3 Things Owning A Home Has Taught Me

A fun way for me to remember Albus' birthday, is that he was born the day before I closed on my house. (Fun fact, I was supposed to have closed on my house on June 15th but someone at the broker's office wrote the date down wrong, and my dad, who was my agent, was going out of the country the day after our original closing date. So my mortgage broker came to the closing with me instead.) So that means I've been a homeowner for three whole years now. I have learned a lot of lessons the hard way. Here are the three biggest things I've learned in the last three years.

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WHATEVER YOU THINK A PROJECT WILL COST: DOUBLE IT: One day, in August the first year I bought the house, I want to say the week before my housewarming party? I hadn't brought Albus home yet, so it had to be very early. I came home for lunch and heard a dripping sound. I went down into the basement to discover it was raining directly under the bathroom. I called the plumber who managed to get there that afternoon and install a little valve to turn the water to the shower off and on in the meantime before he could get back to fix the actual problem. FUN FACT, the house was built in the 60's, so our plumbing is cast iron. What would have been a simple fix for regular pipes required ALL of the pipes around the tub to be replaced. $500 later, we decided that we would replace the tile and drywall around the shower. Three years later, there's still a hole in the drywall. It's on the to-do list, I swear.

If you follow along on instagram, you've probably seen the saga that has been my fight with the English Ivy the people who lived there before us planted. WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T PLANT THAT TRASH. I'm begging you. I have been FIGHTING it for three years now and it still just POPS up out of nowhere. It shows up in the siding of the house, it's growing up the giant live oak, but it hasn't killed it yet, so that's nice I suppose. If you're from my neck of the woods, this stuff is like Kudzu but is somehow still on the damn shelves at Home Depot. 

EVERYTHING COMES IN THREES: Much like celebrity deaths, big problems have always come in threes for me. As mentioned before, very expensive threes. Most recently,  we upgraded our bed, but we sold ours before the new one came in. So we were in the guest bedroom, which is just a full mattress. Sorry to all of my guests, I really didn't realize how small of a bed that was until I was used to a queen. You can read all about the mattress saga here & here. Then, while I was washing the new linens for our king size bed, there was a gushing coming out from behind the washing machine. Remember how I said cast iron pipes? Well the reason they don't use those anymore, is because they rust. So the pipes finally clogged up with rust. We snaked them and it seemed to drain juuust fine. So I got that running, and went to run the dishwasher. Which was full of smelly old water. Turns out, the motor went out of that AND the sink was draining into it. Keep in mind, this all happened in the span of three days. Y'all. I thought I was going to lose it. We ordered the new dishwasher (which of course didn't use the same hoses as the old one, even though it was the exact same dishwasher but see lesson number 1.) 

DON'T TRY TO DO IT ALL AT ONCE: I have pinterest board after board of projects I want to do. I spend hours looking at closet organizational systems, shelves I could totally do myself, cool decorative things, a better chicken coop so the owls don't eat the chickens, raised beds so we don't have to buy vegetables anymore. I would start to try to do one thing and then I would get overwhelmed because the weeds were growing too fast for me to clean out a room in the house and then the house was getting to disorganized for me to spend all weekend doing yard work. It's almost like a hamster wheel if you don't make yourself some reasonable plans.

We've started focusing on one room at a time. We've aaaaalmost got the living room the way we like it. New couch, furniture rearranged, OG boat door for a coffee table, now we just need to get the TV mounted & bring the record player in and the living room will be D O N E. I installed our Nest thermostat ALL BY MYSELF* with the help of a youtube video. Maybe an extra thing I have learned is that I can do a lot of things by myself and now with some help. We've also installed a new ceiling fan and a storm door! Our next project, I think, will be the kitchen. We have minimal cabinet and counter space so I've been studying organizational racks for the pots and pans. I also REALLY need to deal with my closet/office space if I want to start writing blogs at my desk and not using a fun little lap desk like a 10 year old.. I've got a plan for the chicken coop too, but I keep telling myself that's a project for when it's NOT the middle of a heat wave. Along with all of the yard things. So, so many yard things. Home Depot/Lowe's, wanna sponsor some DIY home improvement posts? I'm sure the minute we get everything just right will be the minute someone makes an offer we can't refuse causing us to move and start all over again.

So these are the biggest lessons owning a home has taught me. Do you have any homeowner stories for me? Tips and tricks? Cabinet storage ideas? We really need a pantry but there's just nowhere to put one... Did anyone notice I didn't put fix the hole in the wall in the shower on that list of projects I want to tackle next? Are we surprised it's been there for three years anymore? 

May Coffee Date

So, the last week, I had the most "lame grown up" dream ever. In my dream. Cobb county had announced a sweeping road resurfacing project and actively ignored the giant potholes by our house. I woke up mad as hell, then realized it was a dream and was mad for several other reasons. If that isn't the most lame, grown up thing to have nightmares about, I honestly don't know what is. I'm having a little writer's block, so I thought we'd have a little coffee date. My coffee is still a little too hot because I have this Mammoth tumbler and it almost works too well.

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If we were having coffee, I'd tell you that downloading the library's ebook app has really enabled me to read more than I could have imagined, and that I'm already up to 14 books this year (14.5 if you count the one I'm reading now...) I set myself a goodreads challenge of 30 books, but I'm thinking I might surpass that, should I change my goal or just see how far over it I can go? Right now I'm working my way through another Hercule Poirot novel. I think I just might read all of them... 

If we were having coffee, I would ask for advice on a new ceiling fan. The one in our master bedroom has two speeds: fast enough to where you think the room might take flight and off. There's no in between. We need the fan because we got a Nest thermostat for Christmas and I take it as a challenge to get as many leaf days in a row as possible. I'm a monster. Oh and also so that we're saving money and energy or whatever.. Anyways, what we're looking for is something sleek and relatively small, because we have a small bedroom. But I'm also not trying to spend more than $100. Coincidentally, every ceiling fan I like seems to be $169. 

If we were having coffee, I would ask if you've tried the Naturday yet. I don't care that it's a Natty, it is DELICIOUS. It tastes like straight strawberry lemonade, but it's a beer! It's perfect for sitting by the pool or on the back porch. SUPER refreshing. So good guys. Plus, I bought a 30 pack at Kroger for $18, I mean, you can't beat that. 

If we were having coffee, I would tell you how much I love our new storm door. It's amazing how much brighter the living room is with what essentially amounts to another window. It took us longer to install it than we thought, and the promise of  "oops free installation" was false (we may have put the hinge on backwards the first time & didn't realize it until we had mounted it to the door frame and couldn't open it.......) but it's awesome. And we can slide the little glass pane up to let the breeze in. I love it! 

If we were having coffee, I would also ask for sheet suggestions. We have white sheets right now and I just don't see that going well for us. Albus likes to run outside and then immediately jump into the bed, so I don't know how much longer we'll be able to wash the mud out of them without the stain sticking around. Also are there such thing as cooling sheets? I sleep REAL hot, I bought these magic cooling gel pillows, which was a good start. 

What would you tell me if we were having coffee? 

April Showers Bring May Flowers

I'm really not sure how we made it to May already. Wasn't it New Year's like, last week? We're on pace to set a record high temperatures here today in Georgia and I chickened out taking the doors off Penny Lane, the Jeep, because I was very unsure of my upper body strength. If you've been following me on instagram you'll know that some of my flowers are blooming! I have a super power, that is my ability to kill every plant I want to keep alive and somehow the weeds I try to kill stay thriving. I always spend somewhere around $100 any time I walk into a garden center, I love flowers. They just don't always love me back.

We had a rather wet April AND March this year, plenty of pollen, so the flowers I do have in my garden right now are THRIVING and I need to document it. So, without further ado, please enjoy some of my favorite flowers blooming at this exact moment. 

Yes. There are lots of weeds in all of these beds. I'm fighting a constant battle with them, but my end goal is to get the beds, especially in front of the house, to look like a cottage garden. The cottage garden look is almost an over planted bed, so there are just flowers EVERYWHERE. No need for mulch and you either don't have or can't see the weeds. Patience isn't my strongest virtue, so I have to keep telling myself that plants take three years to really be happy. First year they sleep, second year they creep, third year they leap. 

Standby, because coming your way very soon will be the adventure I undertake trying to build my own raised bed to plant vegetables in. I'm sure my retelling of however it's going to go down won't be quite as hilarious as the actual activity, but you know I'm an accident waiting to happen. How are your gardens doing? 

The Never Ending Mattress Adventure: Part 2

Hey guys. Guess what. We have some updates. First, the drain for the washing machine was just clogged, so we got that fixed without having to pull up all the pipes in the house. Second, the dishwasher is kaput, we tried all of the "youtube fixes your contractor doesn't want you to see" things. Those didn't work, it's d-e-a-d. If one more person suggests hand washing my dishes I will throat punch them. 

NOW. I've been tweeting about this whole "is the bed frame ever going to be delivered?" adventure. I have been purposely not tagging Mattress Firm, because it's just a whole combination of situations and not necessarily their fault. Now, after they sent me an automated e-mail asking for my review of a product that hadn't been delivered yet, they discovered my tweet thread. They asked me to DM them with the drama, so I did. After explaining how we ordered this frame LAST MONDAY and how the mattress is just in the box in the damn living room because we're not trying to put our brand new mattress on the floor, the customer service rep asks me why don't you want to put the mattress on the floor? I almost dropped my phone. 

Why don't you want to put the mattress on the floor? I try so hard not to be rude with customer service people. I was one for years. Sometimes you just can't help. Sometimes, after you've done everything you can, you still don't have a good answer. Why don't you want to put the mattress on the floor? BECAUSE I PAID FOR A BED FRAME. Because I'm not in college? Because I'm an adult? Because we have white sheets and a black dog? Because it's none of your damn business? I calmly responded "not to be rude, but because we paid for the bed frame." and four other reasons. 

I don't know what I was expecting from this customer service team, but that definitely was not it. Maybe a "we're sorry, have a new pillow!" or something. This is 100% going to feed into my review about the product. Even if I love the mattress and the bed frame, I'm not giving it all the stars because this has been the most ridiculous experience. The next day, the day the bed frame was actually on the truck for delivery, the customer service manager contacted me and read me the FedEx tracking. By this point I wasn't expecting anything from them, yes I am aware what the tracking says, I do know how to use FedEx.

SO when I got home from work last night, the bed frame was THERE! I mean, it was getting soaked in the rain, but you win some you lose some. I immediately moved all of the furniture in the master bedroom, poured myself a very large glass of wine, and got to work. I had the entire bed put together, set up, and MADE in under an hour. I have never been more excited to make a bed in my entire life. It fluffed right up and we slept on it last night. It was amazing. The best night's sleep I've gotten in a while. Was it worth this whole nightmare process? We'll see at the end of the 120 day money back period. Our last bed was so bad that literally anything felt more comfortable than what we had.

So far, what I've learned from this experience, is buy the bed frame when you buy the mattress and don't buy anything that ships GROUND from California. So ends the mattress adventure I never want to go on again. Have you had any furniture buying adventures? Tell me allll of your stories!

The Never Ending Mattress Adventure

So, let me just preface this by saying I love my house.  It's adorable, it's super close to all of the things I want to be close to, I can walk to the Marietta Square. It's a great little house. Now, let me tell you about the never ending nightmare that has been getting a new bed for the master bedroom. 

Our cool, handmade, reclaimed wood bed.  

So, I originally had this cool bed with storage made out of recycled pallets. SUPER cool bed. It was a queen size though, and now that there are two of us, queen size isn't quite big enough. I'd also had the mattress forever and had bought it off of a friend. It was the firmest mattress I've ever slept on. We literally had an egg crate AND a down mattress topper and it still felt like sleeping on the ground. So we started researching new, king size, mattress options back in OCTOBER. 

Now, I'm a planner. If I'm making a big purchase, I like to know all of the information. Considering most of the king size beds started out OVER $1,000, I wanted to make sure we got a good deal but not something that would feel cheap. I also wanted one of those "sleep on this for 120 nights to make sure you love it!" guarantees. I read months worth of amazon reviews, hoping I could snag one of the less expensive "beds in a box" they have on there. At the time of my research, there were tons of reviews citing mold and hard to get in touch with customer service options. Then I priced out all the different "bed in a box" options. I was still wary, because I wanted to see one in person and lay on it before I shelled out a grand. 

Then we discovered that Mattress Firm carried one of the beds in a box, that we could lay on one there before ordering it AND got the 120 day guarantee AND they were running a sale where you got the king for the price of a queen. That made the nicer tier king size mattress well within our budget woohoo! We didn't spring for a box springs, because I had seen frames on the internet for less than $100, and thought maybe we could snag one of those instead. This was a mistake.

I went back to the millions of reviews on Amazon for one of the bed frames (by the way, that was a wild ride. I didn't expect to learn so much about the sex lives of strangers in product reviews, but I guess that is something you need to take into account when buying a bed frame. I learned that there are lots of different options when it comes to handcuffs and keeping metal frames from squeaking. It was just a ton of information.) I started to doubt my decision to not just buy a box spring, because the slats were supposed to be 3" or less apart for a memory foam mattress. (After worrying about all of this, I noticed that the slats on traditional box springs are not that close together either, so that's cool.) 

I ended up going back to Mattress Firm, but via the website, and ordering a frame they had as the one that should go with the mattress we bought. It was great, I had a coupon from Honey and saved 30%. The shipping was even free! That began a whole new adventure that I've been live tweeting since it started. Yes, since it started, because it still hasn't been delivered. It's allegedly on the FedEx truck for delivery today, but I'll believe that when I see it. I ordered it a week ago. I also ordered a new duvet cover from Target three days later, it shipped ground as well, but with UPS, and it was there the very next day. 

So. We've got the duvet, sheets, and mattress. We're just waiting on the bed frame. I went ahead and listed the old bed on Facebook, and we sold it relatively painlessly. Some of the people I dealt with were quite a nightmare, but the kid who ended up buying it got it for a song and hauled it off on Saturday. So we're currently sleeping in the guest bedroom, on a full size bed, because that's what fits on the cool antique bed frame I have in there. Sorry, all of my guests, I didn't realize how small that was for two people.

Yesterday, I decided it was as good a time as any to wash all of the new linens. While I was washing the new duvet and in the middle of some serious spring cleaning, I heard an awful lot of sloshing. I looked behind the washing machine to see that GALLONS of water are just overflowing from the drain pipe. (You can watch a video on my insta home highlights) Just a gigantic mess. I turned the washing machine off, (actually,  I only paused it, when I walked away it decided to start running again) and honestly had to stop everything I was doing. The duvet is still in the washing machine, the machine is about 2/3 full of water. It's great. 

This has gone on for quite some time, so I think I'll stop here. We're currently finding out what the problem is with the washing machine (oh and the dishwasher went out yesterday too. cool cool cool cool) and waiting to see if the bedframe is actually delivered. So I hope y'all stay tuned for part 2 of this adventure with us. Home Depot/Lowe's, if you're reading, I'd love to do some sponsored posts about your products..  Do you have any homeowner nightmares?

Spring Fever

HAPPY FIRST DAY OF SPRING! It's going to be a lovely day here, so I'll be in the office all day dreaming about what fun could be had in the sun. I'm so excited though, because spring means that summer is just around the corner! Longer days, more sunshine, and patio weather! I'm a firm believer that food and drinks are just better outside. It's got to be science. 

The pollen is something I'm not ready for. If you've never been to the Atlanta area around April, I don't recommend it. The oh-so-lovely pine trees drop gazillions of little pollen bombs. Literally everything turns yellow. We didn't ever really get cold enough for everything to die off, so allergy season never really ended. Poor little Albus had to get a shot and these ear drops he absolutely hates to get through it. 

Obviously, since the sun was out on Saturday, I was working in the yard again. I'm sure I'll stop complaining about the ivy one day, I imagine that day will be about a year after it's all gone forever. I pulled more ivy, planted more roses, and overall made a bigger mess than I started with. I think that's the most frustrating part. I'm not the most patient person, I feel like four Saturdays in the yard should look like the cover of a Southern Living magazine! Clearly, I have a solid grasp on reality. 

So this week will be another week of little yard projects and I'll probably be done by Labor Day. How are you celebrating the first day of spring?

February Through The Lens & March Goals

I would say I'm surprised that we've made it to March, but that would just be a lie. February felt like such  a long month considering it was only 28 days. Let's see what February looked like through the lens of my camera! It's been a minute since I've done one of these! 

Obviously, Albus, the most photogenic pup in the world takes the cake on most of them. He tuned EIGHT MONTHS old, he let me dress him up for the Super Bowl, he ran his 4th 5K (we have number 5 coming up this weekend!) and he had a friend stay over for a whole week! He also managed to officially transition out of the crate life, although he still sleeps in there on his own accord. Then, it was National Margarita Day, and a month of yard work man. 

I would do a recap of my February goals, but aside from keeping the house clean, I failed miserably. I'm going to keep blog three times a week on my to-do list. Here are a few more I want to accomplish:

1. The Yard. I gotta keep up the exhausting work so that this summer my house looks like the cover of a Southern Living magazine.  Every little bit counts or something, I have to find a mantra that keeps me from getting frustrated. 

2. Work on the blog. I want to get back to scheduling posts because I'm still working on becoming a morning person, so it's a lot easier to get stuff scheduled the night before than to try to hammer something out while watching the Today Show in the morning.. I also want to get back into the whole swing of the community aspect of it. I missed y'all!

3. Read at least three books. I only read one book in February, I mean it was 900 pages, but it was still just one book. I want to read at least three. Last night I started Big Little Lies and I also have All The Missing Girls so I need one more to knock off the list in March. Any suggestions?

What did February look like through your camera? What are you reading this month?

I Cried Over That English Ivy

The rain held off this weekend and I thought "awesome, another day to work in the yard!" So Saturday morning I was up and at Lowe's before 10am (who. am. i.) buying the remainder of the rose bushes I want to put in front of the house. I have this very specific picture in my imagination of what I want the yard to look like. I came home ready to knock it all out and that's where the day took a turn.

I decided to use the lawnmower to clean up the leaves in the yard, because raking took way too much time and effort. Of course, I forgot how much of a pain in the butt my lawnmower is. It was free, so I can't complain, but I'm going to anyways. It's not actually propelled. That part of the lawnmower doesn't work, I have to physically push it. Guys. I fell down trying to push the lawnmower. 

Once I finished with the leaves, I moved on to clearing the spot for one more of my rose bushes. I know I talked about the ivy last week, I could write a book on trying to get rid of that stuff. I *thought* that it was being held at bay, that it wasn't growing back where the pine straw was. Then I pulled a vine and it pulled up all of the pine straw up to the driveway. I was so frustrated, I really did start crying. 

I keep telling myself that this yard thing is a work in progress, that it will be better the more I work at it, that all of the hard work is building to something. It's just very frustrating to spend six hours working in the yard and for it to honestly be at that stage where it's a bigger mess before it gets clean. I'm going to keep on truckin' mostly because I don't want it to stay in the state of disaster it is in right now. Do you have any yard suggestions? 

A Work In Progress

If I have learned one thing owning a house, it's that nothing is ever finished. There's alway something that needs to be done. For example, I don't have anything on the walls in the master bedroom. I have a painting sitting on the ground that has been waiting to be put up since I moved in. We won't talk about the cloffice that is currently the room for things with no home yet. Right now, we're going to talk about the yard. 

First of all, yard work is not for the weak of heart.  The girl who lived in the house before me is a florist, so I thought awesome, I bet there are lots of great plants and after whatever she takes with her, the beds will have great bones for me to build on. I. Was. Wrong. The whole front bed was full of English Ivy. I don't know if you have any experience getting rid of that, but if so I feel all of your pain. 

I MEAN LOOK AT THAT. When I first moved in, I spent an entire day pulling that shit up. We took a CHAINSAW. We hooked it to my step-dad's truck with chain and pulled it away. It was awful. We managed to get most of it, discovering potted plants and decorative step stones and all sorts of treasures. Also, please note the Rose of Sharon back there taking the life out of that hemlock tree. 

After an entire day of pulling and chainsawing we managed to get it to look like this. I'll have you know, that no matter how concentrated the Roundup was, it didn't do anything. I still have nightmares about that stuff growing into my house and trapping me forever. Anyways, over the summer I put out about a million bales of pinestraw, hoping that would at least cover a little bit of it. 

Then, if we're being honest, I completely pretended the problem didn't exist for about six months. This past weekend I decided I wanted to get the yard under control before the spring really got rockin' and rolling. Of course I had to pull all of the leaves and nonsense out of this bed and the one on the other side of the house (ps. if raking leaves doesn't give me Victoria Secret model abs, nothing will) I pulled some more of the ivy up, planted a rose bush, some bulbs, and made plans for a few more rose bushes the next time I go to Lowes or Home Depot. That took a WHOLE DAY. You know why? Because there was more`ivy to be pulled. I cannot. 

I know in a few weeks this will be full of color, so I just have to hold on for a little while longer. Do you have any gardening tips for me? A cure for English Ivy perhaps?

Five Things That Changed With a Puppy

Listen, before I piss of any moms out there, I realize that a puppy is not the same thing as a baby. HOWEVER, I have noticed a lot of similarities between this little monster and the hilarious stories people tell about their toddlers. So I think it makes complete sense that people get puppies before they decide to have babies. Albus has so much freaking personality, sometimes I can't handle it.

1. Everything is a chew toy. I subscribe the little monster to BarkBox but his favorite things to chew on are: my hair, empty water bottles, bras, the ChuckIt, the buttons on our throw pillows, my comforter, really just anything he's not supposed to play with, he wants to play with it.

2. Priorities change. I don't know if this is going to be true for everyone, but man I feel some kind of guilt if I do something after work that the pup can't come to. If I know I'm going to have to work late or have to go somewhere he's not allowed to go, I take him to daycare. You read that right, he goes to doggy daycare.

3. Sleeping in? Dream on. I keep waiting for Albus to adopt mom's sleep schedule, but here we are, 6 months in, and he still wants to get up at 5:30 am every morning. He lets me know it's time to get up by jumping up on the bed & laying directly on my head. It's a great tactic, because it's really hard to go back to sleep when you can't breathe..

4. Hair. Everywhere. First of all, as a human, I shed constantly. Like, every shower I think "yep. this is it, this is the day I go bald." COMBINE that with tiny little dog hair everywhere? I am constantly covered in dog hair. I already have lint rollers everywhere, but it's a constant battle.

5. Coming home is the best. Y'all. It doesn't matter if I have been gone for five minutes or four hours, he is SO EXCITED to see me. Like OMG MOM YOU HAVE BEEN GONE FOREVER I THOUGHT YOU WOULD NEVER BE BACK! It's a really fantastic feeling.

Do you have a little monster? I promise that's a term of endearment, most of the time. 

Adventures With Albus

I know I talked about this handsome little monster on Wednesday, but I want to formally introduce everyone to Albus. Sometimes I want to tell people his name is Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Decker and see if they get the joke, because I'm pretty sure it would be a good way to tell if we should be friends or not...

Guys. I thought I knew what I was getting into with a puppy, at least a little bit, I was wrong. Albus is about 50% snuggle monster & 50% tornado. I swear he only has two speeds: passed out or Tasmanian devil. He's been a handful since day one. 

I picked the little monster (as I have come to call him, obviously in a very loving manner) from a family friend's farm about an hour and a half north of where I live. She told me to bring a box for him to ride in, which I did, and he wanted to sit in my lap. Mind you, we're going about 80 down the highway. From that moment on, he has honestly been my shadow.

In typical lab fashion, he's grown like a weed. The original estimate was 50 pounds. Overachiever that he is, he breezed right past that. He just turned 7 months old (yeah, I know I missed the instagram with his chalkboard, I'm a bad pupmom) and is already sitting pretty at 60 pounds. His legs have been the same length for the past few months, which has been hilarious, he reminds me of Bambi when he first learns to stand up.

We took the first puppy training class at PetSmart and it was definitely worth the money, so worth it that we even signed up for the Intermediate class. We start on Super Bowl Sunday (but don't worry, plenty of time before kickoff.) We're still working on all of the things, especially stay... and the whole loose leash thing. He's just so excited whenever we go on a walk that he wants to go a lot faster than I do. Or smell everything. We've almost mastered not pulling on the leash.

Now, what I could really use tips on is how to make him less of a morning person. He is up every morning at 6:15am and ready. to. play. Never wants to let mom have a cup of coffee before roughhousing. How does he do that? Maybe the question is how can I become more of a morning person like him? I don't see that one happening any time soon. Tell me about your pups! Are they also crazy morning people? Or do they let you sleep in?