Saturday, February 23, 2008

What a difference a little paint can make!

I have 14 more months left living in my current apartment and I have already been in it 10 months and rearranged a handful of times. But this time, not only did I move furniture, I painted! Oh what a difference a little paint will make! When you walk in my room you see....


Before:


After:

I am trying to draw out a design for 2 bookcases I would like to build with my dad for each side of my window. I am also working on drawing up a plan for a small writing desk that i would like on the wall in my room between the door out of my bedroom and the door into my bathroom. It's about 5 feet wide and I really need somewhere to place my laptop so I'm not always laying in bed with it. The chair that I will use for my desk is this little vinatge number that I repainted and reupholstered a few months back!


What color would you paint a desk, to go along with this chair, that will go up against a white wall?

♥JB

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Girls Best Friend

As we've all heard time and time again Diamonds are a girls best friend and Dogs are mans best friends. Well as is it so happens I have no one currently buying me diamonds, therefore, my dog is my best friend!

My favorite cartoon movie of all time is Peter Pan and my favorite cartoon character is Tinkerbell, hence the reason I named my dog Tinkerbell, Tink for short. She is a Black Labrador Retriever/Rat Terrier mix. (my uncle has a dog of the same breed mix which he has dubbed Labratory Rat.) I found her on petfinder.com and adopted her from a rescue center (she had been abused) when she was just a puppy. She was supposed to be my guard dog when i moved to Nashville, that was when I thought she was a full blooded lab. Even full grown, right now she looks like a 5 months old black lab so everyone thinks shes still a puppy. She is absolutely the best dog I have ever had besides the fact that she is a complete and total chicken! Not much a of a guard dog she turned out to be! Tink has to be one of the happiest dogs I've ever seen! See is so excited when i come home from work that when she wags her tail her whole body wiggles! And she gets these random bursts of engery where she'll run circles around the apartment and it cracks myself and my roommate up! And ontop of all that she is the best cuddler! (as you can probably tell from the picture) She likes to put her head right up against you when you're laying down and she digs and pushes until she flops over and lays down. So, here's to the one I can always count on to cuddle with on cold nights, always be happy to see me, and love me no matter how long she has to "hold it" while I am at work.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

When all else fails, run to the nearest trash can.

Oh what a day it has been. A stomach bug has been skipping around between me and the three kids I nanny. Last Wednesday the baby (Jack) got sick, Thursday the oldest (Sarah), and Friday the middle child (Harrison) and I. It only lasted one day for each of us except for poor Harrison. He was sick for 48 hours or so and then fine on Monday but when i went to wake him up this morning he told me he was sick. Coming from a 3 year old it's hard to figure out what they mean by sick. I asked him if he threw up and he said yes. He answers yes or no to everything, whether it's the right answer or not and even if he has no clue what I am talking about in the first place. I search his bed for any signs of "sick" and didn't see anything so I carried him downstairs to the kitchen for breakfast. We walk into the kitchen he starts coughing and gagging and I rush to the trash can holding him over it for the next 5 minutes as I'm sure your imagination can muster up what exactly he was doing...... I called his dad who called his mom who then called me to find out what was going on. (The dad has said to not call her with issues like this because she cant do anything about them so she stays at work feeling bad but then she says it's ok to call i don't mind.... I'm thinking ok you two need to agree on something because I'm stuck in the middle not knowing what to do!) Not only that the baby is still somewhat sick from this "bug" and lets just say I cleaned up messes today that would make a grown man cry! Tuesdays are my long days but the mom ended up getting doctors appointments scheduled for the kiddos so I got to come home earlier than my normal days which was great!

I have taken a picture of the chair in my room that I fixed up, but for some reason it will not upload to my computer. Not sure what the problem is, but hopefully I will fix it soon!

♥JB

Monday, February 18, 2008

Home Sweet Home....at least for the next 14 months

I have come to learn that my rent will not skyrocket quite as high as I thought and I can still afford to live here in my apartment! I love this apartment! 1,101 square feet of pure bliss! It has a great open floor plan! Seperate laundry room and dining room and 2 full bathrooms with garden tubs and walk in closets and a guest bathroom! And big windows! The only problem I have with it is, it's white, I'm talking I-live-in-a-Marshmallow kind of white! And I am painting this weekend!...at least one wall in mybedroom. I'm thinking of going with a unique olive-ish green as a backdrop for my bed! I have blue and brown in my room accented with green. My inspiration came from a little vanity chair I reupholstered and painted a few months ago and then I thought I'd tame the bright colors with a chocolate brown! When i get the chance I'll post a picture of the chair and see what you think! I'm also hoping to build a big bookcase to go on one side of my "almost floor to almost ceiling" window and eventually build another one for the other side. What what to do as a window treatment I have no clue. Any advice?

♥JB

Saturday, February 16, 2008

There's something about the sunrise...

I wake up every weekday at 6:15am for work, so every chance I get to sleep in I thoughroughly enjoy! But waking up at 6:15am does pose a small problem. It is still dark when i wake up, I watch the sunrise every morning on my way to work, which I love! But, I have a hard time sleeping in when I have the chance because I wake up around the time of the sunrise when light fills my room. I've tried placing an assortment of pillows and blankets over my head, but nothing works! On the weekends I usually wake up for the first time between 6:00 and 6:15 and then when the sun rises, so for those of you who have children and wake up early every morning, I sympathize with you!

I'm apartment hunting today! Wish me luck!

♥JB

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Happy Singles Awareness Day!

Happy Valentine's Day! I hope everyone enjoyed today and didn't eat too much chocolate! Speaking of chocolate, my kids I nanny gave me a little box of chocolates *note the picture above :) anyway, I am a huge fan of chocolate! But out of a box with 4 pieces of chocolate I found only 1 that I enjoyed eating! Why do they have to ruin perfectly good chocolate with these taffy textured, fruit flavored filling?! I take a bite out of each piece loking for one I can actually eat without wanting to gag! If I wasn't so broke I would have gone and bought a box of caramel filled chocolates to drowned out my sorrows of being single on this dreaded day. D-day I like to call it!

Major thanks go out to my roommate Christina, whom I refer to as C when writing, because she took me out to dinner and movie tonight! Sharing the roommate love! We went and saw Fool's Gold and I would recommend it but I must warn you there is a highly annoying character who tries too hard, but if you over look that, or just plug your ears every time she speaks, It's not a half bad movie! But then again anything with Kate Hudson or Matthew McConaughey has top rankings on my scale!
♥JB

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Snow day...and a little hope for the spring!




My 40 minute commute to work this morning wasn't as bad as I was prepared for, but still pretty icy! After about 45 minutes at work the snow picked up and we enjoyed a white wednesday! The youngest I nanny is facinated with his first winter and kept saying "no, no, no!" (snow) I would love a huge blizzard like the one we had here in Tennessee back in 1993! But I don't think that's in the forecast this year. :( I better brush up on my snow dance skills!

I absolutely love the outdoors! The birds, the breeze, sunrises and sunsets, the crunching of leaves in the fall, and the beautiful blooms of spring! The lack of color in the winter tends to put a damper on my mood, but after my parents gave me an Amaryllis bulb in a cute little green pot for christmas I have done nothing but want to garden! I started growing some bamboo plants a few months back and I love them, they are so easy to take care of! I'm looking for some cute little pots that I can use to make my own little windowsill herb garden and I found a huge bowl like dish at Goodwill for .99 that I am going to use to make a terrarium! I would love to hear any of your gardening tips and your favorite flowers you would suggest growing!

♥JB

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

The Dash-

The Dash.
By Linda Ellis
I read of a man who stood to speak
At the funeral of a friend.
He referred to the dates on her tombstone,
From the beginning to the end.
He noted that first came the date of her birth,
and spoke of the following date with tears,
but he said that what mattered most of all was the dash between the years.
For that dash represents all the time that she spent alive on earth,
and now only those who loved her know what that little line is worth.
For it matters not, how much we own,
the cars, the house, the cash.
What matters is how we live and love,
and how we spend our dash.
So think about this long and hard;
are there things you'd like to change?
For you never know how much time is left that can still be rearranged.
If we could just slow down enough to consider what's true and real,
and always try to understand the way other people feel.
And be less quick to anger and show appreciation more
and love the people in our lives like we've never loved before.
If we treat each other with respect,
and more often wear a smile,
remembering that this special dash might only last a little while.
So, when your eulogy is being read,
with your life's actions to rehash,
would you be proud of the things they say about how you spent your dash?
I got this video/poem in an email today and I just couldn't help but share it! I hope it moves you as deeply as it did me!
♥JB

This is just the beginning.....!

Greetings from Music City, USA!
I was reading my dear friend Mary-Catherine's blog yesterday and she has inspired me to start blogging myself! I have a knack for writing and bit of a humorous side, and I love sharing my life with as many people as I can! I'm not very good at journaling, but there is something about getting feedback when blogging that has drawn me to it! I hope you enjoy reading my blogs as much as I am going to enjoy writing them!
♥ JB