Happy Halloween!

This is Sophie's first Halloween!!




She is just too cute! Happy Halloween!

It's about time!

I know...its been forever! But its been a while since I have made any improvements to my house! I have been wanting my shower tiled for the past few months but I wanted to completely finish my bathroom before I had the shower done! So take a look at the pictures!


This is my shower head and walls before. I liked the shower head but everything else was just really outdated.

These knobs had to go!

Those little cubby-holes bugged me. They weren't very wide so my shampoo and stuff would always fall off!

Underneath the shower liner.

Andrew (Amber's brother) did all of the work for me! The huge walk-in shower in his house is amazing and he did all of his own work so I knew he would do a good job on mine! It would freak me out to walk into my bathroom and see this! I try to be optimistic but when I see stuff like this I wonder how in the world can you put everything back together and make it look good!

But I shouldn't of worried because this is the end result and I am so happy with it!

It looks so much better and more updated! Excuse my dirty bathtub, I took pictures right when he finished and hadn't cleaned the tub yet.

I got a new shower head, knob, and faucet. I found the set at Home Depot and it was on sale so I was very excited when I found it!

I love my new shower head! I haven't used it yet because I have to wait 24 hours to take a shower so everything can dry.

One last picture. I just love the way it looks. I cannot wait to take a shower in it!

Sophie is 6 months today!!

Today my baby girl is 6 months old today (3 1/2 in people years)!!


I got her some of her favorite treats!


She loves this little green squeaky toy! This is her 2nd one because she plays so much with it that the first one was worn out!


Her new collar! Kate had bought her a new collar a while back so I decided it was time to put it on since she was almost grown out of her first one!


Here she is laying on the vent playing with her toy! Her favorite things to do!


She now loves to sit at the kitchen table and look out the front window. She usually follows me everywhere around the house but when she isn't right beside me, this is where I find her!


There was a man walking his dog so she went crazy! She sits back on her hind legs and gets all fluffy!

Happy 6 month birthday Sophie girl! Momma loves you!!

:)

I'm not a big Obama fan but this made my day!

Obama Caught on Tape Talking about Kanye

Shared via AddThis

Almost done!

So, I have been working really really hard on my bathroom with the spare time that I have! All that is left to do is buy a nickel shower rod to match the shower hooks and then find a mirror that is the right size to go above the vanity, which has been very hard to find! I'm going to go a couple more places tomorrow and if I can't find one then I might have to order the mirror and then get a frame to fit it. I can't wait to post the AFTER pictures. It looks completely different and I love it! Oh yeah....I am also very proud of myself because I bought a drill and used it! I had to hang a new towel bar and toilet paper holder so I learned how to use the drill and did it myself! Since then, I have also hung curtain rods in the bedrooms. I will post pictures soon!

Ruff life...

Talk about a spoiled little girl!!! I honestly think Sophie never disappoints me because she has no rules at home. I never need to get on to her because she never does anything wrong. She basically runs the house! She is now 5 months old and still surprises me with how perfect she is. I hear all these horror stories about how puppies are a lot of work and chew up everything, and I know most of them do, but not my baby girl! I got really lucky with her! If they were all this easy I would have more!


This is one of her favorite spots to lay! The coffee table is cold compared to the carpet or couch so she likes it! She is also high enough to look out the window. She looks so big in this picture!


She also loves to chew her bones on the back of the couch! Anytime I am eating on the couch she loves to be up here so she can be closer to my food! Of course, I have to give her a bite!!

Here she is posing! She took a break from chewing her bone to smile for me!

She is always alert. She loves to watch for the cats that roam the backyard.

Oh yeah! I finally picked out a color for the bathroom wall. It's called Cashmere. It's in between a brown and a gray but more on the gray side. I think it will be a good contrast with my floors and my counter top!

Bye bye weeds!!

This morning the weather was too nice to not be outside. Since I have a major weed and bush problem, I thought today would be the perfect day to use the Roundup I bought!


I have never used this stuff so I wasn't sure what to do, but the instructions were very easy to follow and I did it!

I have these overgrown weeds and bushes everywhere! I hope the Roundup works. It says I should see results in 6 hours!!

When I first moved in, my brother cut all these bushes but they have grown so much in only 3 months. Hopefully, my next blog will be about how the Roundup worked and I have no more weeds or bushes! I guess we will have to wait at least 6 hours!!

I even had to throw in a picture of Sophie. She loves being outside!

Coming to an end...

Tomorrow is the start of my last semester of college! I am so excited! I really have enjoyed college, I am just ready to be done. I will be able to relax and not have to worry about what paper is due or what test I have coming up. I don't even know what I will do with all of my free time once I graduate. I plan on traveling more for business and pleasure! :) I have always wanted to go to hair shows around the country but I have never had the chance because I couldn't miss that many days of school. Maybe I will even go on a hair cruise! I'm ready to see what life after college is like!

Couldn't resist...

I just had to post these pictures of my baby girl! She loves to swim! She would just sit on that top step forever if she could. The second we walk into my brother and sis-in-law's backyard, Sophie heads straight to the pool!


I just LOVE this picture. I have it saved as my background on my computer. Everytime I look at this picture it just makes me smile. She looks so happy and peaceful.


I'm so in love with her! She has been the best puppy I could ever ask for. I am so thankful that she was at the shelter that day I went. I could not imagine my life without her now.

To be continued...

I finally got my new counter tops! I love them! It's kind of hard to see what they look like because the walls were brown underneath the old tile. It was very hard for me to choose a color. I ordered them from Lowe's and there were at least 50 different colors! I wanted to pick one that resembled the floor. I thought I would have a warm color for the floor and counter top and then choose a cool color for the walls so there would be a contrast in color.



I even got new sinks and faucets. I love the way they turned out. Amber's brother Andrew installed everything and he did a good job!

Amber and I started texturing the walls last night. Hopefully we will finish before this weekend so I can start painting. I can't wait to get it all cleaned up and finished!

P.S. Please say a prayer for my Pawpaw. He had a stroke yesterday and had to have surgery on his brain. He is still in the hospital. I just hope and pray everything will turn out fine.

Weekend Fun!

This past weekend me, my nephew Ty, and Sophie all went to Arlington to visit my brother and sister-in-law. Everytime Sophie rides in the car, she has to ride in my lap. I wasn't sure how comfortable she would be in my lap for 2 hours so I bought her a soft blanket that I thought she would like to sit on in the passenger's side. I was wrong!!! I even tried putting treats in the seat but she was not falling for it. I figured sooner or later she would get tired of trying to jump back into my lap and just lay down but nope, she wanted to be in someone's lap. So, what does she do?




She just hopped right in the backseat and sat in Ty's lap. He loved it! He kept saying "Sophie loves me" and "I will keep her safe." It was the cutest thing ever. He even wanted me to get a picture of him snuggling her with! She sat in his lap for about 30 minutes!



While we were in Arlington, we went to this drive through wildlife park. Ty couldn't wait to go to "the zoo." It was so much fun. We got a bag of food and all different animals would just come right up to the window and eat out of your hand! My favorites were the zebras and giraffe. The zebras were pretty aggressive but nice. They get their head as far as they can in the window and you basically have to push it back out if you want to keep driving.



The giraffe was very gentle and pretty. He just stuck out his long black tongue and ate his food!




We also went to this self-serve ice cream place called Pure Bliss. You get to choose your own ice cream and all of the toppings you want, then you have it weighed and it's only .38 cents an ounce which turned out to be pretty cheap. Ty wanted a little bit of everything on his ice cream!
It was vanilla and chocolate swirl with captain crunch, cinnamon toast crunch, and cocoa puff cereal, sprinkles, white chocolate, and even chocolate covered sprinkles!

He ate way more than we thought he would. He really liked it!! We had such a good time in Arlington with Coby and Kristin. This was the first time I took Ty out of town just the two of us and I had such a good time with him. I cant wait to take him somewhere else!

Guess what I got...

I finally got an alarm system! I am so excited about this one! Before I moved into my house I knew I wanted to get an alarm system since I would be living alone. But, I figured I would hold out and see how scared I would be without one. I have lived here now for 3 months and I'm not near as scared as I thought I would be but I'm still not completely comfortable living alone. There are still times when I wake up in the middle of the night and get freaked out because I think I hear things coming from inside the house and then it takes me forever to get back to sleep because I'm paranoid! I do feel much safer with Sophie because she lets me know right away when she hears something out of the ordinary. But, I'm always scared that someone will be waiting for me in my house when I get home. Remember, I'm a worrier! So, I was happy when I received a letter in the mail from ADT about a promotion they were having with a $99 install. I thought about how much safer I would feel by getting one so I decided to call them just to get more info. After talking to the ADT guy, I was excited about everything this package included and figured I would end up getting it but I told him I would think about it and call back. Of course, this is when they trap you!! He told me that if I went ahead and signed up today then he would reimburse me for the $99 installation fee. I knew I wanted to do it so I went ahead and said OK! He told me someone could come to my house and install it the next day! I couldn't wait!

The best thing about this package is that it comes with this nifty key chain remote that will set or disarm the alarm from my car or anywhere else! It also has a panic button, so if I pull into my garage and a bad guy is in the waiting for me then I just hit the panic button and the alarm will go off!

The guy that installed my alarm was real nice. He gave me an extra yard sign and like 20 window stickers and I was only supposed to get one sign and 2 stickers! He said the signs alone are a huge deterrent and a lot of people even offer him money to buy signs and stickers from him! I just looked on eBay and 3 stickers are selling for $30! That's crazy! I won't be selling mine! Trust me, I will have a sticker on every window! Ha!

I have only had the alarm system for about 3 hours but I already feel so much safer! Also, having an alarm system will decrease my home insurance by up to 20%! I definitely think it is worth it! So, for all you bad guys out there: Don't mess with my house!!!

Bathroom Updating!!

When I first bought my house, I knew the bathrooms were one of the things I wanted to change right away! They weren't too bad, just very outdated! They aren't completely finished yet but this is what they have looked like over the past 3 months!!

So this is how the main bathroom looked the day I moved in. The wood is the sub-floor. The previous owners agreed to replace the sub-floor because the old floor had been damaged by water leaking. Notice the white tile going halfway up the wall. At first it really didn't bother me, but that changed pretty quickly!!


This counter top was pretty gross! It was 1 inch tile that had probably been painted 3 or 4 times and the paint was staring to chip everywhere. Also the sink was pretty old so I knew I would be needing a new one.


This is the master bathroom. It was in better condition but still very outdated. We replaced the floors and toilet within the first few days.


I had to throw a picture in here of Blake laying tile in the bathroom. He did such a good job!


So this my temporary after picture. It was a lot better than it was before but it still wasn't the kind of bathroom I wanted. We painted and stained the walls and changed the floor and the toilet. But....after watching too many HGTV shows and talking to different people about remodeling their bathrooms, I decided I was going to change this into the bathroom I would love!


I started by tearing all of the tile off of the wall myself. I figured this would probably be the only thing that I would be able to do on my own so I started one night and it didn't take very long. It was actually kind of fun because it made me feel very productive, even though my knuckles did get all scraped up!


So I thought I was almost done until I started taking tile off around the shower. I saw something dark underneath the tile and at first I started freaking out because I thought it was MOLD! Little did I know, there was black tin tile underneath all of the white tile!! It was a lot easier to remove but it took just as long!!


After I took all of the tile off of the wall, I started chipping all of the tile off of the counter top! This got very old after a while because I had to remove each tile one by one and it seemed like it took forever!!


This is my second bathroom while I was in the middle of tearing all of the tile off the wall. It was the biggest mess!!


So this is my second before picture. I am going to texture the walls, paint them a cool brown color (I think), get new counter tops, sink, faucet, mirror, and remove the wood cabinet above the toilet! Stay tuned to see the after pictures!!!!