Suzy Homemaker, in the Making

My blogging is sort-of, almost picking up. I blame the message boards on The Nest. I'm addicted to them! I never really got into The Knot boards. I think most of those brides were just a little too stressed for my liking. Anyway, since I've been on The Nest boards so much, I've come away inspired for decorating and cleaning. Cleaning has never really been my thing ("But Mooooom, if everything's on the floor, I know exactly where it is!" and "I'm just going to be sleeping in my bed in a few hours"). But, being halfway done with my break, I have done some deep down cleaning in the apartment and decided it's much more time-effective to sacrifice 15 minutes of my freetime after work to clean than for it to build up until I can't stand it and have to find 2 hours to clean. That sounds a little reminisent about my childhood Saturdays...hm. I'm still deciding on a schedule, but I think I'll have a clean week and and off week (mostly since Adam already does grocery shopping and I do laundry every 2 weeks). I'll let y'all know how that works.
Another thing I've been inspired, partly by The Nest but mostly by the excitement is decorating. There's only so much I can do in our apartment both because of paint rules and our lack of an extension ladder for some of our walls! We plan to begin the pre-approval process in Feb. and get an agent about that time too and then begin hunting to buy by the summer. Then the decorating begins! Sherwin Williams, look out! I'm keeping some of my ideas for paint and furniture on a document in Pages (Mac's version of Word), but I'm limited by the color palatte. I look at pictures on The Nest and in the occasional magazine, but all of those rooms look like "magazine rooms." Who really lives there? They seem extremely minimal, yet overly cluttered. There's never any personalization. How does anyone live in a room without pictures of loved ones or the random knick-knacks you pick up on trips? Anyway, I'm excited about decorating. My goal is to make out home personal, yet classy and adult. We're both pack-rats, so some major "purging" will be required of us both. We're also very heavily furnished by band-me-downs so I (I think we) am looking forward to doing some furniture shopping and get some grown-up stuff. That's in my document as well!
One more and I'll be done. We did our shopping on Saturday, spending a few gift cards and Christmas money. We got some amazing deals! I'm not quite done, as I still need a pair of black casual shoes and I want to get us some ornaments for next Christmas. We got 50% off at Hobby Lobby for wrapping paper and a timer for our lights. We went on to Old Navy where I got 2 pairs of dress pants and Adam got some t-shirts and jeans all for $80. Adam got dress pants and 2 pairs of shoes at the mall while I got several tops and a top that will be my trendy outfit (the rest of my closet is basics). I loved second Black Friday!