Our New House - yay!

We finally snagged one! I guess third time IS a charm! :) After 4 months of looking we finally had our offer accepted.....It was exhausting trying to find something, I mean we are looking in the 250,000 and under price range in Montgomery County....single family houses only....that's really limited and doesn't get you very much. So for a starter house, and a foreclosure (built in equity, hooray), it's great!

I almost don't want to even post pictures because I plan to clean it up a lot and it's going to look much better after I'm done. But I mostly mean the outside....the inside really isn't bad! It's clean and freshly painted....the "to do" list is a lot smaller than the last two we've put offers on. It's three bedrooms, two baths....one level with a basement....though it has two big rooms in the basement, we will use one as another tv room, the other room happens to have two doorways and is already perfect to be split into two rooms, so just like the other two houses, this house will be 5 rooms when we are done, though the two can't be bedrooms unless we add closets. We'll use them as my craft room and his work room. The kitchen isn't bad at all, the cabinets just need updating. I unfortunately settled for a dining/living room combo and that's probably my least favorite thing about the house....but it'll work for us for now. Oh and we also got this for $20,000 cheaper that we offered for the last two! woo hoo. And it's already fenced in but we have plans to put a nicer fence to hide the neighbors messy yard. And it has electric base board heating...booo, but we have plans to switch it out as soon as possible....anyway...it's not perfect but it's our 1st house and we are EXCITED!

Now we are just waiting for the signed paperwork back from the bank so it can start to get a little more official! :)

10 things I love

I started thinking of doing this on the way to AC because when I got my hair cut two weeks ago, I picked up this new leave in conditioner that I just LOVE! And I wanted to share so I thought I'd share a few other things that make my heart skip a beat! :)

1. I used to be the one who bought a $20 straightener every 4 months or so and finally for Christmas I asked for a nicer one so hubby went and bought me one from the kiosk in the mall in hot pink! They run about $100...I would have spent well over that by now. I've had it for about two years. I love this thing, I couldn't live without it....though one day when it does break, I do lust over the zebra pattern one they have at that kiosk now and I may just have to get that one next. So far this one is still going strong!
2. This perfume is funny actually...last year for my birthday, Chance went out and got me a sweatshirt I wanted from Aeropostale, while he was there he saw this perfume and without even smelling it, he bought it....It could have smelled like a foot for all he knew. I had never asked for it or even smelled it so it was a dangerous move.....well I LOVE it and it's cheap-o...I have a whole tray full of great and much more expensive perfumes but I love love this one, it's my favorite right now! For Christmas I asked for the bigger bottle, which is this in the picture, you can see I use it a lot!

3. I don't think this one needs a explanation? I love you sweet little kitchen aid mixer, some days I wish you were a pretty red but then I remember that no matter what color I decide to paint my kitchen, you will match.
4. I love these earrings, I wear them often. It's funny actually because I picked them out and when chance gave them to me I did not like them, in fact I wasn't even sure that I actually picked these out....until I put them on and ahhh they felt so right. :) I love these earrings, they are not heavy and they go with so much.
5. Hello bottle of love, the purpose for this post, the reason my hair feels so good lately.....when I recently got my hair cut I asked for a recommendation for a good leave in conditioner or something similar and he recommended this wonderful bottle. I love this, it's like a mist when it sprays. Every time I use it, I feel like I was just at the salon. It was about $15 but it seems to be lasting quite a while so far....I love love love this stuff.

6. I love this cute little tool box....it's perfect. I asked for it for Christmas this year, it's about $20 I think from Michaels and it has a hammer and a screwdriver and pliers and it's excellent. I hang pictures around the house all the time and get ready for this....I've been known to often use my lint roller to hammer things in....hahhahaha IT WORKS, but it's nice to have a little cute hammer now, that works much better!

7. Love this stuff, nothing fancy, you've seen it before....I buy lotions and all this stuff from bath and body works but I swear these are the only things that I use the entire bottle of and have to go buy more. Luckily they are always so cheap!! I swear I think I paid like $3 for this. Thats so much cheaper than regular store soap and it smells so much yummier! I have them in both bathrooms and a peach foam one for the kitchen.

8. Ok this thing is magnificent! You can see how much liquid is still in there, I bought this thing September of 2007, no joke. It ran me a whopping $12. Now I should probably throw it out because it does get goopy after awhile but it's up on a shelf. BUT the point is, when you buy these other places, the liquid is gone in no time, these last forever and you can still smell them! I mean you get at least a year and a half to two years before they get goopy....I had to throw out my other one at two years... This one is buttercream which is okay but my other favorite is cyprus rose....mmm makes me want to go out and buy a new one now!
9. Loved this book, and still trying to make it through the next one. It's about 4 girls who run a wedding business in this old house, they each have a role, one is a florist, one is a photographer, etc. There is still two more books to be released and each book is about one girl. I want their life! haha, no really but it was a good book and when I make time to start reading again, I'd like to finish the second book!! It's called Bed of Roses.
10. I love this thing, I wish I bought the rest of them in the store! It was like $10 at walmart! It's sturdy and cute and it would be perfect to hold some stuff in the closet. I have it in my living room, I love the color. For the price, I looove this thing.

Our 1st Anniversary

Our 1st Anniversary was Sunday, July 11th. Since we got married I've been wanting to plan a one year anniversary trip....but as it got closer and being in the middle of trying to buy a house, it just didn't make sense to go on a long, expensive trip right now. So like I said in the previous posts, we had been looking for cabins in either MD, VA or WV so we could take the dogs but places were either already booked, you could only book weekly or just too expensive because the house was bigger than we needed so they were just charging more. By the way vrbo.com and homeaway.com are great sites to look for vacation rentals. So we looked into other local places and decided on Atlantic City, we were even more excited when we were able to snag a hotel for just $116 a night because we had plans to go on a Sunday and Monday (it was $316 for Saturday night alone).

Our plans were to leave on Sunday and since our Bakery that did our wedding cake, Sweet Bakery & Cafe offered us a complimentary 6" cake (as I explained in a previous post). We decided to pick it up on Saturday because we didn't want to try and take it with us. And because I didn't want to pick up this nice cake and eat just a boring dinner (I did not feel like cooking, I was tired from cleaning and packing)....We decided it would be nice to pick up some Macaroni Grill, which is what we had exactly a year before for our rehearsal dinner. So it turned out to be a nice night with the dinner & cake. The bakery did an excellent job recreating the cake and it was super yummy! They even put the black ribbon at the bottom! :)

The morning of our anniversary we just got up and finished packing last minute things and left at 11:00. I had told Chance I needed to make a stop before we got on the road but didn't tell him where. Earlier in the week I had received an email from the Hilton (I guess I'm on their mailing list) that next month the Hilton where we got married will be turning into a Double Tree. They're not tearing it down, they're just converting it I guess. We don't really have any pictures with the Hilton sign in it and I figured one day we might actually appreciate having a picture or two since it's no longer going to be "the Hilton where we got married", it's going to be the "Double Tree that used to be the Hilton where we got married"...lame. So we felt a little silly jumping out of the car and taking a picture but it was kind of nice :)

So then it was off to Atlantic City! It wasn't a bad drive at all, we were hoping to go to Sonic on the way there but forgot to pay attention and the GPS took us a different way....far away from the Sonic.

We finally got into Atlantic City around 3:45ish and went straight to the hotel. We stayed at the Trump Taj Mahal. I had put a note on the reservation that it was our one year wedding anniversary and when we checked in we got a room upgrade to the executive suite. It was more like a business suite but it was still much larger than we were going to have, it was pretty awesome. We had bought tickets for the Cirque Dreams Jungle Fantasy show at the Taj Mahal at 8:00 so we had to rush to dinner by the time we were settled in the room. We decided to go with a safe, not horribly expensive choice and eat a Phillips at the Pier shops at Ceasers...and it was yum! But then we had to rush back in time for Cirque Dreams which was awesome by the way! When it started off, I was concerned that it might not be what I thought but then they did this amazing jump roping thing and it was just great. I want to go see every Cirque Dreams/Cirque de Soleil ever! At the end of the show we each received $10 Trump casino cards so we went and played the slots a little...I won $75 right away....I decided to keep going and lost $5 and then I cashed out but $70 for free, woo hoo! We walked around a little to see the hotel and casino. It was so nice in there, we loved it!

All day Monday we had planned to just do whatever and that we did. The main thing we wanted to do was go down to the Pier Shops at Ceasers and thats what we did first. We had breakfast at the hotel buffet and then walked down. They had some great but high end stores. I was particularly excited to find Bijoux Terner which was a small store on a cruise ship for our honeymoon! I had bought this great scarf/shawl that I love and a really cute clutch and the best part is everything in their store is just $10. So I was really excited to see this store there. I bought another color scarf and a cute purse for a grand total of $20 :)

We walked around the boardwalk and watched the awesome watershow inside the Pier Shops. Then we went to the pool for the afternoon. For dinner we went to the Hard Rock Cafe which was yum. After that we walked over on the Steel Pier and got a chariacture (sp?) done! Later we got a funnel cake, walked on the beach, went and lost $40 on the slot machines, bought some candy from the awesome candy store and called it a night!

The next morning we decided to check out early so we could make stops on the way home....turns out we just ended up making one stop because the GPS took us a different way and we didn't see the things on the way back that we had wanted to stop and see on the way there. So we stopped and got some Sonic, yum! And stopped in the petstore in the same shopping center to get new toys for the puppies.

We got home around 2:30 and just watched tv until we went to bed.

We had the best time, it was really nice! So glad that we were able to get away for our anniversary. What a wonderful year this has been. So looking forward to many many more with the best husband anyone could ever ask for!

-20 pounds, woo hoo!

Yeeey, so today it's been 11 weeks since I've been trying to loose some weight! Ever since Chance and I started dating it's just gone downhill but I've decided to stop making excuses and stop waiting and do something about it! But my biggest motivation is that after we buy a house and get settled for a while (maybe a year) we really want to start a family and I feel like if I don't start to lose some weight now and then I get pregnant on top of that, it's going to be impossible....okay not impossible but MUCH harder than what I need to lose now.

So in January I started this migraine medicine because I've been getting migraine's since September. And one of the side effects is weight loss....well in the first three months I took it, I only lost 5 pounds so it didn't really do much. So I finally decided I would actually make an effort to do something myself! I started weight watchers which I've done before but I gained it back slowly after 2 years. I think it's because I didn't lose all of the weight I wanted....this time I must! :) On a side note, if I don't get a migraine tomorrow or Sunday I haven't had one in a month! I had a pretty bad headache the first two weeks but not enough to take the medicine....woo hoo!

So anyway, I've been eating healthy....I'm trying to get myself motivated to exercise, so far that hasn't happened yet....but I'm working on it.....but in the last 11 weeks I've lost 15 pounds, plus the 5 I lost from just that medicine....so I've lost 20 pounds total! I really want to lose 28 more....so I've at least made a huge dent.

I can start to see a difference though you would think losing 20 pounds would make you go down a couple pant sizes but it doesn't seem to have shifted that much....hmmm though I think in the next 10 pounds and 20 pounds especially I should definitely see a big difference.

Well at the rate I'm going...unless I start exercising then I hope to be at 30 pounds total by my birthday with only 18 to go but it would be super awesome if I can get more than that....the closer we get to winter the more I see it getting more difficult!

Woo hoo!

So glad hair grows!

I've been way over due for a hair cut and dying my hair (I have waaay too many grays) so I just went out quickly tonight to get it cut and I was going to get my bangs cut too, just to the side not straight across......buuuut he cut my hair much shorter than I would have liked so I decided to keep my mouth shut about the bangs before that was a mess too. It's short and it's going to take some getting used to, and I know I'm going to hear "oh you cut your hair" like 80 times but oh well. Though I did try a different shade of dye, and it was perfect. :)

At least hair grows...