First Grown-up Weekend!

Pin It I started school on Thursday! It was all new teacher information... I'm so on info overload, it was actually exhausting! I still don't have my books yet to start lesson planning, so this was my last (really actually honestly) free weekend for the rest of the semester. We decided to have some fun!

On Saturday we drove to Sioux City, which has a nice mall and some civilization (yay!). It's about an hour drive and it was nice to spend some time with my hubby. We drove there to see the movie "The Help". I read the book last summer and loved it - so obviously I couldn't wait for the movie to come to our three theater movie palace in town!

The movie was good...

but the book is wayyyy better!


Zach has also been on a juice fast (he saw the documentary Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead). So we went to Wal-mart and bought a juicer then ran to Fareway and bought a TON of fruits and veggies! He was hungry for pizza the other night so I made him this juice: tomato, spinach, and celery! Yum?

I'm sure the wine glass made it fancier! Well, his plan was to do the fast for 10 days, but he just made me mac and cheese for dinner and dug in himself... I think he's done - just in time for the Iowa State Fair cuisine. I'm not sure only juice is really that healthy anyway!

Back to school tomorrow!

Fancy and Shiny

Pin It Today was our first day here that we really did nothing on the apartment! Four of Zach's high school friends came to visit and I spent most of the day cooking. It really was a lot of fun and I know the guys had fun at the local waterpark - apparently they have slides and diving boards (emphasis added by the 22 year old men) ha! :) So today I'll post a picture of a project that was recently completed.

Two projects in one picture - more for your reading!

I  messed up by not taking a before picture. The only picture I have of the apartment was when I first saw it and took pictures on my phone to send to Zach - needless to say, they're poor quality! Anyway, if you look hard you can get an idea of what it looked like before (with the previous tenants' stuff).

As I mentioned before, we painted - so that definitely helps change it up. I really wanted to jazz up the accent wall, but didn't want to spend a ton of money on it (think wall decals, wallpaper, etc). I made a wall stamp from a wood block and foam, but that failed. So as a last ditch effort I tried to make a stencil. I went on Google images (strict filters on! lol) and searched for stencil patterns. I printed off one I liked, taped it onto a left over piece of contact paper, and cut it out with an exacto knife. Peeled it off, stuck it to the wall and painted. We really like it!

As you may have noticed, that light fixture is really painfully outdated! A light wood, white metal, gold chain, and frosted white shades just aren't our style. I picked up a can of spray paint (Zach painted!), ditched the shades and bought new light bulbs. I think Zach did a great job on it, but you can judge for yourself! (We still don't have pictures hung up, so forgive that... maybe by tomorrow!)

Pretty proud of our very low cost projects!

Stencil Cost:
Left over paint: basically free
Left over contact paper: basically free

Light Fixture Cost:
Spray Paint: $3.42
Light Bulbs: $2.12 for a pack of 6

Definitely fits a teacher's budget! :)

Paint Stained

Pin It I started a blog to update everyone on life! We're further away, we're starting new chapters (job & school), I'm bad at updating people, and I'd like to remember this time in our lives, so I thought this might be easiest. I also feel like I'm annoying on Facebook, so at least this way I can post what I want and you only have to read it if you want to!

For those of you who don't know, we just moved across the state! We are in a nice apartment that doesn't care if we paint or update, which makes us feel like we actually have a home. We also have a garage with this new place, so Zach is happy that he has a place to store things. And we have a dishwasher which makes us both happy!

We moved in on August 1 and spent Tuesday-Friday painting... we're finally done! It was definitely a lot more work than we thought it would be, but we are really happy with the results... and tired and paint stained.

(The bedroom color is actually a bit darker)

My parents came up to visit this weekend and to deliver two couches to us (much cheaper than a moving truck). They were an awesome deal and they look really nice (the couches, not my parents, although they look nice too)! Much better than sitting on the floor all week or any other couches we could've afforded on our budget - think sketchy-basement-Craigslist-style budget. Plus they match and we don't have to use slip covers... pretty new territory for us :)

 We  just need to hang up pictures and finish putting away our (read: my) clothes and we'll be ready! My grandparents are coming up on Tuesday, so our goal is to be all done by then! Planning to post some of our projects we've been working on soon!