N.T.S.

N-ot T-oo S-habby Ha! Coach and I watched a dumb (ok I might have thought it was actually pretty funny) movie this weekend- Cedar Springs huh you've never heard of it? I have no idea why you wouldn't have?! Maybe because at the theater was the first time I had ever heard of it! It's with Ed Helms, one of The Office guys, and one of the characters in the movie always made acronyms for everything so I figured I would follow his lead today!

What's my NTS project? Night Stands! I did this a while ago but never posted anything about it so I figured I would now. I found two side tables and a coffee table on Craigs a while back and bought all 3 for $40. I planned on making the two side tables into night stand for our room and the coffee table into well, a coffee table! Creative huh? Anyways please take a look at how beautiful they were when we picked them up:Beautiful huh? Can I just say Coach looked at me like I was from another planet when we showed up at the sellers house to pick them up...eh I don't really blame him they are pretty hideous BUT after some ripping of the tacky curtains, primer, two coats of paint, glazing, and new knobs they looked like this:

Much better right? Well for some reason I don't have a totally completed picture of them but the knobs we got for them from Hobby Lobby work perfectly- I'll post a fully finished picture another time but for now NTS right?

There may be pain in the night but JOY comes in the morning!

I think I have said before how in love Coach and I are with our church Small Group. It is so sweet how personal the Lord is and how He puts certain people in your life for so many different reasons. We fully believe that the 4 other couples He has placed us with are by no means a coincidence. The reason I am on this "soap box" if you will is because lately we have had some hardships in our small group, some really big things that all the couples are going through right now and it is such an amazing thing to see little glimpses of why God put the 10 of us together. I know on so many occasions these couples have been so encouraging to us and what we have gone through, I only hope that Coach and I have also been able to provide comfort and speak Truth to them as well. Anyways the reason for this post is just to say that I know there are so many people out there struggling with things and I just pray that they have a close knit bond with some of their brothers and sisters in Christ to help them through! This verse has been heavy on my heart lately and I pray that it might encourage someone today: "More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." Romans 5:3-5

Wonder Wife

Is there such thing as a wonder wife? Is there a woman out there that is good at all of the "wifely" things that we should be good at, and fun at the same time? I don't think there is. I think every wife, every woman has something that she hates doing, is bad at doing, or just plain refuses to do. I think I might have more than the average wife but can I just say my number 1 wifely duty that I loathe is LAUNDRY! I just. hate. doing. it. The only thing I enjoy about laundry is the end when it is all clean, folded, and put away- I just don't like doing any of the steps to get it there. Seriously, if I could pay someone to do one chore it would be laundry-hands down. Coach always says he knows I have too many clothes because I never do laundry and yet I continue to pull out clean things to wear (oh-uh he is on to my clothing addiction) We were talking at small group the other night about this issue, is there something that you wish you could learn how to do, learn to enjoy doing, or at least learn how to do it in the most efficient way when it comes to you wifely roles? Or is there something that your sweet husband takes on and you are so grateful that he does? Don't get me wrong, my favorite thing in the world is being a wife to the most wonderful husband ever, and I love every second of it but let's face it we aren't all Miss-Martha-Stewart-June-Cleaver's! I'm more like Martha Stewart with a nasty secret in my closet, ok so Martha Stewart had that too- at least I won't go to jail for my overflowing laundry basket! Ok, that was low- I love you Martha!

Inspired

I have been reading some amazing blogs with very low cost home decorating ideas and I have been so inspired lately, and thought I would share some of my projects. My first project was to tackle our dresser and chest of drawers (which up until last year I always thought it was called "chester drawers" not chest OF drawers oops!) They were a hand-me-down from my grandmother-in-law, which don't get me wrong we LOVE free stuff especially furniture. We will just say they weren't exactly my taste so it was time for an upgrade, except we didn't want to spend the money, so in came the creativity. A borrowed sander, a trip to Lowes, and a couple days later and voila: new bedroom furniture minus the cost!

Here's how I did it:

Sorry I didn't take any pictures during the process so you will just have to listen up good...First I had to remove all old hardware and get to sanding. I sanded with medium grade sander and I will admit this part was a booger, not my favorite step that's for sure! After the sanding was done it was on to the primer. I bought some spray paint white primer and sprayed it down. The primer doesn't have to look pretty just give it some coverage. Once the primer dried it was time to paint- I used Behr Matte Churchill Hotel Lace for the paint. Since I primed it I only had to do one coat + some minor touch ups. Then came the "antiquing" look. For this I used Valspar glaze. All you do is apply where you want the antique look and then wipe with a dry rag until your desired look. Then apply new hardware- I thought about just painting the old hardware but one was broken so we just upgraded hardware. This was the most expensive part of the project because we had to buy 14 new handles, but well worth it I think! Any ways, I hope you enjoy and maybe you will be inspired to start a project yourself!

I will update later this week with another project that I recently finished also- I think you are going to like it!

Four Christmases

So you know the movie Four Christmases? Well that is real life for us. Both mine and coach's parents are divorced so for the holidays we make four rounds. It gets a little crazy but I am not complaining because there are so many people that have no one to spend the holidays with...so I think too many people to have to visit is a blessing. I know this post is a little late but I still wanted to share a bit of our holiday season with you. We started the rounds on the 23rd at my Father in Laws house. It was so much fun, breakfast dinner, family, and presents! Unfortunately I did not get any pictures from that night because I hadn't yet received my wonderful new camera! Anyways I think someone got some pictures and hopefully at some point I can get my hands on them. After that is was off to the Mother in Laws house on the 24th. We had a blast hanging out with the nephews all day and opening presents. Then off to the grand in laws were there is always an amazing feast which includes shrimp cocktail, Chick-Fil-A nugget tray, fruit trays, and sooo much more. I don't think I actually sat down and ate I mainly just shoved all the appetizers in my mouth and then went in to a food coma only to wake up for more presents.
After that we headed back to our house to wait for Santa to make the rounds. Christmas morning I got Coach all to myself...well I did have to share with the pups, but it was a wonderful morning none the less. After our lazy Christmas morning we made our way to my Mom's and low and behold it started SNOWING! What? I know! A white Christmas in Georgia, can you believe it?
Well ok you can't really tell in this picture but I promise it is snowing!

Uh...these three men steal my heart! Especially the one on the right!

See I told you it was snowing!
Then last but not least my Dad's for Christmas dinner.
Where we had a delicious meal compliments of Mr. Blackwelder. We were also very entertained by the XBox Kinect, watching the snow fall, and hours of the now-to-be-made-annual dance party...so fun!
Don't let the brother in laws face fool you, when the cameras were down the boys hammed it up, they just didn't want to get blackmailed I guess!

So there it is, our tale of Four Christmases. I hope your Christmas was just as wonderful as ours! We are so blessed to have such wonderful family members to spend it with!

Christmas Craft

I love crafts and projects, really I do! I feel so accomplished after they are done and my favorite is seeing something at a store and emulating it for 70% less than you would have paid for it in the store! My sister says the word craft makes her throw up in her mouth a little so I guess not everyone is like this, but if you like crafts you should try this one for Christmas. My friend told me about it and she tried it first- nice to have guinea pig friends, just kidding! Anyways hers turned out so good I had to do it for myself! Basically how you start is with a styrofoam cone (any size) I think mine was 10" tall maybe. One pack of coffee filters, I bought the non-bleached natural color because the neutral color matched most of our other existing Christmas decor, but, my friend did the white and it looks amazing too. You can also soak the white filters in water that has any color food coloring in it to dye them a different color. The last few items you will need before starting is a glue gun and some scissors.

Then you just start filter by filter. I folded the filters into 4ths- I would fold once into a half moon shape and then again into pie slice shape then fold the tip add a little and a dab of glue then onto the styrofoam. You just continue around the base like this and eventually...

you will end up with this:
a coffee filter Christmas tree! So fun and such an inexpensive Christmas decoration. It took about 1 1/2 hours but I had my coffee in hand and a cheesy Lifetime Christmas movie on T.V. so it was time well spent for me!
I had a few more Christmas projects that I wanted to do this year as well, but it's a little late in the season now so they might just have to wait until next year. I am looking forward to having some time off and doing some DIY projects around the house-of course I will update the blog if I end up getting around to them.

Christmas music yay or nay?

Let me just tell you how much I love Christmas music...a lot! I don't know if it is because of the actual music, the fact that I only get to hear it one month out of the year, or the fact that it drives coach crazy by the time the first week of December is over, but I sure do love it! Makes me wanna bake some cookies and string popcorn- did your family do the popcorn garland thing? Mine didn't and I have to tell you, I am not sure I really get it! Putting popcorn on a string and then hanging it on your Christmas tree? Weird, right? If someone knows how or why this became a Christmas tradition please enlighten me!
Happy Christmas music listening! Mariah Carey's Christmas album will always be #1 in my heart!