A Man's House is His Castle, Until the Queen Arrives!

Ross now has an official Man Room in our house! This room holds one recliner, a TV, stereo, XBOX and some workout equipment - nothing more, nothing less!

About a month ago we painted one of the spare bedrooms that has been deemed "Ross' Man Room." The walls were white with a beach-themed border that neither one of us liked and were more than happy to tear it down.



Ross decided to do two colors in his room - three light-colored walls and one dark-colored, accent wall. I think it turned out very nice and tasteful!





But do you want to know the best part about this room? The sign (that Ross picked out himself) hanging on the wall!

Six Months!

Ross and I were married six months ago today! My how time does fly! I cannot believe we're already 1/2 way through our first year of marriage!

We have had a great time together so far and have found marriage to be enjoyable and somewhat easy. Sure, we've had our moments of frustration with each other, but Ross and I are very good and talking through and working out our disagreements. I think we've settled into married life and living together quite nicely. I can't imagine what it would be like to live by myself again.

And oh what fun we had on our wedding day! That was the most absolute perfectest, best day of my life! If I could, I would bottle it and live in that day from time to time!

The Office

Ross' office is now painted!

Ross picked out an olive-green color for his office and I must say, I am pleasantly surprised at the way it turned out. All along I thought the color was, quite honestly, gross. It looked more like a puke-green to me instead of olive-green, but he liked it and it's his office, so it was his choice.

The office had a wallpaper border that we had to tear down in preparation for painting and it turned out to be a fairly easy process. Once the border was down, the holes patched, and the tape up, we began painting.

I think both of us were a little worried when we started seeing the color on the wall - it just did not look like a very pretty green. But, as I'm sure you know, when the paint color dries on the wall it darkens a bit. And thankfully this paint darkened a lot to where I ended up apologizing to Ross for dissing his color choice! In fact, I fell in love with the color so much that I brought a roller upstairs to our bedroom to sample the color on our bedroom walls. It looked nice in the bedroom, but we've since found a little bit darker, more vibrant green that we'll do in our bedroom.

So one more room checked off our list, lots more to go!


Before:




After:

Sunshine Run 5K

I am a runner. I've been running for 7+ years now and have completed several 5Ks and 10Ks (3.1 and 6.2 miles), 6 half-marathons (13.1 miles), and 2 full marathons (26.2 miles). All of these runs have been great, but I completed the best run of all last Saturday - the Sunshine Run 5K. The reason you ask?

I ran it with my husband!

Ross likes to workout and bike a little here and there, but he is not a runner. Sometime this summer we were talking about running and I asked him if he'd do a run with me in the fall. He said he'd love to ... okay, it probably wasn't spoken that enthusiastically.

We decided to do the Sunshine Run 5K together. I have done this run myself a few times in the past and found it to be an enjoyable course. It's a fairly flat course that starts and ends at Hammon's Field (where the Springfield Cardinals play baseball.) In fact, home plate actually serves as the finish line so at the end of the race we got to run the perimeter of the baseball field.

As I said, Ross is not a runner, so this was not an easy task for him. He started training for the run in mid-August, running one mile, two-three times a week, slowly working up to three miles the week of the race.

I'm so proud of him! He did a great job, we ran the whole way without stopping to walk, and we finished in 29 minutes, 45 seconds. It was so enjoyable doing something I love to do with my husband. He is so good to me in that respect. He really takes my needs and desires into account and just makes me so happy!

We decided (well more so I decided) this would become an annual event, perhaps even adding on a race in the spring!

Creativity is Flowing

I'm having a baby shower for one of my very best friends later this month. She is expecting her second baby boy and I am so happy to have a shower for her. It will be nice to bless her with gifts, but probably more fun for me to throw a party! I love planning parties and this will be even more fun as it will be the first party in our new house.

I decided to make the baby shower invitations and did a lot of searching online for ideas. There are some oh so super cute invitations out there and oh how I wish I was a graphic designer - I'd recreate the designs on my own at a fraction of the cost!

But I'm not a designer so I'm forced to go another route: scrapbook paper.

I took a trip to Hobby Lobby and found several different coordinating designs of baby-themed scrapbook paper that I knew would somehow play into my invitations. I started looking online again for ideas, but this time searched for invitation templates or do-it-yourself instructions and came across the cutest idea. It involved a folded invitation covered with scrapbook paper and ribbon, sealed with a diaper pin. This particular invitation seemed pretty easy to make so I decided to go with it.

The card itself was pretty easy - just measure, cut, fold, cover the card with the decorative scrapbook paper, cover with ribbon, and it's ready to go. Pretty easy until the diaper pin. The diaper pin was supposed to attach the flap of the card to the card itself, but I had issues with this. Major issues. I had a very hard time getting the diaper pin through the hole to close it up - I kept mangling up the flap. So I modified the design and instead of closing the invitation with the diaper pin, the diaper pin just hung on the ribbon as a pretty "extra."

I had so much fun putting these together and honestly it was kind of hard mailing them - I wanted to keep them and just look at them over and over!

Here's a link to the instructions and pictures of the invitations!
http://www.do-it-yourself-invitations.com/baby-shower-invitations-diaper-pin.html