pumpkins and anniversary and Devon visits

Hi everyone,

For this Halloween, I decided to carve pumpkins with my niece Juliana. We don't really celebrate Halloween per say but I thought it would be fun to carve pumpkins. Juliana came over and we picked some stencils and did our thing! Uncle Shawn chaperoned and was in charge of roasting the pumpkin seeds.

Getting Ready.....

Scraping out the gunk...

roasting the seeds!

Finished Product...


The weekend of Halloween Shawn and I drove to Gonzales, Texas to stay at the Cabana for our first anniversary. The Cabana is the bed and breakfast where Shawn proposed to me in May 2008. We thought it would be fun to go back there for our first anniversary and it was! Also, this is proof that I have the best mom in the world..... So after our wedding last year my parents took the top tier of our wedding cake and put it in their freezer while we were on our honeymoon. Well their freezer actually ended up breaking and all the food went bad including our wedding cake. So I was kind of bummed about it but I just figured we probably wouldn't actually eat year-old cake anyways. Well my mom went to our cake decorator and had her re-create the top tier of our wedding cake. She then drove 6 hours in a thunderstorm on a Thursday night after work to take our new cake to the cabana where we would be staying for the weekend. She wanted it to be a surprise and for it to be waiting for us when we got there. It was definitely a surprise and such a treat!!!

Headed to Gonzales...

The Gazebo where Shawn proposed.

Opening my first gift (some really cute shoes)

Overall we had a really great weekend. It was very relaxing and nice to catch up with some of our friends in Gonzales. We really can't wait to go back.

I'll leave you with a picture of me and my cousin Devon and our babies Melody and Tozer. Devon came in for a visit on Thursday and we had a lot of fun.

thrifty decor

So Shawn and I have moved into our new house and in the living room we have this huge blank wall that I've been dying to fill up.


I like the idea of a picture wall because I have sooo many pictures but I didn't like the idea of the messy, a million different frames of all different shapes and sizes putting holes in the wall. So I decided to do something more organized and refined but still use pictures. I found this idea in a home decorating magazine where a lady had four related pictures of her family professional framed and matted and hung on a wall. I liked the idea but didn't want to spend $400 to do it. So I kind of came up with my own related idea and here it is....

First things first I headed to Hobby Lobby my favorite store in the world.


I shopped around for some frames and it turned out that day they had 50% off all frames. yay! so I bought four 9x12 frames for half off of $13.99 each ($28.00 total).


Then I headed to the paper section and bought some fun 12x12 scrapbook paper for 10 cents each that would go well with our home decor.

I also bought some large chipboard letters for 4.99...


and 4 yards of some black rope for 1.99/ yard.


I then headed to CVS and printed four 8x10's of the pictures I wanted to hang for about 1.99 each after my cvs card discount.


When I got home I spray painted 4 of my large chipboard letters black with some extra black all-purpose spraypaint I had in the garage.



I then cut each scrapbook paper to fit inside the frames


And taped each picture to a piece of scrapbook paper and put each photo in the frames....


Then i checked with Tozer to get his opinion on how it was looking.

He approved!

The trickiest part after this was hanging each picture on the wall EVENLY, then using a nail to hang the rope above the frames so it looks like the rope is hanging it up. After that I simply used some black thread to tie to the letters and hang them on the nails and this is how it turned out......



So I transformed our boring wall for a total of $48.00! Hope you all have a blessed day!

-Emily

It's been awhile.....

Ok so it's been like 3 months since we've posted an actual update to our blog... let me try and remember most of what has happened.....

July 9th was Shawn's 30th birthday. He made me PROMISE not to have a party so I agreed and we just went out for dinner. I wanted his birthday to be special so I called around and found this piano bar downtown Dallas that I thought would remind him of the piano bar we loved on our honeymoon on the Cruise. So we drive all the way downtown and get to the restaurant and it was a total joke. There was no piano that night, they informed me it had been moved to the next night and the food was horrible. It was pretty sad but of course Shawn didn't mind. For his birthday he got some camping gear (which we have yet to use) and permission to buy me an IPHONE 3G. He has been wanting to buy me one since he got his for his birthday in 2008 but I had a really hard time spending that much money on a phone so I never let him. So, for his birthday I finally let him buy me one. And let me say, it was the best gift I could have ever given him. haha! I love mine so much and I truly do not know how I ever lived without it.



The rest of July was spent mostly house searching. We thought we were going to have to wait another year before we would be able to buy a home but after talking with some different loan officers and real estate agents it turned out we were going to be able to buy one this year! So we spent most of July and August looking for the perfect home and we finally found it and closed on it August 26th.





It's a 3 bedroom 2 bath about 1800 sq ft home in McKinney about 3 minutes away from Shawn's brother Scott's house. It's absolutely perfect for us. I have a music room with my piano that I have been teaching lessons out of, Shawn has an office/study for him to do work in and Tozer has a great big back yard. It's been really fun decorating and figuring out where everything should go. Shawn has also really enjoyed doing the yard every weekend. Our mortgage payment is actually LESS than our rent was at the apartment so we are actually saving money, not to mention the investment we are putting into.








Our lease at the apartment was not up until October so we took our time moving into the house and didn't officially move in until September 18th. My parents came in town the weekend before we moved in and brought us a lot of furniture that we had picked out of storage including a refrigerator, two couches, and some coffee tables. The extra fridge my parents had was white so Shawn used appliance paint specially for refrigerators and painted it black so it would go better with our kitchen. It turned out great! Move in weekend went smoothly and there were really no major issues. My parents came in town again the weekend after we were moved in and helped us get organized. Shawn's mom Joyce came in town the first weekend in October to see the new place and to visit Scott and Amy and their kids. So much has happened in these last few months it's difficult to remember it all.





Tozer graduated from intermediate dog training in September. We were very proud of him and the trainer actually recommended him to take the "good citizens test" because he has great mannerisms.

Shawn and I went and saw one of our favorite bands Wilco play at the Palladium Ballroom in Dallas last weekend. It was a really good show and it was great hearing their new album live for the first time.

The next day we went to The Texas State Fair for the first time for either of us. I had heard so much about it and was so excited to go and see all the animals and weird food. We ended up eating Fried Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwiches as our "weird food". It was surprisingly really good but it made Shawn's tummy hurt afterwards.





Teaching piano has been amazing. I keep getting call after call from just word of mouth. I really feel like God has confirmed to me that this is what I am supposed to be doing. I might possibly be getting into a Christian school next Spring to teach lessons in the school so please pray for that.

Also, Shawn officially has a Texas State License!

OK I'm done now. Maybe since I'm all caught up I will start posting more often. God Bless.

-Emily

Wedding Video Highlight Reel by 31films

June / July

So this weekend we were blessed to have Tommy and DeAnne come visit. We also were able to spend time with Aunt Linda this weekend. It is always nice to hang out with family that we don’t get to see too often. We are heading over to Linda’s house this afternoon and we hope to find out if Tozer can swim. We are having fun house hunting and we think we may have found one, although sometimes discouraging. We are trying not to get out hopes up yet because at this point there is no guarantee. Emily is enjoying the piano and she is working on Claire de Lune. She is so amazing. I am continually in awe of my wife and it is still a little unbelievable that she is mine forever. I truly feel like the most blessed person in the world. We went to EA over the 4th of July and had a great time seeing all of our friends. I miss Gonzales, Texas a lot which is something I never thought that I would hear myself say. My new position at work is going well and I am enjoying it. Emily has also been working on building up clientele for piano lessons. We are hoping that she will be able to get in with a private school and give lessons. Her website is up. Check it out. http://www.hammersandstrings.com/

We also went to see Ben Kweller last month. It was a great show and he played both of the songs that we tweetquested.
Tweetquest – requests made through twitter by @mentions to @benkweller.

Hope Everyone is well.

I hope to convince my wife to start updating our blog again. I know everyone would rather read her updates than mine, including me.


Shawn