Happy Birthday!

Happy 25th birthday to my wonderful husband, Michael!

January 2004, one month after we began dating

June 20, 2009. The day before our one year wedding anniversary!

You're still as handsome in 'old age' as you were six years ago!

I love you!

Puppies!

I know, I know. It's about time, right? By not taking photos over the last four weeks, I've bypassed the blob stage of their lives. We now have walking, playing, growling puppies. Their eyes have been open for over two weeks now and they can obviously hear.

Oh, and they have names!

Allow me to introduce...

Carmen!

Carlos!

Rosita!

Maria!

30-Minute Cleaning Challenge!

It's my day off and the house could use some serious attention. I have my timer set for thirty minutes and my goal is to see how much I can get done in that time. I challenge all of you to try it this evening in your own homes and report back with how much you accomplished! I'll update the blog in half an hour and let you know how I've done.

*****UPDATE*****

Here's what I managed to do in 30 minutes:

-- Made our bed, got out linens for the guest bed for this weekend

-- Dumped a basket of clean laundry on our bed to be put away

-- Gathered dirty laundry and towels from upstairs, took them to the laundry room

-- Sorted the laundry into the proper baskets

-- Started the washer, brought up the load from the dryer

-- Folded said load of laundry from the dryer

-- Loaded the dishwasher, hand-washed large pans and mixing bowls

-- Picked up living room, sorted papers to be filed/trash/etc.

-- Dusted mantel with dirty sock I missed on the way to the laundry room

-- Swiffered the dining room, cleared junk from table

WHEW! Okay, that sounds like a lot, but it didn't seem like a lot when I was doing it. If I got that much done in half an hour, why then do I always feel like cleaning is such an overwhelming thing? Perhaps it is a lot easier managed than I let myself believe.

All right, I'm off to finish organizing our third bedroom/home office and put away some laundry. I'm itching to start a sewing project and cannot do so until the third bedroom is cleaned.

How'd you do with the 30-minute cleaning challenge?

Show Us Your Life -- Wedding Dress!

Kelly over at Kelly's Korner has been posting a series of blogs on Fridays showcasing the rooms in your house. Unfortunately, my house was full of boxes at the time, so I wasn't able to participate.

Now, however, she has started another series called Show Us Your Life. This week is all about your wedding gown! I loved my wedding gown. It was big, beautiful, and, most importantly, it didn't weigh a zillion pounds.

It was an A-line dress with a lace overlay, pick-up skirt, and chapel-length train. I paired it with a simple, chapel veil and a black sash. For the reception, I wore a simple blusher veil so I didn't have to carry mine around all night.

Head over to Kelly's Korner to play along!

On My Mind...

1. I saw Half-Blood Prince last Thursday with Michael. This was definitely my favorite movie thus far. It was so well made and followed closer to the books than the others. I was nice enough to tell Michael the end before the movie started, which he did not appreciate (though, I do recall telling him of the ending on several other occasions, which he had obviously forgotten). Half-way through the movie, it occurred to me that I would see the end of the book played out on a gigantic movie screen. I get really emotional reading book six and watching it was no different. Yes, I cried.

My husband, being the sensitive guy that he is, looked over and asked if I was seriously crying at Harry Potter.

Then he farted.

It wasn't really loud and there weren't any people sitting around us, but it was part of the movie that was silent.

2. We've had cooler temperatures the last week or so, starting with last weekend. It has been SO nice outside! It's been in the 70's and lower 80's. I could live with temperatures like that year-round. It made work much more enjoyable. We actually had people wearing jackets in the mornings since it was below 60F. Of course, it's almost August, so temperatures will go up again.

3. Michael is turning the big 2-5 next week. He's going to be so old! I still haven't found anything to get him for his birthday. We went to Sonic today (which is a 45 minute drive) and stopped at the mall across the street. I told him how much I was planning to spend on his gift and asked him to pick something out. The problem is, he doesn't want anything.

Scratch that.

He wants a truck.

I obviously cannot afford that. So the gift search continues. It may take me to Bergner's tomorrow, where I am told they have really cute dresses on clearance.

Oh. I suppose my husband wouldn't be interested in that. I could buy myself one to wear on his birthday when we go out to dinner. Looking nice is a good gift... right? Bueller?

4. The puppies are so-stinking-cute! They all have their eyes open, they can walk, and they've been playing with each other. Oh, and they give kisses! Cute, cute, cute.

They also have names! We have Carlos, Carmen, Rosita, and Maria. How cute are those? They're chihuahuas, so I decided to give them more Hispanic sounding names.

Oh, and there have been no new pictures. They are definitely suffering from second-litter syndrome. My mom pointed this out today. I'm a bad dog-mommy. Well... I guess in this case I'm a dog-grandma. I'll work on it, I promise!

5. Thanks for your advice on the mop situation. I have a Swiffer and I really like it. It's great for small, day-to-day messes. However, we had a little momma with a tummy ache and needed something a little more heavy-duty for our kitchen floors. We ended up getting the Libman mop since the head can go in the washing machine. Fortunately, the issue has since passed.

6. We're finally almost unpacked! We finally have all of the random boxes out of the living room and dining room. This evening we went through the boxes in the third bedroom and it almost looks like more than a storage room. We're hoping to use it as an office/reading room. We're looking for an affordable futon so that we have both a sitting area and an extra bed in the event that we have several people stay with us at once.

Fashion Don't

Do people seriously buy this stuff? When did this come into style? These pants are a MESS! Not to mention expensive.

If this is what ladies are wearing these days, I am more than happy to be out of style!

Recommend your...

MOP!!!

I now have a larger area of uncarpeted floor and am in need of a mop. I have a Swiffer that I like, but it's not really good to use on my kitchen floors. I need something to really get out the grime and the germs.

I need one like, yesterday, so leave your suggestions in the comment section!

PS -- my puppies can WALK!

Life Update

I've been quite anti-social lately on the blog front. Sorry about that. I guess nothing overly-exciting has been happening in my life. Here's a brief rundown of a few things that have been going on:

1. I did some landscaping. I bought several purple leaf plum shrubs at work the other day and planted them along the south side of the house. They'll look really great once they've established themselves and gotten larger. In fact, next spring they'll have fragrant, pinkish-white blooms on them. Hopefully I'm not a complete gardening failure and they come back. We've also seeded our lawn. Michael and Ty put down Weed & Feed about a month ago and we've had big patches of dirt ever since. I finally picked up a sprinkler and some grass seed, so we should have a nice, green lawn very soon!

2. Puppies! They all have their eyes open! It's SO cute. It's so hard to believe they're already two weeks old and that they'll only be with us another six weeks. I can't wait until they're a couple of weeks older and learn how to play.

3. Work. Ugh. Enough said.

4. Summertime. It's already mid-July and I feel like I haven't done anything this summer. With work, it's just like weekends -- they barely exist.

5. Harry Potter starts tonight! HOORAY! I'm really looking forward to this. I'm hoping to see it this week.

Am I Wearing a Sign?

Seriously.

Do I have a sign on my back that says, 'I-get-off-of-work-in-five-minutes-but-would-LOVE-to-spend-the-next-forty-minutes-of-what-should-be-my-personal-time-standing-around-while-you-ask-stupid-questions-and-decide-whether-you-actually-want-to-buy-the-product-you're-in-front-of.'

Okay, that was a little too lengthy, but it's true. I worked well over my eight hour shift both nights. Going into my shifts, I was looking forward to the fact that I'd be off earlier than usual and would thus be at home with my husband before dark.

It didn't happen. Either day.

I don't even want to talk about what happened.

In other news, all four of the puppies have their eyes open!

Master Bedroom

So I had the holiday weekend off from work. It was great. We actually had no definite plans. It was so great to be able to be spontaneous all weekend long. We went to a movie Friday night and saw The Proposal. It was really good. My husband, who is not a lover of romantic comedies, even liked it. Nothing makes me happier than to look over at him during a movie and see that he's enjoying a girly movie.

Saturday morning, we woke up and decided to do a little shopping. The hubs wanted to look at gym equipment, but enticed me with offers of stopping at the mall and other stores that I like. We didn't stay at the mall very long. We actually only spent money in one store -- the pet store. We bought our dogs homemade dog treats and a three-foot rawhide. Never again, but that's a story for another post.

We decided to stop at Gordman's, which is my new favorite store. I got a couple of pair of much-needed shorts. Since we just moved from a little apartment to a large house, we've noticed how empty the rooms are. In fact, our bedroom was literally a small dresser and our bed. We wandered over to the home furnishings section of the store and found a pair of great nightstands. This gave my husband an idea -- why don't we redo the bedroom today? I agreed, we bought the nightstands, and off we went.

We stopped at Lowe's on the way home and bought a quart of paint to match the nightstands and painted the dresser. We also got paint samples so that we could choose one for our wall color. Below are before and after pictures of our little home improvement adventure.

Our bedroom before we moved in. Peach-colored walls, ugly berber carpet, mini-blinds.

View from the other side of the room. Walk-in closet (yay!), door to the hallway, more ugly berber carpet.

After! New nightstands (gordman's), bedding (wal-mart), lamps (Meijer), curtains (target), wall hanging (gordman's). The paint color is called 'dark toast' and in the can literally looks like cardboard. In fact, we got a little bit of it on a piece of cardboard and didn't see it until Michael stepped in it.

Another view of the same thing. Interesting tidbit about the curtains: the brand is Eclipse and they're supposed to block out all kinds of light and noise. This is great for me, because I still occasionally wake up to bright, bright light and birds chirping. I'm not Cinderella, I enjoy getting to sleep until the obnoxious tones of my alarm clock go off.

This is Michael's nightstand. He specifically asked me to take a photo of this. Excuse the wrinkled curtains. We were too excited to see the entire room together to iron.

Here's the other side of the room. I've had the dresser since 2005. I bought it second-hand and painted it white and added wooden knobs that I painted black. It's now a brick red color with aged bronze knobs. I'll post before and after photos of it later. We're still on the lookout for a mirror we like to hang above the dresser.

I found this while shopping on Saturday and decided it would look great above our bed. It has that aged look going on. Michael calls it 'tique. At first I thought he was saying 'teak' and informed him that it was a type of wood. He informed me that he was saying an-tique. So yeah, I guess 'tique is our thing.

We still need to do something about the ceiling fan. It's older, ugly, and doesn't function as well as it needs to. I also need to get a few frames so that I can hang photos on the walls. I think I'm going to do a few various-sized frames and do something about the radiator. Oh, and speaking of which, we're also planning on building a cover for it. It's not very pretty. The ugly berber carpet is also still there. We know there are hardwood floors underneath, but after the dining room, we're not in a hurry to see what it looks like. We've also considered carpeting. Shag would be awesome.

So there you have it, the first major transformation in the new house. It's the first room to be completed.

Puppy Photos -- Finally!

Can you see all four? The dark little beast is a male and the other three are female.

This is all they do. Eat. Sleep. Poop.

They look so cute when they do it, though.

They make cute, little dog piles.

How cute are they? I seriously cannot get over it. I sit next to their swimming pool and just look at them. How am I supposed to get rid of them in seven weeks?

Happy Birthday, Dad!

29 and holding, right?

I love you!