I'm a strong believer in the fact that every now and then everyone needs a day off.  For no reason other then to relax.  Give yourself a break from the daily grind.  That's exactly what we did today.

We slept in until 9:30 then got up and showered.  Afterwards we decided to go to the Cox Communications store to pick up a new remote control (ours has been acting up for a few weeks).  On the way home we stopped off at Albertson's for a few items.  Hubs saw that ribs were pretty inexpensive, so we picked some up to make for dinner.

Once we got home we both had the energy to actually clean and cook.  We're usually tired and ready to relax once we get home from work.  But I was able to vacuum and finally take down the Christmas decorations (finally!).  I set up our new kitchen table, which I love!  It's just so simple, and the perfect size for us.

I was also able to set out a sign that my brother and sister-in-law bought us for Christmas and clean up all the papers, books and boxes for moving that we taking over our sofa table.  We were starting to look like the beginning stages of a hoarder.  And nobody wants that!

 

The sign says says: "Shafer" and under that "Established in 2009".

The Hubs spent all afternoon boiling and cooking the ribs we bought from Albertson's.  He even made his own BBQ sauce.  He put his heart into those!  (You'll get to see our dinner in my Wordless Wednesday post tomorrow).  He also emptied the trash, and there was a lot of it.  I've been cleaning out the house and getting rid of stuff we just don't need. 

Once all the cooking and cleaning was finished we were able to sit down, relax and just enjoy eachothers company.  This is the highlight of my day.  I think everyone deserves to take a day off and just relax.

I don't mean to be updating my blog one room at a time, but then again it kinds of works out best that way. That way there isn't just one massive entry then I have nothing to write about for a few weeks. HA!

Anyways, my closet is one of my favorite rooms in the house. This time around I decided to actually organize it in a way that really works for me. I have my tank tops, t-shirts, short sleeve shirts, long sleeve shirts (for work, since I have to cover my tattoos), hoodies, cardigans/jackets and the few dresses that I have. I also have a new addition to it -- this snazzy dresser that I painted! The dresser helps out a lot too, now I have somewhere to put my bathing suits and some other random stuff. I also decided to move Rob's shoes into my cloest so they weren't all over the floor in his, plus it gives him more room in his closet now. Having my clothes in different sections now totally works for me. Before I had them all mixed together and I could never find anything to wear! But now I love it!

I just had to share my new and improved closet!

I am absolutely in love with my new "kitchen island". It's not really an island, but I don't know what else to call it. My new kitchen cabinet? Anyways, it's amazing! It's huge, right now inside it I have a veggie steamer, a very large pot, skillet, and a crock pot. And I still have so much room left for other stuff! I need to put my George Foreman Grill in there, but first I must clean it. And on top I have my Kitchen Aid (that I could finally bring out of the garage!), toaster and coffee pot. And there's still a bunch of space!

My wonderful mother came over today and helped me clean house. It was so sweet of her since she really didn't need to. I don't know what I would have done without her today. She kind of just took charge, which I didn't mind at all. She swept up all the animal fur balls all over the house, helped me move a bunch of furniture and a bunch of other random thing. But all in all, my house looks amazing right now! The only thing I really have left to do is mop the kitchen. The floor looks awful, but that will change tomorrow.

I also hung some pictures up around the house, none in the living room yet. I'm waiting until we find out what our seating arangement is going to be before I start hanging some stuff up. I'm very tired now. I worked my butt of today! And Rob's still not home so, I'm starting to feel a little lonely. :( I'm going to watch some HGTV. I'm definitely going to post more tomorrow.

I feel like a big fat blog failure lately! I haven't updated since the 10th! I know many people don't follow me, but I still feel like a failure and I mainly blog for me. I've just been really stressed and distracted lately with all the work that's going on at my house at the moment. Once the floors are 100% finished and everything is back there is should be, I'm going to make a perfect spot for me to sit down a blog.

FLOOR UPDATE:

The main thing that's been stressing me out are my floors! Tuesday was an awful day! We were so excited to finally be able to get our floors done on Tuesday. It was all set that I would take the day off work, we would get the floors done and then that week we would start putting together our gorgeous entertainment center. WELL! It turns out that our floors that we thought was going to be a one day job really turned out to be a THREE day job. They never mentioned that to us. Very frustrating!

On Tuesday though, Rob's Gramma & Husband, Art decided to come over to watch the guys put the floor down. I had previously told Rob that I didn't want them to come over. If he would have been there, then that would have been fine. But I didn't particularly want to hang out with them. So they were bugging me the whole time. I was seriously about to go insane.

While the floor guys were working they ran into some issues, apparently. They didn't decide to share this information with me (THE HOMEOWNER) but with Rob's Gramma and Art. That was the last straw. Bad enough they were there, but now the floor people are telling them about the issues that were going on with the floors. So I decide to go over to talk to the guys and figure out what the issue is. Turns out the floor in our bedroom and living room needed to be leveled and ground down. Which meant extra time and extra money. But this guy couldn't tell me how much. So I had to wait an hour and a half to two hours for the owner of the company, Jason, to come to our house to talk to us. The previous day the owner had actually come to our house and seen the rooms that we were getting the floors done in and he said there wouldn't be any issues. A little bit later Rob's dad showed up so he would be there when the owner got there.

So, when Jason finally showed up he went around the house and looked at the spots that needed work done on them. After that he told us that it was going to cost $400 for all the extra work. We had previously agreed on paying $3,000 for all the work, that's it! I told them I was going to need to talk to Rob about it, and Jason and his workers went to Home Depot to pick up the extra supplies and the trim that was needed for the floors. Shortly after Rob called the owner from work to argue/discuss the situation with him. In the end we only have to pay $120 for the leveling material and that's it. Jason is going to pay the other guys for their labor.

We thought our floors were going to be 100% finished on Thursday, but when we get home we see the the transition pieces from room to room were not put it. (And I guess they are back ordered, which they never mentioned.) And they ran out of trim so there was no trim put up in any of the closets. And apparently the doors on the closets in two bedroom and the hallway won't fit anymore so we need to get new railing for the floor for them to fit, which I don't get why they even pulled the railing up in the first place. All in all, I AM NOT HAPPY WITH THIS COMPANY! We have not heard a single thing from them since they stopped work yesterday.

Why is it just one thing after another?

Next post I'll write about our counterfeit money experience! I can't believe I haven't shared this story yet!

Well, we finished painting the drywalled section in our living room. I think it could still use a few more touch ups. I also spackled all the nail holes around the living room and painted over those. It's starting to look really good. We still have to ad some floorboard to the bottom. We've checked Home Depot twice. We were thinking about taking a look at Lowe's, but I came up with an idea. There is a strip behind our washer and dryer that are still in good condition. So we're thinking about peeling that off and using it in the living room. Makes sense anyways since we're going to pull the floorboard up in the laundry room anyways. We just need to be careful while pull it off the wall.


I've been wanting to go look AT couches, but Rob doesn't want to. I just want to see if we can even find one that's going to work for us. I haven't found very many chocolate brown ones and that's frustrating. I've looked on CraigsList a bunch. I've found a lot of tan ones and a few chocolate brown. But the chocolate brown ones other have leather on the bottom or they are too long. :(
We're still waiting to hear back from Chase about the credit card I applied for on the 15th of July! They're giving us the run around. They've sent me two letters asking me for different things. After the second letter I finally decided to call them. They finally gave me a fax number, so I faxed them the information they wanted. That was Tuesday (4th of August). I just want to know the answer! But on the 4th they told me I would hear back within 7 to 15 business days! Applying for a credit card is almost as difficult as buying a house now. In fact, it might be harder. Ha.
All I want it: my floors to be done, my entertainment center to be put together and a pretty chocolate brown couch that will fit in my living room perfectly! Why can't that just happen?

The man (Frank) that is drywalling our fireplace shut came out to work on it today. He got quite a bit done. I think tomorrow he might finish, but I'm not positive. Once he's done all we'll have left to do is buy the floor board to match and then paint it!

I am so excited to announce that we picked out what our new flooring is going to look like! We had a sales representative from French Quarter Flooring's come out last night and give us an estimate. We decided to go with laminate flooring as opposed to tile. We're going to go with the one on top in the picture below; the more red one. It looks really nice! I cannot wait until we get it put in. We're not sure when that's going to be though. Soon, I hope! :)

And since we put a deposit down on the flooring we got this really awesome rug! It's really nice, and quite large. My parents both really like it, they offered to buy it from us! Ha!

This is it before:

This is the fireplace now: We have decided now that we're going to take everything out of it and close it up completely. The black section and bricks aren't being held in my anything. We can just pull them right out. So we're going to pull all that out and drywall it shut then paint it to match the rest of the living room. Which I think is so freakin' exciting because that's what I wanted to do in the first place, but Rob wasn't really havin' that, but now he's perfectly fine with it. We've also talked to a guy Rob knows who will do tile cheaper then this guy quotes us today. He told us that it would be $3.50 a square foot! When he told us that, Rob and I thought he was joking! But I really hope we get at least the living room tiled soon! We got our entertainment center today! It's in boxes, but we still got it! Let me remind you want it looks like.

So, tonight we're going to Home Depot with the guys that's going to work on our fireplace. He's going to help us pick out tile, grout and whatever else we need to make this happen. Then bright and early tomorrow he's going to start working on our fireplace. Tonight we should probably start clearing the area around the fireplace so he has a place to work. And I definitely need to clean off the mantle, that would be a smart idea.

I really need to clean my house. Ever since this sun burn I haven't wanted to do ANYTHING around my house. So stuff is just piling up. I haven't folded my clothes that I washed on Sunday! And I generally love folding clothes. Well, this weekend I will be a slacker no more. I have a goal and I'm going to acheive it:
A CLEAN HOUSE! :)

Well, I'm at work so, I should probably... work. :(

I have been forgetting to post a new picture of my office shelves, so I'm going to do it now. I really like the way they look now, much better then it did before. The whole room just looks tons better. I should take pictures of the whole room, but I'm just a slacker. :)