Bob the Builder (aka Danny the Builder)

I have a pretty awesome hubby. He has all sorts of tools and saws in our garage and actually knows how to use them to build stuff and tackle home improvement projects.

He redid our entire kitchen when we moved in turning it from shab to fab!

In a few weeks, he will be ripping out our master bathroom to give it a major overhaul. I didn’t want his building skills to get rusty so about a month ago I asked him to build me one of these.

I thought it would be the perfect addition to my craft room but I was not about to pay $300 for it and Danny and I think we can DIY anything. So, Danny got to work and built me one for $30 instead.

The benefit of having him make it for me, besides the money saving, is that he customized it for what I needed! The one from PB was only wide enough to fit the small wrapping paper rolls. That was not gonna cut it for this girl so he made mine extra wide so I could put my extra long rolls up there. Also, mine doesn’t have drawers on it like the PB version does. That is actually because he ran out of wood and I was impatient and told him I didn’t care about them so I could get that baby up on my wall but it worked out nicely because the spaces that would have been drawers are the perfect size to hold my glitter and craft paints.

So, with $30 and an awesome husband I have a new wrapping/craft station just in time to wrap all those holiday gifts!

He also built me this fabric shelf a while back that I love!

6 months

Today is our 6 month wedding anniversary! The past 6 months have seriously flown by so quickly and have been so much fun. So far I can't complain about married life. I love coming home to my best friend every day.


Danny thinks it is dumb to celebrate this anniversary but I made him do it anyway!

We started our special day out at church followed by lunch at one of my faves, Big Shucks!

Then we headed downtown to the opera house to see the musical How the Grinch Stole Christmas. One of Danny's coworkers had 2 extra tickets and offered them to us. We ended up sitting front and center and the show was really great! Such a fun treat!

We planned to go out for dinner, but once we got home we decided to take the dogs for a walk and just have Whataburger for dinner instead.

So we lit a fire, got our burgers and sat down in front of the TV to watch the Cowboys game. I insisted that we drink champagne out of our champagne flutes we used at our wedding so we had smores and champagne for dessert!

A pretty perfect 6 month anniversary night at home if you ask me (minus the part about me having to watch the football game.)!

6/12/10

12/12/10

Crocheting It Up

So, I picked up a new hobby. Anyone surprised? I have decided that I will learn to crochet.

I was totally inspired by the Lullaby Lubbock circle scarves. They are beautiful and I have even put one on my Christmas list (crossing my fingers Santa comes through).

Anyway, last Thursday night I forced Danny to come with me to JoAnns so I could get the supplies to start my new hobby. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that starting a crocheting hobby requires minimal start up costs (unlike candle making which I seriously considered a couple of months ago, I know I am totally bizarre). We skipped out of JoAnns $12.32 later with two things of fluffy yarn and a snazzy teal crocheting needle!

I got home that night and got straight to work by watching a few you tube videos. I decided that my first project would be to make Danny a gray scarf with some maroon in it for the Aggies. After unraveling my project a few times I finally got a pretty decent looking few rows of stitches but my fingers got tired so I stopped.

Then, one night this weekend, I made a rookie mistake and left the dogs inside the house while we went to hang out with some friends and we came home to find this:

The number one suspect is this guy:

According to Danny, he was very intrigued with my yarn earlier in the day and Danny had to tell him to leave it alone. I am not sure why at that point Danny didn’t move my yarn and project to a higher place where the dog couldn’t get it but whatever.

So I started over on the scarf and as of today I have this nine inch masterpiece!

I think I am going to need a lot more yarn and a few months before this thing gets finished.

Danny suggested I turn it into a sweater for Oliver since he likes yarn so much but I feel the same way about crocheting as I do about sewing so I only do things that require straight lines. Basically, the only thing I can crochet is scarves and the only things I sew are curtains and pillow covers.

Once I am a little more confident in my crocheting skills I will try make myself a circle scarf or I will decide I am over crocheting and find a new hobby.

Shellie’s Bowling Birthday

My sweet best friend Shellie turned 27 years old yesterday! To celebrate her big day, a group of us got together and went bowling on Saturday afternoon and had an absolute blast!!!

Nothing is better than the four B’s (birthdays, beer, bowling and buds) on a Saturday afternoon.

The girls had a great time laughing and chit chatting throughout our games while the guys tried to keep us on track so we could get in as many games as possible in our 2 hours there. We did speed bowling on our 3^rd game of the day and tried to have 10 people finish a game in 15 minutes! That totally did not happen but speed bowling was surprisingly super fun (this totally could have been due to the number of pitchers of beer we had consumed at this point).

After we finished bowling Shellie opened her bday presents and we called it day. It was so fun getting to hang out with everyone, especially the bday girl since she has been out of town so much for work lately! We love you Shellie and hope you had a wonderful 27^th birthday!

P.S. Danny has now declared bowling to be so fun that he thinks it would be the perfect date night for us. I told him I don’t think I could bowl for two hours straight on a date night because it makes me tired. He then told me that it was ok because he would bowl for me if I got tired and I could just watch him. Um, yeah, because that is exactly what I want to do on a date!

A New Addition!

Meet the newest addition to our family, Evans.

Evans is the child we now sponsor from Ghana through Compassion International. For $38 a month we are able to help provide Evans with educational opportunities, medical treatments, life skills training and development in a place where he gets to hear the Gospel and grow in his Christian faith.

I heard about Compassion International a couple years ago through reading other people’s blogs and mentioned it to Danny. Ever since then we have been saying that we are going to sponsor a child but just never sat down together to actually do it. Finally, a couple of months ago, we were on the way to a Young Life fundraising dinner and talking about what we donate to Young Life each month. One of Danny’s best friends is the Young Life leader in an area close to where we live. Ministering to high school kids is his passion and he is so great at it! I love that we support him and what that ministry does but I felt like we needed to be doing more than just helping out a local ministry because we had a connection to it through a friend. I immediately thought back to Compassion International and told Danny we needed to get on the ball and sponsor a child this year. We even decided that this year for Christmas we were not going to get each other gifts because sponsoring the child would be our gift (I did cheat and get Danny a couple of small things though, shhh).

We decided to sponsor a child from Ghana since Danny may have to travel there for work in the future and we thought it would be neat to have some common ground with our sponsored child. A couple of weeks ago we got our Compassion packet in the mail with our first picture of Evans and some information about how and where to send the letters. We plan to frame his little picture and display it proudly in our house and we can’t wait to write him his first letter so he can get to know us!

I am so happy that we finally decided to do this. We have been blessed with so much and it was really time for us to sit down and figure out how to start giving back. This is just a small step but hopefully it leads us and Evans to bigger and better things!

Let's Talk Nail Polish

So here is a random fact about me: 98% of the time my finger and toe nails are painted. Actually, they are not just painted, but painted in a color that is coordinated to either the month or season of the year.

I know it is strange to coordinate my nails to the month or season of the year instead of my outfits but it actually works for me because I guess I subconsciously end up picking outfits that look good with my nail color so I also end up wearing seasonal colored clothes.

This all started around my junior year of college when I decided my nails and hands just looked better when I had some color on them. I would probably paint my nails twice a week in college because I hated for them to be chipped and I had tons of time on my hands. I even got my roomie Tori into my obsession and we spent many nights watching our favorite TV shows while polishing our nails.

I guess at some point over the past 6 years I got into the habit of seasonal color coordination.

Here is what my year in nail polish normally looks like:

January – Gray (I can’t remember what color I normally wear in Jan. but for 2011 I have decided it will be gray since that is kind of what it looks like outside during the month)

February – Pale pink in honor of Valentine’s Day

March & April – Spring has normally sprung in Texas so I wear a brighter shade of pink

May – It’s the last month before the summer months start so I step it up a notch with hot pink

June & July – Summer is here in full force so out with the pinks and in with the Corals but for 4^th of July I get patriotic and go back to a bright red for a few days

August – A pinkish berry color. Not too bright since it is almost the end of summer but not too dark because it is not fall yet.

September, October and November – These months signify fall to me and fall means Aggie football. So, in honor of my beloved Aggies I normally wear some shade of maroon during these months.

December – Red for Christmas, duh

This year I have decided to get all new nail polish’s because I am so over all the ones I currently own. Plus, nail polish is only like $7 a bottle so it is cheap monthly treat for me, yay!

My new color for December is OPI An Affair in Red Square.

So far I am loving this color! It is a rich shade of red with a little bit of shimmer. Perfect for the holidays!

Another Gameday

A few weekends ago Danny and I headed to College Station for another football game. His aunt and uncle are season ticket holders and go to every home game and they were able to get us tickets in the seats right next to them.

Ollie wanted to go with us and jumped in the car!

We got to CS at 9 pm Friday night and headed to one of my fave restaurants, La Bodega. Sadly, it was not as good as either of us remembered. Maybe they were just having an off night.

After dinner we headed to the hotel to get a good nights rest for the next days festivities.

The next morning we headed out to the tailgate at 9:30. We had a full day of hanging out with friends, going to the game (which the Aggies won, yay!), eating dinner with Danny's aunt and uncle, and watching the end of the Ranger game.


It was another fun and relaxing weekend in College Station. Sadly, we probably won't be heading back there until next football season. On the bright side, that gives me plenty of time to plan my next game day dress!


We got home Sunday afternoon and headed to have lunch with Danny's fam to celebrate his mom's bday. Then we picked up the boys from his parents house and took them home to get ready for Halloween!
The dogs did such a great job helping pass out candy to trick or treaters!