Music To My Ears!...

Gretel's First Spin!! 

I love her!,

SG

365 More Days....

of being a "twenty-something!"  Today I turned the big 2-9! I am so grateful to see a new age! I'm enjoying a little couch time (while Troy hangs curtains in the living room) to share with you some details about my stupendous birthday weekend!

I'm SUPER excited about my birthday gift from Troy...

YES!! That's right folks! I'm FINALLY the owner of a KitchenAid Stand Mixer!! I've wanted one for years!!  Her name is Gretel!! And she looks so nice in the kitchen.  I'll have more pictures later, but here's one I snapped on the iPhone after setting her up on Friday night.

Then, if Friday's fun gift wasn't enough, on Saturday my BFF's spoiled me with some quality time, a beautiful cake, and birthday decorations! I came home from Publix and to my surprise Regina had decorated the living room.

 

And Allison brought cake!!! Which I love! Check out the Celtics green!

Us girls then headed to a private yoga class at my yoga studio which was a very light class just to ease them into the yoga practice that I oh so love! All smiles afterwards.

After a good workout of course you need food. So off to PF Chang's to pick up our to-go order and head back to the house to eat and relax.

Regina enjoyed the balloons as you can see in this picture. Balloon volleyball.

After lots of movie and tv-watching, some games, LOTS of laughter and lounging around the house we finally headed out to dinner before calling it a night.

It's been a great weekend and I'm so blessed that these three ladies took time out of their busy schedules to celebrate with me.  As for Gretel, thanks to a gift card from Charity, I plan to get the ice cream maker attachment to Gretel soon!!! I had just pinned it on Pinterest this week!  That Charity, she knows me so well!! 

Alrighty folks, thanks for tuning in on the birthday details. It's been a great one!  So grateful to Jesus for EVERYTHING!  He's given me such a beautiful life filled with joy, peace, and love.  And for that, I owe Him EVERYTHING!!  So, here's to this new year and seeing all the many ways in which He continues to develop me!  I'm beyond excited about it!!

29 and counting,

SG

Whistle While You Work...

the frame project continues....

and I'm SUPER excited to finally have found a pillow set up on the bed that I like.  I've been playing around with various throw pillows for months.  I think, for now, we have a winner with these shams I purchased from West Elm this weekend.

I felt bad about tossing the blue pillows from the bed so they are on the ottoman in the meantime.  Looks so much better.  I also rolled down the duvet so the bed wouldn't be as puffy looking.  Still a work in progress but I like it 10 times better than how it looked before.

Okay, back to work. Time to do some measurements on the wall!

*whistling*,

SG

Namaste!

I am officially addicted to yoga.  I've been going for about four months now and I literally do NOT like missing my weekly yoga classes.  It has become a high priority and my body actually misses it when I miss my regular classes.  I love yoga so much that I've been thinking of ways to incorporate it into my work routine and guess what, there are ways to enjoy yoga at work! So passing on some of the things I've found!

There are so many cool ways you can incorporate yoga at work as seen above here.  These websites here and here also give some examples.  Whose with me?! Who will add at least one stretch or posture at their desk with me?  (although, you may want to close your door before trying some of these!) 

Speaking of postures.  I am dreaming of the day when I have enough yoga strength to master these babies!

how cool do these look?!! my upper body strength is getting better and better with each passing week.  So, in about, hmmmm...5 years I should be able to do this!

In the meantime, let's keep it simple with some yoga at the desk!!

whose with me?,
SG

Three images above can be found here.

Writings on the Wall...

The next bedroom project is underway--the wall gallery!  While in Charlotte for work on yesterday I made a trip to IKEA to pick up one of each size of the RIBBA frame.   The goal was to make newspaper cut outs of each size and determine what layout I want and then go to IKEA next week while in Atlanta to purchase the exact frames that I will need.  

I've become semi-obsessed with wall galleries thanks much to Pinterest and a few blogs.  

Super cute right?  Anywho, here's an iPhone sneak peak at what's going on over here:

It's coming along!

Yay for Projects,

SG

p.s. all wall gallery pictures above can be found on my "Frame It" Pinterest album.

Blogger on iPhone ?

This is a test of the "I just downloaded the blogger app on my iPhone" system. But to keep it fun, here is yet another picture of Miyah! I woke up yesterday morning to this text of her having sweet dreams!

Sent from my iPhone,
SG

I've Been Ghost...

and I've been busy.  But I'm working on getting better at making time for the blog.  Forgive me. And look at my beautiful niece while you bear with me! :-)

9.15.11 the day she was born

Day 2 being on the outside

She's growing so much

 pictures from the weekend

Isn't she PRECIOUS?!!! I'll upload some non-iPhone pictures as soon as I catch up with camera uploads, etc...

Forgive me,
SG

It's Like the First Day of School!!

BUT SO MUCH BETTER!!!  Yesterday was my first court appearance all by myself!!! I had a short bench trial in Fort Mill, South Carolina and it was so much fun I must say!  And, just like on the first day of school when your mom takes your picture with the lunch box in hand, Troy took my picture with my fancy case in hand!   Because Fort Mill is about 2 hours away I left so early in the morning it was still dark outside hence the darkness outside the front door.

 

It was pretty much the most exciting day of my career thus far and I've had some pretty exciting days!  Now I'm waiting to find out the judge's ruling.  But, if I do say so myself, I think I ROCKED it!!  I'll update the post once I find out the result!!

Loving Litigating & Lawyering,
SG

UPDATE: GOOD NEWS!!! A victory for me and the client!! We won!! 

Wanna Know How To Paint Curtains?

Well you've come to the right place!  Recall, that I planned to paint curtains using a stencil from Cutting Edge stencil.  My right hand is sore and my legs are too, but the curtains are done and I'm excited to show you how it all went down!

Materials:
2 packs of IKEA Vivian Curtains [each pack has 2 panels]
Cutting Edge Stencil [Missing Link Allover Stencil]
Acrylic Paint [I chose silver]
Fabric Medium [to keep paint from being all crackly when it dries]
Paint Roller
Drop cloth for floor
Painters Tape [to hold everything down]

The pictures will speak for themselves from here on out...

fd

Each panel looked better than the one before since I learned a few tricks with each panel. My first panel took me 2 hours to paint but the fourth panel took me only 50 minutes.  I let them dry about 2 hours each and then hung them.  Tada!!

I was trying to be fancy with the camera by tilting it when taking the picture.
 Day Time View.

 Night Time View of Other Window.

I like how the squares on the curtains play off the squares on the duvet.

And the color of the curtains ties in with the ottoman at the foot of the bed!

And really, these pictures (and my not high quality digital camera) really do not do the curtains justice!! They look so nice in the room and bring us one step closer to slowly bringing this room together. Next up, I need to get some things up on the walls! 

Off to ask Troy for a hand massage,
SG

Things to Come....

It's been a fun week.  Vacation from work, trip to Virginia with Troy, I finally baked a cake from scratch for the first time this year (it's been too long!!), and we finally got the curtain rods hanging so I can start my curtain project.  I plan to post on all of those things, but I tell ya' I really need a TWO week vacation so I can use the second week to tell you all about the first week!  

What's more, to add to the excitement, I am sitting by my phone waiting for my mom or sister to call to say "the eagle has landed!" My sister is due on September 15th (Thursday!!) and I've been hoping that my niece, Miyah, would come this weekend.  Well, that didn't happen so now I'm just waiting for the bat signal and hopefully it will all work well so that I can leave the moment she goes into labor and head to Atlanta. 

So, yeah, lots of exciting things going on this way.  I just need to find time to put together the video clips and pictures from Virginia, upload the pictures from baking/curtains, etc... so that I can sit and write a post. 

Oh, I'll also add that I read The Help, all 530 pages, on vacation and it was so good!!  Definitely a great vacation read!  It was the first fiction book I've read since college!  I read another short book also on child birth and it, too, was an excellent vacation read! 

Okay, enough babbling on things to come. Just know there are good posts headed your way!  I'm currently waiting for these painted curtains to dry so I can see if I should hashtag #winning or #epicfail as a result.

Alrighty, that's it!! Oh, and, if by chance, I have any readers who live in Dallas, TX.  Please check out my girl Desiree's house which is now listed for sale!! It's GORGEOUS and you know you want to live there!!!

Okay, I'm done for real now. I have to go check on these curtains!

Enjoying the last 24 hours of vacay,
SG

p.s. for those who read this post, good news!! REGINA PASSED THE NC BAR!!!!!

How Many Posts Can I Make About Our Bedroom Makeover without Actually Showing the Bedroom?

No more. "After" pictures are finally here!  But first, an explanation on what has taken me so long and why I gave up and decided to go on and post now!  I wanted to do a proper before/after entry last week but I've been waiting to upload old pictures of our bedroom.  However, due to some technical difficulties (my computer is keeping me from accessing my external hard drive which has all old picures--appointment at Apple Store on Saturday) I'm having to resort to two pictures that I happened to have saved to shutterfly in order to give you a look at the "before" of our bedroom and a peek at a few "after" pictures.  Once I get some better "before" pictures I'll update this post.

Okay, now! Where'd we leave off? Oh yes, we painted our room, got rid of every single piece of furniture and the mattress (and the TV) and basically started over from scratch.  The only thing that stayed was the carpet (which is in our room because the master bedroom is not original to the house, so no pretty hardwood floors). 

Here's what the room looked like when we viewed it in January 2010, days after being on the market.  Gotta love staging:

Pretend that there are pictures here of the room right before we painted.   

And here are a few "after" pictures thus far...  

Isn't the paint color close to some of the inspiration pics?!  I'll be back with more details on some of the plans for the immediate future, like my stencil curtain project which I hope to work on while on vacation in September!!! But, for now, we're loving the new room! And, yes, the plastic is still on the TV per Troy's request.  The man is odd!  But, I love him!! 

Hope you enjoy the before/after.  There's still so much more I want to do in here but the biggest parts have been done!! Whaddaya think?!

Finally some "after" pictures, 

SG

p.s. please hope that I can get access to my external hard drive.  Otherwise, I will be sad for about 3 minutes.  And then I will move on.  :-)