Friday, August 27, 2010

lucky #5

For almost 2 years, I have been struggling to get good sleep again.  It just hasn't come easy.  There are several factors for this, but the #1 is the MATTRESS.  As I previously reported, mattress #4 made its appearance at our house and left in a quick fashion.  It spent roughly 4 weeks at house before making its leaves of absense last night. 

Not even 5 minutes after the delivery guys left, we noticed several stains on the brand new mattress.  GROSS!  I don't even feel like going into the round and round conversations that we had with Mattress Firm about receiving a new mattress.  I am just thankful we now have a STAIN-FREE mattress.

Not only is it stain-free, but it is SUPER firm.  In fact, it is the firmest matress they sell.  It is h-e-a-v-e-n!  I am pretty sure the mattress episode is over.  I have definitely met my sleeping match and we will sleep happily ever after.

THE END

Saturday, August 21, 2010

30 day shred

The end of May has come and gone and sadly I did not meet my resolution goal.  I got down 6 pounds, but the last 4 were extremely hard to lose.  Basically I just gave up.  In the meantime, I have gained 4 back so I am still net 2 for the year.  Some people think that is a win, but for me it is a complete fail.  I am on track for gaining the 2 back plus more before the end of the year.  Then I will be back to where I started the first of the year.  It's time for a change...

For the past few weeks, my co-worker, Erika, has been saying she wanted to lose some weight.  Her birthday and a beach trip are coming up so she wanted to use those events as motivation.  She brought a couple of her work-out dvd's to work yesterday to show us just how intense they are.  After seeing The Biggest Loser workout, I set my eyes on the 30 Day Shred by Jillian Michaels:  20 minute workouts everyday.  Not too bad, I thought.  So we decided to start the dvd together; a buddy system really is the best way to go.  We set our start date for tomorrow, Sunday the 22nd. 

I have to confess, though, I started it today.  I have been SUPERLY lazy tired recently and I know it's from not proper exercise.  I hope that my workout today will help my sleeping tonight to improve.  I know that I slept great during the first half of the year.  It has to be the workout! 

We will see where this takes me.  I am not setting a goal of "I want to lose this amount of weight" or "I want to wear this size clothing".  I simply want to do the 30 Day Shred and take a look at the results afterwards.  This is my pressure-free work-out routine.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

2010 backyard makeover

When we moved into our house last May, Daniel had a vision for both the front and back yards.  His front yard vision was simple compared to the back yard.  His goal was to remove the bradford pear in the front.  He did that with flying colors and ease.

The biggest project we knew buying our house was the backyard.  There was nothing wonderful about it except that it was a decent size and fenced in.  There was good bones about it, but Daniel talked about how much there was to dig up and replant. 

And boy, was there!  My intentions were to help with as much of the makeover as I could.  I am happy to say that I contributed one day's worth of work by digging up rocks.  I have never seen so many rocks on all my life!  I would have to say that we had close to 1000 rocks in and buried in the yard.  Obviously I couldn't dig them all up so Daniel did about half of the rocks digging as well.  Then my part was done.

Daniel exploded on the scenes with his digging up plants and planting new ones in their place.  He made several really nice beds for the new plants around the yard.  Two of the beds are against the house and are lined with brick pavers.  They look fantastic!

The hardest and most stressful part of the makeover was deciding on the pavers for our patio extention.  We wanted something that wouldn't look janky, but also didn't want something that was too expensive.  We had already unloaded hundreds of dollars from our wallets and I was looking to save as much as I could.  After many weeks of researching and comparing, we decided on plain gray pavers.  They were less than half of the fancy ones we had originally picked out and we still have plans to paint the them along with the original patio.

After deciding on the pavers, Daniel went to town on laying them.  I must say that Daniel surprised me with his paver-laying abilities.  He spent several hours watching video after video about how to lay pavers and the materials needed to do so.  He laid them all down within a few days' time.  And they look great!  I hope our next house is already landscaped and beautiful, because this was a very stressful project.

Before Pictures
left corner of yard

right corner of yard

back of the house

left front corner of yard


 
After Pictures
left corner of yard

right corner of yard

back of the house
part one of the patio extention

back of the house
part two of the patio extention

the new and improved back of the house

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Christmas in July

With less than 5 months until Christmas Day, I have started brainstorming about this year's outside Christmas decorations. Last year's huge ornament window decor was a lot more trouble than it was worth.  I thought I had thoroughly thought through the hanging process, but it all became too much.  Daniel and I had several arguments about those brightly colored balls:  I had a vision and he had the know-how to make it work.  The catch was that his know-how and my vision clashed. 


outside Christmas decor 2009

So the goal for this year is to have a peaceful holiday decoration season.  I am thinking the traditional window wreaths will work, but as always, I am not satisfied with just the plain ol' forrest green colored ones.  How boring is it to have green wreaths with green bushes with green/mostly brown grass. Super boring!  My goal is to search for bright and shiny wreaths to add some pizzazz to our house.  I am not saying that I want 1970s tacky Christmas wreaths, but something along those lines will work.  Of course, I don't want to spend a buttload for them either.  We all know how much of a cheap gal I am and there's no sense is spending too much on decorations that are only out for a little over a month (if that).

Plus we are buying a taller Christmas tree for our living room!  I am SUPER, DUPER excited about this!  Don't worry about our first married 6 foot Christmas tree; we are still keeping it.  I plan on putting it in the kitchen with all of the "usual" ornaments.  Daniel says "we'll see" about putting it in there, but he will be the one to see once it is lit and decorated in front of the kitchen bay window.

The living room tree is going to be our "fancy" tree like the ones in rich people's houses.  I have always wanted to live in a house with multiple trees (like my grandparents who have like 4+ trees!).  The thing is growing up we barely had room for just one tree in our house.  I still have great memories from childhood Christmases though so I wasn't missing out on much.  Anyway, back to the new living room tree... My vision for this tree is simple:  silver and gold (I love that song!).  During the post-holiday season, Mamski went hog-wild buying up super cheap ornaments at the dollar store.  And thanks to her we just might have enough for the tree!  Of course, I still need garland, a tree topper, and various decor such as flowers and sticks to finish it off.  That gives me an idea.  I should collect sticks and spray paint them silver and gold!  Maybe I can remember to do that in the fall. 

Should be looking good at Christmas time though. 

And another thought:  how come when you decorate at Christmas it never feels like enough decorations, but when you pack it all back it, there are like 10 bins fill of stuff?  My philosophy is that one house can never have too many Christmas decorations.  Look out, Daniel!  We are no where close to having too many decorations.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

football project preview

As of lately, my brain has been going to town on thinking of ways to make and create different inexpensive (precious) projects.  I completed my summer beach project (that I have yet to blog about, but will soon).  I have ideas for the fall season as well:

1.  Fallish table runner/napkins/maybe placemats
2.  Cardboard wall art
3.  Football t-shirts

I haven't started on the first 2, but I am full swing in making precious AU shirts for football season.  I can only leave you with this image.  More to come on this developing project...

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

the princess and the pea

When I was 14 months old, I began sleeping on a mattress that is thought to be harder than a brick...at least that is what other people have said.  To me it was my heaven...ironically just like sleeping on clouds.  Who cares that my back grew accustommed to the firmness of the mattriess?  It was (and still is) bliss when I lay on that mattress, but when it came time to marry, my back terribly missed that mattress.

Since Daniel and I have been married (for less than 2 years), we have gone through roughly a mattress every 6 months.  Nothing is supporting my back like "ol faithful". 

When we married, we had Daniel's old mattress.  He LOVED it and I HATED it.  It felt like I was sleeping in a bowl and I always rolled next to him.  After some research, we decided to buy a Sleep Number bed.  Great!  Problems solved.  Or not.  I must say that we kept that mattress a pretty long while.  It had its moments of good and bad, but mostly bad.  As it turns out, it was like sleeping on an air mattress.  No support at all!

Once Daniel and I completed our backyard makeover project in May, we started looking for a king-sized mattress for our ever-growing (dog) family.  Well, "start looking" to the Todds means we are buying one this weekend.  This is how fast it happened!  I wasn't complaining because I had heard great news about pillowtop mattresses.  I was exicted that we got a firm pillowtop mattress.  Ah, yes.  True heaven awaited us in our dreams.  Until the infamous bowl happened...

A month and half  (yes, less than 2 months) of owning the new king mattress, I began to sink into the mattress.  No support was given to my back/hips/neck.  It felt like being in a swimming pool and laying your head on the side of the pool.  Absolutely no support!  After spending a near sleepless night on that mattress due to horrible back discomfort, we trucked it back up to Mattress Firm.  After spending close to an hour in the store performing a sleep diagnostic test, laying on several mattresses, and mental analysizing, we are welcoming (with big arms) our 4th mattress next Thursday.  You have no idea how grateful I am to have another (and hopefully final) opportunity to have a good night's sleep.  And all I have to say is that it BETTER work this time. 

I will report back with my sleeping habits in due time.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

never say never

A lot has happened since my last blog entry.  My (work) life as I know it will forever be changed.  Starting tomorrow morning I report for duty in Tuscaloosa.  This is a place I thought I would NEVER work.  Being an Auburn graduate, I have never enjoyed going or thinking about "the armpit of Alabama" also known as Tuscaloosa.  I thought it was fairly ironic when I first started working at Valmont that I occaionsally had to visit that place for certain events considering that is the location of our concrete plants. 

When I was a sophomore in college, I remember taking a roadtrip to Tuscaloosa.  It was one of the worst weekends of my life (for more than one reason), but mainly because of having to be in the "enemy's" territory.  I vowed that weekend that I would NEVER have anything to do with that city again. 

Never say never.

With Daniella's departure to Dallas, I was offered her position....located in Tuscaloosa.  (oh my.  open mouth and insert foot.)  It was an offer that I couldn't refuse for more than one reason.  Time-wise the commute is the same, but it is more than double the miles.  That is the only (other) down side.  I will manage though.

Along with Daniella's departure which was last Thursday, Whitney said good-bye as well.  Frankly, it was hard for me to think about leaving Whitney in Birmingham, but she turned in her notice shortly after I made my decision to work in Tuscaloosa.  I wish Whitney and Daniella all the best in the future, and I will miss them greatly.

In happier news, Lisa is coming back to be the Office Manager again.  Talk about blast from the past!  I am so excited to work with her again even though we will be miles apart.  It's funny how things work out.


me, Daniella, and Whitney
June 10, 2010