Tag!

Shirley tagged me in her blog, and I figure that I need a little brain break right now (yes, right in the middle of the day.... :) ), so....

1. Current obsession: home improvements.... i'm obsessed with anything we can do to make the house more "OURS". i'm also obsessed with the end of the school year ;-)

2.Namesake: a character on General Hospital named "Tiffany" (back in '81). My mom had apparently never heard the name before?? There are a lot of Tiffany's now, but it's alright!

3. Favorite Dinner: my favorite homemade dinner is salmon off OUR grill-- Ryan is becoming quite the grill master!

4. Favorite brand of jeans: Paige Premium Denim. I'm still working on getting back into my pre-Campbell favorites :(

5.Favorite tea flavor: homemade sweet tea. Or the orange blossom tea at Can Can in Carytown.

6. Favorite owned jewelry: Engagement ring/wedding band. Any of my Slane&Slane, and of course my Miki pearls!

7.Favorite TV show: grey's anatomy.... and friday night lights (if you haven't seen an epidsode, you MUST watch it!).... and how i met your mother.

8. Listening to: the sweet silence that is my classroom during my planning period!

9. Bathroom cabinet holds: we actually don't have a "cabinet", unless you're talking about under the sink... and in that case, it holds just about everything that is needed in the bathroom!

10. Childhood dream: to be an actress.. haha! or a psychologist... apparently now as a teacher, i'm both!

11.If I could go anywhere in the next hour, I would : go shopping all by myself! :)

12.Person I want to meet: me as a grandmother... i imagine i'll be a pretty cool grandma! haha!

13.Five-Year-Plan: have ONE more child.... retire from teaching and either be a stay at home mom, or do something else... i imagine i'll need a break from teaching if i make it another 5 years!

14. Today is special because: i'm in a great mood, despite the ENORMOUS amount of stress i'm under to get the rest of the math 6 SOLs taught so i can finish the VGLA binders before may 7th (eek!)

15. Where I blog: usually at home, but today, here in my classroom!

16. My perfect day: sleeping in till 7 (it's a luxury i haven't had in a very long time), having coffee while looking out on the ocean, spending the day on the beach with a beer/margarita in hand, eating a delish dinner with family and friends, and talking with friends and family till i almost fall asleep! ..... OR a day spent shopping and gabbing with friends! :)

Heat Wave

Ahhh... the hot weather has us (ok, fine- me and Campbell) SO ready for summer time! Ryan did some awesome landscaping this weekend, though he has now sworn it off and refuses to landscape ever again! Campbell tried out her swimming pool and is now a bonafide water baby!

We had a delish dinner with Brandon and PJ on Sunday at Kona Grill. Kona was a big fave of ours when Ryan was in Phoenix AZ for a summer for his baseball injury. They have some really great sushi... I loved the Sunshine Roll. It's basically a spicy tuna roll (or yellowtail, can't remember which) with a slice of lemon on top. The lemon makes the roll-- it's so crisp and light tasting! I highly recommend Kona if you haven't had it yet. Plus, they had high chairs, so Miss Campbell was able to enjoy dinner with us too (sans sushi... though they did give us mashed potatoes for her, which were to DIE for!).

Hope you all are enjoying the heat wave.... we're in for rain starting tomorrow... typical Richmond!

It's beginning to look a lot like springtime....

I've surprised myself since moving out to suburbia. When I was living in the city, I had no desire to own plants, work on a garden... heck, I didn't even want people to give me flowers because I just didn't like having plants or flowers in my house because they'd just die! But now I have a house, and I'm all grown up because I have PLANTS! I bought 4 gorgeous boston ferns for the front porch this weekend to give our house a traditional southern look. I am obsessed with them.... I constantly gaze at them, willing them to survive despite my "black thumb". They better live, since I spent quite a bit of time at Lowe's picking out just the right ones.... that's time I can't get back!

I also spent a hot minute at Home Depot this weekend buying some herbs. They had a fabulous BOGO-free deal on their peat pot (say what?) herb and veggies, so I took some time to find just the right rosemary and oregano plants. Ryan and I want to have a nice little herb garden established, so we still need to get more.... but for now, I'll keep my nose glued to the rosemary.... how I love the smell of rosemary! Saturday, we're working on getting the azaleas and shrubbery planted, and hopefully we'll add some color with some other flowers, too!

And speaking of the great outdoors, Ryan bought a grill on Friday and we spent Saturday AND Sunday grilling with friends and family. Ryan is becoming quite the grill master, and I'm craving food off the grill constantly.

The only thing I'm craving more than grilled food is a patio. Our deck is nice, but small.... so I'm hoping that we can put in a stone patio. Not sure of the timeline on that quite yet, though.... I doubt it will happen before Campbell's birthday party at the end of May, but that's just fine since our grass is quite green and lush thanks to Ryan's awesome fertilizing job Easter weekend!

Now, I'm in need of ideas (and I'm probably just talking to myself here, but whatev...)... what, oh what, can I do with my front door??? It has a big oval shaped window on it. I am NOT a country girl who likes curtains on it. I'd love to have leaded glass or something along those lines, but that's a pretty penny that we just don't have to spend on something like that, SO..... I've been looking at vinyl options. Either I can do a vinyl cover on the entire window (similar to privacy adhesive stuff ), OR I've seen some great stuff on etsy to maybe do a vinyl monogram that has an etched look to it.... something kind of like this (but of course, much larger, and just the letter "N"):

thoughts, anyone???

Tile and Crown Moulding makes a girl happy

Ahhh... relief! The tile backsplash is complete! My kitchen is *finally* back in order. The next step is choosing a pretty color to paint the kitchen... I'm thinking of a nice green. Green is such a hard color to get right (much like orange)... in my mind, I'm thinking something like an aloe green, but I don't know if it will be too bright. After updating this blog, I'm going to Behr's website to play with their "Paint your place" tool. It is SO awesome- you upload pictures of your room, and then get to try out paint colors with a click of the mouse!

Enjoy the pictures of our updated space.... In the coming weeks, Ryan and I will be tackling the landscaping with the help my wonderful Aunt Chris! I'm looking forward to getting some color around the outside of the house! :)

Happy Easter y'all!

The living room as we got things ready to install the crown moulding.

Crown moulding installed... it makes such a HUGE difference in the feel of the room!

Our boring, bland kitchen before our much needed tile backsplash....

Ryan installed the tile backsplash completely on his own.... I am in love with the way the kitchen looks with it now!

Isn't this tile BEAUTIFUL? The awesome folks at Moasic Tile Co. here in Midlothian helped us find just the right fit for our kitchen!

DIY time

Hello spring break! We've been busy this week working on a variety of projects around the house (damn you HGTV and your DIY inspiration!). We have installed crown moulding in the living room and dining room, installed a tile backsplash in the kitchen, and FINALLY painted the downstairs half bath. All while fighting some nasty stomach bug (apologies to all those who came to visit us for dinner on Sunday, and then caught the funk-nasty-ness). Pictures of our new additions are coming!

Campbell is getting her spring/Easter pictures done tomorrow, and she is overdue for some professional pictures. She has a super cute Easter dress courtesy of Gigi (my mom), along with some very cute Stride Rite white sandals. Those pictures will be coming soon as well (as long as I can get the scanner to work.... ugh, yet another project).

It's a beautiful day, and I'm finally feeling well after spending a large chunk of my spring break SICK. I anticipate a nice walk around the neighborhood with Miss Campbell in a few hours.... :)

Sneak Peek...

It's been quite a while since an update, but we've been busy! The "funk" has hit our home, so we've been cycling through runny noses, congestion, and nasty coughs for what seems like 2 and a half weeks now. Ryan is almost 100% healthy (but don't ask him that... he swears he is still running a fever... I mean, who runs a fever for 2 weeks??? but I digress..), Campbell has a nasty cough still, but the humidifier seems like it is helping things. And me, well I am just NOW getting the funk, so I'm not feeling all that glorious.

Besides being sick, we've been working on the house trying to make it more of a home! I think we've made 3 trips to Ikea this month, and Ryan is swearing he will not go back for another 5 years. We have found some really great items for the home there, though. I've been impressed with Ikea lately- if you haven't been, you really should check it out... some of their newer lines are very "Pottery Barn"-esque, which is fitting in well with the rest of our decor.

Speaking of Pottery Barn- thanks to one of Ryan's co-workers, we got an awesome hook up on a PB dining room table and chairs. Ryan's co-worker just built a new home (which is GORGE by the way.... it's way out in the boonies, but I would be willing to live that far from civilization if I had a home like that!), which meant new decor for her.... so she was selling her PB dining room set that was practically brand new. Then, she dropped the price when we went to pick it up yesterday. So we basically have this beautiful dining room set for about a quarter of the price of the table ALONE! Nice!

The house is FAR from done, but here are a few snapshots to see how things are moving along. April will be a big month for us with home projects- tile backspalshing in the kitchen (yes!), painting some more rooms, and maybe I can convince Ryan to go ahead and do crown moulding downstairs????? We shall see!


View of our living room from the back door. Check out our awesome TV niche above the fireplace!

Another view of our living room. Don't you just love the choice of toys as living room decor?

Yet another view of the living room!

Breakfast nook... check out the pretty aloe plant centerpiece from Brandon and PJ!

Our "formal" dining room, with our awesome PB dining room set (we accidentally left the table leaf at Ryan's co-workers house, so we haven't extended it yet!). The plan is to add crown moulding and wainscotting in this room!

Winter Wonderland

The Blizzard of '09 made sure that March lived up to the hype- in like a lion! I think we got about a foot here in Midlothian....

Campbell enjoyed getting out and playing in the snow for a bit, too!