Irene

I started out this week being super nervous about what Hurricane Irene was going to do to our beloved OBX. Our wedding venue is on the beach and the Outer Banks is my favorite vacation spot. Although it's currently still beating on it at the moment, it's definitely not hitting as hard as expected, so hopefully recovery will be quick and not too bad.
At the moment, here in Richmond, we're under a tropical storm and flood warning and the highest winds are expected to come at about 7 or 8. It's been really windy and the rain is definitely coming down. There are already a lot of power outages in the area and I'm pretty sure we're waiting to see when the power goes out, not IF. Obviously this is causing my dog some distress:

Ok, not at all. He's calmed down so much since I got him almost a year ago. He's learned how to be a lovey dog and clearly, he's good company during a storm. Or an earthquake, which we also had to deal with this week.

While you were out...

I really miss Trading Spaces and While you were Out. Even when Hildi would cover the walls in straw and feathers and the homeowners would come in with "WTH?" expressions on their faces and every once in a while the homeowners would start crying as if it's impossible to paint the walls again and as if they didn't agree to the makeover in the first place! Always entertaining...

Anyway, my TV-watching habits aside (most of the time our TV is on HGTV or DIY network nowadays), it really is a good thing that I fell into homeownership. As long as Joel is cool with it, I can pretty much do whatever I want to the house. Well, this time he didn't know about it, but it's not like I painted the house bright pink or anything! He was traveling for the International Children's Games in Lanarkshire, Scotland so I kept myself busy by doing secret things around the house. The first was more minor and involved fixing this oddity:

That's our house. Now take a little look-see at some houses that I found when I search, "front porch":

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Aww.. John and Sherry's house from YHL came up on my search, didn't even try! Notice that all of those other porch spindles are painted white or off-white and ALL ONE COLOR. Yeah... apparently the previous homeowners here were big sports fans so went with referee stripes or loved zebras. Either way it was ugly and had to go. I painted them all white and it looks super fresh and new, despite the fact that I ran out of paint after one coat and will have to finish after my next trip to Lowe's. I've already been three times this week so I'm not going to worry about until after my vacation, it looks better than it did anyway so I'm not too worried. Plus, no Homeowner's Association means no one to come yell at us anyway!!!

And now for the main event... When I moved in, I quickly found out that Joel's style was basically, "everything I own is black and white because I know it all matches." So, we did a little for our bedroom when I moved in, like taking down the black curtains and getting rid of the black and white comforter. We got it to a point that we were happy with leaving until next year when we were hoping to get our comforter set off our registry. Before....

 

I ordered the comforter set that we picked out because it wasn't available in stores. I was a little concerned because when I ordered it, the site said that the delivery estimate was August 9th-11th. Well.... Joel came home on the 10th! Usually online shopping leads to earlier delivery than the estimate so I decided to wait until it was here to get the paint so it would match. I was really excited when I got a shipping confirmation the next day, but was quickly upset when I found out that "shipped" only means that the UPS label had been printed. It sat at the Target warehouse for almost a week before it even got to UPS. By Monday I decided that I would basically guess paint color based on the picture on Target's website. I was comforted by the fact that A) one of the reviews said that the colors on the website were true to life and B) I wasn't trying to match the shade, I was looking to paint it a lighter gray than the comforter (ok, so I guess that second reason is pretty iffy since I could have been really off and the fact that it was a lighter gray would still be bad but all's well that ends well...) I started painting on Monday night, painted from the time I woke up on Tuesday until 3 AM and then did touch-ups on Wednesday. Joel came home Wednesday at about 9 PM ... UPS knocked on my door at 5 PM. When I dragged him to the bedroom [not like that!!] when he got home, the room looked like this:

 

 

I love love love it!! I love that I was able to surprise him but I knew he would like it because we picked out the comforter together. It was such a pain to find one that we both really liked. I love that this is a perfect mix of feminine and masculine. I mean, yes it has flowers, but but it's mostly gray and it's more abstract-y than super floral. The reviewer on the site was right, the colors on the website were true to life so the paint color I chose works perfectly.

I also rearranged a little bit, removing his beat-up nightstand, replacing it with mine and moving my dresser around so it's next to my side of the bed. Our bedroom is not that big and moving things around definitely opened it up as it doesn't look like everything's smushed in there anymore. I think Joel's most excited about the fact that he no longer has purple curtains in his house! I'm excited that things actually coordinate and I don't have a white bedroom anymore.

Random

I find it really odd that I don't care about clothes or fashion right now at all. I realize it's summer and since I don't have a job during the summer it doesn't really matter and my top priority is just to stay cool when I go outside in 100 degree heat, but still. Usually I care and usually I go shopping every once in a while. I've bought two pieces of clothing since that s-word let out for the summer (s-word = school, which is a bad word around here during the summer), a pair of shorts and a pair of flip flops and that was only because I had a Groupon that was going to expire from Old Navy.

Guess I'll have to start giving it some sort of thought in a month or my middle schoolers are going to judge me. They're rough, I better watch out!

Above the bed sign

Although I haven't used Pinterest for long and I've mostly used it for wedding-inspiration pictures, I was inspired by Young House Love to participate in ---

The lovely leaders of these challenge and their projects can be found here:

YHL 

Katie

Emily

Lana

I don't know if it's the teacher in me or what but I've always enjoyed cute sayings in poster form and my bestie Lauren seems to love them, too, based on my following of her on Pinterest. She never ceases to amaze me with all of the awesome sayings she scrounges up. I will definitely be making a sign for my classroom with this saying:

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But for this particular challenge, I decided to focus on the home. My fiance is out of the country for a week so I'm making over our bedroom While You Were Out-style. Right now we have nothing hanging on our walls so although our comforter is on the way from Target and as soon as that comes, I'll be able to pick out the right shade of gray for the walls, I need something to hang on the walls once they're painted and I thought that painting a canvas with a saying would be perfect to hang over the bed.
Here is our comforter set:

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At first I thought I'd use the ever-popular:

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... but, fiance and I have never said that to each other, even though we do always follow it! Then I started thinking about what we do say to each other while I dug up these canvases that I painted and used in my old apartment (previously blogged about here):

Which weren't exactly my fiance's style and were hiding out under the bed just begging to be repainted and used again. Since I was reusing canvases, this project cost me a whopping $5 for paint a couple of new brushes. Here is what I came up with:

This started out when I used to tell him, "I love you more than chocolate," which is a huge deal because, c'mon, it's CHOCOLATE! It evolved to, "I love you more than Starbucks," as I kinda sorta got him as addicted to Starbucks as I am and now it's our unofficial motto. Shameless plug for our wedding-planning blog that I just started by the same name: here.

Once I finish the rest of the room makeover, I'll be blogging about our sign's new home over the bed. I am thrilled to be painting another yet another white room in this house. I am officially a real estate agent's worst nightmare.