Finally, this is what we did today…

We packed up the random tree in our entrway.

I called it a random tree because it’s been naked since the first week in January, we just didn’t get a chance to actually haul it to the basement (or wherever we planned to put it). We also caught up on 2 weeks worth of mail and laundry, which I wanted to take hysterical pictures of to link up to Emily’s Real Homes, Real Messes, Real Life party, but my camera died.

No we’re not the laziest people ever, we just got hit with holidays, then vacation, then sickness and suddenly, it’s January 23rd. See, I even made a calendar….

I should title this “How I spent my winter break” since grad school technically started up again this week. My first on-campus course is tomorrow night and my first assignments for my online class are due tomorrow. I thought my winter break would be a nice little time to focus on house projects and well, it was a big whaaaamp whaaaamp on the home front. Luckily summer vacation is just 13 weeks away and at least we managed to get some clean clothes ready for the week!! 🙂

I survived 8 hours of work today, but my body is screaming for some rest. So I’m going to take it easy tonight and give you some pictures of our house from January of last year, when it was freshly drywalled. It was so exciting at the time, but I must add how small it looks with nothing in it!

The family room…

Half of the kitchen, sans cabinets (those came in March I think…)

The dining/living room, which I showed you last week…

The entryway…

Sometimes I feel like we’re not making enough progress, but looking at these and seeing all that we’ve accomplished in less than a year, while working, schoolin’ and having lives…I guess we’re not doing that bad of a job 🙂

Hopefully this weekend I can get back to my regular picture taking around this joint. For now, snuggles, milkshakes and Jersey Shore.

“Imma good peeeerson!”- Snooki, 2010.

I have spread my illness to Mike, so we were both home today drowning our sicky sorrows on the couch. My fever and nausea have morphed into sneezing, coughing and watery eyes, which I will GLADLY accept. At least now I can sit up, as of this afternoon.

So I was just in the kitchen, debating whether or not to have soup, toast or soup and toast for dinner, when I realized that I never showed you pictures of my beloved stand mixer in it’s new permanent home. Since I am still not at the top of my game, I didn’t have the energy to find the camera, find the memory card and upload pictures. So I decided to take pictures with my iPhone quickly. Being the overachiever that I am, I remember that I installed the Hipstamatic app a while back and never used it. Time to put it to use!

We previously kept fresh veggies in our Ikea Stockholm bowl in the corner…

But now…

I tried some of the different film styles that come with the app…

The view finder was reeeally hard to work, or maybe I’m just sick and impatient. But I wanted to get some pictures of how small this thing actually looks on the counter. We weren’t going to keep it out, but when we saw the small footprint it left, we loved it as some new countertop eye candy. Here are some standard iPhone pictures of the size…

I hate cluttered countertops, so this worked out nicely and adds some pretty shine 🙂

Plus have I mentioned how easy it is to make cookies now?? I love you, stand mixer.

Now back to that soup….

Last week, I started drafting a post about all of our big plans for our upcoming 3 day weekend. This is as far as I got with it…

“Since Mike and I both work full-time, we are always counting down to the weekend and potential projects. We haven’t had a chance to really do anything the past few weekends because of the holidays and vacation, but this weekend we have to ourselves AND it’s a three day weekend! I start up a new semester of grad school next week, so I feel like this is my final (and first) weekend to tackle anything house related without being distracted.”

All was hopeful and dandy, and then I got a stomach virus/flu/still don’t know what I have. I haven’t left the house since Saturday, so obviously my big dreams were squashed. We planned to hit up the Philly Home Show, hang our new curtains and organize a bit. Oh and disassemble our Christmas tree, which has been naked since before we left for Disney, but is still standing since we got home late Sunday night.

But on Saturday, before we were hit with the plague, we were out running a few errands and managed to hit up the Crate & Barrel outlet sale and West Elm. I’ll tell you about my Crate & Barrel finds when I have the energy to actually unpack the bag, but I cannot hold my West Elm find in anymore!

Remember this Christmas tree I wanted with the hefty $69 price tag?

Well it was on sale for $8.97. Oh and it was 20% off of that, so I paid $7.17 for it!!! And it’s giiiinormous, like 3 feet tall. I basically skipped out of the store.

Another thing I learned during this West Elm trip? I have a $10 threshold. If I like something and it’s less than $10, I buy it. More than that and I’m like whoooa! too much! So I also picked up two things for $8 each that I’m not sure about now. I’ll keep you posted.

But for now, back to bed 🙁

Today is a milestone for my little bloggy, this is my 100th post! Cue the balloon drop! Okay I don’t have a balloon drop, but I do have this video I found of the parade through the Magic Kingdom in Disney…

This song has been in our heads for a week. Though I didn’t know the words were “Celebrate a dream come true” and I normally just run around singing “Celebrate da datty doooo”. I also perform the arm waving dance, which I did once while entering the Magic Kingdom and my beloved iPhone took a flying leap out of my pocket and onto the concrete. Mike told me this was a sign from God to never do that dance in public again. Luckily I can still bust it out in the house!

It took me about 4 months (of actual “serious” blogging) to get to this point. So I figured I’d set out some goals to accomplish by my next milestones. A list, shall we?

By my 200th post:

(via)

I would like to have painted another room in this house. Whether it’s the office, powder room or master, within another 4 months I hope to have told you about some new color on our walls!

By my 300th post:

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We have been wanting to add some lighting to our landscaping since our yard is ridiculously dark at night. I would also like to change out some of our builder given landscaping with maybe some more hydrangeas. That is, if the two I planted last summer come back to life!

By my 400th post:

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I would love to have our master bedroom completely (or almost completely) finished and made-over. I don’t necessarily want it to look like this one, I just picked a dreamy looking one 🙂

By my 500th post:

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A nice finished basement with a pimped out theater area. Mike can go crazy with all of his speakers and wires and whatnot, and I can get a couch with cup holders in it without feeling like I’m breaking a design rule…

By my 1,000th post:

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We’ve been dreaming up a nice backyard area for ages and well, this one wouldn’t be so shabby! We’re not sure if we want to do a deck, patio or combination type thing, so this project isn’t a big priority. Once we feel like we need an outdoor entertaining space we’ll look into it a little bit more!

By my 1,500th post:

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If you’ve done the math at this point, you’d know this one is very far down the line, but I hope to be able to add a nursery to my resume in a few years. I love browsing nurseries, they are just so fun and imaginative. This one is one of Young House Love’s great nursery crashes on Baby Center. Oh and with a nursery of course comes a spin-off blog 🙂 You think that I’d dedicate a blog to my cats and house but not dedicate one to my future kids?

Hopefully I’ll keep up with some of these goals, at least the ones within the next year or so. It will be interesting to see how many posts it takes me to actually finish and post about each thing! Now I’m off to celebrate a dream come true by watching a new episode of Jersey Shore!!