Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Before and Not-So-After: Master Bedroom

[In a low and ominous voice] Our third "episode" in the Before and Not-So-After Series takes us to the master bedroom.  [End low and ominous voice].  Although we aren't awake long enough in this room to realize it, we actually spend nearly a third of our life in this room!  It should be personal, soothing, comforting, and peaceful.  Instead, this is what I see before I shut my eyes and as soon as I open them:


Yep, that's the wall opposite our bed.  We clearly need to do something in here.  This is what it looked like when we moved in (view from the door):


Things we like about this room:
  1. It's pretty big.
  2. It has 3 windows!
  3. It's connected to own master bath
  4. Our bedroom is on the opposite side of the house from the two other bedrooms
  5. Neutral color-dark beige
  6. Window blinds
Things we don't like:
  1. We can't figure out where to put the TV (more on that later).
  2. The windows face the backyard.  I would much rather them face the front (like the guest bedroom).


Short-Term Goals:
  1. Get night stands.  The small problem with this is that the windows are a little too far away from the bed.  And I would like the end tables to be centered under the windows (see pic below).  Our choices are: deal with it or buy a king sized bed.  Yeah, we'll deal with it.
  2. Either buy new lamps or spray paint some we already have and get new shades (haven't decided yet)
  3. Mount the TV--which is becoming harder than we ever thought (read more about that below)
  4. Hang the art that we already have.


In the long haul, we will need to purchase a new bedspread and sheets, buy or make a headboard, add more decorations to the walls, and possibly add more furniture (maybe a comfy chair?).  But those are on the back burner for now.  We want warmer colors upstairs.  The bedroom will probably include greens, light blues, yellows, and black furniture.  We would like a spa/candle feel going on.

There are a few problems concerning the TV.  First of all, we both agree that having a TV in our bedroom is not a good thing.  We are likely to watch it at night and less likely to read or talk OR SLEEP.  But we can't seem to get rid of it, so I guess it's staying.  Second issue:  the cable hook up is on the side of the room where we currently have our TV sitting on an old night stand.  See?


This isn't a huge problem, because if we really wanted our TV across from the bed mounted on the wall, we could always run the wire behind the walls.  The third (and most significant) problem is that we can't figure out where to mount it.  If we mount it across the room, we probably won't be able to see it very well because it will be so far away and our tired eyes won't be able to read any words on the screen.  But if we mount it on the side, we need a mount that can turn the angle of the TV to us.  And then if we choose the side, which side do we hang it on?!  I would really rather if it wasn't the first thing people saw as they walked into our room, but it may be the most realistic way to do it. 

Whoa.  I just had a huge debate with myself about a darn TV mount... phew.  Glad that's over.

Here are some of my inspiration for relaxing, cool bedrooms:



beautiful  bedroom


There are different things I like about each one, but overall:  I like blues, greens, tans, and black.  And I like simplicity.  But unfortunately, our bedroom is the only room that we don't have a "vision" for.  It's going to be one of those "Try it and see how it goes" kind of things, which makes me think that it will be put off for quite a while.  That's okay, though.  We have plenty of stuff to do.

On another note, today was Josh's first day of school.  He got the exciting news that he will be teaching math groups for one and a half hours per day this year.  Excellent! (NOT!)  But overall, he said it went well.  My second day was almost as awesome as my first.  The kids were mostly great, with the exception of a few boys who tried to test me.  They lost.

See the other "episodes" in the Before and Not-So-After Series:

Monday, August 29, 2011

Our Weekend With Irene

As it turns out, we did not lose power for more than one second at a time.  However, we did not have cable/internet for about three days.  This made it pretty difficult to do my grad school work... which is why I am writing this and taking a break from reading boring articles right now.

Although we were expecting the worst Saturday morning, here is the view we had from our deck on Friday night:
Pretty, right?  I like to think those clouds look like they are swirling in a hurricane, but unfortunately I checked the radar and they were definitely not hurricane clouds.


Irene was quite the popular girl, but she ain't that great. Don't get me wrong: I saw the disaster that is Vermont.  I am praying for those people.  But seriously, this is the extent of our hurricane damage:


Yeah, that's my poor crepe myrtle out front.  With one amputated arm.  Remember my friend, M, that I talked about in this post?  Well, she and her fiance live in our old townhouse in Salisbury.  They were under a mandatory evacuation.  So they stayed the weekend with us.  It actually turned out to be a great weekend.  We watched movies, drank beer, played games, drank wine, did the puzzle I bought, and drank whiskey.  All in all, it was a good time.  We didn't go outside, though, because our trees were sideways.  Our neighbor's tree (and many others in Salisbury) actually fell down completely.  And there were some tornadoes about 30 miles north in Delaware and one in our county as well.  But everyone is safe and sound.

Today was the first day of school!  I went yesterday to set my room back up after tearing it down in hurricane preparation.  It was a very pleasant day.  Not very stressful, not chaotic, and altogether "good".  My classroom is really cool this year, with "Under the Sea" as our theme.  Josh's schools were closed today.  Ocean City is in his county and they got pounded pretty good, so they were busy cleaning up today.  Josh's first day will be tomorrow.  He is excited because he starts out his year with a 3-day week (no school on Friday--labor day), then a 4-day week (no school Monday--Labor Day), and finally a 5-day week.  He is lucky.

I originally wanted to finish a spray painting project this weekend, but obviously that was out of the cards for me.  Now I am going to finish reading for grad school, take a hot bath, and go to bed!  I am exhausted!

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Come On, Irene

I keep singing "Come On, Eileen" over and over in my head with the word Irene instead.  So, have you heard?  About Irene?  She's comin'!

Apparently there hasn't been a severe hurricane in Salisbury, MD for nearly 70 years.  That is about to change.  My friend, M, moved here about two weeks ago (she just got a music teacher job here).  When her mom mentioned that the weather might be bad here, M said "Oh no!  It's perfectly safe!"  Well, two days after she said that there was an earthquake.  And five days after that a huge hurricane is supposed to hit.  Sorry, M's mom.

I will show you exactly how this is supposed to go down (found on The Weather Channel's website this evening):


Do you see that yellow dot?  Yep, that's Salisbury.  That's me.  I have to put all my instruments (that I just got out ) at school back in the closet for the weekend.  And bring my patio furniture inside.  And buy up all of the milk and bread.  And prepare for possible long periods of power outages.

So, we went to the grocery store tonight and bought milk and bread (it was crazy, by the way).  And we bought lots of dry goods in case we don't have electricity for a while.  And we are bagging all of the ice that our ice machine is making.  And tomorrow we will gather all of the candles and flashlights.  Friend M and her fiance may be coming here this weekend to stay safer.  So I also picked up some 1000-piece puzzles to keep us busy!  It's weird to think that our very first day of school (Monday) may be cancelled due to weather!  Usually that happens in the dead of winter!

I will try to keep updating about Irene (if I have power!).  If you don't hear from me in the next few days, you may need to send a raft.


On another note, I am actually in my grad school class right now.  It's the first session of my Fall course.  I was all worried after the B+ fiasco I talked about here.  So I tried so hard to prepare for this session.  Then it started.  And my professor's voice is so boring I can barely stand it.  I can type and ignore him at the same time, which is what I am doing right now.  But don't fret!  I think I will be fine.  I just caught these short phrases after desperately trying to pay attention for 51 consecutive minutes:

"...you will not be penalized for late papers."

"I want everyone to have a grade at the end of this semester."

hmmm....

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Go Ahead, Make My Day

I have had a super long day.  I spent all day in in-services (that didn't apply to me) and setting up my room. I stayed more than three hours late at school.  I went to Target to purchase some school stuff.  I didn't eat dinner until after 8pm.  Now I have to read 18 million pages of a boring book for grad school.  And the site that the book is on is "overloaded" and I can't even access it.  And I just found something that MADE MY DAY.  Do you love the beautiful, rich tones of the recorder?


Well, if you do, you should definitely listen to this magnificent recording of the 20th Century Fox theme song on soprano recorder:


Wordless Wednesday

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

That's All, Polks

We bought these beauties:
Polk Audio RCi 80 Left / right CH speakers

What are they, you ask?  They are Polk Audio ceiling speakers.  We got a specific kind and I really don't know much about speakers, so I can't tell you exactly which ones or why.  But here are the reasons why I agreed to purchase these speakers even though we already had speakers which worked perfectly fine with our system:
  1. Josh eventually wants to upgrade everything we own in the audio system/home theater area.  This was just one of the steps in that process.
  2. The speakers we used to have worked just fine and they were of the same brand.  BUT... they were black.  They were on the wall.  They were ugly.  This is the picture of them on the wall in our old townhouse seen here:

They were box-y and large and stuck out of the wall like a sore thumb.  I didn't even know that ceiling speakers existed until Josh pointed them out recently.  You can get them in white or off-white to match your ceiling and they fit right in.  The hole that you cut is actually smaller than the outside of the speaker itself.  You stick the actual speaker into the hole and mount the white part on the ceiling over the hole.  So there is no clean up, no painting or Spackle-ing after that.  And if you're thinking "Well, that's great, but my ceiling is [insert any other color than white or off-white]".  That's great, too, because you could just paint the white part to match your ceiling (or leave them white... it might look cool).  So, the grand reveal:




Pretty cool, huh?  I am impressed for sure!  Josh and his friend installed them in only an hour or two and they look and sound great.  In other living room news, the TV stand we ordered was delivered to our local best Buy this past weekend.  My dad and Josh picked it up and installed it for us.  


We wanted something that was low and long.  We needed space for 6 electronic devices and we found this one at Best Buy on sale.  We really like the color of wood (which we hope to match closely when we finally buy end tables and a coffee table).  We will eventually mount the TV to the wall and put the middle speaker on the top of the TV stand.



Our selling points were:  The color, the price, the hardware (silver), the size (fits in our house), and the simplicity.  We don't really like elaborate furniture with lots of twists and turns.  This fits our style and personality the best.    

So, if you remember from my last living room post, we had a countdown list of things that needed to be done before we could paint in that room (which is the main goal).  Here is our updated Pre-Paint To-Do List:
  1. Wait for the TV stand to be shipped and make sure we like it and like the color of wood against a teal wall.
  2. Mount our TV on the wall (mounting hardware is already purchased)
  3. Install new in-ceiling speakers.
  4. Run all of the wires through the wall and install all electronics. (Actually, this is 99% completed.  Josh just needs to add one more piece of hardware behind the TV when he mounts it to run the power cord down behind the wall.)
Woo-hoo!  In other-other news, did you guys feel that earthquake today?  That was nuts!  I was in an in-service for school and I will be honest, it really scared me because I had never felt one before and I was certain what it was immediately.  But our instructor just says, "Don't worry, they're always doing construction".  Immediately after it ended, the instructor just keeps going like nothing happened!  When we were saying to each other, "What was that?" "Was there an earthquake?" "Did you see the lights moving?!", he was just looking at us like we had two heads for interrupting his lecture!  What a dweeb!

Speaking of dweeb, I got my final grades back for grad school last night and I am terribly upset to admit that I earned a B+ in my third grad school course.  If you know me, you know I am a perfectionist and that a B+ doesn't exactly cut it in my book.  But if you know me well enough, you will also know that I earned two B's in undergrad.  And I say "earned" with absolute certainty.  I was in a "eff college" phase during one of them and simple forgot to take a test (How does one do that?!) and during the other one, I started out working my behind off and realized that being a perfectionist in the most ridiculously hard course I have ever taken was impossible.  Not to mention that I hated the subject and really wasn't interested!

But this time was different.  I worked SUPER hard (harder than I have ever worked, in fact) and I still got a B+.  I did not, however, earn a B+.  In my books, I earned an A.  But, regardless, I will still be reimbursed for my tuition and I will still continue with and (hopefully) graduate in the program.  So all is okay with the world.  And something that settles my nerves is my new favorite song:

Monday, August 22, 2011

Closet Makeover #2

We have a cute little closet in the foyer right inside the front door.  I went to WalMart yesterday to pick up spray paint (details on that later) and stumbled upon a shoe rack for less than $3.


This was all the inspiration I needed to do a quick 15-minute makeover in that closet, which, we can both admit, was looking a little neglected:


Why do we have winter coats in this closet in August?

After some quick updates, a 30-second installation of the new shoe rack and some organization, we were left with this:


I added a small hook for the umbrella, I parked the vacuum in the corner beside the DVD binder (yes, we keep our DVDs in a binder), I added the shoe rack, and placed my yoga mat in the back.


Josh's hat now goes on a hook, and using all white hangers, I hung Josh's jackets on the left and my jackets on the right...



We still have the blankets that we use on the couch most often folded up at the top. I wish we could have a little basket for them, but the closet is beneath the stairs, so the ceiling is slanted and low.  I don't think the basket thing is going to happen.  But overall, I think it looks pretty good.  It's the first thing I see when I walk in the door, so if it is organized and clean and pretty, I will always be happy :-)

On another note, I went to WalMart yesterday for spray paint to do a test run on a door knob.  All of the door hardware in our whole house is brass.  We hate it.  We looked into purchasing new door knobs and handles and hinges and locks, but when we found what we wanted (which was the cheapest thing you could get in silver) and added up how much it would cost to do every door in our house, we realized it would be a huge investment.  But I recently saw on young house love how they spray painted theirs.  I am going to give it a try soon.  I think I will do a test run on the door handle on the inside of the office closet.  That way, if it goes all wrong, I can scrap that idea altogether or try again with different products after I reevaluate.  I will update more about that later.  Do you have brass door hardware?  Has anyone out there tried spray painting door hardware before?

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Last Weekend of Freedom

Tomorrow is the big day.  School starts again.  On our last weekend of freedom, we were accompanied by my dad and his new girlfriend.  It was the first time that they saw our house, so that's super exciting for us.  We love having visitors!  And even more than that, we love having visitors come back again so they can see our house progress in person.  We went out to lunch at The Shark, my favorite restaurant, also mentioned here.  We spent some time shopping on the boardwalk, laying out at the beach, making awesome dinners, and watching movies.  We even met my Uncle and his daughter yesterday and went to the zoo.  My 7-year-old cousin was the flower girl in our wedding:

What a cutie!

After spending hours at the zoo, the only really great shots I got were not of any zoo animals at all.  I almost stepped on this beautiful butterfly:


And this photo of my cousin pointing to something on the underside of a fake piece of wood:


All in all, we had a great weekend.  My dad also surprised me with a gift he bought in Haiti on his cruise:


A scroll???  Nope....


Some original artwork painted on canvas.  It is really cool, matches some colors in our home, and has music stuff on it.  Not to mention that no one else in the world has it.  I am really excited to get it framed, but have never had anything custom framed before... any suggestions on where to go?

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Busy Bee

As the new school year is approaching, I am beginning to feel the tiniest pinches of stress in my neck.

I actually really enjoy my job (as long as I'm not thinking about the BS that is public education).  And I am a super hard worker, so I am always keeping myself busy.  Even though I am often really busy, I am enjoying it so I have lots of motivation to continue my work ethic.  Every year that I have worked so far I have had a few things that have caused me stress.  I can't wait for an entire school year where the only thing I have to worry about is doing my job well.  For instance, the first two years of teaching for me were in new schools each time.  This is my third year teaching but only my first year of seeing the same kids as last year.  So that has been taken off of my shoulders.  It's always hard getting acquainted to your new building, students, administrators, coworkers, etc.  While there are a few personnel changes at our school, at least I have a good idea of what's to come.  And I will no longer be the newbie (sp?)

But, as always, I take things overboard.  Here is a "short" list of what is to come for the school year that is starting in two days:

  • I am working my regular job full time.  PK-5 General Music teacher.  Because of some changes at my school this year, I am going to be teaching more classes this year, sometimes 11 in one day... and with less planning time.  And I am starting a chorus, which I didn't have last year.
  • I just got hired for another position after school every day teaching a program called STARS.  It's about project-based learning for students who are "at-risk".  By the way--I hate that term.  I don't think it's fair to label students that way.  But I am excited for the program in general.  I will probably teach general ed stuff and music stuff.  SO, instead of being at work from 8a-4p every day, I will be there from 8a-6p.  Less time for at home stuff, but I am happy to be getting paid more.  Josh also plans to take advantage of some after-school teaching opportunities at his school this year as well.
  • I am still charging full speed ahead in my master's program.  I am going to be taking one class in the Fall and one in the Spring.  One class doesn't sound like much, but it really is.  We meet in a virtual classroom once per week and I am pretty much spending the rest of my free time reading or working on a paper or project.
  • A friend of ours, Wesley Rice, recently moved here with another good friend of mine who will be teaching in my county.  Wesley owns a clarinet repair shop in Salisbury and is starting lessons at his shop.  Josh and I are both trying to gain some students at the shop and make some extra dough.  Check out his website.

So, since it is the beginning of the year, I am still really excited and have lots of motivation to start these new and exciting projects.  We will see how it goes!  Please pray for me :-)

Friday, August 19, 2011

Before and Not-So-After: Dining Room

Post #2 in the Before and Not-So-After series.  Our dining room is connected to the living room and kitchen, it serves as a corner to the two.  It is the same yellow as the living room, but for some reason it always looks brighter in the dining room.  We were SO excited to even have a dining room!  We have only ever had an eat in kitchen or no room for a table at all.  TV stands were our dining room table for some time.  So when we moved in, we were excited to make our dining room look like a dining room.  Here is a picture of the first day we moved in:


What we like about the dining room:
  1. The light fixture.  It matches the living room light fixture.  I also love the fact that it's not brass.
  2. The crown molding matches everywhere in the house, including the chair rail in the dining room.
  3. The openness... even though it's pretty small, it opens to the living room and kitchen through large entryways and no doors.
  4. The openness continues with a sliding glass door to the deck with a view of our back yard
What we dont like:
  1. It's very small.  No big table for us!
  2. That's it.
Here is our Not-So-After/Current Dining Room:

Whoops... a little crooked.
The furniture is from my step-dad's step-mom.  She gave us the table and the china cabinet. We are really lucky that we haven't had to buy dining room furniture in the last few years.  But we are ready to have our own furniture now!

Goals:

#1. Paint.  We LOVE the look of grey dining rooms.  And it's something that we both agree on.  And it matches the color pallet that we chose for the downstairs.  We have lots of inspiration photos for grey dining rooms, including:




We really love the grey colors and the contrast of stark white against cool grey with dark wood furniture. I like most of those photos, but we want to go for a much simpler and less elaborate look than what you just saw.

#2.  Buy a new table.  Dark wood.  VERY simple.  Clean lines, pointed corners, rectangle

#3.  Get rid of china cabinet (sad, because step-step-grandma gave it to us) and install white floating shelves like these pics below.  This is where we would have some china, some glasses, some art, and some vases and brightly colored decorations.  Kind of like these:


Photobucket

The dining room will probably be painted before any furniture is purchased.  That's okay with us.  We are going to try to take our time and buy stuff when we can afford it.  Plus, it's not a huge priority because we already have a table to eat on. 

On a sad note, I start school on Monday.  This is going to be a super duper busy year full of making money, spending money, going to grad school, working a few extra jobs (more on that later) and balancing a home/social life.  YIKES.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

I'm a Closet Blogger

Big News!  I am featured as a guest blogger on friend Mrs. Puma's blog today!   My closet is officially the first room in our house that is completed.  Check out my post on Puma Life:

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Before and Not-So-After: Living Room

I really wanted to show some updates to friends and family who have seen our house. It is coming along, slowly but surely. I titled it Before and Not-So-After because none of the rooms are actually "finished" (except my closet--I will post about that later). So my goal is to show the before and the current and to inform you about our to-do list for each room.  I will start with the living room because it is the first room that you see when you walk in (except the foyer) and the room that we spend the most time in (alone and with guests).

Our living room is the very sunny yellow color that prevails throughout the majority of our entire home.  Here is the very boring before picture:


Things that we like: 
  • The carpet.  Although we would rather have hardwood here, we are happy with the color/style/cleanliness of the carpet that is here to stay.
  • The blinds.  They were here when we moved in.  I don't know if they will stay forever, but they are very nice blinds and we were happy that the house came with them.
  • The light fixture.  It matches all of the others downstairs.  So that's good.
  • Yellow walls.  Not too bright.  Not too dull.  Makes me feel happy.
Things we didn't like:
  • The size and set up of the room.  It is virtually impossible to set it up in more than one way (if you want a TV).  And we still wish it was a tiny bit bigger.
  • The yellow walls.  I know I said we liked them, but there are also things we don't like.  We both have a similar vision for our living room and although we think the yellow is warm and happy, our vision doesn't include much yellow.
Here is the Not-So-After/Current living room:

Sorry about the color, I had a lighting issue with this photo


Things we have done so far:
  • Bought new couches from Ashley Furniture.  This was an adventure.  Josh and I have a hard time agreeing on things like this because we have different tastes and ideas of budget.  But after many days of walking through many different furniture stores and bringing many different fabric swatches home, we finally agreed on the Ashley Zia Couch and Loveseat in mocha.  It was officially our first-ever furniture purchase together.  If this is a sign of what's to come, I'm terrified!
  • New TV!  We just purchased and received our first ever TV purchase together.  We bought a 47" LG TV.  That's all I know about it.  If you're really interested, ask my hubby.

  • We used our old TV stand pictured here and just took the top off.

This picture is from our old townhouse in Salisbury.
  • We ordered a new TV stand! We actually just did this yesterday.  We had been searching online for the perfect stand for a while and finally came across it at none other than Best Buy!  We waited and waited for it to go on sale and when it finally did yesterday, we ordered it right away.  It should come in sometime next week.
Our vision for our living room and downstairs in general was a sort of beach-y look.  We wanted to incorporate cool colors downstairs and warmer colors upstairs.  We love the beach feel of homes and since we live close to the ocean now, it makes perfect sense.  Let me make myself clear: I like the feel of beachy-ness.  I want to create that through cool colors and simple but bright decor.  Not glass lamp bases filled with seashells or tons of dead starfish on the walls.  (I apologize to anyone who has one of those lamps with the seashells)


So, we found the perfect color pallet for our downstairs!  Sherwin Williams has a line of HGTV line of paint and one of their color collections matches our color vision for the downstairs almost to a T. It's called Coastal Cool.

CC 01 Recycled Glass

CC 02 Watery

CC 03 Pier

CC 04 Comfort Gray

CC 05 Lemongrass

CC 06 Eider White

CC 07 Sea Salt

CC 08 Cooled Blue

CC 09 Wheat Grass

CC 10 Coastal Plain

CC 11 Restful

CC 12 Fawn Brindle

CC 13 Accessible Beige

CC 14 Nurture Green

CC 15 Scanda

CC 16 Rapture Blue

CC 17 Hearts of Palm

CC 18 Cay

CC 19 Curio Gray

CC 20 Blissful Blue


Now, this isn't exact and it certainly is a bit limiting.  We would hope to incorporate a few brighter colors, too.  We don't know if we will actually use this brand of paint, as we don't know anything yet about quality or price.  But it's a good starting point.  Our kitchen most closely matches the green on the bottom called "Hearts of Palm":

This isn't the best lighting, but if you click on the picture and enlarge it, you will be able to see the green color.

We have been talking a lot about painting the living room a cool teal color.  We thought it would look good with the white crown molding and the sofas we picked out.  It turns out that on the Ashley website, our exact couches are staged against teal walls with white crown molding:

Sofa & Loveseat

We would really like to paint our dining room a cool gray color in the future.  And our foyer and staircase are already a nice, cool beige color which we will be happy with for a long time. Our main priority is to get some paint on the walls in the living room.  But a few things need to happen before we can make that possible.  Here is our Pre-Paint To-Do List:
  1. Wait for the TV stand to be shipped and make sure we like it and like the color of wood against a teal wall.
  2. Mount our TV on the wall (mounting hardware is already purchased)
  3. Install new in-ceiling speakers.  Yep, bought 'em yesterday.  Are you surprised?  If you know me at all, you are very surprised.  I will talk about this more at the end.
  4. Run all of the wires through the wall and install all electronics. We definitely don't want to paint and then cut a huge hole in the wall to run wire.  But it certainly can't stay like this forever:
Those wires are driving me crazy!
About the new speaker purchase:  If you know anything about me, you know I am not a risk-taker.  So this post may surprise you in many ways.
  1. I am actually going to paint my living room teal.  This is not in accordance with my simple, clean, white usual self.  I mean white as a metaphor to blandness.  Not to the color of my skin.
  2. Because I am not a risk taker, it is unusual for me to spend money on non-essentials.  And it is unusual for me to spend a large amount of dough on anything all at once.  However, you have seen through this blog that we have made the following purchases in the last 2 months:
    • A house.  Largest check I ever wrote.
    • A new couch and a new love seat
    • A new, large, flat screen TV
    • In-ceiling speakers
    • TV stand--the real kind of wood.  No pressed wood or laminate for us.
"How did you do that?!", you ask?  Well, because I am not a risk taker, I have spent the last two years working modest paying jobs (teacher and teacher) and I have literally saved every penny that I didn't need to spend (with the exception of a few trips to New York and Company and our favorite Italian restaurant).  Josh is the opposite in this respect.  He is a risk-taker and I am super proud of him for not spending a dollar more than he needed to in the last year of our marriage.  And because he did that part my way, he was happy to be able to pick out our TV, speakers, and TV stand.  He is really interested in those things and I left it all up to him.  Plus, I don't really care to know about the specifics of different LED TVs.  So, I am happy to spend some of our carefully saved moo-lah on things that we really want for our home.

Plus, once we get the room painted, it's my turn to spend money on decorations!