I'm finally putting up pics of our new home! We are so excited to be new homeowners and are loving making it our own. Manny has been Mr. Yard man. It's been pretty funny to listen to him talk about trees and plants and ant killer! There are a lot of pics but I wanted to try and show everything. I have to apologize for the darkness of some of the pictures. I thought that since it was in the middle of the day and I had my flash on, that I didn't have to turn lights on in my house. Lesson learned, definitely needed to turn some lights on. Also, don't look at the blinds. They are paper, temporary ones for privacy. We ordered new blinds and they should be here in a few weeks. There are also two before and afters in here. Enjoy!

Here come some of the dark pics. This is our living room. The layout of the furniture will be changing because Manny's mom is giving us her piano and it will be going in our living room. I'll post pics when it changes and I promise to turn the lights on!

The piano will go under the metal piece on the wall. Which means the couch will be moving way back. Which means the chair will move too. We have it all worked out. Hopefully it will all fit okay.

This is makeover number 1. Remember when my mom and I made this ottoman. I love love love that fabric but when we moved into our house and I saw it with everything else, it was the BIG GREEN MONSTER in the middle of the room. It had to be changed!

This is what it looks like now. Much better!

This is one of my favorite areas in our house. The apothecary will be painted too in chalk paint. I'm also changing the knobs!

This is our breakfast area. I'm also thinking about painting/staining the table. I'm also changing the light over the table. Not a fan!

This is the view of our kitchen from the living room.

View from entry.

This is our dining area. We love our table. That was a nice gift from my mother-in-law, Judy.

I will be changing the light in here too.

This is one of the guest rooms. I am wanting to change this room. I'm thinking of using some of the green monster fabric in here. I still have a lot of it and I do still love it. I'm also thinking of putting a lot of pics in here from places Manny and I have been. I haven't fully decided!

Yup! Needs some change and some pizazz!

This is the front guest room. Don't you think we did a great job decorating? We are getting a day bed from my cousin, Allison. It will eventually be a nursery too when we are ready to have a baby.

This is the guest bathroom.

This is the entry. That's a reflection on the wall, not some weird paint job!

This is our master bathroom. This is Manny's sink area.

This is mine.

Bath and the stand up shower is on the left. I love having these separate.

This is one of the best things in this house. We have a bonus room off the master which we made into Manny's office. We need to get another bookcase for all of Manny's school books.

Looking into the office from the master.

Dresser area.

This needs some love. We found this piece at the City Wide Garage Sale. I love the color. We need to get a stand for the TV. It used to be wall mounted and we don't know where the stand went. This will look better eventually.

My little desk area.

My side of the bed. I am thinking that I want to have a chandelier hanging over the chair.

Manny's side. Mija got a new bed too.

View when you walk into the room.

This is makeover number 2! The pantry! I have wanted to do this since I saw it on House of Smith's. This is the before.

Close up of the labels my mom and I made.

Ta-da! I used some wine boxes that my brother brought home from work to store cookbooks, bread, etc. There are other baskets for storing too. We used clear containers so you can see what's in there instead of boxes.

I love the way it turned out. PS, the door organizer is the bomb! I love it! I got it at The Container Store.

I used the silhouette machine to make this vinyl for our wedding album. Then I put the book on a cute bird cookbook stand. The brown leather was just too boring and most people didn't know what it was.

Mija followed me around while I took pics. She is loving being in the house. She loves the backyard and we love not having to walk her down three flights of stairs!

We finally did it! Manny and I are the proud owners of a new house! This process has been pretty interesting. We started out thinking that we would rent a house. We decided to get a realtor to help us find a rental property. We looked at a few houses and when we ran the numbers and the benefits of actually owning a home, we decided to buy! We found a house that we loved and things seemed to be on the right track. Two days before we were supposed to close, the sellers backed out. I was a bit angry to say the least. But our realtor found us another house and we fell in love with it! So here we are. We closed today and will move this weekend!

This is it! Don't worry the blue beam has been moved. I took this the day we looked at it.

Last year, I was contacted by Bead Trends Magazine about doing a tutorial for their blog and magazine. They said that it would be in the June issue of 2011 and that they needed it by January to have everything photographed. I did the blog first. The blog tutorial was actually for one of my ornaments, but this was for the cake topper I had at my wedding. I got it done and sent it off. I went to JoAnn's today and there it was! The June 2011 issue!!!! It is so exciting! Here are the pics I took of my feature! Go out and buy one! Ha!

A picture of my topper isn't on the cover, but I am a teaser on the cover!!!

The first page! How awesome is this! At the bottom of the little blurb, it says my name! I was so excited to see that part!

Page 2!

Page 3! Look mom, your hands are in Bead Trends! She helped me out with photographing during creation! This was such a great opportunity and I am so glad that Bead Trends contacted me!

Since it's Cinco de Mayo, I'm making a yummy dish tonight. I made enchiladas last night and tonight I am making Mexican Pizza! This is so yummy! The black bean spread definitely makes this dish! If you haven't gone to Annie's Eats, then you are definitely missing out!

This coming weekend is so busy! My mom is moving and one of my college friends is having her engagement party. Now, I've debated with a few people whether you are supposed to take a gift to an engagement party. At the end of the day, I decided I'd rather show up with a gift, than not! We were very close in college. We were best friends, roommates, attached at the hip! So I wanted to give her a gift inspired by a gift that I got when I was engaged. I decided to make her a picnic basket for two. Mine had a vintage twist to it. As much as I love the vintage twist on mine, that is not her personality. So I found a cute little picnic basket and lined it with a fun table cloth that can be used to sit on during a picnic. I bought two glass plates and two wine glasses. I also bought two forks, spoons, and knives and tied them with some turquoise raffea. I also bought a bottle of wine and wrapped it with some cute paper from Paper Source and then put a tag on it with a message reminding them to always take time for just the two of them. I added a cookbook, that had some good recipes for picnicing and wine bottle stopper. I hope she likes it!

I've finally caught up on my one book a month this year. These are the books that I have read so far. Spoken from the Heart by Laura Bush was the culprate in making me fall so far behind. I started out flying through the book but, by the time she hit the part where they were in the White House, I lost speed. It just drug on and on! But I powered through and finally finished it. I decided I needed some quick books to catch me up. My next book was Uncharted Territori by Tori Spelling. I don't read for eduaction purposes. I read for entertainment and her books are pretty entertaining and quick to read. My next book was Water for Elephants! This book was ah-mazing!!!!! I loved it and I can't wait to see the movie. The last book I read was Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks. His books are always fast reads for me. This was a good one and it actually had an unexpected ending. If you like Nicholas Sparks, then you will need to read Safe Haven.

But now it's May and I need to start a new book. I have a few books being shipped from Amazon right now, including Something Borrowed. That movie looks good too. I'm just one of those people that likes to read the book before seeing the movie. At the beginning of this, Manny had asked if he could pick just one of my books for the year. I don't know why I said yes. We have absolutely nothing in common when it comes to the things we read. He's an English major for goodness sake! He reads for education purposes 9 times out of 10! I read smut!!!! Haha! So he picked the DaVinci Code by Dan Brown. Manny is a huge Dan Brown fan and is really excited for me to read this book. I'm thinking that I'm about to get behind again. We shall see. I will read it. I did promise after all.

First, I am so excited that I have finished my student teaching and am officially a certified teacher! Yay!!!!! I learned so much and I will miss the class! I've had a few crafts and projects in the past few weeks.

This is a picture of the thank yous I made for all the ladies at school that helped me out during my student teaching. Since I work part time at Paper Source, I had to do something cute. So I got paper bag envelopes and lined them with the tan and turquoise paper. I used pool colored cards and favor boxes and stamped the bird stamp on both with a harbor colored ink pad. Then I heat embossed them to give them a little more of a punch. I made strawberry cake balls and put them inside the favor boxes. I love the way it turned out!

This is the shadow box I made for Manny with all his Navy stuff. This is what he asked for, for his birthday. (His birthday was in January! Gasp, I know!!!! Bad wife!) I bought some navy and white paper from ,where else, Paper Source. I glued the paper to the shadow box and then attached everything with Velcro. I was a bit intimidated with this project but, it turned out to be pretty easy!