Show Me Your Life- Master Bedroom

Once again, I write my apologies. I promise I've been working on some projects. One is technically done, but I want to finish decorating it before I show it off. Don't worry, I just need a lamp. Too bad they're freakin' expensive!

Anyway, one of the blogs I read is starting up a home tour for "Show Me Your Life" every Friday. First up is the master bedroom. Luckily, this is one of the most finished rooms in our house, so I figured now was a great time to get involved is this as well as jumping back on the blogging wagon :)

So without further adieu, here's our master bedroom:

Obviously, this is our bed. All of our bedroom furniture came from Wal-Mart, of all places! It's surprisingly high quality and was extremely affordable. We asked for the nightstands for Christmas one year just to test it out. They ship for free site-to-store. My mom took advantage of this for the Christmas night stands, but we opted for delivery for the other pieces. No way were they going to fit in our cars!

This is Husband's dresser (which I'm trying to figure out how to steal for myself). The only complaints we have about our furniture are on this dresser--the drawers are a little snug. I could probably sand down the openings, but haven't gotten around to it.

This is my dresser (which I want to trade with for Husband's). I'm short and this dresser is not! I'd like to see what's sitting on top. Anyways, we also have a little reading area, even though most of our reading actually happens in the bed. This pictures on the wall are a cross-stitch prayer my grandmother made us for a wedding gift (which ended up being a first anniversary gift, but that doesn't make it less special)! In the middle is a Native American marriage blessing Husband's uncle gave for Christmas one year. Finally, we have a signature mat from our wedding with an engagement picture. We opted for a signature mat instead of a guest book just so we could be reminded of our loved ones all the time. Plus, we are rapidly running out of room on our book shelf!

So that's essentially our master bedroom. Nothing fancy and not completely done, but it suits us and it's a relaxing place to be at night!

Not a Real Update

One of these days I'll post a real update. I'm sure everyone wants to see some Mister! For now, this post is just so I can copy some pictures to a program so I can do a little decorating online before I start drilling into brick and digging up plants ;) Now you're really curious, huh? Let's just say this weekend has produced a nail gun and air compressor(not for keeps, but for borrows), so I'll have a few other updates.

So, remember how I mentioned I got motivated to fix up the laundry room due to "the impending arrival of a four-legged, furry friend?" Well, you were probably too caught up in my use of alliteration to think about what that meant. Meet Mister:

He's an about 5 year old Jack Russell mix. So far, he's pretty low-key which matches our lifestyle pretty nicely. We brought him home yesterday and seems to be settling in.

We're still working on making our yard essentially inescapable (and being a little perturbed at the fence people but that's another story), so we're not letting him out without a leash. Luckily, he's very good with it!

Just wanted to share our new bundle of joy ;)

Laundry Room

I finally got around to working on the laundry room. I had lofty goals, so it took awhile for me to get motivated...and to find time to actually get it all done! Turns out the impending arrival of a particular four-legged furry friend was all the motivation I needed (as the laundry room will be his temporary bedroom).

What I did: Painted, lowered the shelf over the washer/dryer, did a little DIY artwork/Amazon.com shopping

Art, folding table, and ironing board

Me reaching our new shelf! I subscribed to my mom's theory of home decorating/renovating which is do things for you and your everyday life. When we go to sell, the shelf will likely need to be raised back, as your average home buyer is NOT 4'8". But this is for ME, NOW.

Another view of our new shelf.

Now all we need is something for the suddenly expansive area over the shelf! Any ideas?

Gatlinburg Observations

Husband and I took a short get-away trip to Gatlinburg this weekend to celebrate our two year anniversary. We had a great trip and pictures will follow. Until then, here are a few of our observations:

*Seiverville is the tri-cities area red-headed step-child. Pigeon Forge is the family city. Gatlinburg is the grandparent.

*Note: Kentucky is not the only state that cannot correctly pronounce the names of cities. Apparently the em-PHAS-is makes the step-child city sound like what a thunderstorm warning might be (severe), not the surname of the family on Growing Pains. We only learned this because of a television commercial.

*Multi-culturalism is not a word in their vocabulary. We could probably count on one hand the number of minorities we saw. See below.

*Confederate flags abound. I have never seen such a large collection of Rebel memorabilia. Likely contributing to the number of minorities in the area (see above).

*Target gladiator sandals are not appropriate for walking the Gatlinburg strip. Doing so results in blisters on the balls of one's feet (Ouch!).

*Hot tubs will help said blisters feel slightly better, but cushy, clearance flip-flops from Off Broadway help immensely.

*The Cub House cabin gets a big thumbs up for two anniversary get-awayers who wanted to mostly relax, but still be near restaurants.

*People from New York really are that bad.

*a) Buckeyes and Hoosiers re-inforce their reputation (at least in our house) of being terrible drivers.

*Apparently no one really applies logic to the location of certain businesses. Bubba Gump seafood restaurant and Titanic museum...in the mountains? Really?

*There are no less than 602,584 pancake restaurants in the tri-cities area. None are open for dinner. I'm not sure I can live in a world where breakfast for dinner isn't allowed.

...And I love Hargis. HEY!

Last week, I made my almost annual trip to Chelsea, AL to counsel a group of wacky teenagers for the week at church camp. We filled our days with canoeing, swimming, fishing, family groups-ing, and corruption 101 (if you want to know, just ask :)). We spent the evenings dropping eggs, watching Glee, and worshipping an inclusive, loving God. Words can't describe the week I had. Reconciling what went on at camp with life at home is always difficult for me. Camp is such a fulfilling experience, especially this week, then you get thrown back into situations with people who haven't had that shared time. Too bad my trip home was too eventful for me to really reflect on everything. But that's another story for another day.

Little Things

I'm a pathetic excuse for a blogger. To my credit, it's been a crazy couple of weeks around here. Husband's grandfather had surgery a couple of weeks ago, so keeping up with all of that plus work had us running all over town. Pawpaw's surgery went great. Watching Mawmaw take care of him when he first got to his room was so sweetly adorable. One of those "we'll be like that when we get older, right?" moments. Yesterday though Pawpaw mowed his yard, when he has yet to be cleared to drive ANYTHING, much less have that much physical exertion. Mother-in-Law is beyond livid with him. It's tough raising parents.

Anyway, I had a moment at work yesterday that I just had to share. One of my students is extremely...stubborn. She has guessed at words for so long, she doesn't really have the skills to USE the rules we give her to help decode words. She has also said on more than one occasion to both her other tutor and me that she doesn't care if she learns to read, she doesn't want to be here, blah, blah, blah. Last week she threw herself a nice little fit for me. She was trying to read a story and getting completely frustrated at not being able to figure out the words. That shut her down for most of the rest of the lesson. Not fun. Yesterday we had to start off again with reading stories. She gets about half way through the first one (and did a great job of figuring out words--only one really threw her because, well, how often do YOU use the word "utmost" in everyday conversations?) and asks if her grandmother could come in and hear her read. I say absolutely, but was a little nervous since she hadn't read the whole thing through yet and she has a history of getting frustrated easily. She stumbled over a few words, but only needed a couple of prompts ("What will that c say?" or "What's that vowel sound again?"). I catch her grandmother wipe her eye and then again and realize she's started crying. When my student is done, her grandmother hugs her and says "Thank you for sharing that with me." So beautiful. When grandmother leaves my student says "She was crying" and kind of giggles. I told her that was because of what an amazing job she did, sounding out words, dividing when she needed to, and not getting upset when she didn't know a word automatically. Grandmother may need to come in more often! One of those little things that remind me why I love what I'm doing and reinforces what my ultimate goal is.