My Birthday!

My birthday was yesterday and it was awesome! I had to work, but being an adult I don't have the luxury of doing whatever I want on my birthday. On the bright side my mom bought me lunch at China Garden which made up for me being at work. :) After work, Curt surprised me with flowers and some scratch off tickets. I love scratch off tickets...I have no idea why, but they are so much fun. Then we headed to Merrillville to get my present and go out for dinner. He did a Price is Right kind of thing where I got three choices and I got to choose what I wanted. Such a cool idea. I ended up picking the gift that he originally thought of which was a new telephoto lens for my camera! I love it and cannot wait to use it more. I also got a camera bag and a remote for my camera. He spoils me, but I'm not complaining. All the picture you see below are pretty much with my new lens which doesn't make sense to use for the pictures, but who cares. 

 

 I forgot to mention that Tuesday night Curt made me cupcakes for my birthday. He is so sweet. 

 Funfetti of course

 He even brought one to me yesterday morning with a candle for breakfast. A cupcake plus I didn't have to get up to get it....That's my kind of breakfast.

 They are delicious!

 

 My gift!!!

 Check out that lens....Curt has a softball game tonight and I am excited to use it!

 The dogs got a little close when I was testing out the lens. These pictures turned out pretty funny though.

Check out Buttercup's face. hahaha

 Using the new remote and new lens

 We think we are so cool

 Here are the flowers he got me. I love them! I was using my new lens and had to stand on the other side of the room to get these pictures. Check out close up I got from standing about 6 feet away!

Flower Beds

So my mom invited us to go to Sassafras Hill with her this last weekend. I wanted some hanging baskets for the front porch, but came home with some Gerber Daisies as well. Gerber daises are like one of my favorite flowers, and Curt and I picked the same colors! It makes everything so much easier when you both have the same idea. I wish that happened all the time. We didn't get a lot of flowers because we still aren't sure what is going to bloom, but we wanted a little color to spruce it up. Being a homeowner is expensive, but it's fun to make it look better!

New Furniture!

So some exciting news is we got new furniture! The Christmas colors are gone. We were probably a little more excited than we should be about furniture, but oh well. We did learn a few things.

1. Furniture shopping takes forever

2. Eat lunch before going furniture shopping

3. Expect to make a lot of decisions

We thought we would just walk in, find something we like and be done. It's not like that at all. haha We found the furniture we wanted and then a deal was going on. So the furniture came with a coffee table, end tables, lamps, a picture, and a rug which is awesome. The problem with all the extras was that we had to pick them out and make more decisions.

 Before

After

We have more furniture now, but it almost feels bigger. The dogs approve of the comfort level as well. :)

Cub's Game at Milwaukee

We got to go to a Cub's game and it was a new stadium for me....exciting! This game was at Miller Park in Milwaukee. It was really cool to see the stadium, but I'd have to say Wrigley Field is way prettier. Miller Park has a roof (which is kind of cool), but nothing beats the ivy at Wrigley. Plus at Wrigley you can get a tan if you are in the sun...no sun when the roof is closed.

 We got there about an hour early so we got to see them warm up.

 I always take a picture of the scoreboard too. Even though this one is digital the one at Wrigley is better. I'm not being biased either. I would choose Wrigley's even if I wasn't a Cubs fan I promise.

 Curt and I :)

 Brandon and Curt

 We had some awesome seats! 

Even though they lost I had fun. There is just something about being at a baseball game in person that makes it more exciting.

Home Project: Bookcase

So last weekend I'm sitting in the living room staring at this bookcase. In my head I thought...wow that takes up a lot of room and if I had two it would probably hold all of our DVDs. I also didn't like how it was like a foot deep and our DVDs were only like 4 or 5 inches deep. So I hatched a plan in my head. What if I cut the bookcase in half and have two. I could then paint it black (to go with our color scheme in the living room). So you know what...that's what I did with Curt's help of course! Now I love it.

Before

After

 So you see the doors at the bottom? That was another idea I hatched up after deciding I wanted to cut it in half. We have a lot of gaming systems (XBOX 360, XBOX One, Wii, GameCube, a Playstation, etc.) and all of those come with cords, remotes, and accessories. I hated looking at them all. I am a very organized person and feel like everything has a place. Cords drive me nuts and so seeing all the cords and remotes all over the bookcase looked so unorganized and chaotic. So that's how the door idea began. At first I thought we could make wooden doors, but that wouldn't really match our modern look. We had these old woven baskets so I grabbed one and looked. The sides were just stapled together so I tore two of them apart and created 4 doors out of them. 

 These doors were a hassle, but they turned out cool! The hardest part was screwing the magnetic stop to the bookcase. Those suck, but in the end was worth it. 

The new look of our entertainment system. I'm so happy about it. It was a plan that turned out how I pictured it in my head. I still need to work on the cords behind the TV (see them sticking out all over the place?), but I love how it looks. This also freed up some space on our wall for furniture. We are hoping to get a new couch and love seat within the next few months to modernize our living room. I'm very excited about this because we will go from a Christmas living room (our couch is green and our chair is red) to a grown up living room.

Have you had any home projects turn out awesome and that you are proud of?!

Easter with His Side

On Easter we went over to Curt's parents house to celebrate Easter with them. I love seeing my nephews and getting to play with them! It's also fun to see them get excited to open gifts. Even if its a stuffed bunny or bear they get so excited.

Of course, gifts were first. haha

I remember Legos....if I had a kid I'd probably play with their toys too. :)

I'm so excited that its nice out again. No long sleeves and being frozen!

Soccer time!

I think Curt should have played soccer growing up. He was a pro. 

Can't forget Daisy

We also celebrated a birthday since his was the following Tuesday.

 

Mega peanut M&M's...probably the best invention ever.

Talented and controlling the video camera as well as her camera.

Thinking about birthdays I realized mine is in less than a month already! Not like I'm counting or anything.