Bliss

Just snuggling up with my little boobear on this cool day!

Homeownership Woes

  So yesterday afternoon around 2, it started raining. I was on my
computer in the dining room with Wrigley sleeping at my feet.
Suddenly, Wrigley starts barking and growling at something in the
sunroom. I tell him to be quiet becuase sometimes he will just start
going crazy for no reason and that's what u thought was happening
until I start listening. And what do I hear but plunk, plunk, plunk. I
realize that I am hearing rain drops inside my house!! Cue freak out
time!! I jump up and see drops of rain dripping down onto one of my
director's chairs in the sunroom. I look up and see the stream of
water rolling down the wall where one of our skylights are.
  I call two companies and thankfully, one is able to send a guy out
to tarp the skylight for a mere 450 bucks! Ugh!! But that seems to be
the going rate as the other company quoted that price to me too. I
must admit that I did go to my haircut while I was waiting on the
second company to call me back because the rain had stopped and I did
have a pot underneath to catch the drips. Of course, the guy called me
back right when I got to my salon and said he would be at my house in
an hour. I got my hair cut then drove like a madwoman in traffic to
get back to my house. I walked into my house and saw this:

Yup, we now have a lovely blue tarp covering our skylight to prevent the leak from doing any more damage. I'm so glad this company was able to send out a guy to tarp the skylight since it POURED last night and the other company couldn't send anyone out until today to place the tarp. Unfortunately, the guy thinks we might have to replace the whole roof because the people who lived here before us used a sketchy guy to replace the whole roof and gluing shingles on isn't quite the way it's supposed to be done. I am hoping they can just patch a few of the worst areas, but I'm doubtful. At least if we have it replaced, I guess we will have a ten year guarantee from a reputable company that won't not return my phone calls or disconnect their phone!! Oh, the woes of home ownership!

Guest Bedroom Changes

After living in our house for over a year now, I am finally trying to add touches to make it our own. I took Bryn's (from bryn alexandra's interiors) advice and snagged up a new duvet set from Overstock for our guest bedroom. When we first bought the house, we ended up buying the furniture that the previous owners had in the guest bedroom and they left the duvet cover and shams for us too. Now, the duvet is from Pottery Barn and so it's pretty nice, but it just wasn't my taste. I convinced P that we needed a change and we got the white and light blue duvet. So, a little before and after for your viewing pleasure.

Before:

After:

                                      

I still need to order a simple white bedskirt to match the duvet set because I don't think the current one with all the red and tan stripes quite works! Any advice on where to find a decent bedskirt? I've done a search on Overstock and haven't found too much yet, but i'm thinking about this one, but I'm not sure if the whites will match up. Do you think that will matter?

Presto, Change-o

This week, I've been trying to get the house in order. I bought this stuff from Kroger about a week ago and it has been sitting on my kitchen countertop until yesterday. I finally decided that our bathroom was just too gross to shower in anymore until I thoroughly cleaned it. 

So now I'm going to gross you out with this picture, but I'm just keepin' it real people, just keepin' it real. (I hope I won't lose any readers because of this.)

Yup, that's the nastiness that was going on in our bathroom. Now the entire shower wasn't that bad (this was Patrick's side, people), but yuck nonetheless. It took pretty much the whole bottle and my right pointer finger being rubbed raw before I felt satisfied with my progress. We now have a much cleaner shower. 

Hooray! Much better, right? I really don't want to have to do this whole grout cleaning business again, but I'm afraid if I don't seal the grout then I'm going to have to do it sooner rather than later. But before I do that, I think I might have to regrout the whole shower and I've only shown you the big tiles in my shower. I feel like I need to take this on as a project, but it's quite terrifying. Now I've read how to grout a shower from Young House Love, but I'm not sure how to start with tile that has already been laid. Do I have to scrap it all out and then start grouting? Plus, I'm a little scared that if I rip out the grout, then it could lead to a slippery slope and some of the tiles might start falling out. Any tips for me? I told Patrick that in our next house, I will have very large tiles or slabs of marble in my showers. No more of this teeny tiny square and diamond tile mess again!

Wedding Weekend

Batman building

  This past weekend Patrick and I drove up to Nashville to see our friends, Stefanie and Kevin get married! We left on Friday and were lucky enough to stay with our long lost friends (just 1 month removed), Katie and Tyler at their new townhouse, which is gorgeous, by the way. We had to take the Wrigster to the vet to leave him for the first time and I was so nervous! But don't worry, he did just fine. And today, he was rewarded today with a bath because woowee, he stunk! I guess they let him run around in the mud on Friday's torrential downpour.

Aerial

 











  We finally made it to Nashville after being stuck in Atlanta traffic to only get to Marietta after an hour. We ate at Taco Mamacita's where the boys had the chef make a buffalo chicken taco that they both raved about and are hoping will be put on the menu. Needless to say, our waitress got a very good tip! On Saturday morning, we enjoyed a nice leisurely morning before finally getting out to go eat at a fabulous pizza place. We thought we would have leftovers, but nope, we polished off two pizzas. Yum! We also then grabbed some ice cream though Tyler was very good and worked out before the wedding while we ate ice cream.

"You may now kiss your bride"

Mr. and Mrs.

  We went off to downtown Nashville where we watched Stef get married on the rooftop of Aerial Nashville. Kevin walked into the Star Wars theme, I believe, and he had the guy doing the ceremony take pictures of him. It was awesome! Unfortunately, one of the bars down below us decided that they were going to start blaring music right when Stef and Kevin were saying their vows, but oh well! We could still see and so who needs to hear, right?

me and P

Katie and Tyler

Doc and Robert

  After the ceremony, we had a little more champagne and hopped on the shuttle to get back to the reception site, The Cannery. As much as I hate UT, Kevin's cake was awesome!! We were impressed with the food; the queso was ridiculous! We then proceeded to party the night away while listening to Bueller. One of the guitarist had sunglasses, so I asked him for them since at Katie's wedding in December, I wore her band member's sunglasses. I had to do it. He obliged, but I guess he has people take his sunglasses all the time because he immediately put another pair on! I was originally going to give them back to him, but once he whipped out the second pair, I decided I would keep them. We got a few Kappa pictures with the bride. We had a great time dancing with Doc, Robert, Katie, and Tyler throughout the night. The night finally ended and we all headed back to Katie and Tyler's house where we collapsed from our night.

All the girls with Stef

All You Need is Love

Sunglasses stealer

dancing with my baby

On the way out to the limo

  Sadly enough, we had to leave Nashville on Sunday, but not before we grabbed a little lunch with Katie and Tyler. We had a great time at Stef's wedding and it was wonderful to be able to see Katie and Tyler again since they moved to Nashville.

The Last Week at the Beach

  After my parents left the beach on Sunday, my bestest, Kathryn, and her boyfriend, Dave, drove down to spend the last week with us. My mom was mad because we stayed up super late all week long when we couldn't even stay up later than 11pm one night with her! We ate pizza and played several games of hand and foot throughout the night as soon as Kat and Dave got to the beach. Wrigley also decided that his new best friend was Dave, so we started calling Dave Wrigley's "grandpa-pa". You can see the evidence of Wrigley's newfound love from this picture below.

I love the fact that the Wrigster adopted Dave and Patrick had to get a picture for the full effect.

Dave and his new BFF

  I absolutely love it. Wrigley did too, as he didn't wake up for several hours as we played cards. For a while now, every time the four of us get together and play cards, it is always girls versus boys. I think it was last summer (Kat, correct me if I'm wrong) when we were at the beach together that we formed pair names. The boys became Manmates and the girls were aptly named Skinny B******, or Skinny B's. Kathryn makes a killer margarita based off of the skinny girl margarita that we kept sipping the whole time we were at the beach and our name was born! Now it's been a running joke that whenever we are drinking our "B" juice, we kill the boys in cards. Well, our juice didn't seem to have the usual mojo it carries as we lost most of our games we played. UGH! I hate losing!

  The above picture is very random, but I had to document the huge bruise I got when I jumped out of my dad's car to go eat at The Beach Club. Yup, that's what slamming a door on your leg will do. Watch out for those rear Explorer doors! It has finally healed and I am so glad! Ouch!

  Anyways, when we weren't playing cards at night, we were laying out by the pool. It was quite relaxing. We grilled steaks, tomatoes, onions, and okra one night and then Kathryn made an amazing shrimp creole another night. We ate at Cosmo's again, but it was terrible. I ordered the grilled shrimp and none of them were deveined. I'm sorry, but that doesn't fly in my book. We told the manager and at least she comped our meal, but she didn't really tell the waitress so it was a little awkward when we told her. Oh well, one bad meal over the course of 2 weeks isn't bad (at least the risotto underneath the grilled shrimp wasn't bad)!

Dinner at Cosmo's

  We spent our last night eating at Louisiana Lagniappe once again and it was delicious! I had the crabcakes again (no surprise there) and Patrick branched out and had some kind of fish that he liked, but he enjoyed the shrimp etouffee and lobster tails best. Kat had the crab stuffed shrimp and I can't remember what Dave had.

The Skinny B's

Manmates

  I thoroughly enjoyed our time down at the beach and felt re-energized once we arrived back in Atlanta. I'm very glad that we were able to spend so much time down at the beach, thanks to Patrick's job requirements. I know, right? 

  Anyways, two last pictures of the Wrigster. The first is where we found him one night while we were playing cards late into the night. I guess he decided he was really tired and loved the couches my mom has at the beach so he put himself to bed. He was quite irate when we had to wake him up and put him in his crate for bed that night.

  Don't you love these ears? I do, but I might just be a little biased. :) Wrigley would jump up on the couch every day and would just watch what we were doing if we were eating at the dining room table or if we were in the kitchen. We figured that he must just love being able to see since normally due to those stubby little legs, he can't! So precious!