house project: after (finally)

You may remember a while ago when I mentioned here and here that I was planning to redecorate my kitchen/breakfast area. As I read it again, I laugh at how I gave myself two weeks to complete the project. As it is over 3 months later and truthfully, I still have a bit more work to do.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

I got the curtains from Ikea, basically my favorite home store.

The left and middle vases are DIY projects that I will show you soon. The vase on the right is from Homegoods.

I just love this saying on the sign (from Hobbly Lobby). And here are my most often used cookbooks. I recently acquired several vintage cookbooks that I can't wait to break into.

Here is a photo from our wedding with my bridesmaids. I LOVE these girls. I plan to do a little DIY-ing to the cake stand soon.

At the bottom right is Jack's eating area. I still have a little work to do. But I thought it was about time that I did the big reveal!

So what do you think?!

It turned out even better than I imagined. The blue color just brightens up our home even more. Incase you didn't already know, I am a HUGE fan of color in our home. My dining room is orange!

a halloween letter from tina

Hello everyone!!

I just wanted to share with you a little bit about my Halloween experiences.

Last year mom and dad dressed me up as rooster. I was not a fan of the idea. It was impossible to walk in! Going backwards was the easiest. When I attempted to walk forward, I felt as though I needed to be low to the ground and walk at an angle. They kept laughing at me, but I was certainly not amused. This year I put my foot down. NO COSTUMES! If they want to humiliate an animal, it's Zoey's turn or Jack even! Jack probably wouldn't mind. And Zoey, where was her initiation into the family?!

Anyway, I just wanted to wish you all a Happy Halloween!!

xoxo Tina (or princess tina if you prefer)

happy halloween weekend

My intention today was to do an outfit post. I wore a new blazer and I wanted to show it to you all. BUT as you can see, that is not what happened.

Here is the story - Jason is working and he won't be home until about 8pm. By that time, it will be too dark to take shots outside. You might be wondering, why not just try out self shots again? Well I tried that and the truth is it failed horribly. I did not like anything.

As a result, a tripod was immediately added to my Christmas list! haha

Instead, in light of this weekends holiday, I decided to share some of my autumn decor with you. I like adding small and simple decorations throughout the house; I fell like it makes the season come even more alive. I enjoy decorating for the holidays and each year I add a few more things to my collection.

Jason is working all weekend, so we won't be doing anything special for Halloween. But I am hoping that we will get some trick or treaters so I can see all the cute little costumes :)

Are you doing anything for the holiday??

Have a Happy and Safe Halloween!!

its a love hate relationship

This photo pretty much sums up how Tina and Zoey's relationship started out. Tina was not a fan of our new addition.

Over the last few weeks, Tina has been coming around. One minute they might be fighting, but then they will be sleeping together the next minute.

Tina is for sure the queen of the house. She is also super sweet too. We are not sure of her exact age, but we are saying she is five years old and her birthday is....okay we haven't decided that yet. (we adopted her when she was a few years old)

Zoey is getting so big! She has grown quite a bit in the last few weeks, she now weighs in at 2lbs 14oz. If you look closely you might notice that she has a bit of a cross eye. lol Her nickname has become Little One, which we find ourselves calling her that more than Zoey.

black, white and read all over

varga cardigan, f21 leggings, banana republic top, betsey johnson belt, bakers boots

Have you heard this riddle before? - What's black, white and read all over?

It kinda doesn't work when you type it out because it gives away the answer. Oh well....(the answer is: a newspaper)

I was thinking today how awesome the blog world is.

You may have noticed in the right hand column of my blog, I have a world readers box. I love this feature because it allows me to see who from around the world reads my blog. Today, I got my first reader from Indonesia. I also recently got readers from Ukraine and Malta. How cool is that?!

Besides blogging, I can't think of any other way for me to connect to people across the world. Blogging has shown me how big, yet also how small the world really is. There are people all over the world that are interested in the same things I am. It blows my mind sometimes to think that so many people, that I don't personally know, care about my life. It's really touching actually. I love feeling connected like this.

So thank you, to all my international readers!!

I have also felt great connections with some of my fellow bloggers here in the United States. I have found a few that I would call my BBF's (blog best friends). If only we lived in the same place, we would totally hang out all the time :)

we're not in kansas anymore

This is what I came home to today.

Our poor little harvest man was blown off his hay bale by the forceful winds. I knew right away this meant the weather was serious.

I had been hearing all day on the radio about severe storms that were headed our way. Yesterday a tornado touched down pretty close to our house and the threat of another tornado makes me pretty nervous.

As I am typing this, the television has been taken over by weather reports. Another tornado touched down tonight near our house and caused a 7 car crash and shut down a highway.

Don't get me wrong, I love thunder storms. But natural disasters? Not so much. This is a little too much for me.

When it rains, it pounds the ground. It has been raining on and off since about 3pm. I took some photos at my house when the rain first started. And then when there was a break in the rain, I went outside to take some shots of the "damage." So far we have been lucky that it isn't bad.

All evening an emergency plan has been running through my head. I would grab that cats and Jack and head to the laundry room That is the most central area of our house that is a smaller room. Also there are no windows and none of the walls are shared as outside walls.

Jack is not a fan of the rain. He doesn't like to go out into the yard when it's wet and muddy.

One good thing about the weather, I got to wear my new Marc Jacobs rain boots!

it was a monday kind of day

Well friends, today was for sure a Monday.

Work was quite busy for me. Our office is going through a lot of changes and transition usually requires some extra work. I am sure things will get better; it's just getting there that is the hard part.

Hubby also had a rough day. He worked 15 hours (he is such a dedicated nurse!). Needless to say, he is pooped too.

So now that we are both finally done with work and home together; we are going to relax and turn off our brains for the night.

We just wanted to be sure to stop by and say hello!

I hope your week started off well.

Who's ready for Halloween?? Me, me!!

5k for united way

Hooray hooray! We finished the 5k! [it rhymes - ha!]

Okay, sorry that was a little corny.

Anyway, you may remember I mentioned here that I started to train for a half marathon. I have been running 3x week for the last few weeks. I decided to do at least a couple races before the big one.

This 5k was the first step. I have to be honest, it was harder than I thought. It probably doesn't help that I don't love running (yet) and I am not a big fan of participating in competitive running.

The more I think about it, the more I realize I am totally forcing myself to enjoy running. Some days I am successful and some days I am not. It would be so easy for me to just stop running. I am guessing that I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

BUT I am not a quitter (i have to keep reminding myself of this). I am going to continue to push forward and I just pray that I survive. haha!

Oh and even though I didn't place in the race, I won a door prize. It was a coupon book for Chattanooga, which is pretty cool. We decided to go out to dinner to celebrate and we were able to use a coupon from the book :)

sugar cookies make everything better

My hubby had a pretty rough day at work on Friday.

Because I am such an awesome wife (atleast I try to be), I decided to surprise him with a little sweet treat when he got home from work.

Please don't judge me for using pre-made cookies. I was very limited on time and I will admit that I am not the best dessert maker.

I love cooking and trying new recipes, but for some reason I just never got the baking thing down.

So anyway, I followed the very complicated instructions and got these little suckers baking away. Once the timer beeped I took a look and my instincts told me they weren't quite ready. I left them in about two minutes longer and voila! They looked perfect.

Of course I had to sample one (or two) before my hubby got home, just to make sure they were as good as they looked. And they were.

Hubby was very surprised and quite pleased with this special treat I had prepared. He said that it made him feel much better after such a hard day at work.

Mission complete :)

Happy Weekend, from both of us!!!

i did a d.i.y.

I've actually had this project done for a little while now, but I am just now getting around to posting it.

I follow a few design blogs and I am always quite inspired by all the DIY projects. Instead of just buying expensive pieces to decorate our home, I really wanted to start finding cheap pieces and fancy-ing them up. So here is my very first DIY!

For this project I followed the instructions found here.

I started with two frames I found at a discount warehouse store.

First I did one coat of primer, followed by two coats of spray paint. I let the frames dry completely in between each coat.

After the last coat was dry, I glazed the frames to add a special touch.

And ta-da! I ended up with two fantastic frames for my prints.

I found these awesome prints here.

What do you think??

I had such a fun time doing this project and it really made me feel good about my creative abilities and I appreciate these frames more than plain old store bought ones. I have never really thought of myself as an artsy person, but completing this project has really inspired me to do more DIY projects. I already have my next three planned!

it's business time

old navy top, cardigan from target, h&m skirt, betsey johnson tights via tjmaxx, rocketdog shoes

This is who I call Professional Amber™.

For the last couple months I have been working on improving my work wardrobe, and I'd have to say I am doing quite well. I was pretty excited to throw on a pair of tights with this outfit. Although I want to look professional at work, I like throwing in a little twist - the tights were my twist today.

Have you ever seen the show Flight of the Conchords? If you have, then you are familiar with the song Business Time (which is currently stuck in my head). If you haven't, then you need to get with the times and check it out. It's funny because this particular song has nothing to do with actually working. It's about "working," wink wink. So maybe I need to find another song to have in my head to get motivated and be productive at work.

Do you have any tips to being super productive?