Happy Brithday ABE!!

Bon Anniversaire

I hope you like the handmade sign!

Wishing my big brother Abe the Happiest Birthday Ever!!!



I hope you have a great day celebrating, know that Justin and I are wishing you a happy birthday from Paris!!

Au Revior

Many of you might not know that Justin and are leaving for Paris tomorrow on a mission trip. Now before you start thinking "Right...I'm sure you are going on a 'mission trip' to Paris...", let me tell you a little about what we will be doing. First, we will be working with a minority people group sharing with them the story of Christ. We have been told that many of the people we will be working with have never heard, experienced, or lived in the freedom that only Christ can give. This brings me to my first request: please pray that each person who has the opportunity to speak with this people group would be filled with the Spirit. I know that I am nervous about what to say to someone who tells me that they have no idea who Jesus is. We will also be working with missionaries, doing whatever they ask us to do, such as working with the woman's literacy classes, helping them in their bookstore, and encouraging their church through manual labor...really just doing whatever they ask.

Justin and I are very excited about this opportunity and would greatly appreciate your prayers. I know that the Lord is going to Shine!!!!

I will give a full report once I return. So until then Au Revior!!

The Golden Girls

I am sure when you read the title of this post your thoughts went right to Betty White, Rue McLanhan, Bea Arthur, and Estelle Getty or maybe the beloved phrase, "Thank you for being a friend." As I am writing this I am humming the tune. (Confession: I use to watch The Golden Girls every day. Sorry, back to the point...)

Last month, a few of my friends from USM were together at a shower. We talked about how sad it was that we all live within an hour and half from each other but never really hang out. We made a plan to get together every few months to hang out and keep in touch. We wanted to have a name for our group so we started throwing out ideas. Since we all went to USM, we wanted our name to represent USM in some way, hence "The Golden Girls." Get it? Golden girls, golden eagles.

This past weekend was the first Golden Girls reunion. We meet in Jackson at Julep for dinner. We had a great time catching up and making memories. Check out a few of the Golden Girls blogs here, here, and here.

Group pic!!

Here are some of the highlights of the night:

1. Two of us arrived a few minutes before the other two and the waiter asked us if we would need the other table. If we didn't they would like to know so they could use it for other guests. We didn't need it so we happily gave up the table.
2. The waiter kept trying to get us to order before everyone on arrived. He also used the word "beautiful" after everything. Waiter: "Are you ready to order?" Us: "No we are waiting on someone." Waiter: "Beautiful." Every exchange of dialogue went this way.
3. We ordered 4 desserts. We thought they might be small and everyone would be able to have a few bites of each. We were wrong!
4. We all finished our meal and dessert and had paid our bills and were just enjoying hanging out, when our waiter came to our table and asked if we needed anything else. We said no. He then asked us to leave because other costumers had reserved this table. We all looked at each other a little confused and processed to gather our belongings and left.

Don't you wish you could be eating these. Can you say delicious!!

Before we were asked to leave we made plans for the Golden Girls to get together again. We are very excited and are hoping that all the Golden Girls will be able to join us next time.

I want to leave you with a blurred out pic of the waiter that asked us to leave. Another funny moment, when we asked him to take our picture and he squatted down for us to take a pic of him. Enjoy!

Be our Guest

Justin and I have not had a lot of guests come through our house in a while. However, in February we had guests (granted, both were our moms...but they were guests none the less!) on two weekends in a row.

Our guest room is one of the rooms in our home that we have filled with a hodgepodge of furniture and decor to make it functional. It works for us right now and we are happy with the room, but I did want the room to be welcoming to our guests. After a lot of online reading and magazine perusing, I found the perfect idea that would make our guest room just a little more guest-friendly. I created drawer with personal necessities that our guests may have forgotten to pack for themselves.

How many of you have forgotten a toothbrush, deodorant, or some other toiletry item while out of town? Most of the time you don't notice what you forgot until right when you need to use it, like at night or early in the morning - not the best time to run to the store. Well, I saw this idea in a magazine and knew that this is something I wanted to put in our guest room.

I cleaned out the top draw in the small chest we have in the room and put in some organizing trays. I filled the compartments with toiletries and other things our guests might need while visiting. I made a cute little tag to go on the drawer so the guests would know that they were welcome to use anything they might need while staying with us.

Here is a list of everything that we have on hand for our guests.

• Kleenex
  
• Soap
• Shout wipes
• Shaving Cream
• Deodorant
• Q-tips
• Nail File
• Lotion
  
• Vaseline
  
• Pain meds
• Mints
• Chaps Stick
• Floss
  
• Toothbrush and Toothpaste
• Mouth wash
  
• First Aid kit
• Hair Spray
• Lint Roller
• Finger Nail Clippers
• Wet Wipes

I have already thought of a few somethings that I will need add for our next guest!!



I have also put some of my favorite books on the nightstand and some magazines in a basket next to the bed. One day I would like to have some place to put a carafe of water and some snacks for our guests to munch on when they were at our house.

How do you welcome your guest? I would love to hear your ideas.

Oxygen in the House

A few weeks ago Justin's mom came for a visit. With her, she brought along a few plants for Justin's office at work and for our house. She is great at gardening and has a very "green thumb" - something neither Justin nor I have. We have talked about getting plants for our house for a while, but have never done anything about it - in part because we didn't want to spend the money on plants that would probably only live for about a month because of our lack of botanical expertise.

I have tried over the past four years to keep numerous plants alive in our house, but for some reason I am just not very good at it. Perhaps I water them too much (or not enough), or give them too much light (or not enough). Up to this point, the only plant that I have a good job of keeping alive is the plant I have at work. It's one of those plants that you find in almost everyone office that needs very little water and no sunlight. Over the Christmas break it did nearly die, but fortunately I was able to bring it back to life (though it did lose a lot of leaves and it is not as green as it once was).

So anyways, when Justin's mom brought us all these plants I was really excited to have some plants in our home again have the chance to try and better my plant management skills. She gave us three different plants, and while shopping for pots I found a plant that I have been wanting to put into our guest bathroom to add some life to it. I hear that moisture is good for this type of plant, so the bathroom is a great place for this little guy.

I'll admit that I am a little nervous to share this with everyone because if the plants don't live very long...well, everyone will know how bad of a gardner I really am. ButI am going to do my best to keep all four of our new plants alive and growing for as long as I can. We'll see how it turns out!

This is in Justin's office a home.

This is the new plant in our guest bathroom. I just love the delicate look of this plant.

This plant has not found a home yet. I am still moving it around trying to find the best place for it.

This picture does not show the real size of this plant. I am hoping that this one lives.

GuestBath Complete

I feel like we have been working on our guest bathroom forever. We've actually been working on it since July to be exact, so I am very excited that this room is finally finished. To read about phase one of our bathroom redo and to see some before pictures click here.

Without having to spent a whole lot of money, the bathroom went from dull and outdated to clean and somewhat modern. We didn't gut the bathroom - we simply painted and updated the old fixtures, but we are both really pleased with how it turned out. It was a long process, but all worth it in the end.

Here are a few stories of why the bathroom took so long:

1. The Mirror - We purchased a very trendy mirror from a local design store, but when we got it home we found that it really didn't fit the space, so we went back to the store to return it and find something different. They didn't have anything in the store that would work, but we looked through lots of magazines and found one that we both thought would work. It ended up taking two months to get that mirror when we were told would take four weeks. But either way, we still like it a lot and have no regrets about this mirror that we picked out from a catalog without first seeing in person.
2. Wallpaper - When we removed the wallpaper we were either not careful or the wallpaper just damaged the walls (a little bit of both, probably). We not only had to fill in holes and sand but prime, sand, and paint the walls twice. This is the real reason why we waited so long to finish the bathroom. Once we finally got around to sanding the walls and repainting the walls, we realized how dull the trim and doors looked. So we had to find another weekend to paint the doors and trim. We started this over the Christmas break but because of the cold weather (Justin removed the doors and painted them in the garage) the paint took forever to dry and what we thought would take only 2 or 3 days took over a week.

But finally we are done. This has been a long time coming but it was worth the wait. We both love the bathroom and are excited to be finished with this project and move on to something else.

Here is a list of what we did to turn our outdated bathroom into something that we are glad to call our guest bathroom.

• Removed two layers of wallpaper
• Filled, spackled, and sanded holes in the walls
• Primed and painted the walls (twice)
• Painted all the baseboards and doors
• Replaced the vanity and shower faucet
• Replaced the mirror
• Painted the vanity
• Updated the light fixture
• Replaced all brass knobs (including the door handle)
• Added some artwork
• Added new rugs
• Replaced the toilet
• Changed out the old shower curtain curtain and rod
• Add accessories
• Updated the blinds and curtains
• Replace the magazine basket with a wall mounted magazine rack

• 

I love fresh flower in the bathroom!

• 

Sorry, for the poor lighting, wnated you to see the window

This does not look like much but I had to show you the white doors and new knobs

Wow, that is a lot more than I remember doing. I guess you forget all that you did when it takes all most a year to finish the project. I very excited that this is done and now can move on to another project.