One man's trash... pt 2

Right about now, you are thinking 'please tell me LB did not go dumpster diving again'.

Well, the answer to that, my friends, is yes I did. I can't help it that the people of my complex throw out good furniture! But before you get mental pictures of me, head down in the dumpster, feet dangling out, let me tell you how it went down.

On Tuesday, I stopped in the office to pay rent, and on my way to meet up with Mommacita, I happened to notice the dumpster was removed from the trash area. Well behind it, I saw this little gem:

I didn't really have time to stop and pick it up, so I called JEGs and asked him if he could check to see if it was still there on his way home.

The entire day I am having dreams about this table. I was so excited to work on something and I kept thinking about whether I wanted to keep it or sell it. Then JEGs texted me later that day "no table"
Wa wa waaaaaaa.

That night after work, I had to throw away the recyclables from work (because I love Mother Earth, even if no ones in my office does) and I thought, 'Let me just check behind the dumpster'. Like a gleaming beacon of light, (or not) there it was! WOO HOOO! So I grabbed it, and worked on it all of Wednesday night and turned it into this:

Not too shabby, eh? I used Valspars Lily Muse still leftover from this project and this project.

There was a little water damage on the top, but I sanded it down as much as I could

it is still visiable, but not as bad as it was

I dumped the old, brass hardware and added a snazzy new one from Home Depot (sorry Allie!)

The hardware ended up being the most difficult thing. I needed a pull that was 3.5 inches between the two screws and most pulls are 3 inches or 4 inches with a few at 3.75 inches. It was a miracle that I finally found one that fit.

Not bad for 8 hours worth of work! Now I'll pop it up on Craigslist and see if I get any bites!

Always & Forever,

ME

NOW it's a party

Today, we meet the wedding party!

Since we are proper on this blog, we shall introduce the ladies first:

Maid of Honor- Connie

Connie is my bestie and life partner. We knew each other in high school and hung out in the same crowd, but we weren't really friends. She was always the one organizing fun things for the group to do like mystery dinner parties and nights out. We really bonded our senior year of college when we went Daytona Beach for spring break. That was the week we became life partners and have been attatched at the hip ever since. Now we bond over our fabulousity, cosmos and the desire to be friends with gay men.

Bridesmaid- Tara

Tara is my cousin- she's like a built in best friend! In high school we worked in a retirement home together and, at one time, were even dating two guys who were best friends. Alas, when Tara went to college she moved to Penn State- and just never came back. :::sad face::: She is now living in Pittsburg, so I don't get to see her nearly as much as I would like, but I still consider her one of my very dearest friends.

Bridesmaid- Aileen

Aileen is also a cousin- Tara's younger sister in fact! Since I grew up in a house with all brothers, Tara and Allie were the closest thing I had to sisters and I really do think of them as that. Not only does Allie hook me up with sweet books of wallpaper, but her dry sense of humor cracks me up! She is an incredibly caring person, and I know I can always depend on her to have a full conversation over texting!

Now on to the boys...

Best Man- Mike

JEGs and Mike are very much like Connie and me. They were friendly in high school, but it wasn't until later that they started to really hang out. The first time I met Mike was at JEGs 21st birthday where he amazed me with his CD art. They started to wrench on cars together and when JEGs was looking to switch schools and majors, Mike suggested a program he was looking in to. Two years and a couple liquid lunches later, they graduated with the same degree. Now they are best buds, and I'm still not 100% sure they aren't gay for each other.

Groomsman- Joey V.

JEGs met Joey when he was working at AutoZone. I will never forget the first time JEGs mentioned him, it was something to the tune of, " You gotta meet this guy Joe. He's crazy. He just told his wife if she calls the store one more time, he's gonna burn the house down". After working with each other for a few months, they just clicked.

Groomsman- Tim

Tim is another one of those I-knew-you-in-high-school-but-we-weren't-friends kind of guy. You know how every group of friends has that one guy who knows everything? Yeah, that's Tim. He's like Google- but funnier.

Flower Girl- Doodles

Doodles is my 4-year-old neice who is already psyched about being my flower girl. This ought to be interesting because she loves to be the center of attention. ;)

Ring Bearer- W

W is JEGs cousins' son. What does that make him? Nephew? Cousin? I don't know. But I can tell you he is cute as a button.

There you have it! Eight of our most favorite people in the world, and we are honored to have them in our wedding.

Always & Forever,

ME

How Very Lovely!

...and the winner of the One Lovely Blog Award goes to....

LIZZIEBETH!!!

:::cue me clapping my hands at my breakfast bar::::

It's true! I have been honored with the Lovely Blog Award by Jodi over at This is What We Do in Maine...
who is totally my new favorite blog. Read her blog about the great spoon/fork debate. Gave me a new way of looking at eggs ;)

Anywho, back to business!

The rules for the One Lovely Blog Award are:
Accept the award; post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award, and his or her blog link. Pass the award to 15 other blogs that you've newly discovered. Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

To be honest, I don't read 15 blogs but I will give you the cream of my crop. In no particular order:

Get It Girl Style

Shannanigans

Rinse. Repeat.

Team Schularick

3 pm Coffee

Thrifty Little Blog

Freckles Chick

You Paid More Than Me!

If you've got a couple extra minutes, I recommend you meander on over to these blogs. And don't forget about Jodi's as well!!

Always & Forever,

ME

Top Shelf

By the end of this post you are going to be amazed by my organizational skills, or think I'm a complete dorkus.

..I'm leaning towards the latter. Just a heads up.

About a two months ago when I reorganized the kitchen I made the laundry nook go from this:

to this:

and was quite proud of myself. :::pats self on back::: Good job, LB.. way to organize a full shelf.
What I didn't show you was what was lurking on the floor next to the washer.
Of course we forgot to take a 'before' picture, but trust me all this

was jam packed in there. It was a holy mess.

 

So on Saturday when I came home from a cheer clinic, JEGs had a surprise for me: he was going to install ClosetMaid in the laundry nook!

JEGs has a relationship with ClosetMaid. And I don't mean casual drinks-and-the-occasional-nookie relationship, I mean full on If-I-didn't-give-LB-a-ring-first kind of relationship. It started when he was living in his first bachelor pad in the Dub C. He didn't have enough closet space so he added more shelves for his t-shirts in his closet. When we moved into Falconhead, we had ZERO storage, and I had a lot of crap. So he did his ClosetMaid magic in our walk-in and doubled our storage space (which can be seen here and here).

I have to admitt, their website is pretty cool. You can design a space in 3D and then the website gives you an exact list of every nut, bolt and screw you need. So JEGs jotted down what we needed and we headed out to Home Depot.

JEGs started off simply by adding another self above the existing self

and wrapped it all the way around. From there he added four shelves down the wall for extra storage.

Go ahead and drool if you need to. It's pretty amazing

All wiped up? Ok, let's take a closer look...

On the shelf that was already there we kept things that I access on a weekly basis; cleaning supplies (all gathered in the basket) and laundry detergent positioned directly above the washer so I can pour my cocktail of washing suds

The new shelf above that has things we really won't need that often, such as Christmas decorations, our excessive amounts of Qtips and the extra paper towel holder

The other side holds all our painting supplies, the grooviest ice bucket you'll ever see and extra plastic cups for all of our frat parties social gatherings

Right now you are thinking, 'Wow LB.. you, um... have quite a collection of paper products...'
I promise you we don't have regular bouts with diarrhea. We bought in bulk for OBX and are still living off what we brought back. So for that reason, we have an entire shelf dedicated for all things paper

On the third shelf is our impressive Tupperware collection. When I orginally put them in the drawer I must have had a multitude of dirty ones in the sink, because we could not get them to fit anymore. Now there is plenty of room for them and they can hang out with our trash bag (which we also buy in bulk)

The fourth shelf has NOTHING! We figured perhaps we can store some electronics there like the coffee maker and toaster, to make more room on the counter. Or we can use this as dry storage so JEGs doesn't have to lay on the floor to retrieve the spaghetti out of the cabinet next to the sink. For right now we are leaving it empty to decided what works for us best.

Last but not least our broom and Swiffer are up off the floor.

The end result? A perfectly organized laundry nook- and a fiance who gets giddy everytime she opens the doors to do laundry.

... and that, my friends, is worth JEGs' weight in gold.

Always & Forever,

ME

Mark the Calendar...

I ordered our Save the Dates today!!!

front

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back

(sorry stalkers, you don't get to know our address or real names).

I am so excited because I used VistaPrints and only had to pay $6.59 for shipping! They should be arriving here on Oct 23, and hopefully JEGs and I will have them out by Oct. 25.

EEeeeeeee!!!!!

Always & Forever,

ME

Happiness

Last night I fell asleep on the couch, wrapped up in a blanket, watching Survivor with JEGs.

I love living together :)

Have a great weekend everyone!

Always & Forever,
ME

Spellin Bee

I saw this sign on the way home from cheer practice the other day:

"NO LEF TURN"

Whoever wrote this must be really smrt. ;)

Always & Forever,
ME