chalk board calendar

Oh man, my blog titles are so original and catchy, don't cha think? :)

I had been eying a particular chalk board calendar at Hobby Lobby for most of the year but was not going to spend $40 for it. It's cute and all and I know I would use it but forty smack-a-roos, no thank you. Well, not too long ago we were walking around the good ole' Hobby Lobby and found that it was 50% off! WhooHOO! I did a dance (in my head) and immediately put it in my shopping cart. SCORE!

It's been months since I had my dry erase board in the kitchen. It fell off one too many times from the refrigerator and finally broke.

(I don't have a picture of my actual dry erase board but it looked just like this one): 

We were using a regular old paper calendar to write down all our important events but it just wasn't the same as the dry erase board. We couldn't easily erase things and we had to write smaller.

So, here it is. Our brand new kitchen calendar in all it's glory!

I love it and I always knew I wanted some sort of chalk board in the kitchen and I think it works out wonderfully that it also doubles as our calendar.

Here are some before and after shots:

(our walls are not as white as they appear in these pictures)

We have a galley style kitchen so this chalk board is across the kitchen from this piece that I created earlier this year.

Now I just need to figure out how to store the chalk and eraser for convenient use.

Do you have any suggestions? Has anyone used chalk markers? Do they last long? Are they worth the money?

a master bedroom in progress...

Hello!

I realized today that I never shared our recent big purchase with you (who ever you are). 

We finally sold our 1972 Green Thomasville furniture back in June and purchased a gorgeous cherry wood sleigh bed, dresser and media chest in it's place. 

Here is a gander at our old furniture. It was a  hand me down from Matt's parents who received it as a wedding gift. 

These mirrors go to the top of the long dresser but when I moved in with Matt, I promptly removed them.

As you can imagine it was tough to coordinate bedding and wall colors with this furniture. We debated re-finishing the set but in the end we knew we didn't have that kind of time and the furniture was just too big for us. So we put an ad on Craig's List and it sold in 2 days (which makes me wonder if it was priced too low ??).

We went shopping the day after we sold the furniture since we were living out of laundry baskets. Of course I had already been surfing the net for ideas we kind of knew what we wanted when we went to the furniture store. 

So here is our new furniture... we only purchased the sleigh bed (without the foot board), the dresser and the media chest. The night stands were too bulky and too much like what we had before. 

As you can probably tell from the pictures the room is a work in progress. We haven't done much with it since we have been dealing with all the flooring issues. 

Things we need to do to this room:

1.) Paint the walls - we haven't picked a color yet.  I wanted grey but everything we have tried looks blue. 

2.) Raise the curtains... our new curtains are a lot longer then our previous boring brown ones so we need to raise them more. 

3.) Wall decor! 

4.) New lamps.

5.) Change out ceiling fan

Nightstands!!

As I mentioned before we didn't purchase nightstands when we bought this set. They were too big and bulky and expensive. 

We lived with these make shift tables until this past weekend when I was on a shopping trip with my mom at Garden Ridge. 

I found these beauties and snatched them up. I was lucky that they had 2 that were the same size. These are nesting tables (which I'm not a fan of). 

I love the rustic look!

And I got these  bad boys for $50 a piece, much cheaper then the $299.99 each price tag for each nightstand that came with the set we purchased. 

And this is what they look like in our room now. 

We love them! We think they fit perfectly!

I also found these awesome pillows at Garden Ridge for $5.99 & $9.99. 

And they work great with these curtains we got at Target! 

And this chair we got at Marshall's for $140.

There you have it, the progress we have made so far. We still have a long way to go. Hopefully we'll be able to pick a paint color soon so we can get some stuff on the walls. I love the direction this room is heading. It already feels more grown up! 

all fenced in!

Good Morning! I don't think I've done a weekend post before. First time for everything, right?! :)

For about a week now we haven't been able to leave Oliver (our 5 month old Westie) outside by himself because he has discover 2 areas in the fence he could fit and escape, and he did just that, 3 times.

The first time it happened was last weekend. I let him out to go potty while we were cooking dinner and when I went to check on him he was in the side yard, outside of the fence.

This is where he escaped...

So we bought some chicken wire and got busy.

Guess we should have worn those gloves!

The second time he escaped was this past Monday morning when I was home sick. I took him outside and to go potty and he saw the neighbor come out of her house and walk to her car and he darted after her from here:

I had to run after him in my bathrobe, a little embarrassing.

We got busy on this area. There was an area he could fit under the fence so we covered a couple feet at the bottom and up the side where he had been escaping.

And Oliver was with us the whole time, probably trying to find a new way out! ;)

So, for now, Oliver is free to roam our back yard until he discovers the bunny hole. We have a bunny that comes in our yard from the woods behind our house. We will be working on that area of the fence next weekend.

Did you conquer any pet related projects this weekend?