And now the alter ego...

Joel Leichter has now made an apprearance... :-) They got close, I guess??

We've got a celebrity in the house...

Joe made the news... You go baby! If you haven't been to the Lodge yet you better get over there!! ;-)

Ground Ginger

We finally have gotten around to painting the living room. As you may remember we have needed to do this since January and with the help of some dear friend (the Haney's) we got it done this weekend. It's a real change for us because we have always had a dark color in the space the 9 years we have lived here. We started with a chocolate brown and then changed to Orange. It's definitely taking me some warming up to the lighter option but I am coming around. It feels clean and crisp which is a great way to enter the house! The past two times we have painted we have used Behr's new Premium Plus Ultra which is a paint plus primer. It's a little more expensive but so worth it!! We painted over the orange with the light yellow with only 2 coats! And here are the results... (drum roll please :-)

BEFORE:

The color choice - Ground Ginger

AFTER:

Garden Progress

Well the garden's a growing! Tomatoes are getting some height on them and the peppers, zucchini and squash seem to be doing well. The poor basil and cilantro are getting eaten by something. We are going to make an organic bug spray and I will report on that soon.

Our first tomato has appeared as well!!

Sweet Sunday

Today we headed out to the second week of Pops in the Park. I love going to hear the Charlotte Symphony and eat yummy food and be outside! They play every Sunday night in June and we try to go to all of them if possible. This week we did some seared Tuna and Filet... BBQ mini sandwiches, smoked salmon, deviled eggs, cocktail shrimp and other goodies. And of course it's not ALL about the food - it's always a good time to hang with friends as well!!

We even had yummy birthday cake too!!

Sweet Sunday

This is a picture from the mission trip I went on in April to Honduras. These girls are from the New Life Children's Home. Meilan is in the pink and Karin is in the blue. Meilan and I really bonded and she seems to be heavy on my heart all the time! I just sent her a package down with some goodies. I can't wait to see her again!!

Canoeing on the New

We went to the New River this weekend for a little camping trip. The main activities we're fishing, eating, fishing, eating, playing around, eating fish, and fishing some more.This week we have had a lot of rain so the river was a moving! So even though there was a lot of fishing going on there wasn't a lot of fish catching going on. Joe actually had the two catches of the weekend. But some of the guys shared their fish with us from an earlier trip and we had an awesome fish fry Saturday night! We went with a wonderful group of friends and had some really great fellowship.

Ellie got a little crazy with her marshmallow! :-)

The days were beautiful but the night was a little challenging! We had a pretty serious storm roll through during the night and I don't think anything was dry in the morning. But thankfully the sun came out and dried up all the rain!

Joe and I went for a canoe trip down the New. It was a 5 mile trail and it was awesome! The water was moving so good we really didn't have to row very much at all. Our first rapid we came to didn't go see good though, we filled the boat up with water! But after pulling over and dumping that out we were good to go for the rest of the trip. Going down the river and seeing God's creation was such a great time for us! Check out some of the scenery we saw...

My idea of canoeing!

Sweet Sunday

On some blogs that I follow they do a "Wordless Wednesday", I wanted to do the same concept just a different day, so I thought I would do "Sweet Sundays" instead. I love Sundays!! Sunday is our official family day. We almost always start our Sundays at church and then we'll go out to lunch or make something ymmy at home and then normally the rest of the day is just good ol' quality time together! So I thought it would be a good day to share a little something that's on my mind or in my heart.



This was taken a few weeks ago at my cousin's graduation from UNCW. We only got to see Jonathan, my brother for a few hours. I miss being able to spend time with him and his girls!! Joe and Jonathan have such a good time together! What a blessing family is!!!

Master Refresh

I finally got the "new" Master bedroom painted and a few new touches added. It only took MONTHS for me to get motivated but hey it's done and I am really enjoying the results!! I really wanted to do something a little different from any thing we have had in the past. I LOVE color but the cool colors are really intriguing me recently. So I thought that our bedroom would be a great space to try it out. I wanted to do a monochromatic color scheme with just a punch of color. We went with Coventry Gray from Benjamin Moore for the walls. I kept the same duvet we had since it was white, added some pillows and window treatments from IKEA. (I love being able to swing in IKEA and pick up something! Too fun!!!) So we've got grey, white, black and hot pink for our punch!

I still need artwork for the main wall of the bedroom. I am thinking about using some of the decal artwork that is so popular now. Truthfully I can see why - you get a nice big bang for your buck! I still can't decide which one... Will you help me choose??? So here are the options:

one, two, or three...

The decal would be on the long wall (see below.) I would like the decal to come out from behind the window treatment panel. I like the idea of having it in black with hopefully a some pink mixed in, but some of the options are only one color. So we'll see which one works out best.

Our first garden

Well... we are going to try a garden this year. We have done some tomatoes in pots before but this will be our first time for having an actual vegetable garden. I did some research on what we need to do to get our garden started. Placement is important, your garden needs 5-6 hours of sun a day. But most importantly was the soil. We rented a tiller and thankfully had some of our very own BLACK GOLD (as Joe likes to call it aka compost) to mix in with our lovely red clay earth.

The good Lord blessed us with rain yesterday so the ground was nice and soft and incorporated well. We had decided that we wanted to do tomatoes, squash, zucchini, red pepper and some herbs. I will keep you up to date on the progress of our little guys. We're hoping we'll have some fruits of our labor... maybe enough to share! Here are some before, during, and after shots...

Our plot of earth...

Joe workin' the ground


There they are... Wonder what they'll look like in a few weeks...





Our sweet little garden

There were a few tools we purchased to help with our garden endeavor...

We decided to get a rain barrel and a drip hose to help with the watering. This was the best deal we had found around $60.00 at BJ's

We had started our composting efforts last year around this same time. We did the very simple option of using sticks on the bottom for air and then just adding grass clippings, leaves, and kitchen scraps. We covered it with 2 black garbage bags to create some heat and then placed heavy pieces of wood on top to keep the critters out. Now this was not the prettiest option but it did work.

This year we actually splurged for a real composter. This also was the best deal we've seen around for $40.00 at BJ's. Now we have a pretty little composter beside our trashcan and we look forward to making more BLACK GOLD!!

I also recommend getting an compost pail for the kitchen counter. Joe got this from my Mom for his birthday last year and it has been so nice to have. It does a great job of keeping the stinky smell away and really encourages you to keep your kitchen scraps. Here's a list of things to put in your compost and what not to put in there.

This is the one Joe got from Crate and Barrel