Updates

My oh my, where has the time gone?  Where has this summer gone?  Please excuse my blogging abscence and lack of posts.  We are alive and doing well, just busy! I know it's annoying to check on someone's blog and they haven't posted in a while.  I think my broken promises of posting more are even more annoying, I'm sure!  I even read on Twitter that some people stop following blogs if there hasn't been any activity in over a week... yikes! That may explain my decline in followers/comments.  At this point, I'm not really sure who reads our blog.  Looking at the stats I see I have a lot of activity, but not that many comments.  I have moments when I just want to keep this blog private (for many reasons) but then I wouldn't meet new people and that has been my favorite part about blogging! I am not thinking of going private for now, but if for some reason in the near future, if I choose to go private I will give y'all a heads up and have an email you can reach me at on my profile.

While I could list off a million reasons why I let time get the best of me, I will spare you the excuses and just start posting more! I am aiming to set more of a schedule for myself and fit in things I tend to put on the back burner... this blog being one of them.  Not only do I like to update friends through this blog, I also like to keep it as somewhat of a journal, so it's important to me to keep it updated! 
In random order here's what Daniel and I have been up to the last few months! 

May/June

• Took our 1st Wedding Anniversary Cruise to Key West/Cozumel!  Pics to come.. sorry, I'm so behind!

• We went to Gainesville for my friend, Ashley's son, Lucas' 2nd birthday party!  It was a transportation themed party, which turned out so cute!  I sent Ashley a bunch of ideas I found on Pinterest, and she had a lot of help from some other friends too.  It turned out really nice!

• Took a girls beach day with my sweet 3 year old niece, Madison!

• Throughout June and July we had a lot of wedding festivities going on!  It was Briana's Bridal Shower, her and Andrew's Bachelor/Bachelorette Weekends and their Wedding in July! I'll share pics from all those events soon.  They deserve a seperate post! ;)

July

• We spent the 4th with Daniel's family at our house for a lunch BBQ

...and watched fireworks at Lake Eola w/ Andrew, Briana and her parents.

• We also had Daniel's parents visiting for a month or so from East Asia (in town for Bri & Andrew's wedding festivities)

• We celebrated my 28th Birthday in Sebastian w/ my Family

....birthday gifts, sunset beach date, dinner w/ family at Squid Lips in Sebastian...

...took a boat excursion to a little island w/ my little brother, Nathan and one last beach trip at the Inlet for Daniel to surf before heading home for my birthday dinner at Cantina Laredo with friends!  I had such a relaxing, fun birthday!

• I was also very busy in school this summer

House Updates

As I mentioned here, this summer we wanted to tackle painting the exterior of our house.  It was a long, drawn out project between the Florida afternoon showers and heat we had to paint whenever we could.  The first pic is the paint prep.  We chose our colors, scraped and taped off areas (ugh, that's the worst)!

I originally wanted to paint the house a light gray, but every single gray color I liked showed up either too dark or too purple!  So we played it safe and went with a neutral light beige/gray color, Edgecomb Gray. All colors are from Benjamin Moore.  I really love how it turned out!

This was our inspiration,



via House of Turqouise



For the trim we chose White Dove and "the color of the year", Wythe Blue for the front door.  We also plan to make some planter boxes from wood pallets to put in front of the garage door.  We'll paint them the same color as the front door for an added pop of color.

As of now, this is the before (first pic) and after pics...

The pic on top is with a lot of shade before we cut a lot of trees down. The after pic was taken at the end of the day so it looks shaded, but during the day it is very bright and fresh! :) 

The paint colors before were a light yellow base color and a dark brown garage, front door, shutters and window ledges.  When we moved in back in February 2010, I knew this was something we had to tackle because I really disliked the drab, dark look of our house.   

The second picture is the "after"... it was taken later in the day, so it's not the best picture, but I'll be sure to take more progress pics as we add more updates to the front of the house.  We still need to add our new mailbox and light fixture, add some potted plants to the front porch area and landscape the yard... new grass and all!  We also need to update our shutters, but that project will need to wait a little while longer.

 Some random DIY projects

Upholstered headboard prep!  This is a project I have been working at a little each week this summer.  I need to buy the fabric, foam, then I'll be all set to start stapling and adding nailhead trim!  I'm almost positive we'll use the Robert Allen Circle fabric (above) from Joann's, but who knows I may change my mind!  We're going with the belgrave headboard shape.  I'll post pics of our master bedroom when it's completed!

I took this pic at night, but you get the idea!

The front living room/sitting area is coming along nicely, we're making progress!  The gallery wall is finally complete!  We  put this project off for a while.  I was just wedding'ed out, so looking through pictures was just a tedious task for me! ha!  We finally got around to choosing our favorites though.  I find it funny we are now "one of those" couples that have wedding pictures everywhere (not that there's anything wrong with that)... oh well! I'm sure that will last a couple years or so, until we start putting baby pics up everywhere! haha

I added some book plates to some of the frames.  I printed out the wording in Edwardian Script font using Microsoft Word and printed them out on cardstock.  I attached them with double sided tape to the glass on the frames, so they're not permanent.

This large surf poster/frame was from a surf shop that our friend gave us.  We just enlarged one of our beach engagement pics of us riding bikes for it, and we plan to hang it on one big blank wall.  We bought the picture light from Ikea, and when it's lit up it looks really nice.  We're just about finished with it, but we still need to get the matting for it (we'll probably use fabric), paint the frame an espresso color to match the other frames in this room and hang it!  I'll share more living room/sitting room updates soon!

Well, that's about all for now.  I finally have a couple weeks off from school, so I'll try to post more frequently between house projects and my trip to San Diego to visit my friend, Michelle! :)

oxox