Christmas morning with the Martins

Christmas morning with the Martins includes

our annual Christmas morning picture

a stocking hung with care

Mike sportin' his new threads - a cowboy hat & Braves shirt

my wren that Mikey made for me

two blue birds and some mistle toe soap

handmade

Every year for as long as Mike and I have been together, we've made handmade Christmas cards for each other. Since we've been super busy house-sitting, moving, and celebrating Christmas early with family I didn't think we'd have any time to get our annual cards made -- which made me really sad. However, we had a night this week when we had a few hours after dinner to work on some things. Mike worked on framing another window [I'll post about that soon!] and I worked on his Christmas card.

It's not completely finished because in all of our chaos I didn't bring any glue [I was lucky to have remembered the paper!] but you'll get the idea!

I'm pretty excited about how it's turning out!

you can see our cards from last year here

the life of a nomad

First...

Mikey's so, so, so tird after all that sanding & mudding

Starting the clean up process. It took us over an hour to get the floors cleaned...in this ONE room.

Do you see what I see?! PRIMED walls baby!

AND baseboards!!! (:

Well folks, we're at it again. We've been in the house for a little over a week ... literally with only a week's worth of stuff. We finally put the mattress on the frame - only to take it down 2 days later. And, I managed to make it to the grocery store to put some bare essentials in the fridge. But, once again we had to stuff everything into the laundry room and nook because those are the only two rooms with tiled floors and Scoot, the floor dude, is coming back today to finish them! (: Since we have to be off of them for a few days we've packed up our bags and are heading back to Mama & Papa Martin's. I came into work this morning saying that I feel like I'm back in college -- except that I'm bringing home a car full of two people's belongings instead of just mine. I'm pretty sure that I didn't bring home as much stuff for Christmas break in college as I have in my car right now...and this was only a weeks worth of stuff! We're going to have to do a mighty-lotta-cleanin'-and-sortin' out our stuff before we officially move!

*We'll be home for Christmas*

this crazy life

Friends, I am ecstatic to be able to tell you that Scott, "the floor dude," is returning TOMORROW to finish our floors!! But, there is much to be done [do you see a recurring theme?]. For the most part, we're ready for him to come -- all but one room is ready. It's the living room, which just happens to be the largest room in the house [granted, none of them are very large]. We've mudded and sanded, mudded and sanded, mudded and sanded until I don't ever want to mud or sand anything ever again. Too bad the laundry room is still lacking a wall and there are a couple of spots that need to be sanded before they can be painted. Anyway, after a couple of ate nights, we're ready to prime the walls! Hopefully they'll dry super fast so we can at least get the base coat of paint on them as well!

OH YEA!!! Huge news: our house is COMPLETELY 100% sided! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you to the men who gave their entire weekend to help us get this monster done (: It's so neat to drive up and see a somewhat finished house! Next up for the outside: gutters, shutters, window boxes and re-constructing the gable on the front porch. I cannot wait to show you pictures when these 4 things are done!

when it rains...

Well, we had an unfortunate accident situation at our beloved Tyler Street house yesterday. Around lunch time our house got broken into and we had about $1000 worth of tools stolen. Thankfully our neighbor Dana was at home and caught the criminals in the act, so she called the police. The men still made out with some [very minimal] stuff, but it could have been a LOT worse had Dana not been home. I will say, I wasn't nearly as angry as I would've thought having our house broken into...the things that were stolen were just that - things. Yes, it's a bummer to have to spend money to replace them, but that's the good thing about our "stuff" -- it's replaceable!

After all of this, we decided we'd go ahead and unofficially move in so the house would at least look occupied [while it's only us and a few days worth of clothes at a time] to hopefully deter anyone else from getting a crazy notion of robbing us again. [Should they try again, I will shoot ... and I do not miss.]

Since we now have no choice but to be at the house during the evenings and there is nothing to but work I feel like we're going to have everything that was left hanging over our heads finished in no time. Well...as soon as we replace the tools that were stolen, since of course they were the exact ones we need to finish things like the window molding / trim work. Go figure. Anyway, I'll try to share our daily doings - even if it's something small (: 

I have to brag on Mike for just a minute. Earlier this week while I had dinner with my gal pals, Mike slaved dedicated 7 hours to working on the living room after a full day of travel and work. He [with BD's help] tackled the disgusting diamond in the ruff of a living room we have. The walls were in desperate need of the mud/sand process, so he got started on it. Pretty soon we'll have a primed and painted living room!

Here's what I worked on last night -- the mantel! It's one of my favorite things in the house, partly because it's original to the house..and I have some super cute ideas for decorating thanks to Pinterest!! I can't wait to see how it turns out once it's painted and the bricks are treated!

Step 1: Sand & apply paint thinner 

  

  Step 2: Prime!

PS: Don't you just love the floors?

weekend in charleston

this is long overdue!

game night
strollin' around downtown
these birds. oh, these birds. they put on a show..i got some fabulous pictures that will be hanging in the bathroom with our awesome bird shower curtain
kaminski's