Window Treatments!

Window treatments - formally known as curtains - have made their way on my windows after a year! These lovely orange curtians were in our bedroom when we lived in Texas and now they nicely accent our living room walls by mirroring the light orange wall across from them!

The brown ones below were actually meant to go in the sunroom, but make the bathroom much nicer!

Then there is Brent shooting me with a nerf gun he found while cleaning out! HAHA!! He's so fun!

Also today is my mom's birthday! Happy Birthday, mom! Love you!

Here today....gone tomorrow!!

Do you see this little building? It has been in front of our house ever since we bought our house and now it's GONE!!!! Hooray!!! It looks amazing! The land looks so great!! I don't have a finished picture yet. I forgot to take one, but in the pics below, you can see the damage after it was taken down and how much better it looks!

Well I am sorry to say that this week was not as interesting as the last. But it has been more frustrating. I have not heard from the job interview. They said I would receive a phone call by Monday for a second interview or if I didn't get the second interview, then I would get a letter in the mail, but I have received neither. So I am assuming that I did not get the job, but I'd like to get the letter they promised. One thought that someone gave me, was that it is possible that they only interview for legal purposes and had people in mind within their system to promote. This is really frustrating for a few reasons:
# 1 - I was really excited about the possibility of this job, but now it has been dashed into the
ground - LOL hahahaha
# 2 - Then it was a complete waste of my time and theirs
# 3 - I may have missed other jobs in which I did not apply for because I was waiting on them.

Well I guess I can just carry on with my life.

It has also been frustating b/c I have been very slow at getting our house unpacked - so this week I have got to get on the ball. It is also frustrating for me with this new house - because I think I should have all the updated new house items to decorate with or to use. I do not need these things, I just think that I do. For some reason I have begun to think that everything has to match. What is this about???
It was a little easier when we had less and less space - (amazingly enough). And when we were in an area where material looks and things did not seem to be a competition, well at least for me anyways. Now that we have moved, I kinda feel like I am having this secret competition with other houses to see whose looks to the best. Where is this pride coming from!?!?! AH! I get so annoyed with myself. God has amazingly blessed us with a house, in the first place, in a time when it's hard to buy a house, it's been remodeled a bit on the inside, we have 6 acres of land with tons of trees, and it has a red front and side door - this house was made for us. But I keep thinking I need "more things". I have had to work on this each day. It is a struggle - although I haven't bought anything extra - but I keep wanting it. What is the deal???

I have been reading Set-Apart Feminity by Leslie Ludy.
Oh, I have to go, church is out and Brent and I are hungry and ready to eat....so I will finish this later....

We're In!

Oh I forgot to say:



We're in! We moved in last week! We spent our first night in our house on Saturday!


Last Thursday was a bit sad for me. The last time I saw our "stuff", it was being packed into a 10x10 storage unit in Texas. So needless to say Thursday was a swirl of memories. I kept seeing boxes that we used from our friends who had just had a baby and moved, they said "black diaper bag", "Charis' room", or a game we played with Rachel and Thomas, the table that sat near the door of our apartment, etc. I was lost in Texas-land and just as the first tear that I had been holding back for an hour was about to fall - I saw the toilet! HA! It was hilarious! The toilet upstairs looks so funny! It's kind of squatty and juts out from the wall - it's very long. I just started laughing. So that was good comic relief! Thank goodness!

I am very slow at unpacking! But it's going to be done soon!

Then you may come for a visit!

At Last: COLOR!

It's the moment you've all been waiting for!!! Our walls with color! Hope you like it!

Living Room - someday a new stair rail!

Kitchen - the red is going to be gone though and there is a purple accent wall - see above.

Sunroom

Our room - it's grey (and sink for our bathroom)

Upstairs bedroom 1 - I love the brown!

Upstairs bedroom 2

Not pictured are the bathrooms - but they are a nice tan color.

We have a new countertop in the kitchen now that looks amazing and soon there will be a backsplash where the red is - although the red looks good with the yellow.

Also - there is carpet in the upstairs bedrooms and our bedroom and the living room and hallways now have hardwood. We hope to finish the hardwood this week!

Someday I will post new pictures and maybe there will be some funiture in the house!

I've bought a few new items to decorate with and Brent and I bought a new couch for the sunroom, along with a set of bistro table and two chairs for the sunroom. We also got a new chair to go in the living room - all we have is a couch!

Well I have new pictures to show you of our house - but alas I forgot my camera cord, so I cannot upload them on this computer. So you must wait in anticipation! Perhaps they will appear on Wednesday!


Brent is going to the doctor tomorrow. His ankle is not moving and he cannot walk without the help of crutches or a wheelchair! (the wheelchair was used to go to the Winter Jam concert Saturday - it was hilarious!!) So hopefully Dr. Layton will be able to find something.


Adoption update: We are back at square one. For a few reasons:1. this house thing is taking longer than we thought and we are pretty sure that instead of domestic we are going to adopt internationally. Peru being the country of choice. :) I'm really stinkin' excited about this.

But you should know that I was really beginning to struggle with adopting in the first place. Esp. since I feel like we haven't even gotten the ball rolling. Our friends Jay and Tanya are adopting a little boy from Nepal. They started the whole process I think almost the same time Brent and I met with the agency in Birmingham. When Jay told Brent in November, they were about to have their first homestudy. Their adoption seems to be speeding along. Click here to see Tanya's blog.

I though maybe it was just an emotional thing since Brent and I do not have kids yet. Nothing was taking off for us it seemed. Maybe we were just trying to do this ourselves and what we wanted and not what God wanted at all. I was praying through it one day and just asking the Lord and telling Him about all my concerns and worries and the next day - what comes in the mail - Southwestern News - what is the WHOLE. ENTIRE. magazine about - ADOPTION. I am not kidding. Plus the rest of week it seemed like everything I saw or picked up - was about adoption. It just happened. I didn't plan any of it. I thought okay Lord - I got it now. Thanks. :)

Now we are just waiting until we are in our house and ready to fill out the application form. This will probably be March or April, but as soon as possible. :)

I am also apply for a job this week. I'd really love to work at this job. So please pray that the Lord might see fit that I get the job. Thanks!! :)

It's finished!

Well the painter finishes today anyway!! It looks like a completely different house! Amazing! I hope to take pictures today or tomorrow and hopefully i can post them by this weekend! We also have a few new furniture items! A couch and a bistro table and chairs for the sunroom and a new chair for the living room! We will one day buy the matching chair for the couch in the sunroom and we are looking for an ottoman that opens to put in the living room - but we are waiting for our tax return! Also did you know that if you buy a house, the next year on your taxes there is a 1st time home buyer credit where the governement will send you money to help on the new house? Granted it will be paid back to them. They automatically take it out of your refund the next few years. So I guess it's a good thing. It does help with a few things though!

I have a couple of things to blog about.
Adoption update and something I learned over Christmas. But I am working on a few things for Wednesday and Sunday night, so I will have to wait and blog later.

Have a great day!

Extreme Home Makeover: Colee Edition!

Extreme Home Makeover: Colee Edition has begun! And trust me, there is a lot of work to be done!! Below: this is the very first picture taken in November. The former owners still had most of their belongings here. First - all the wall paper had come down. A bit of flooring had to come up. The door and window caseings had to come down. We had to find a painter and people to lay tile and put down hardwood. So by now all the wallpaper is down, we found a painter - he started Tuesday, we have a guy putting crown molding up! MJ, Michael B., Brent and Brent's dad - Greg laid the tile. My dad, Brent, and Brett are going to lay the hardwood, and a pro is going to put the carpet in the 2 rooms upstairs. Whew!

This is the back - an in-ground pool used to be here,

but Brent wants to put in a koi pond!

Yes, we are offically rednecks! Toilet in the front yard!! HAHA!

(it WILL be gone soon)

Kitchen Living Room, Upstairs rooms and part of kitchen

A new stair rail is on the way!!

Living Room and great ceiling Barksdale loves laying tile! HA!

Newly tiled sunroom and laundry....Brent laying tile in the master bath! Isn't he cute!

So he and his dad did this bathroom in 20 degree weather -

no joke it was 8 degrees the next night!

(Still a cutie!)

Okay, below is the ceiling in the laundry room.....are you kidding me? what??

I gave up asking questions after we discovered that DUCT TAPE was used to seal some of the sheet rock together!!!! Yeah.

We are so excited about this house! I can't wait till the color is on the walls!! We have great plans for this house. The Lord has really blessed us greatly!

So come stay with us sometime!

The house that Brent bought......

I wish I had some pictures on this computer to show you! I can't wait for ya'll to see it! Especially the before and after pics! It has 2100 square feet and 6 acres of trees and a great front yard! The past 4 days we have been working and working. The house had wallpaper in 5 rooms! I don't know if you've ever had to take down wallpaper or not, but it is a long process! Our pastor came over on Friday to help and he suggested we rent a wallpaper steamer. We were able to rent one for the whole weekend, this little joy of a machine is such a time-saver! Please do not ever take down wallpaper without one! It took 3 days to get it all down and if we had not had the steamer, we would still be working on it. Some of the wallpaper was double! It creates a mess, but is easy clean up! Brent's dad has been spraying the outside of the house and it looks amazing! It is sided in white siding and I think that the people who lived there before were not sure how to take care of it b/c the house used be white with green tint, but now it is a lovely pure white!

Now we are waiting for the tile man and a painter or two to come this week and give a few estimates and then we will be painting and tiling. I think it will be a few weeks before we can move in. I've been trying to decide on colors for the rooms. It is a good thing that I did get a degree in interior design, b/c this is the most time consuming thing for me! I'm pretty sure it's because I don't really know what I want. Or it's that I do know what I want, I just don't know how to make it happen.

I was on IKEA's website today searching for a few things. We have enough stuff to fill 713 square feet, so that leaves 1387 square feet of space to fill! The closest IKEA is in Atlanta, so I might be taking a a little trip in the future!

We are excited about all the possibilities of this house.

New Things

Well it's ours! We signed the papers on the 23rd! Brent and I are now home owners!! Hooray!! We are moving in the 2nd week in January - most likely! We plan to paint some and start working on part of the floors after we return from camp next week! Also, we now have 2 black lab puppies! They are so cute! Brent got me a puppy for Christmas - his name is Hurley and he is 6 weeks old today! He's such a chunk! Cody was given to us by April, Brent's sister! Cody is 12 weeks old! They sure are a hand full! I think they will be great dogs for us. Cody is named for the Alabama lineman and Hurley is named for the character from the TV show LOST, it is also in honor of our time in Texas! I'll have to post pics later! It was crazy yesterday at our house - there were 5 dogs and a 1 year old baby! My parents have two dogs and our two and my brother and his wife spent the night and brought their little dog!

I hope everyone had a very enjoyable Christmas!

December 22

That's our closing date! Well, projected closing date, I should say! It's so crazy! We are getting closer to owning our own house and 6 beautifully wooded acres!!! All though takes an act of Congress to buy a house, it really has moved along quite quickly! Brent has been fabulous and has done EVERYTHING! I think the only thing I have had to do is make a copy of my driver's license and sign a few papers!

We probably will not move in until January. There are a few things that need to be done to the house. Some of the flooring needs to be repaired and it needs a good face-lift in paint. It's pretty exciting!

I'll keep you updated on what happens and post a few pictures, but probably after the 22nd!

2 Things:

One:
We might buy house!!!! Yep. No kidding!! Brent found this house yesterday. It sits on 6 acres and needs a bit of work and paint, but it's still nice. Well that's what Brent says. I haven't seen it yet! He said he might could take me by tomorrow! It's being foreclosed on, so it is a good price. The family has already moved out. Brent filled out the housing application or loan application this morning. I know that the economy is on it's way down hill, but the Lord owns the cattle on a thousand hills right? So maybe He will sell a cow of us? We have learned though to wait and be patient. God has the right place for us to live. I just hope this one is it!! Trust me, if we were not patient, we would have already bought this other house that is way, way above our price range!! haha!!

Two:
Some of you may or may not know that Brent and I are hoping to adopt a child. :)
And last Thursday our fingerprints from the ABI (Alabama Beauru of Investigations) came back! They approved our background checks. Now we have to wait on the FBI. They take a little longer. Then if we are able to move in to this house, we can start our home studies!! Although I have to send in some paper work first.

We are using an agency in B'Ham. www.lifelineadoption.org
It is a Christian agency, which I did not know until the day before we went down to talk to a social worker. We are planning to do a domestic adoption, however it is possible that we could do international, but we really like certain aspects of the domestic adoptions that the social worker told us. China is out of the question though, you have to be at 30 when you go to the child and make $80,000 combined income.
Lifeline just began a partnership with Uganda. So maybe we will have a child from Uganda! The social worker said this is a little different from the other countries in that when you travel to Uganda, you go the orphanage and "pick out" your child. Like picking a puppy.

So if you would like to pray with us in this process, we would appreciate it!

Have a happy Thanksgiving!