{3/52}: House work...the kinda fun kind

(shhh...its been a little more than a week! : P)

Since we moved last June, Cody and I have done a lot of little (some a little big) projects around here to spruce things up or simply make a space functional again. I'll admit that at times I didn't think some of the things would get completely done before we moved again in August, but I think we have just about everything done that was planned on at this point, i.e., the things we could afford to do *lol*

I think that I posted a few pictures from "before" when we started working on our bedroom, but here's a refresher...

A mess is what it was : P  We ripped out the carpet, washed the walls, took down the old blinds, as well as both of the sinks in the bathroom--the shower was already ripped apart when Cody had started working on it for his parents a few years ago after he remodeled the guest bathroom. One shower was good enough for now, that gets expensive quick in an old house.

I know I know....right now you are wishing you had awesome 70's black and gold tile in your bathroom ; )

We decided on a NYC theme for our room. I'm in love with that city and had tons of pictures to decorate with from my trips out there. After we picked out colors I went to town putting together a collage like this one I came across on Pinterest....long before we moved too!

Next came the pictures and floors.....and the floors didn't get done for what felt like FOREVER. Not on purpose, just two busy college students, and I certainly couldn't do it by myself : P

This was the template I made to know where I wanted each of the frames. I bought a big roll of butcher paper on Amazon (it's come in handy for wedding planning too!) and traced the outside of all of my frames and just used painters tape to hold them up so it would be easy to move them around.

These pictures are put on canvas with photo mount spray that I got at Michael's--gotta take advantage of those 40% coupons! The canvas I got a JoAnn Fabrics, they have a 2 pack of 12x12 with a "bonus" gallery 12x12 (thicker sides) canvas...the added bonus was that it was on sale for $8! I painted the sides with black craft paint to go with the room. The frames below I scored at Goodwill--3 packs of plain wood IKEA frames for $.50 each, and there were 6 of them so I couldn't resist snagging them all : P

 I had the collage done for a while, but I wanted to wait until we had the floors done before I took pictures of the final results--I think we got the floors down just before Thanksgiving. I *love* how it turned out, and it still needs work but we can live without trim and closet doors for now : P

YAY! NO MORE SUBFLOOR! ; )

Oh but we aren't done....

The living room--Cody calls it the family room and what I call the front room the living room....it gets confusing : ) --was the other project we got done, and I'm pretty much in love with how it turned out.

Cody's sister and her boyfriend did most of the carpet ripping in this room while they were staying here, we just cleaned up what was left and got rid of this weird jaunt in the floor that curved the tile around to meet the  width of the sliding door....hard to visualize, you kind sort of see it in the sunlight on the floor in the bottom picture.

First, I swear it is a coincidence that the color I chose for the accent wall and the main color for our wedding are pretty much the same....I just like what I like okay? : )

BAM! Color, floors down and lights! 

It didn't take us too long to get this room done...we were itching to have a place to stretch out and watch some TV.

Despite the time and effort it takes, I really enjoyed working on these projects with Cody. It's nice to know I'm marrying someone that can fix and take on pretty much any home improvement project and take the time to do it correctly AND nicely! 

Hope you've enjoyed seeing what we've done--we are certainly proud of the results : )

{2/52}: "Adventure" to Banks Lake

This past weekend I had my first real Keane and Cody style adventure. Over the last 4 years I've been with Cody I've heard countless stories, some more than once, of the kinds of trips these two have taken and the things that happen on said trips....and I've always been thankful I wasn't there.

Cody wanted to go out to Banks Lake and scout out some campgrounds good for the boat and look for places that we could just camp on the shore without having to pay $35 a night.

Side note--since when is it almost as much to sleep on the ground as it is to get a room at a Motel 6?! Throw in the Discover Pass and the National Parks passes you need and you're looking at $100 to camp for a weekend, not to mention the gas to get there in a loaded truck hauling a boat. Ridiculous.

I digress...

The adventure: I first have a disclaimer. Despite what I am about to say and being in a car for about 10 hours, I enjoyed the trip--but I had to give Cody crap about it. I was told hiking and possibly snowshoeing would be involved, and neither happened : )

It's about a 3 hour drive to Banks Lake, so leaving around 6:30 was the plan. Leaving actually happened at 8:15. Then we were (a little bit too) excited to eat breakfast at the Snoqualmie Casino...only to find out they don't start the buffet until 10am. What the heck?! Already "running late", we found a little restaurant in North Bend that was actually pretty delicious.

Along the way we passed by a lake that was frozen over and this had to be investigated. The conversation went a little something like this:

Keane: Do you think that ice is pretty thick?
Cody: I don't know, would you like to attempt to traverse it?
Keane: Yeah lets do it, we might lower morale and die of cholera though.

Oh Oregon Trail, how you have touched our lives forever <3  hahaha

Testing it out...

I had to join in the fun too, though Cody didn't want me taking my camera out on the ice : P

Yes, they are running back : P

They really did want to try to get to the rock in the middle, but I told them I had the keys and I wasn't coming in after them ; )

A few hours later we finally come to the Shell Station/Big Wally's Tackle Shop, the spot where knowledge had been said to abound about where to fish and where to camp. Well, Big Wally had the day off so after Cody made Keane smell some fish bait that he claimed smelled like limes but really was more like something that died and had been locked in a tupperware container for days in the sun, we headed off to Steamboat Rock.

We "hiked" up some rocks to see the other side of the lake, found a couple of campgrounds that had signs saying "no overnight camping allowed" so we were confused as to why they were even called campgrounds. Instead of going back south to Moses Lake and Potholes, we headed back north and drove by the Grand Coulee dam. That was pretty cool, I had never been by there before, but for whatever reason I didn't take a picture of it. Oh yeah that's right, we didn't stop and I was hungry and sulking that I wasn't going to get to snowshoe...and pictures through car windows are crappy.

At the top of our "hike" to see the rest of Banks Lake

The plan was to stop at Lake Chelan and look around there for some camping, but in our hunger we missed the turn and didn't realize we missed the turn until we were practically in Wenatchee. Oh well, life goes on and there was food in Wenatchee : P

13 hours after we left we made it back to Tacoma...with a slight idea of where we want to camp this summer *lol*

This was a minor Cody and Keane experience--I'll let them have the broken down in Idaho and the "there's no cougars, but there's mountain lions in them there hills" trips to themselves : )

{1/52}: Wrap it up, start again...

"Last posted June 21, 2012" is what I see when I sign in today...

For real? I honestly didn't think it had been THAT long : P

My new goal: slow down, take more pictures, and a weekly blog post (hence the 1/52 in the title)....we'll see how that pans out ; )

Add to that list to actually decide how I want this thing to look. I have yet to be satisfied with it..

Life is just a goin goin goin...and I am really loving every minute! Now that we are down to less than 6 months till the wedding I'm finding myself getting more excited...not that I haven't been all along, but I am very much a planning and get it done kind of person (...not with homework, HA!) so it was driving me crazy more than anything having all these thoughts about what we wanted to do but not really being able to do anything about them. And then I do things like buy bridesmaids dresses and later decide to do something different and now have to try and sell the dresses ; ) OOOhhhh well! haha

I am SO thankful to be done with school for a few months!!! While having no homework, large books to thumb through or primary research articles to scour has been excellent, I have certainly managed to fill that void with working a ton and getting wedding projects started and vendors booked...

So, really I guess there was never a chance for a void to actually exist ; )

BUT--guess what I did the other day? I can't remember what the subject was, but I came across something that I wanted to find out more information on and guess what I did? I looked up the primary research articles using PLU's database. Officially a little bit of a nerd for life? I think so : )

Graduation was fantastic, even more fantastic a week later when I was actually done with school, and here I sit with a degree hanging on my wall, working my butt off until I start studying for the next degree in August.

Christmas was wonderful, as usual. I got to spend a few weeks in OK hanging out with the family down there and had a relaxing time...though I did bring stuff with me to work on ; ) We had Christmas at my mom's when Avery came out here in January and that was just as fun seeing my step sister and her kids who live in Oregon.

 

Speaking of Oregon...

The most exciting news of late has been getting accepted to both Pacific University and University of Oklahoma pharmacy schools---heck yeah!!! : D  Talk about a tough decision though....be close to family in OK or 3 instead of 4 years in Portland? Can I have both? In the end I decided on Pacific--3 years is just too good, even if it does mean a little more intense studying on my part. In a couple weeks Cody and I will start checking out apartments near the school and slowly start to figure out a plan.

I've decided that I have an inability to just sit and be lazy for more than a couple hours. I don't know if that is just boring to me or if I really have that many things I would rather/want/need to be doing (nobody really WANTS to scrub floors and do laundry, right?). This conclusion has been further solidified by the plans that have been made in the mere 4 weeks before starting pharmacy school:

1. Get married on July 13
2. Go on a honeymoon for a week
3. Go to Tulsa for a second reception for a few days
4. Start school on August 6

Uh...somewhere in there packing and moving need to take place maybe? No big deal...right?

Wedding plans are moving right along! I think/hope we have all the major things booked and the rest of it exists as a reminder in paper or picture form. I have designed everything being printed or made for a sign myself, with the exception of some banners I recently purchased--I loved them too much and they were too good of a price for me to attempt to make them myself! We (me, my mom, and Pastor Kathy) are planning on making much of the decorations for the wedding ourselves and so far I am having fun doing it! Lots of "pinspiration" going on and searching the depths of Etsy, Michael's, Amazon, Ebay and antique stores for the perfect things to add to the day. I am hoping to post more about how we are making some of the stuff--with the amount of thought and effort going into them it should be shared don't ya think? : )

Back to designing wedding things I go... : )

.:Ashley:.