Watch the Garden Grow

I put some veggie plants into my new garden a few weeks ago and most of them are starting to show definite growth. The tomato plants have blossoms on them and one even has some baby tomatoes!! Other than two different types of tomatoes (one of which is called "Mortgage Lifter," appropriate, right?) I planted summer squash, zucchini, eggplant and cucumber. Everything looks like it's doing good except for the eggplant. Probably because it's in a shadier area than the rest of them. I probably won't put vegetables there next year unless they magically grow and produce a lot, which I don't think will happen...

From L to R: 2 tomato plants, 4 zucchini, 1 cucumber plant

 Summer Squash!

Zucchini & Eggplant

 

My poor little eggplant...

It's my first true attempt at gardening. My mom has had a garden and it has done really well in previous years but I didn't spend much time in it. I'm glad she knows about it and can pass her knowledge on to me because sometimes I feel pretty clueless about stuff :) Forget sometimes, I feel that way most of the time haha. If any of you have gardening tips and advice please feel free to leave a comment.  I'm really nice & won't bite :)

-Kaitlin

Chalkboard Menu

The previous owners of our house did a fairly good job of taking things with them when they moved out. They did leave some miscellaneous pool junk and some old sand box toys that I didn't really find appealing, but they did a lot better job than the previous owners of my parent's house who left a whole lotta junk. Ick. They did leave some relatively nice & useful things though, like the [now] yellow picnic table and this pretty snazzy chalk board. Honestly, they seem like nice people and I'm pretty sure the previous lady of the house and I would have gotten along quite wonderfully.

Here's how they left it; isn't it cute??

I thought it was really nice of them. I left it up for awhile and

 then decided that it was time to transform it into.... Our Weekly Menu!

Now Mike can't ask what's for dinner and I know exactly what I'm making ahead of time. It also really helps with planning the trip to the grocery store and calculating finances. Win-win and super cool looking too, if I do say so myself. It goes without saying that it was a super easy project too.

Chalk to ya later,
Kaitlin

Picnic Table Painting

Well! It has been quite the eventful month! After writing the last post, we attempted to go to the closing, only to be told that there was a slight glitch and they had to postpone. We ended up closing the next day, which wasn't a huge deal, but it did set our plans back and we didn't get as much accomplished as we hoped. After we closed and picked up the keys we started cleaning and painting Aislyn's room. It turned out so cute! I'll post picks soon, right now there's laundry waiting to be put away...

Moving in went smoothly, with the exception that no large furniture would fit up the staircase.... so they put it through the 2nd floor window. I pretended I didn't see that and was involved as little as possible... what if they dropped out new bedroom set?! ahh...

We've slowly settled in and gotten used to the routine. I started my summer college sessions and it stinks. It's four days a week and a ton of reading, plus the dance recital is coming up too so between that I'm staying super busy. But I did happen to paint a picnic table for Aislyn :)

The previous owners left it at the house, and it was in really good shape other than some weathering:

 I sanded it down and then primed it:

 Then painted it BRIGHT yellow!!

Aislyn loves it and keeps saying "Mommy paint my table yellow!" 

She's so cute sometimes.

I'm looking forward to seeing her play on and use this table a lot this summer.

Post soon!

Kaitlin

Our AWESOME New Home :)

 

Today is the big day! May 15th babyy! We close on our new home today! We are all excited, nervous and a tad stressed, but overwhelmingly happy. Aislyn is probably the most excited out of all of us. Yesterday we had the final walk through and when we went up to the second story she led everyone down the hall saying, "My room! My room! So pretty!" and then went up to the 3rd floor finished attic and had a little accident. We've regressed a little in the potty training area, which is to be expected...

We are doing a little painting this week to freshen things up and then we are moving in this weekend! Once we are all in an settled I can start posting room updates and fun things around our *NEW* house! But for now I have to get ready and go to the closing.

Happy, happy day!!

Kaitlin

Father-Daughter Dance

Mike took Aislyn to her first sweetheart dance at the YMCA on Friday night, and boy let me tell you, she had a GREAT time. We got her all dolled up in a pretty pink dress, painted her finger nails, curled her hair and put on her new white dress shoes and took pictures before heading over. Mike also cleaned up good :)

I came in towards the end of the dance and she was running around and dancing like a maniac. She was one of the younger ones there but she was probably having the grandest time. It was SO cute. Mike and Ais had some pictures taken together at the dance itself but we haven't received them yet. I'll post them when we do (look below!). We expected her to crash on the way home, but she was so excited, she babbled and talked the entire way back and took way longer than expected to fall asleep. All signs of a great time.

Her Southern roots are showing!

Happy Sunday!
Kaitlin


edited to add photos:

Here are the pictures of Mike and Aislyn at the Sweetheart dance taken by YMCA staff :)

Aren't they darlin'?

Freezer Makeover!

Mike and I scored a freezer for $50 off craigslist recently, but it needed some work. It had some rust spots on the front and a paint chunk missing inside. Instead of sticking to white we decided to go all out and paint it turquoise! Because who doesn't need a bright blue freezer? I can't wait to get it set up in the basement. This was a super simple and fast project.

Here's before:

Here's some of the rust spots:

And AFTER:

The tape on the hinges and handle wasn't removed in the pictures, but you get the idea. We'll probably do a second coat after we move into our new house (we close May 15th!! YAY!). At that point I'll post some updated pictures that are hopefully better quality. I'm also toying with the idea of sealing it to give it more of a durable finish, but it's not going to be in a high traffic area so I'm not sure it that's necessary. 

How do you like it?!

-Kaitlin

Hello!

Well, that was quite the vacation from blogging! Life has gotten in the way since I wrote my last post. Lots of good stuff has happened and some not-so-good... We've found a house we love and are in the process of buying it, we close May 15th. With that comes a lot of stress and worry, but we know in the end it's what is best for our family and we will succeed! We've also had a trip to the ER, because little Aislyn had a mean allergic reaction to an antibiotic. Never again will she have a penicillin based  medicine. She had hives and her joints were all swollen, nothing life threatening, but man, that was scary! It's also the end of the school semester for me, which means professors don't think we have enough on our plate, and throw another paper or ten on top of the ones you already are falling behind on. YAY! [sarcasm.]

But overall, life is good. Life is especially good cause I went shopping yesterday and found my favorite pair of jeans ever are on clearance and marked down to $20. You can't buy half a tank of gas for that. So naturally I went back today and bought a couple more pairs. Hey, I needed them, right?

I'll post in the next few days a revamp of a freezer we recently bought off craigslist that desperately needs some love. But first, I gotta take that love and cover the freezer in it or you're going to have a horribly disappointing blog post.

Thanks for coming back & remembering me!

Kaitlin