Easter Weekend Recap

Easter-oh my heart!  What a time of celebration!  I cannot believe that just this day last year we were packing up all our things from our first apartment together and moving to a townhouse on Daniel Island-ish.  Rich and I both remember so vividly how rough that move was.  I feel like Easter 2015 just didn't exist!  This year was oh so different,.  My parents came up for the weekend to visit us in Virginia and we loved having family in our four walls finally!  

Can I just share how amazing KONGS are for our dogs?  Company is REALLY tough for our high energy fur children, and thanks to peanut butter and the freezer, these KONGS become the most amazing distractions.  I caught this photo of them kong-ing away while we had breakfast one morning.  This picture is truly a photo of a FAMILY meal. I am a strong promoter of all things KONG, so if you have wild doggies like us, you will want to grab this from your local petstore of here! 

We spent part of Saturday at the oceanfront in Virginia Beach and a little place on the water called Rudees.  It was the closest we've found to a great place in Charleston called Reds. We had lots of great family laughs at this lunch time together.   

Completely guilty of pinteresting these little Easter basket cookies.  You can find the recipe here.  It is so simple and a pretty treat for kids (or....adults!)

After church we had a nice Easter brunch and a beautiful chance to use our china.  Love the chance to set our table for a real meal!

Easter evening we headed to Lifegroup and had a great potluck with about 14 great folks and lots of kids.  We played games, ate WAY too much food, and caught a few minutes of March Madness on tv.  

Speaking of tv, my bestest buddy friend Danny was on Hollywood Game Night and...umm WON!  He won 25,000 and it was so fun cheering him on Sunday night,  I can't believe I stayed up that late but I was so hyped he won I couldn't even fall asleep after.  It was an AWESOME way to wrap up a great easter weekend!

Five Things on Friday

It's Friday which means it's time for a little Five on Friday.  This week I am bringing you some spring favorites with a sprinkle of national puppy day.  With a line up like that, what's not to love?  As always, I am linking up with Liz.

1.  Easter:
I am SO excited it is Easter!  My parents are coming to spend the weekend with us and it will be so great to show them around town a bit and see our new house. We're hoping to do a nice brunch after Sunday church and later we have a potluck with our Life Group.  

2.  National Puppy Day

I just loved National Puppy Day and a chance to remember my puppy girl a bit.  I am sure this is how parents feel when they look at pictures of their baby, but when I look a little Ellie I can't help but think how did I let her grow up?  She is a terror for most of her puppy years but looking back at the photos you wouldn't know it.  Cheers to puppy's everywhere, you are the answer to the world's problems puppies.

3.  Patio Lights

Patio Lights

A few weeks ago Rich strung the rest of our lights in our back patio.  I LOVE turning them on at night and seeing how magical our back yard becomes.  But why I am really sharing this with you is due to the awesome deal we got at Costco for these lights.  We were able to buy two seats and basically have full light coverage in the backyard.  They are high quality and will withstand most weather.  If you have a Costco membership, you can score these lights here!

4.  Amazon Guest Room Duvet Deal

White Duvet Cover

With family and guests coming more this spring, I finally needed to execute on a cover to the duvet I bought for the guestroom.  Cue Amazon to the rescue.  This beautiful white cover arrived in two days (thanks Prime!) and what a beauty it was!  I was thrilled with the price tag!  If something get spilled or ruined on it-no big deal to replace this guy.  And white bedding is my jam. Did I mention it came with two matching shams too?

5.  Fire Pit  in the Spring Time

One of my biggest wish list items in our new house has been a fire pit for the backyard.  I had a vision for our backyard being a great entertaining space for friends and family for these years and a fire pit was a great next step.  Rich did a great job tricking me into thinking it wasn't going to happen anytime soon when he told me they aren't on sale this time of year, but was so thrilled and surprised to come home to one on a Friday afternoon!  We've tried twice now to get a good fire going but unfortunately haven't had any luck.  Here is to hoping this is the weekend!  you can score this same fire pit at Lowes here. 

3 Day Weekend in North Carolina

This pats weekend I got to sneak away to NC to visit with Kristen and a slew of other great friends for the weekend.  It was SO great and energizing to see everyone and hang out like old times.  It certainly made me miss that area and all the things there are to do.  

I began my mini-vacation by taking the day off Friday.  It was a beautiful morning which led to me getting to bask in the sun in our sunny backyard and read a good book (or two) with the puppy girls.

But not everyone is made for the sunshine.  Little gal needed a pair of sunglasses for sure.  

The Little Black Dog soaks up the sun so well with me!  She doesn't ever leave my side when we sit outside together.

Part of my visit was with one of my favorite babies!  She's grown so much since her mommy and daddy's visit a few weeks ago and it wasn't too long ago I was hosting her mommy's baby shower. Wait, what? Slow down time! 

Nothing says laughter like catching up with my NC State pals from my job there a few years ago (Tory not picture sadly!)  The three of us catching up was such a flash back to old times.  All we were missing were Abbie and Amber Rae and the rest of the gang.  

This brings me to the real motivation behind my trip south-theme party.  Kristen hosted a St. Patrick's Day party at her house which had us scrambling for the perfect last minute party attire. Apparently Old Navy dumps their holiday shirts when you really need them (we tried TWO!) but I stumbled upon a party store in Raleigh and scored this headband and Kristen a princess tiara that said "Irish Princess" 

Three lucky charm cheers for these lucky charm treats Kristen made. 

So much (delicious) green food: 

Best news of all was that Kristen (of course) had a competition and I am proud to say Team Irish By Nature brought home 1st place.  Just throwing it out there that these two are pretty good at games.  One should probably go on a national tv game show with Jane Lynch or something :)

It was a GREAT weekend with this party host, complete with Disney sing-a-longs and long conversations about whether its normal to not have a favorite color.  (It is).

March-ing into Spring

A few weeks in March and I can already say this is my favorite month of the year! ;)   I am a sucker for warm weather and I feel like I deserve a big pat on the back for surviving winter when I get to this time of year.  The flowers and trees in our neighborhood are blooming and the feeling is spring is everywhere! I LOVE it!  Since things are going so well in March, I figured I would share a bit of what we've been up to so far and some highlights of this month so far. 

The new weather has been perfect for extra puppy walks, which not only gets me outside and enjoying the new neighborhood, but also accomplishes a January  goal I had to train these doggie messes a bit more.  Sophie has learned to shake in this last week and they are overall listening to us a bit more.  I am over the moon excited to give these two more leg stretches during the week with this weather and my lunch breaks to run home.  I think they love it already.  Happy dogs, happy mommy. 

As I've mentioned a million times, new couch means our living room is getting a bit more living time!  Also, March brought us Fuller House and we are LOVING this throwback to the 90's.  Shame on you Michelle for not returning to your tv family for this throwback. 

  Did I mention we've been training these suckers more?  Also that means they are getting more treats and we are seeing a lot more of this begging position.  The bigger news for these two is they got new (matching) collars in March.  Flowers for everyone-dogs included.

We hosted a going away party for a family (March goal check!)  in our Life Group and it was our first gathering at the new house. It was SO great to have folks in our house for change and it was especially fun to use all the party supplies I got at my bridal shower and then we got for the wedding, including these adorable bunny plates for Pottery Barn that remind me so much of my grandmother.   

Rich hung our Italian lights in the backyard and we just LOVE the ambiance of our yard now.  It's totally dreamy!  It made for a great backdrop to our Life Group coming over on Sunday. 

March Goals

You know you got off to a bad start on your goals this year when you missed an entire month but it's all about #PROGRESSnotPERFECTION so I'm just going to roll with it and chalk February up to starting a new job and getting settled in.  And what a great February it was!

SO, for fun, let's review the goals I set oh, two months ago in January:


January Goals Reviewed
1.  Meet people!  The last two months we've been doing SO well with this goal!  Between our neighborhood, our jobs, our church, and life group we are finally meeting folks here and really starting to make social connections.  We are hosting a potluck dinner at our house on Sunday a mere 2 months after moving, so I'd say we are progressing really nicely with this! I'm freakishly proud of us.  
2. Find a church.  We are really loving the church and community we've found.  Also, it cannot help but be noted we can WALK to church.  Getting fitbit steps in and celebrating the name of Jesus at the same time-no excuse not to get out of bed Sunday! :)
3. Begin working on training the dogs.  Eh, kind of.  I'm working on teaching Ellie to leave it and drop it again so we can hopefully help with the coming and going excitement she has when we get home and leave.  I'd really love to take her to some obedience classes.
4.  Limit Caffeine intake. Fail.  Hard and fast fail.  I have no good excuses other than I'm all about that #caffeine.

March Goals:
1. Have one new friend over for dinner
2. Try to start running a bit again
3.  Replace the awful curtains in the sun room of our house
4.  Yardwork, yardwork, yardwork.  

Three Cheers for our New Living Room

It's hump day but I am finally getting around to blogging about some of our new living room upgrades.  Our living room is my favorite room in our house right now.  I feel like we really maximized the space, and this is in large part to our new couch! 

The great part about living in a 91 year old house is the charm.  It's everywhere!  The downside is that some of the rooms are just oddly shaped. Let's face it-they were made for smaller people and not always for entertaining!  This is exactly the case of our living room!  It's great, but boy, its shaped oddly.  This really caused us to have to change our furniture to make this room functional.  Let me show you a bit what I mean:

See that above?  That was what our living room looked like when we viewed the house, with the previous owners décor.  Great fireplace right?  Only issue is its so high it was not made for a large screen TV like us 21st century Americans have!  This left us with a bit of a problem.

Above is a recent photo of our living room now.  We lightened up the paint and simplified the mantel with a nice mirror and some recycled glass.  Simple, just how I like it.


Our next issue was related to our large (yet comfy) dark leather couches.  We love them, but they are too dark and were just too large for the space. I'll spare you the before photos, but here is the other side of the room with our new couch. 

We love our new sectional and we decided to spring for this baby.  We used the free design services at Pottery Barn to find a couch that fit our space.  Did you know PB will send a designer to your house to help you?  There is no obligation to buy a PB piece of furniture, but no doubt it does not make it easier to make a purchase with their furniture since they can line up the dimensions for you.  We chose to get a slip covered couch because of our dogs and for the future so we never have to stress over stains on our white furniture.  We got to chose the fabric and the color and went with Cotton Canvas in natural to keep the room really light and airy. 

Those Pottery Barn-like white frames were actually a Hobby Lobby steal of a deal!  We got them 40% off which made them about 5-8 dollars each.  A simple printable search on the internet landed me the art in the farms. 

The next step was dressing up our couch with pillows from Target and TJ Maxx.

Oh...and for those wondering, yes that dog gate is due to a bit of training that needs to happen for our two dogs who are used to making their home on our old couch. :)

We still have a nice project list for this room, mainly:

1.  Find a 9 by 12 rug (absolutely going to be using RUGS USA for this baby!)
2.  Find a wing back chair that can go nicely in the corner
3.  Buy a lamp that can hand over the back of the couch.  We have our eyes set on one at Target.
4. Find a great rollable tv stand where we can put our tv safely since we can't keep it on the mantel.


So, for a 91 year old house, I think we made some pretty nice upgrades-what do you think?