Sleepless Weekend

James & I slept a total of 10 hours this weekend hence this will be a ‘picture speaks 1000 words’ kinda post. Here is what kept us up this weekend:

Friday-Halloween Party
Saturday-Passion Pit Concert & Friend Visit.

Thanks to all friends for a wonderful weekend and a special thanks to Kimes for sharing a room with us. Our friends rock! =) OX

Hello My Name Is. . .

Christine and I am a shopoholic. Insert (Hello Christine here)
Embarressing, sad and true I have turn into a shopholic since becoming Mrs. Brice.
I blame it on being a new homeowner and our honeymoon. James & I bought our first place weeks before our ‘big day’. During those short weeks before the honeymoon James & I spent our free time buying winter clothes to accomdate out trip to New York City. It was incredible. James never told me no to anything I wanted to buy and encouraged me to buy more. My shopping experiences prior were in and out the store picking up exaclty what I needed. Never did I spend a entire day in a shopping mall or really take fashion seriously.
Now it is a blessing & a curse all in one. A blessing because I no longer look like a rag muffin and a curse because I am always striving to look good for James. See I have it in my head to be the ‘perfect’ wife. This includes always making the meals, doing all the household chores and looking good doing it. Thank God James does not expect the same because it is exhausting! More often than not he volunteers to take over those duties or help with. I married a good guy.
We have also become obessed with DIY projects. We feel the need to always accomplish a big project before our next big get together with friends. Whenever people come over we feel the need to show off a project we have accomplished. We are very strange people I know.
Back to the issue at hand. So I am working on overcomming my spending urges. James & I want to start a family in the next few years so I am working on spending less on me and putting more away for the cost of our future babies.
How do I expect to accomplish this you may ask? Well I turned to the power of google and here is what I learned:
CASH ONLY: leave your bank card at home when you go out shopping so you can control how much you spend.
MAKE A LIST: take a list with you for the item(s) you are shopping for and be specific! Example a dark gray sweater. Not ‘ a top’
THINGS TO AVOID: Shopping alone & Malls. Take someone with you will you help you think twice before buying the ‘super cute pants that are on sale and maybe if I lose some weight they will fit perfectly’

So I hope this helps and I hope I am not the only one! Thanks for reading guys!

Light Surgery

Do you read this blog enough to remember how we bought the IKEA light? Well in case you don’t check out the link. If you do, GOD BLESS YOU! (http://form2form.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/its-not-you-its-me/) Moving on; we finally got into the ‘swing’ of things and put that retro swing light up. Unlike everything else we have put together from IKEA we did have a speed bump this time. One of the pieces was broken and not attaching. WOMP WOMP. IKEA is 2 hours from our house and we not driving 2 hours to return/exchange a $30 lamp. So we did some recon. I google help ideas and looked on IKEA’s website to see if I could order new parts. No dice. James on the other hand used his own brain and came up with a macguber like solution. “Give me a twisty tie and a match.” he said. “Uh…Okay?” I responded. I found him the needed items then dug my face into the world-wide web again. When I came back from my empty search I found he had done this:

Ah-maz-ing. I married a genius.
In case you can’t make out what is going on in the picture I’ll explain. James burned off the paper around a twisty tie to get down to the metal pieces so he can then secure the two pieces together. Afterwards he was able to quickly put the light together and hang it up.

Right now we are keeping it as a ‘swing’ lamp so the cord runs down the wall to the outlet. eventually we will hire a electrician to come and install a electric box. Who knew overhead lighting was so hard to come by? So what do you think of the swing lamp? I don’t have any pictures of the cord running down the wall because I very much dislike it and I fell like it takes away from the room. At least I am being honest. =) Maybe one day I will swallow my pride and show off the cord. Until then I leave you with this:

One Word

One word can have so much meaning.

Nest
Took this off a old paper brown bag. Isn’t amazing what you can turn into art?
P.S. this is not my first time turning a bag into art.http://form2form.wordpress.com/2010/11/15/from-gift-bag-to-art/

Light As A Feather

Saw this while window shopping with my main man. I ADORE it. What a simplistic but powerful piece. I think it would be PERFECT in a kids room. I must commit it to memory.

How Does Your Garden Grow Take 2

So you may remember I had posted about growing grass in our yard in the spring. (http://form2form.wordpress.com/2011/03/28/how-does-your-garden-grow/) Well apparently our garden/grass grows better in the fall.
Perhaps it is the cooler temperature, or maybe it is because James and I are actually WATERING the grass every day. Yeah some how we forgot that important step during the first go round. Plus this time we have spent our time focusing on just the front of our yard. In the spring we used the huge 20 pd bag to seed the front and the back. This fall we used just the 20pd bag on the front yard, so we over seeded. This made a huge difference! Here is a before & after:

It seriously looked like this all summer. A big mess of grounded up stumps. Here is how it looks today:

We are LOVING the results. However there are a few patchy areas so this past weekend we bought another 20 pound bag of seed, REBEL, love it recommend it, and over seeded the area again. We will keep on doing the same as this time around, lots of watering and we will keep you readers updated and let you know how our yard is growing these days. We are so proud of our yard we have to show it off. It has gone front sketchy & trashy to open and inviting. P.S we did not aerate as most recommend and it still turn out pretty nice so hope this helps all you fellow black thumbs out there.

THE ONLY CHANGE IS NO CHANGE AT ALL

We have been really lazy the past few weekends for a change. In fact the past 2 weekends have been spent on the couch. Fall TV=Lots of fun things to watch and not enough time during the week. This weekend though we got moving:

We did some yard work! Working on our curb appeal has actually become a current hobby the past week, more on that later this week. We also did some ‘fall cleaning’ pulling out all our winter clothes and purging all unwanted clothes. We actually got rid of A LOT of clothes especially James. I’m so proud!
Enough chit-chat onto the photos:

Goodwill here we come!

After doing something good we decided to punish outselves. That makes sense right? And since our backs were finally rested from digging the retaining wall for our driveway that we decided to torture ourselves again and dig out a walkway. So here is phase 1

The rest of our plan includes laying timbers then fill with rock and set out concrete pavers. Hopefully we will have it done before it becomes unbearable cold to work outside.
Do you like how I was wearing a hoodie and flip-flops? Or that fact that I could totally smushed a toe during this activity but I decided to risk it anyway? Anyone else like that? I own 1 pair of sneakers and 10 pairs of flip-flops so the chance of me wearing sneakers while doing a project are slim to none. Haha hopefully my toes will stay intact until our long list of DIY projects are completed.