn's Benchwright table. I love the look of that table. I do not love the price. $1,300 for just the table...no thanks!

I also found this one at World Market that I loved. It was less than half the price of the Pottery Barn table, but too long.

Anyway, I started researching like a crazy woman. I found Ana White's website back when we were house shopping in MD and I saved (this was before Pinterest) a bunch of projects that I wanted to do. One of them was our bed, that my dad built. We never actually built any of them. Nevermind that...there were tons of projects that I WANTED to do. I knew she had some great stuff, so that's where I started. Don't worry, I didn't just pick a table to build without consulting Josh. We looked at some of Ana's plans together and he actually picked the one I ended up choosing. It was actually my second choice. Once I was committed to it though, I was in love with it.

These are the plans for Ana's knockoff.

So...Friday after work, I went to Lowe's to shop for wood. Let me tell you, it's not super easy to find nice, straight boards at Lowe's! We had gift cards though, so I was set on getting everything from Lowe's. You can't beat free! I bought a few other things and the supplies for the benches (which I didn't end up making), so I'm not 100% sure how much I spent, but it was roughly $250. That's with getting a LOT more stain and poly than we needed because we will use it in other projects (and with a 10% off coupon). That's a heck of a lot better than $1,300!

Anyway, here are some pictures of my progress...

 This is my little workspace...before I got it dirty.

 Partially assembled legs

 This is my progress at some point Saturday

 The frame is getting there!

 Almost ready for the table top...or so I thought. The ends were not very stable and I messed up some of the boards on the inside so that the table just was not going to sit even. I thought the table was a goner and there was no way it was going to end up in the house. I decided to start staining and figure the rest out when Josh got home. At this point, it wasn't possible to finish it before Josh got home anyway. I decided to wait until he got home so he could help me fix my mistakes.

I stained the undersides and everything because I thought it would be much easier before I added the table top. I was right. SO glad I did that.

 

I went ahead and stained the wrong side of the boards too

I left it like this until Josh got home. I had exhausted my ideas and I didn't know what to do to fix it.  We spent a full night going over all the issues and trying to figure out how to fix it. In addition to the ends not being very stable, some of the pieces of the frame were sticking up farther than they should have been and they were going to prevent the boards on the top of the table from sitting flat. Not a good thing. We had to take some pieces off and re-attach them, we had to re-cut some of the top boards, we had to plane some of the boards underneath because I didn't nail them evenly, we had to sand a LOT of stuff that probably shouldn't have needed to be sanded in order to get them even. Between the 2 of us, we figured it all out!

 Josh nailing the boards on. Getting close!!! 

  

Hours of sanding and lots of wood filler later...

Time to stain! - We used MinWax Dark Walnut - We both love the color!

 

 Finishing up the stain

 About 8 coats of poly later, it's in our breakfast nook and we love it!!! 

For the poly, I got MinWax's Oil Modified Water Based Polyurethane in Satin. It was super easy to work with and you only need 2 hours between coats. It was more expensive than the oil based stuff, but with the easy cleanup and the fact that we only needed to wait 2 hours between coats (vs 8), I thought it was worth the extra money. The link above is for the gallon, which is definitely not necessary for this project.

I love everything about it!

I found these chairs on sale at Target. I spent a total $235 on all four chairs, so roughly $485 on the table and 4 chairs.

Yea...that's a LOT better than the Pottery Barn table or even the World Market table that was a LOT less. I'll take it!

On top of saving the money, I know this is a solid table and we get the satisfaction of knowing WE built the table that our kids will do their homework on, dye Easter eggs on and spill their cereal on. Even before kids, we'll have many game nights and breakfasts here. I think we'll have lots of great memories here!

Meet Sir Poops a LOT

This is an old story that I never posted, but our little friend came back for a visit this week, so I feel like it's still an appropriate time to share it. From about the first week we moved into our new house, I started to notice MASSIVE amounts of bird poop on the sides of both of our cars AND on the driveway. I looked around trying to figure out where all these birds were perching. Surely, it had to be 4 or 5 birds! I didn't see anywhere they could be targeting our cars from.

This picture doesn't do it justice.

Well...one day, I was about to take Bailey out for a potty break and I see this little guy. My first thought was - "Awwww, how cute!" I love Cardinals! I think they're such beautiful birds! Then it hit me and I probably said something not nearly nice as "Awwww, how cute!"

This little guy is responsible for all the poop on the cars and the driveway! How do you make a bird stop perching on your car? And why on earth does he like perching on our cars so much in the first place?!?

Josh figured that out a few days later when he was working from home on a snow day...

Yep...this little guy likes to fight himself in the mirrors. He will fly from car to car and fight all of the other male Cardinals who like to hang out on our cars. It's almost too cute to get mad at...almost. So we started tilting the mirrors in to keep him off. It works for the most part, but we don't always remember to tilt them in. 

I still don't know why he chooses our cars other all the other cars in all the other yards in the neighborhood. 

Anyway, thanks to Jen, this little guy has been named Sir Poops a LOT.

Now, to get the garage organized enough so that we can fit both cars in it. haha...

Friday Favorites!

Woohoo! TGIF! I've been SO ready for this weekend for no particular reason at all...anyway...here are my favorites for the week!

1) Dating Anniversary - Monday was our 14th dating anniversary! We've been together for half our lives now! That' pretty crazy! We didn't do anything crazy...just had a low key dinner at home. We grilled out and watched Mockingjay. I'm so thankful to have such an amazing husband and best friend. I'm really excited to see what this next year brings for us! 

 

2) Dining Table - Josh was out of town for a bachelor party last weekend and I decided to get handy. I built a dining table! Sort of. I'm not finished, but I got a LOT of it done. I thought I would be finished by now, but we've been taking advantage of the nicer weather to tackle some outdoor projects we've been putting off. It's supposed to be gross and rainy on Saturday, so we hope to finish it over the weekend! 

 

Here's a sneak peak of the dining table...

We still have a long way to go, but the majority of the hard stuff is done (I hope!)

3) Gift Cards - Directly related to the dining table, of course. Thanks to amazing friends and family, we had a ton of Lowe's gift cards between Christmas and housewarming gifts. I was able to purchase all of the supplies for the table with the gift cards, so it's almost like it was free! Not really, since we could have used the money for other things we'll need at Lowe's, but it was still nice. :-D

4) Weekday Visit from Family - My parents and aunt came to visit me Wednesday afternoon. They brought us some pallets and other wood for some other projects we want to do...eventually. Haha. I'm really excited about the projects and I'm really excited that the wood was free! It's SO nice to be able to see my family on random days during the week though. They stayed for a couple hours and we had lunch together. We got LED recessed lights to put in the kitchen a couple weeks ago, but we hadn't gotten around to installing them yet. Daddy installed them for me while he was here. Yay for another check off the to-do list!!!

5) Weather - I mentioned that we haven't been holed up working on the table it the garage because we've had nice weather this week. It has been amazing! I've really enjoyed working with my office window open and not having to use heat this week! We have grilled out for dinner twice and it has been amazing. I wish the weather could always be this nice!

6) ACC Tourney - This is a favorite and a not favorite, I suppose. We had a really really horrible game against Duke last night, but we had an amazing game against Pitt Wednesday night. I'm hopeful that we'll make a nice run in the NCAA tourney! 

2014 Recap

Wow! 2014 came and went SO fast! It's nearly 1/4 through 2015, so I feel like a real slacker for just getting this posted! I started on it forever ago, but it was really difficult to figure out what we did each month since I basically failed at blogging in 2014. Let's hope I'm better at it this year!

January 

 We started our new year with some of our best friends, Jen, John and Baby Z! We had a low key night in and we enjoyed every bit of it!

February
We went to the Dominican Republic!

We thought this would be the perfect time to escape the cold. We were right, but we were off by just a couple days! A snow storm caused our flight to get cancelled and we weren't able to get another flight for a few days. We ended up being snowed in at Anna and John's house. It wasn't how we planned to spend our Valentine's Day, but we still had a blast. We shifted our trip around and only had to shorten it by 1 day.

 Playa Fronton...such a gorgeous beach!!!

The boat we had to take to get to Playa Fronton. Totally worth it!

Dirt cheap and delicious street food!

March
We celebrated our 13th dating anniversary!

We went camping in Greenridge! This was my first primitive camping trip. I had a great time, but there's no way I could do more than 2 nights like this!

April

Josh started his second job and things got REALLY busy!

My family came to visit for Easter and we spent the day in DC

May
We spent a week at the Outerbanks! This was our first time visiting. We rented a  house on a 4x4 beach in Corolla with Anna, John, Andrew, Kristian and Chris. We were able to bring the dogs and we had a blast!

We had some great friends get married!

June

 We celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary!

We had some MORE great friends get married!

We went camping at our friend Cory's house. He has a ginormous yard and lives near the West Virginia border, so there's lots of hiking nearby.

 The guys playing kickball

Four wheelers

July
 We went back to Cory's on the 4th for some hiking. It was an absolutely beautiful day!

NC Civil Memorial in MD. This was really cool to see!

August 

My cousin who was like my big sister growing up passed away. It's still hard to believe she's not with us anymore. This is the last time I saw her, Thanksgiving 2013.

My little fur brother also passed away (on the same day actually). We had Harley since he was born the day before Josh and I started dating. This is the last time we saw him, when my family came to visit for Easter.

We went to Spain!!! Such an amazing trip!

 At the market. They had SO many fresh juices, infused oils, salts...anything you can think of!

 La Segrada Familia...Easily the most beautiful building I've ever seen.

In Toledo, probably my favorite city in Spain

 Toledo again

Madrid!

We celebrated Josh's 28th birthday while we were in Spain!


September

We went to go see Billy Currington in Baltimore with the Smiths! We had a lot of fun and met a really nice couple from Georgia.

We got to seethe Orioles clinch the division!!!

We went to Boston for the weekend with Dave and Theresa.

We ran in the Dogfish Dash for the second time.

We had a great time, but I let myself down by not finishing the 10K. I opted to do the 5K about 2 miles into the 10K. Oh well. At least I did it.

October
We went under contract on our house in NC.

We went to Vegas for Jen's 30th birthday!!!

We celebrated my 28th birthday by going to Fogo de Chao, a Brazillian steakhouse! YUM!

November
 We had our first date night in DC! I can't believe it took us so long!!!

We went home for Thanksgiving and watched UNC get beat up by my Wolfpack! Woohoo!

December
Probably the craziest month ever.

We went to NYC

We bought our house in NC AND sold our house in MD exactly a week later. Super stressful time

We went home for Christmas and woke up on Christmas morning in our new house. :-) We didn't have a tree, but we put a few quick decorations up when we got in on Christmas Eve.

 My goals for 2014 were to:

Get back to my goal weight - Didn't happen, but we had a LOT going on. I'll hit this one in 2015!

Get organized - I did get our house quite organized, then we moved out of it and most of our belongings are in our garage or Jen's garage at this point - I'll have to start this organization thing over too. 

Meet our financial goals - Yes, we did meet our financial goals for 2014. Our savings account isn't quite where we hoped it would be, but that's because we didn't start 2014 out with the plan to buy a house! The down payment we were saving has been spent!