The first and the largest purchase was our new living room set - a chocolate brown bonded leather couch, love seat, oversized chair and ottoman. We love it! I'm very excited to have a different color in our living room. Why did we "need" new living room furniture...well, honestly we probably didn't need a whole set of furniture, but we did need a sofa bed for when visitors come. Now that we live a great deal farther away from family, when they visit, it tends to be for a longer period of time, I'll just be real, I can't handle sleeping on the floor or the couch for longer than a weekend. The more we thought about it, the more we considered getting a new set because you see, we have this "back building" as we call it, I think we should call it the mother-in-law quarters :), it's just a room separate from the house with no bathroom attached. We thought for quite some time that we would get a sofa bed and put it out there for guests, neither parents said anything, it's the questions they asked that made us think that maybe it's not so convenient to sleep in our building out back with no bathroom...hence, the idea came from Eric one day, what if we got a new set of furniture including a sofa bed and put our "not-so-old-but-now-old-because-we-have-brand-new" furniture in the back building, the more we thought about it, the more we liked the idea. It makes the back building more useful for family visits, for our family in general, and for potential ministry opportunities with our church (Eric and I could have groups over and never be heard by the kids when they are sleeping!)...so it was a win-win all around. We bought the furniture....my mind has been in FAST mode ever since about home decorations. So now that our furniture set was delivered Tuesday, my accent colors had to come together, I spent a lot of time looking and looking, dreaming about the character I wanted to give my living room. AND...drum roll please....I found them! At Pier One today!! (by myself with both kids..I must have been a crazy woman on a mission!) Lots of multi-colored pillows that will bring all kinds of possibilities for colorful decorating in the living room! We have made progress!! Thank goodness for Christmas money to help with these splurges! :) I spent a good hour (even though I knew I loved the pillows!) with a nice employee at Pier One (while the kids are yelling for snacks etc) trying to decide if I should make this purchase. I think the lady seriously thought it was like I was spending a million dollars...it kinda felt that way to me though because I just don't typically go out and spend that kind of money on decorative pillows! :) Anyways, they are bought, loved, and here's some pictures of it all...
Another purchase that I am super excited about, Eric got with some of his Christmas money...it seems that not many people know what this is, so I'll connect a link for you in a bit. It's called a Roku - it a device that allows you to stream things from the internet. We moved our Wii to the back building so we can have netflix out there since we are too cheap to add more cable out there! The Roku can play for free netflix, huluplus, and 2 things I am SUPER EXCITED ABOUT ARE: KLove and Air1 radio stations! We don't have either in Tupelo, and I miss them so much since we moved from Lexington. There's a ton more, but it's pretty cool, if we can figure out how to have college football and basketball through the Roku, I think we could save some money and give up the cable TV. I'll challenge Eric to figure out how that may be a possibility! Here's a link to learn more about the Roku, thanks to my friend, Diane Munoz who introduced us to hers in the first place! http://www.roku.com/?gclid=CL2GqoyNqrUCFQsFnQodwHsA-A Maybe I should be a salesperson for all these things, because I am really excited to share about them with you!! There are a ton of things free that you can get on the Roku, of course there's a ton of things you can subscribe to monthly, but we will stick to the free for the most part because there is so much free stuff to get!!
I don't have a picture to send you of this, but my last and final "bigger" purchase is a much lighter shower curtain (light green, white, and dark-tan-ish), rugs, and towels for the kids' bathroom, our guest bathroom. The bathroom is painted a darker tan-ish color, and it's been begging me to be lightened up a bit ever since we moved in, and I randomly found these items at TJ Maxx last weekend when we were in Memphis, and it was a great deal! So, now I'm excited with this purchase because now I don't have to paint the bathroom and the room feels so much brighter and lighter! Yeah! If only you could see my to do list for the house to make it our home, it's going to be awhile until it is all accomplished, but we have made progress this month! I'm not a huge decorator, "so I thought", but my friend Jessica has been helping me with decisions along the way, and all the sudden, I think, dream, and can't sleep because more and more ideas are coming into my head! Oh my!! :)
Some other things that I just have to share with you that have taken up my time this week are out of our new cleaner eating lifestyle -- I think you should give each of these foods a try because we have thoroughly enjoyed them! Here's the links...I don't know how to link these better, if anyone has any advice on attaching links let me know!
Pizza on homemade whole wheat dough:
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/amazing-whole-wheat-pizza-crust/detail.aspx
with homemade pizza sauce (that even Stanley said was so good, mommy!):
http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Homemade-Pizza-Sauce
and salad with homemade balsamic vinegarette:
http://www.chinesegrandma.com/2010/11/balsamic-vinaigrette/
We are still enjoying this yummy goodness, and it was very therapeutic to make the pizza dough, it's a lot like my mom's that I've been making for years, just healthier because it's less white flour! And, I think it keeps longer for leftovers which is a win-win in my book! I think that I may actually now become brave enough to bake some bread, that's something that I told myself I would never get into, but I think I'm just going to have to try it!! ;) I even wore my new apron - Stanley again noticed his mommy's apron and said, "that's cute, mommy!" I'm excited because he doesn't know it but I got an apron for both he and Clara for Valentine's day - a friend made the aprons for them. Stanley's is Thomas and Clara's is Minnie...I think they will love wearing them when they are helping me in the kitchen.
I only write about all of this today because I'm excited to share about all of it with you, if any of it comes off "bragging"...again, that's never my intention. So much on social media and blogs, etc. can seem like bragging to me, and I'm sure you have felt that same way. That is not the case for me, and I hope you can see my heart in sharing. I feel blessed that we could make these splurges without going into credit card debt. We'll just be praying nothing major happens to the house or appliances, because then we may be in trouble. :) Join with me in prayer about that, too! HA!!
Well, Eric is at our church's men's retreat today and tomorrow, and I'm thankful that our sitter was with the kids last night so I could go on a date with my husband on our 10 year dating anniversary. Now, tonight, she is returning so some mamas can have a girls night out while our husbands are away. I am so thankful that the fog of the first year living somewhere new is behind me/us, even though it's far from what we know and there's things that I miss about my other home lands, I am so very thankful for where God has brought us in Tupelo, at The Orchard. I'm so thankful that God orchestrates a plan much better than our little minds could dream of. Hope you are enjoying this Saturday afternoon!
As always, thanks for stopping, if you make it to the end of some of these long posts, thanks for enduring!
-Kendra :)
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