Our weekend adventure

This past weekend we drove out to Wilson, TX (pop. 562) for our niece's 2nd birthday party and to spend some time with Chris' side of the family.

Wilson is just about 20 miles outside of Lubbock, and is a good 5 hour drive for us from Dallas/Fort Worth area. What a drive!

Unfortch, I did not take out my camera to take pictures along the way because in all the previous times I've tried, they..... well, they sucked. So, these pictures are not from me (as if you couldn't tell because they are actually pretty good!).

To give you a better description of the area to an outsider, which I am to this part of Texas, I found this account on another blog that I thought really summed it up well:

Yesterday began southeast of Lubbock with a nice sunrise to the left and dense fields of cotton to the right. Smell was the dominant sense, though, as I passed through a long dusty cloud emanating from a compost factory. Whew. That was followed by long sulfur-y miles, apparently due to the petroleum being produced at closely spaced pump jacks.

This is not to say that it stinks out there - it really doesn't. It's just that you'll get these "whiffs" from time to time. It's a dry and pretty flat terrain, with cap rocks and wide valleys. You can see for miles and miles.

Along the way, just as you pass out of Abilene, you will start seeing and come across the "wind farms". Giant windmills to harness wind energy for electricity. Did you know that Texas produces the most wind power of any state?? This picture below doesn't do justice to the sheer size of these things!

This is ONE blade being transported.

All in all, we had a great - albeit HOT - weekend. It was nice to get out of town and see his family, and I can brag that my cooing/moving baby-doll present was a hit with our niece!

Picture credits: Photos 1 & 2, Photo 3, Photo 4, Photos 5 & 8, Photos 6 & 7

A little Wednesday shopping

They are having a sale on ABS Essentials (a new line from Allan Schwartz) over at Ideeli today, and I picked up these 2 cute dresses for under $80, including shipping!


The first dress is cotton (lined), and kind of has a cute suzani-like pattern going on. It looks really breezy and comfortable, but still cute. $29.

This dress is so cute - I don't really have a "need" for a dress quite this formal/dressy, but it was too cute and too good of a deal to pass up - $39! Personally, I think this would also make a cute bridesmaid dress. But I'm sure I'll find a place to wear it, even if I have to throw a wrap over it in the winter!

If you're interested, the sale lasts until tomorrow - but get there soon for the best selection of what's available!!!
You can use this link here to join (for free): http://www.ideeli.com/invite/rachel_wiley






I will hopefully be posting some more about our weekend tonight. Don't worry, nothing amazing happened, it's just that I forgot my camera at home today!!! We did put up some shelving in the garage, and had a nice barbeque for my dad on Sunday. The dogs sunbathed (have some cute pictures!) and we tried to stay as cool as possible!!


**UPDATE: I am obviously going for the world record for number of times the word "cute" can be used to describe something!!! OMG.
I left it all up in my original text for your reading pleasure.

Friday updates

So, #1 on my to-do list is almost done.... Riley and Murphy got trimmed, but the group is still in need of baths. That fun comes tonight and tomorrow morning!

Here is a "before" of Riley, who is trying to tell you here that no, he is NOT a sheepdog. He is a miniature schnauzer, thankyouverymuch!





And "after"! Fur on the floor? Just about 1/4 of all that came off. Now we're all ready for summer with our short trim! Riley's telling me here that he's ready for his treat for being such a good dog. JJ's doing his best impression of a crazy chihuahua...

And GUESS WHAT came in last week (but I didn't know about it until yesterday!)???

Something I've been waiting a veeerrrryyy long time for...

My wedding pictures and albums!!!!

That's right, we got 2 "mini" albums for our parents. I was worried a bit that the size would be too tiny, but they're actually really nice!

Their albums look just like ours!

Inside this box is a very big and heavy book... that I'll share with you later.

Here is one of the 8 x 10's that we got. This one is now hanging on our wall. They were printed on metallic paper - so cool. If you have the option, use the metallic paper. It's beautiful. Especially on black and whites and sepia tones.

I'll be working on a big recap with photos for EAD. I'm hoping to get it done over the weekend/early next week, but we need to save the photos to our hardrive first. But I'll post some photos here too, it's so exciting to finally have them in hand!

So this weekend we're just planning on laying low. Cooking out for my parents for Father's Day on Sunday, mowing the yard, cleaning the house, putting stuff up in the attic - you know, the exciting things you get to do when you own a house and are "old" and married! ;-)

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

To-do list:

1. Bathe and trim the dogs.

2. Spray paint the tops of my Ikea cannisters (currently silver) to an antiqued bronze-y black, like these from Pier 1.





3. Spray my new seagrass rug with Thompson's Water Seal. Yep. Maybe the little "accidents" that seem to frequently happen where this rug will be (which is close to the back door) won't be able to soak in now. That is a good thing (cuz' there's another 2 that aren't in this pic!).

4. Make a mini-blind roman shade. I found some fabric I like to use, and these directions from the Little Green Notebook make it sound fairly easy! I love roman shades, and I've been wanting one to go over my window in our kitchen forever. Couldn't quite find one that I liked and that we could afford. Enter a $19 sale window panel and these directions and *PRESTO*!!

Plus, all the usual still-trying-to-get-the-office-organized, fold up laundry, do something about our mail system, clean house, do dishes.... fun stuff.

Is there anything big on your to-do list??

Cool things

I thought I'd share with you some cool design things I've seen lately.

The first two are from Jennifer Delonge. Storage boxes used as tables with chalkboard paint on top! How cool.

These are some new rugs we (at work) have. The first one is cow-hide rectangles laid in a subway pattern. Please excuse the wrinkles, but I think this is one of the prettiest rugs. Plus, it's treated with silicone, so it's stain resistant (but still soft!).

This rug is showing a nailhead trim on the binding. It was something new to us, and because the carpeting and binding were so thick, a special technique had to be invented and used. But I think it's a cool look - something different. I'm not so sure about the carpet pattern, but whatevs.... it would probably look better with a sisal or seagrass field.

Work is still keeping me hopping! Which is good, but we still have to work short weeks every other week. I think it's because business is still slow in some of our larger showrooms - so they're spreading the pain around. Yay.

In the meantime, I've got several orders that need processing (again - yay!), so hopefully this short-week thing really will end on Labor Day and we can go back to getting paid normally.

Chris is home this week and next, which is nice, so I'm also hoping to get some things done around the house. We still have a bunch of things to go through, and after being totally lazy this weekend and last night, it's time to get moving on this stuff.

Oh, and I'm going to try and waterseal my new seagrass rug. I'll let you know how that turns out....

the Good, the Bad, and the Busy

The Good.
Laura Bush came into our showroom on Wednesday, which is pretty cool actually. This is the second time I've gotten to (very very briefly) meet her. She wasn't working with one of my clients, so I made do with a "hello". I will say though, evidently the Secret Service get to dress more casually once the President they are guarding is out of office.

The Busy.
Work has kept me really busy the last couple of weeks. Have you ever felt like a juggler?? Like, "here - I'll work on this now.... oh wait, there's someone on the phone.... ooooooh, I need to do this NOW, or else..... " Whew.
Last weekend was FINALLY the garage sale!!! We did it! Yay!! We didn't make a whole lot of money, but we did get a lot of junk out of the way. Chris has been gone this week, so the going-through-of-his-stuff has been put temporarily on hold, but he's back tomorrow morning.

So that's the busy. The bad is that I found out a couple of weeks ago that our company is going on 4-day work weeks, ever other week throughout the summer. It sucks because as much as we were on a budget before, we are really on one now. Having your paycheck cut is no fun at all. On a positive note, though, I'm going to try and use these "days off" as time to work on getting some of the stuff done that I've been thinking about for so long - an Etsy shop, maybe a side business, clearing out the office, repainting the guest room..... I can't say I don't have the time now.

Hope everyone is doing well! I'll be catching up soon.

Wall Murals

I saw these referenced in a story from Kelly+Olive's site... how cool are they? You can custom size the mural or print to whatever you want.

Cool way to fill up a big empty wall.

Picture from the LA Times.