Project 52: 1

52: 1

Happiness

I can't help but smile when I see his handsome face with those adorable dimples.

I sure do hope our future children are blessed with those same dimples.  

Hair Free. Carefree.

This pretty new toy just made my life a whole lot easier!

  Our new stick vacuum is friggin' A-MA-ZING. 

No more sweeping & flying dog hair for this girl! This vacuum means business. I've use it twice already and our floors were spotless each time!!! I'm all about efficiency and this vac is definitely efficient! 
Now to talk to hubs into buying a FURminator....

Project 52:7 - Stopping To Smell The Flowers

Project 52:7

Stopping To Smell The Flowers

It's been a rough couple days filled with nothing but taxes. My brain is on information overload!

If you know me, you know I hate not knowing what I'm doing & especially hate making mistakes! Luckily, I have an amazing husband to help me get through this rough patch. And to help put a smile back on my face, he surprised me with beautiful flowers & a sweet card when I got home from work today. It was definiately a nice surprise! 

Thank you, my love!!!

Project 52:6 - New Chapter

52:6

New Chapter

It was a bittersweet day having to say goodbye to the people & job I've worked at for the last 8 years. It's crazy to think that I was only 17 when I started - so young & clueless. Now I'm (a lil') older & more experienced, & ready to take on the next chapter in my life! I am thankful to have worked with such amazing people. I will miss you guys!!!  

{Cheers!}

 

And thank you to all the girls who took me out to lunch on my last day!

Project 52:5 - Valentine's Day

52:5

Valentine's Day

The hubs & I celebrated a lil' late. He was out of town & I was busy job hunting. So with the little down time that I had, I put my crafty side to work decorating our kitchen table. It was so much fun being creative & I think he appreciates my dorkiness craftiness. The best part was seeing CB's "surprised" smile light up his handsome face!

Project 52:4 - Unconditional (Puppy) Love

52:4

Unconditional (Puppy) Love

I hate to admit this, but before I got Peter I wasn't really a dog person. I thought they were smelly & messy - I didn't want anything to do with them. Then Peter came along & it was puppy love at first sight. It took a lot of convincing for me to keep him, but I finally gave in once I found out shih-tzu's don't shed. I'm not going to lie, I miss the shed free days cuz as of 6 months ago I became a proud momma to a big, black, shedding Lab! It's definitely been a struggle, but I've learned to accept the fact that we will never have clean floors no matter how often I clean. She's totally worth it though!

{If you look close you can see all the black dog hair on the carpet}

Project 52:3 - Snow Day

52:3

Snow Day

Yesterday San Antonio experienced it's first snow day in 25 years! CB & I got to sleep in (kinda) & enjoy some of the day from home....then is was off to work after the snow melted & the roads were safe to drive on. Boohoo! It was exciting while it lasted.  

{Warning: The following picture is cheesy, but I just couldn't resist.}

Homemade Laundry Detergent

My blog stalking has gotten out of control! But in a good way....is that even possible?!

I never had a desire to make my own laundry detergent, but after I stumbled across a super easy & cheap (I LOVE cheap) recipe from The Sitting Tree  blog & doing some further research, I just had to make my own because I hate buying detergent! It's so darn expensive!
This recipe only costs $2 per batch and takes 10 minutes to make!!!!

Ingredients:

2 cups finely grated Zote Soap (found at Walmart)

1 cup  Borax (deodorizes & acts as an alternative to color safe bleach)

1 cup  Washing Soda (used as a natural stain remover & softener in hard water)

*Use a tablespoon for a regular load of laundry & 2 tablespoons for heavy soiled laundry*

Project 52:2 - Creative Love

52:2

Creative Love

I know CB knows I love him, but I think it's important to remind him. I like to be creative & leave random notes around the house when he's least expecting it. This is advice we received from a very, very good family friend who I've known since I was 6 months old. He gave us THE best marriage advice!

Thank you Mr. Rodriguez!

Project 52:1 - Learning To Sew

It was a last minute decision to start my own Project 52. So, once a week for an entire year I will be documenting our marriage. Don't worry, you won't have to suffer through 52 posts of "CB & Tina" pictures - we have plenty of those already. Being the random person that I am, I will be documenting random stuff throughout our first year of marriage.

52:1

Learning To Sew

Since we've been married my creative side has really kicked in, so much so that when my parents asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I said a SEWING MACHINE! I have this crazy desire to make curtains and pillows for our new house, and one day Halloween costumes for our future kids. I just hope I can pick up this lost art cuz this girl had never used a sewing machine before.

{My first sewing class}

Better Late Than Never

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

I know I'm a lil' late - CB & I  have been crazy busy. I can't believe how fast the holidays flew by! I had planned to make a few more crafts, send out Christmas cards, photograph every detail of our first Christmas, wrap each present extra pretty & much more, but there never seems to be enough time or things just don't go as planned. I shouldn't complain - we still had a picture perfect First Married Christmas together!

Christmas Recap:

We spent Christmas Eve & Christmas morning with my family. I love my parents for continuing the "Santa" tradition even though we are all grown up & out of their house. They still know how to bring out the child in us each year & we LOVE it!!!

After breakfast CB & I headed to Ptown to spend the rest of Christmas with his family. I am so glad I married into another big family. There's never a dull moment during any holiday get together. It's non-stop laughing, reminiscing & picking on each other....good times!

And apparently, CB & I were extra good this year cuz we got some suhweet gifts!

New Year's Recap:

My brother, Jamie, was kind enough get 2 rooms at the downtown Hilton Placio de Rio. My other brother, Chris, CB, and I shared one room and Jamie & Melissa shared the other. We checked out all the live entertainment & toured the beautiful Riverwalk Christmas lights then decided to head back to the hotel for drinks. Downtown was ridiculously packed with people waiting to see the amazing fireworks display. We waited in line for 45 minutes for our first and only round of drinks. Luckily, we made it back to our room in time to see the fireworks display from our balcony. That was probably the prettiest way I have ever brought in the New Year! Glad we can finally say we've experienced downtown for New Year's. After all, we've lived here for almost 15 years. Thanks for including us in on the fun, Jamie!

Now it's time to work on our goals for the year and execute some house projects!

{SO true!}

Our Rustic Vintage Christmas: Mantle

Our Christmas Mantle...

It's a lil' bit country (CB) and a lil' bit vintage (Me) - the best of both worlds!

I made the wreath & rustic wood chalkboard. Both easy DYI projects.

Our stockings were a $5 Hobby Lobby find. I wasn't super excited about them, but decided they would do the job this year and maybe next year we'd find better ones. Well....after a lil' make over, there won't be a need to find new ones!



Details, details, details!
I love the fabric rosettes and they are so easy to make! The hardest part was picking out the perfect fabric. And the buttons....I'm so glad I decided to replace the snowflake with sewn on buttons!

Even our doggies got their own "personalized" stockings...well, I just added a cute dog print button to theirs.



There will definitely be a lot of family time spent around the fireplace this season.

  

Happy Christmas decorating everyone!

Christmas Time Preparation!

We still haven't finished putting up all our Christmas decorations. I'm hoping to finish this weekend and post pictures shortly after. I took on a few DIY projects to personalize our decorations and hope to continue it each year. This may sound cheesy, but I have this picture in my head of our (future) kids putting up our ornaments and asking what the story is behind each unique one. Who knows, they may not even be interested in them, but at least I will be able to look at them and remember why they are special.

We are also trying to pick out the perfect Christmas card to send out, but have been slackers. Hopefully, those will also be ordered very soon. 

After searching the internet for the perfect Christmas photo card I came across Shutterfly's massive selection! I've been pretty picky about what kind of photo card I want to send out since after all....this will be our first married Christmas together! They have such a unique selection of cards to choose from….they’ve made it so very hard for us to pick just one! After a few too many hours of staring at my computer screen, we were able to narrow it down, and like I said, hopefully they will be ordered SOON.

Check out the massive Christmas photo card selection for yourself:

http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/christmas-cards

I even found myself browsing through all the other wonderful products they offer.

I really, really want to create a Photo Book with all our wedding pictures and pre-wedding events. It’s such a great way to display special photos and showcase on our coffee table for friends and family to enjoy.   

http://www.shutterfly.com/photo-books

  They even have a great selection of invitations and thank you cards for every occasion. 

http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/thank-you-cards

Shutterfly is offering 50 FREE Christmas cards if you blog about them. FREE is always good in my book!

Shutterfly: Blog & Receive 50 Free Christmas Cards


Decisions, decisions.....

Thanksgiving

CB and I have a lot to be thankful for this year! We are truly blessed with the most amazing family and friends and a wonderful marriage. Not to brag or anything, but since we've been married there have been quiet a few "life is good" moments....you know, the moments where you just sit back and really, really love life. I love those moments!

We spent Thanksgiving day with my family. I know I use the word "love" a lot - I'm a loving person - but I LOVE Thanksgiving food!!! I look forward to it all year long. My mother has been given strict instructions to keep all Thanksgiving food the same. My brothers and I remind her that it is not the time of year for trying out new recipes. I guess you can say my family is traditional and it works for us. As usual, the food was delicious (Thank you, Mom!) and I ate waaaayyyyy too much! 

Friday, CB and I headed to Granny's house to spend time with his side of the family and go to a Family Reunion. I love spending family time in the country. Everything is so beautiful and different from city living. We had a great time, it was sad to see the weekend come to an end. 

We hope everyone had wonderful Thanksgiving! 

We started decorating for Christmas! Stay tuned for pictures.

Birthday Boy!

Today is a very special day...

HAPPY (28th) BIRTHDAY to my amazing Husband!!!!!!

I love you and hope you have a great day!

"I love you not because of who you are, but because of who I am when I am with you." - Roy Croft

Productive Weekend

Clayton and I had a very productive weekend. We started shopping for Christmas decorations early since we are starting from scratch....yay for our first married Christmas! 

I LOVE Christmas and especially love decorating! I don't think Clayton really understood my love for Christmas until we went shopping. Luckily, I had him to hold me back from buy everything in sight. If it wasn't for him,  it'd look like Christmas threw up in our house. I thought we did pretty darn good all thanks to Hobby Lobby and Dollar Tree - I don't know what I'd do without these stores. 

We also reupholstered our dinning room chairs. 

Clayton and I were fortunate enough to inherit my great-grandmother's beautiful dinning room furniture from my parents. It needs a little love, but the bones are great! The cushions were the biggest eye sore (sorry Mom), so I decided to reupholster them last night. It was a lot easier than I thought it'd be. It was a nice surprise to see the previous material choices used by my grandparents and great-grandparents! I chose to leave the 3 oldest layers because I couldn't bare to throw away family history, and it didn't hurt that they added cushion.  

My mom's attempt at reupholstering the cushions...

I was going for a fresh, vintage look. I really like the way they turned out! 

I can't wait to start putting up the Christmas decorations!!!

Another Epiphanie Camera Bag Post.....

I LOVE this camera bag so much!!!!!  There's another giveaway for it....

Color Inc Epiphanie Camera Bag Giveaway

Happy Veterans Day!!!!!

Thank you to all those who have served or are currently serving our great Country! It takes a special person to fight for our freedom and I hope they know how much we appreciate all that they do.

I'd especially like to Thank my Grandpa, Dad, sister (Katrina), and Carolyn for their service!

I love you guys!!!!

I don't have a picture of my dad in his uniform :(

 

I Hate Laundry!

Actually, I don't mind the washing part, it's the folding and ironing part I loath! I'd love to have someone do ALL my laundry for me or never wear an item of clothing more then once. Since my husband has already informed me that laundry will always be in my future, I've tried to make the process easier. I used to buy the Downy Wrinkle Release spray, but found out that it's only fabric softener diluted in water (thanks to http://www.stylelushblog.com/). To save money I decided to make my own wrinkle release spray....and it works!!!

DIY Wrinkle Release Spray:

• Add 1 to 2 ounces of fabric softener (of your choice) to a spray bottle
• Fill the rest of the bottle with water
• Shake 
• Spray it on your clothes, shake them out, let them dry, and no more wrinkles!

Now, I just have to work on the folding part.....

Love this camera bag....

Clayton just bought me a fancy new camera for my birthday, so naturally I've been looking for a pretty camera bag. What girl wouldn't!?! I found this pretty Epiphanie camera bag!!!!

They are having a giveaway for it and I would love to win this fancy bag!!!

http://www.pamelatopping.com/2010/11/epiphanie/