that's what i love about sundays.

end of the weekend update here.

i guess i forgot to mention that austin and i finally got to go see the new harry potter movie. we kept putting it off because his work was keeping him late, but he finally was able to leave early enough one night for us to go to dinner and a movie. strange, i know.

he also brought me "sorry-my-work-sucks-and-makes-me-work-five-hours-late-every-night-flowers."

but anyway, the movie was pretty good. very action-packed, with some crazy camera movement at times that made it hard to focus, but it was good. i guess there's still one more movie to come? i don't know, i didn't read the books...

friday night, after austin got off work, we decided to do our little bit of {really late} black friday shopping. we weren't necessarily looking for anything in particular, which can lead to trouble when shopping, but we managed to keep it under control. all we bought was a jacket for austin, he's been looking for one he likes for a while.

on saturday we decided to go to a nearby park and try to take a few more pictures to give us more options for our christmas card. apparently, though, we weren't being very photogenic that day, so we only got a few decent ones.

i still don't know what we're going to put on our cards... i do know that i need to get busy on those, or i'm going to run out of time...

we also finally got my daffodils planted in the flower bed, i sure hope that we did it right, i've never planted anything before. i guess we'll find out in the spring.

and this morning, austin and i decided to go to church. where we live, there's a church every 100 yards, so we went to one that's pretty close to our house. it was nice, the church looks pretty big from the outside, but they really don't have too many members. austin used to go to a really, really big church, so we both thought it was nice to go somewhere small enough that everyone noticed that we were guests. i think we'll go again next weekend. :)

after church, we met up with austin's parents and brother to go check out a new washer and dryer set {considering our's are broken}. we didn't get them today, but hopefully we'll be getting them soon. i'm tired of having to manually hold the washing machine tub in order for it to fill up... then we all grabbed an early dinner and austin and i came home to put a few christmas lights up on the porch.

and now, austin and juliet are asleep on the couch beside me.

i'd say it's been a pretty good day.

oh, and because i have the most adorable {and most photographed} puppy in the world, a few pictures of boo.

i just love that face.

and apparently, posing for pictures bored her. biiiiiig yawn.

chocolate pie for breakfast.

this was my breakfast this morning. french silk chocolate pie. and it was a. maz. ing. i had planned on making pie to take up to austin's parents' house for thanksgiving, but for a couple of reasons that didn't happen. so when we got home from the thanksgiving festivities at 8 or so last night, i made myself a pie. and i plan to eat the whole entire thing myself.

speaking of thanksgiving festivities, like i said we went up to steve and gloria's house. austin made some macaroni and cheese, some rolls and some kind of {what i would say was really nasty} dip. gloria had prepared a turkey {of course}, stuffing, green beans, turnips, greens and cranberry sauce. austin had a little bit of everything, but i just had mac and cheese, stuffing {a special meat-free dish for me} cranberry sauce and some rolls.

since austin and i are planning to send out holiday cards, we decided to dress nice and try to get a few pictures while we were up there. here are some of my favorites.

  

we kind of had to finish up in a rush, we had some visitors who wanted to eat my camera {and maybe us}.

those are the babies on the farm. one of the mommas seemed to get angry when they got interested in what we were doing in their field...

when we got back to our house, i made pie, austin drank egg nog {straight out of the carton} and julie boo slept. pretty standard around here.

and then, this morning, there was a knock at the door. well, it was someone ringing the doorbell, whatever. it was our mailman with a special delivery for me!

pecan rolls! sent from momma and timmy back home! best thanksgiving present ever.

needless to say, pie and pecan rolls are all i've eaten today.

weekend roundup.

in case you missed the memo, the new harry potter movie is out. austin and i considered going to see the midnight showing thursday night/friday morning, but we decided we'd just wait until friday night so that he wouldn't have to worry about being tired at work on friday. however, work kept him way late... no harry potter for me. yet. i will be seeing it soon.

saturday night, i met up with lindsy for dinner at the acropolis. aside from our awkward waiter and somewhat soggy salad we had a pretty good little meal. i had a greek salad and cheese ravioli and lindsy had a greek salad and something called santorini. no clue what that is. but we had a good time.

we then met back up with austin to go watch the ufc fights that were on that night and then on over to a friend's house.

here's a {really awkward} picture of all of us saturday night. ok, so it's really, really, awkward.

all those guys are austin's fraternity brothers. from left to right you've got ben, chris, tyler, and sean. and of course lindsy, austin and me. i can't really get over how awkward we look. oh well.

and then, of course, if you find a lacrosse helmet, you must put it on. at least that's how austin feels.

so that was our saturday night. on sunday, austin and i did our usual grocery shopping and then i had a meeting to go to for a fashion show i'm going to be in next weekend. it's a tim burton themed show and it looks like i'll be dressed as sally from the nightmare before christmas. it should be fun. and possibly cold, because the show is outside...

and today, finally, i got julie boo's nails cut. she shakes terribly all the way to the vet, but then prances like a proud poodle once her manicure is complete.

and now she's cuddled next to me, keeping me warm.

no word on the job yet... and my fingers are getting tired of being crossed. still hopeful though.

season's greetings cards?

thanksgiving is coming up this week and usually, my thanksgiving consists of lots family, lots of eating, and lots of driving. most of my family is somewhere around virginia for thanksgiving, so i just have to plan out my day as far as which house i'll be at when. my mom and stepdad usually have a huge lunch at our house and all of the family eats there. usually, we have somewhere around 15-17 people, which is a lot in their tiny house. then i usually head up the road to see my dad's side of the family and my stepmom's family, too. by then, i'm too stuffed to even look at food...

however, since austin is on call the entire holiday weekend, we won't be able to go home for thanksgiving. this will be the first time i haven't spent thanksgiving with my parents... but that's ok, because his family is here, so we'll be having thanksgiving dinner at his parent's house. they do a much more low key dinner. it will just be me, austin, his parent's and his brother.

we're hoping to be able to make it to virginia for christmas, which hopefully will work since christmas is on a saturday. fingers crossed for that one.

but since we can only be in one place at a time, we're planning to make sure all our loved ones know we are thinking of them this holiday season no matter where we are by sending out personalizes holiday cards. we'll be using cards from shutterfly. i'm pretty sure my dad used their website to print off lots of pictures from my brother's wedding and they turned out great, so i know our cards will look just as quality. i want to try to find one that doesn't say "merry christmas" though, because even though both austin and i celebrate christmas, i have some family members who celebrate hannukah, so i want to make sure the card will work for all my family.

they have tons and tons of designs to choose from. i'm considering this one, this one, and this one. they are each super cute, but i just don't know what kind of "feel" we want to go for. i can say that i know that julie boo will be included in the picture we use. :)

i know everyone will be anxiously awaiting their mail from us in order to see which design and picture we chose!

glitter is the herpes of the craft world.

it's true. once you bring glitter into your house, you'll never get rid of it.

ok. so today is supposed to be "finally finished friday." however, it seems i have been especially non-productive this past week... out of the six to-dos i posted last week i have accomplished: zero. none. not a one.

i almost got one tackled. i made an appointment to get juliet's nails cut today. but then i got distracted and missed her appointment time. what was i distracted by?

arts and crafts time! yay! {hence the glitter problem}.

i am anxiously awaiting being able to decorate for christmas. i've seen that a lot of other people have already done so, but austin says i have to wait until after thanksgiving. so until then, i will craft my little heart out in preparation.

today, i made three wreaths. one for our bedroom door, one for our bathroom door, and one for guinny's door. i made them each color coordinated to the decor of the room!

this is the one on our bathroom:

and here's the one on our bedroom door:

and, my personal favorite, the one on the guest room/guinny's room:

i got all of the supplies at the dollar store or wal-mart. i bought the wreath forms, the pine garland, doves, and ornaments at the dollar store. then at wal-mart i got the glittery things sticking out from behind the wreaths, the "peace" sign and the ribbon at wal-mart. very inexpensive and super cute {in my opinion, anyways}.

but now my house has the glitter disease. oh well, we'll call it festive.

now then, what, if anything, did i accomplish the past seven days {back to that finally finished friday}? let's see...

finally, we got to see mcs in concert, with our v.i.p. access.

{does that even count for f.f.f.?}

finally, i finished a deep cleaning of the house. thus, the reason you all got an inside tour of our house the other day. i organized, vacuumed, mopped, and even dusted. i know, who am i?

finally, i got a job interview. actually, two. with the same people though, but i'm hoping it's a good sign that the first interview led to an immediate second interview with the company owner's. haven't heard back yet, though. keeping positive thoughts.

not much accomplished as far as my to-dos, but oh well, we'll just move them on to this week's plan!

so, by this time next week, i hope to:

• finally, post a blog about our halloween dinner party
• finally, assemble our headboard
• finally, plant daffodils {still hope it's not too late}
• finally, get juliet's nails cut {appointment made for monday}
• finally, send our wedding photographer our picks
• finally, fill some of the empty picture frames

yeah, it's the same list as last week. we'll see how much of it really gets done this week...

welcome to our home.

the week of our wedding {the last any of my family was at my house} austin and i had basically just moved in. we had no furniture, save for a few lawn chairs, and definitely no "homey" touches. since we've had some time to get things set up, i thought i'd share a little virtual tour of the house! it's still a work in progress, but we're just renting, so we can only do so much without it being a waste of our money.

this is the wall right inside the front door, in our living room. i got those shelves for $10 each at tj maxx, total deal. the little bookshelf there was donated to us. i'd really love to find a much longer bookshelf for along this wall, but this will do for now. and those black and white pictures on the hanging shelves are pictures my mom took back when she was in college as part of a photography class. i just love them. there's also evidence of just how spoiled julie boo is with that many toys.

next, my wall of empty frames. i got them all at either goodwill or the dollar store and painted them black or white. i also found those little hanging shelves at goodwill. and i got the "h" from hobby lobby.

and the rest of our living room. thanks to nice friends of ours, both of our couches were donated to us!

next is our not-so-fabulous kitchen. i'm not sure who picked out this wine/plaid theme, but i'm not so much a fan.

however, since we had the whole wine theme going at our wedding, i tried to make the best of it by using the wine decor in the kitchen...

good not great. we still have this nasty gold-ish color and the heinous plaid on the bottom to deal with. don't even get me started...

moving on.

here's our main bathroom. it's pretty small and has zero counter space or storage. but i really like our shower curtain {not that that makes up for lack of space}.

next is the guest bedroom/my dressing room/my office/guinevere's room. multi-function, to say the least.

i got the bedset on sale at ross, i believe. the nightstand was donated to us. and i made the curtain rods out of branches from our back yard!

since it's guinny's room, i've kind of got a nature/bird theme going on. found this bird cage memo holder at home goods. it was hot pink, like the clothespins still are, but i painted it light yellow to tone it down a bit and match the bedspread.

that dresser is old and junky, but it was free and all i had to do was paint it. i got the cute little bird house on sale {of course} at hobby lobby and the bronze tree jewelry holder at big lots. oh and that desk is an antique that we found in my great grandfather's garage.

and lastly, the "master bedroom." ok so it's teeny tiny, not the slightest bit bigger than the guest room. but that's ok. i try to keep as little in here as possible, i hate feeling crowded in my bedroom.

say hi to dinger, who looks like he's about to fall off the bed. and yes, that is an empty picture frame hanging on the wall {remember that's a goal for finally finished friday, as is to get the headboard put in here}. and see those little wooden hearts on the wall? austin bought me those in jamaica on our honeymoon. :) and p.s., i got that 8 piece bedset at tj maxx for $40. dang, i know.

let me just tell you how much austin loves this little shelving number. it only took about 7 hours to get them all hung up and level. i'm still not sure they're level, either. we still need to find a few more things to put in/on those shelves, so don't mind the one that's lonely up there.

and yes, those are dead, crunchy roses in that vase. they were my birthday flowers from austin and i think they look cool. so they are staying.

so that's our house. most of it, at least. we do have a dining room type area and a half bath. but they aren't decorated {or even cleaned, really} so i figure no one wants to see those. the dining room is currently more of a storage area, as i am looking for a long cabinet type thing to store more kitchen stuff in {i believe i'm looking for something called a buffet?}. and that half bath should really be called a quarter bath. it's got the world's smallest sink and a toilet. and that's it.

so that's that. welcome to our home. maybe someday we'll have our own home for real and everything can be set up just as i like it. but this shall work for now.

i lied.

oh, hey, so remember on finally finished friday when i said that i had finally finished clearing the house of all our halloween decorations?

so i forgot some. so apparently i wasn't so finally finished.

our pumpkins we carved on halloween are still sitting on the front porch. growing mold. and looking gross. so maybe by this friday i'll get them thrown out and i can be finally finished for real.

or maybe i'll see how long it takes for them to completely dissolve on the porch. we'll see.



coupon schmoopon?

austin and i do our grocery shopping on sundays, after we can clip out all the coupons we might need out of the sunday paper. but since we were in atlanta, we didn't get to go sunday. so we decided we would go last night. since i'm not working currently, i kind of have all day to do, well, nothing. so austin and i decided i needed to find out where we should shop by which store had the most stuff we needed on sale.

and then, apparently, i became an amateur "couponer."

it seems like everyone these days is doing all sorts of money saving tricks and the other day i was reading my friend katie's blog {she actually has two, here and here} and she has recently starting couponing. it seemed a little overwhelming to get all the work arranged to get the best deal, but austin and i decided to give it a shot.

first stop was cvs, a place we rarely shop at, but considering the deal we got, we're going to start going there more! here's how we got our deals.

purchase 1:
aussie hairspray: one 14 oz. can
       regular price $4.99
           sale price $2.99
                         -$  .50 manufacturer's coupon
                          $2.49 paid out of pocket
                                 + received $2.00 in cvs extra care bucks {same as money on next purchase}
fiber one chewy bars: one 5 ct. box
       regular price $3.99
                         -$  .50 manufacturer's coupon
                          $3.49 paid out of pocket
                                 + received $3.00 in cvs extra care bucks
cvs green tag: {carry with a reusable bag, earn $1.00 in extra care bucks for every 4 scans}
       regular price $  .99 paid out of pocket
                                 + received $.25 in cvs extra care bucks {essentially}
                         ___________________
                           $6.97 total price + $5.25 in cvs extra care bucks

purchase 2:
progresso soups: four 19 oz. cans
      regular price $3.29 for one can
                          $3.29 for two cans {buy one get one free special}
                          $6.58 for 4 cans
                         -$1.00 off 4 cans manufacturer's coupon
                          $5.58 total
                        -$5.00 cvs extra care bucks
                         ___________________
                          $  .58 total price 

so, we spent $7.55 out of our pockets {since the discounts don't apply to taxes, we'll just ignore them for these calculations} and we got $23.13 worth of stuff. pretty good, huh?

then we went to bi-lo to get the rest of our groceries. obviously bi-lo doesn't have the extra care bucks, so the deals don't work quite the same way. but we still saved tons. we literally only bought foods that were on sale {didn't really plan this, just worked out that way} and we used as many coupons as we could. lucky for me, bi-lo does a sub-total on the receipt so i don't have to do the math.

total before savings:   $113.67
                   savings: -$   42.61 {$31.31 through bi-lo bonus card, $11.30 from coupons}
total after savings:      $   71.06

$71 for $113 worth of stuff. pretty good, huh? i say yes.

the thing about coupons though, is you can sometimes get excited about the deal and end up with stuff you don't need or normally get. i refuse to let that happen, so austin and i have to really focus on our meal planning for the week and things we buy even if we didn't have coupons for them.

so that's that. i just got a call about a job i applied for so i'd better get off my butt and call them back! fingers crossed for me, please!

an amazing weekend.

this weekend was a roller coaster of emotions.

friday night, austin and i just did our usual. we rented a movie {the oxford murders, pretty good} and ate a frozen pizza. saturday moring, austin's mom picked up julie boo to watch her for the weekend as austin and i headed to the atl. that's atlanta, georgia, in case you didn't know.

first stop, dave & buster's in marietta. basically it's a chuck e. cheese for adults. you buy tokens, play all sorts of games, win tickets and then cash in those tickets for {mostly crappy} prizes.

we played a football game. i beat austin. i also beat him at skeeball and basketball. he was mad.

austin did the flight simulator. note the concentration in his face.

then we found this janky little game hid way back in a corner. austin won the jackpot on it. twice.

we ended up with 1,314 tickets. yeah, we really racked up. check out our loot.

yep. a d&b glass. a giant pixie stick. a giant pen. a stuffed junior mints box. and an airplane shaped eraser. be jealous.

after we left dave & buster's, we headed to downtown atlanta to check into our hotel. after navigating some really obnoxious one-way streets, we finally found it: the hyatt regency. pretty nice, if i must say so myself. {we got it on priceline, we're not that fancy on purpose}. the lobby is under construction, but it was really nice regardless.

austin snapped these pictures from our window/tiny balcony.

saturday night, austin and i met up with j.j., my cousin who lives in atlanta. we went out to dinner at mellow mushroom with her and one of her friends, then we met up with a few more people to go out for the night.

here's j.j., her friend ava {maybe eva?} and myself.

sunday, austin and i took a detour for me to try on bridesmaids dresses for a friend's wedding i'm in next year. then we grabbed lunch at a mexican restaurant and then it was time to head back to downtown atl for the concert we were going to, which was the actual reason for the weekend trip.

so here's the emotional roller coaster part. motion city soundtrack is pretty much our favorite band. we've seen them a few times and have all of their cds. we missed their show in february due to weather, but anxiously awaited their show in atlanta. we didn't buy tickets in advance, their shows are never sold out and the processing charges online are ridiculous.

mistake. sometime saturday night, i noticed the band's facebook page say the show was sold out.

disaster.

as an act of desperation, i found the band manager's e-mail address and sent an e-mail explaining how we were huge fans, drove all the way to atlanta, missed their show in february due to weather and how badly we wanted to make it to this one. we figured there was no chance in them responding.

we were wrong! he wrote me back and put us on the guest list! we couldn't believe it!

austin and me at variety playhouse before the show started.

the opening bands included a great big pile of leaves, saves the day, and say anything. {no picture of agbpol}

 

i have to say, all the opening bands were great. say anything really put on a great show. then mcs came out and rocked our faces off.

after the show, austin and i waited around to meet the band and get their signatures on the set list we snagged. the only band member missing was the synth player. don't know where he ran off to.

so that was our mcs adventure for this weekend. we left atlanta around 11:45 sunday night and got back to our house around 1 in the morning.

this morning we met austin's mom at her work to pick up juliet.  the second we got home, she snuggled up in her blankets on the couch. she's adorable. 

oh, and then i gave her the junior mints box. we picked it out at dave & buster's just for her. and she loves it.

this has been a pretty long post, but it was an eventful weekend. lessons learned: atlanta is fun, but only for visiting. dave & buster's is fun, but expensive. and most important: buy. tickets. in. advance.