home.

We are here. After a couple of months of living at the beach and out of suitcases, we have now started life together in our new home, Franklin, TN. We are settling into our one bedroom apartment and exploring as much as possible.

We closed on the selling of our first home in Montgomery a few days after our 4th anniversary. Since we had not found a place to live in the Nashville area yet, we moved everything into two storage units and packed our bags for the beach. My parents graciously allowed us to take over their condo in Gulf Shores while we were searching for our new place. Taylor was traveling in and out and I was spending my days by the pool and my nights on the computer searching for where we were headed next. We discovered during those two months that we could live without a lot of the "things" that we were used to in our 3 bedroom/2 bathroom house.

We narrowed the search down to a smaller place and found exactly where we knew we wanted to be for the next year. We signed the papers and after a few set backs with the construction not being finished by the deadline, we had keys in our hands and took off to Montgomery to get our things.

There are still boxes to be unpacked and there may not be anything hanging on the walls but it's starting to feel like home more and more every day.

catching up and starting over

Too long. TOO long to even try and update on anything and everything that has happened in the last year. So maybe just a few highlights:

• Surprise trip to Disney World in April for 3rd Anniversary and my birthday!

• Heather got married!

(picture by J. Rawlings Photography)

• Lucy turned ONE! I fly to Salt Lake City for the week to celebrate this little one's big day.

• Andrea got married!

• Thanksgiving in New York! 

• We placed our house on the market and it SOLD in 13 days! 

So much has happened but those are the highlights. Taylor is still traveling all over but we are making the move to Nashville as soon as we find somewhere to live. More to come on that.

I don't have excuses on why I haven't updated but it is my goal to start back again.. (if anyone will even read this anymore).

Pre-Spring Cleaning

This weather has had me stirring to throw open the windows and clean the house from top to bottom. And that's exactly what I have done today. I made a list last night of everything that I wanted to accomplish today and most of it got checked off.

- clean windows
- dust blinds
- clean mirrors
- clean fans
- vacuum floors
- vacuum furniture
- clean baseboards
- dust living room furniture
- dust entertainment sleeves
- dust inside & out of china cabinet
- sweep kitchen & bathrooms
- mop kitchen & bathrooms
- clean kitchen cabinets
- clean oven & stove
- clean sink & countertop
- wash master bedroom duvet cover & pillow cases
- wash master bedroom quilt
- wash bathroom rugs
- wash shower curtains
- clean showers/tubs
- clean toilets
- clean sinks

Yeah, that's a lot to do in one day. Also included a few other things that just needed to get done.

- finally hem curtains in office
- cut out patterns for a few new projects
- trim Valentine's flowers
- take Miley for walk/run
- return spontaneous shoe purchase that I didn't need
- gather clothes donations for the Clothes Closet
- prepare shopping list for grocery store
- wash clothes

I'm exhausted. I decided to finish the day with a fresh pedicure with a new bottle of nail polish. I'm off now to crawl into clean sheets and continue reading Black Heels . Hope that you had a productive Saturday, too!

Updates

Yes, I've changed up the blog. It was time for a change. I needed a little something new. I am still working on it from time to time.. trying to get it just right.

If you see the last few posts that I've done, all of my extra time after work is being spent creating things for my nieces. Smocking has become my favorite hobby and I'm so thankful that I found someone last year that taught me all about it. It's been a year since I took my first class at Kids Kloset in Auburn. I always have a project in the works. After finishing this last one, 3 more have started. One is smocking a design on a pre made bubble. The next two are making 2 dresses from scratch. The smocking design for those is going to be perfect. Hopefully there will be enough time after work to get them finished on time. I'm about to have a timeline on one of them that looks like it maybe exactly a month to get it finished.

Here goes nothing.

Hula Hoops

Another bubble for Emily Kate:

Little Fish

A bubble that I smocked for Emily Kate:

Little Bear Peep

A dress I worked on for Lucy:

Little Turkey: part 2

Here's Lucy on Thanksgiving day wearing her turkey bubble. (Please excuse the iPhone pictures, it is all I have!)

wishful thinking

not that i need a new phone cover right now...

Little Turkey

I finally got around to smocking one of the bubbles for Lucy's Thanksgiving outfit. The smocking plate had 3 turkeys on it but I did not have room for all of them. I think it turned out pretty cute!