Painting Adventures

For my birthday, I told Mike I wanted to go see my sister and her husband in Ohio. He obliged and we planned to travel there for my birthday weekend, yay! Jaclyn texted me asking me what I wanted for my birthday and I told her I had to think about it.
I recently have been making a more concerted effort to match decor items around my house and actually start decorating. So as I thought about what I wanted, I thought of the gorgeous canvas paintings she did in her house. Lightbulb! I would have her help me make cute canvas paintings for my house. So the plan was hatched!

Here is a picture of the one in her living room complete with my sloth of a husband and the gorgeous chunky blanket I made her (don't worry a blog on that blanket will come eventually).

So my colors were chosen and we started painting! I think she used this tutorial when she did her original one.

Step 1: Paint on the colors & let dry. 

Jaclyn must've blocked this part from her memory because it literally took us TWO HOURS to get this tape on there. It was insane. 

But the finished project is so worth it! 

 We did have other fun besides painting! We did some shooting and swimming. We always have fun hanging with these two.

We also painted a set of three canvases for my office at work. We just found the picture on google images when we searched "tape canvas art." 

First we taped the canvases in the pattern we wanted. We made the mistake of leaving them all taped together so we had to go back and free-hand the edges. We probably should've cut the tape and added some on the edges after we separated the canvases. 

It looked awesome once we peeled the tape off! It looks perfect in my office with yellow walls! 

Thanks Jaclyn for being the best sister and built-in-best-friend for always. I love you so much and can't wait to see you guys soon! 

One Year

 I cannot believe it's been a year since this wonderful day. God continues to bless me through Michael every single day. We have so much fun and are always laughing. It's such a special relationship. I am forever grateful that God brought us together. Here are some highlights from our first year of marriage!

September 28th-October 4th: Of course our honeymoon was so fun! From lunch with the Disney princesses to me saving his life while he almost got stung by a huge jellyfish in Sanibel. It was a lovely trip!

 October 17th--Watching him do his exercises and walk the hallway after his knee surgery. I couldn't believe how strong and determined he was.

November 3rd--Omgsh. I will never forget the JOY I felt this day to bring Mike home from the hospital. I would go home to our apartment every evening before I went to the hospital to be with him and our apartment was always so eerie without him. It was so nice to have him home.

November 29th--Yes, the DAY after Thanksgiving we got our FIRST CHRISTMAS TREE. Such an exciting moment! Especially since Mike lovessssss Christmas so much.

December 24th-- I'll never forget us laying on the floor next to our crispy, dried up tree (because we got it in November...) talking about our Christmas wishes and dreams for the future. What a special night.

December 31st-- We rang in the New Year with Mandy and Jared. We had such a fun night with them. We came back to our apartment the next day to find it was below 50 degrees in our apartment because our heat was broken...

2015

February 14th-- First married Valentine's Day. Good thing we didn't make any fancy dinner plans since it snowed like crazy. We watched people getting stuck on the road outside our apartment and ordered pizza for dinner.

April 27th-- We got to relive our honeymoon when I made orange crunch cake from The Bubble Room for Mike's birthday! Yum.

May 15th--We settled on our condo!

May 27th--After MONTHS of torture, drills, weights,  and running, Tim kicked Mike out of PT. We both left a little dumb-founded, like did that really just happen? Big moment for Mike in his ACL rehab.

June 19th--Mike's first time hitting at the batting cages! I think I was more excited than he was--I even shed a few tears of joy watching him. :)

June 24th--Mike's first softball game since his ACL surgery. Wow, what an exciting and special night to see all his hard work pay off!

Summer 2015--It was full of NATS games and trips to the country while we slowly pieced our condo together. I loved every minute spent working beside my husband. He worked so hard on our condo but we still took time to relax and have fun.

September 5th--My first time on the Williford Family Vacation to Salvo, Hatteras, NC. I definitely fell in love with Hatteras and cannot wait to go back. We spent every day with Kristen on the beach. We did lots of shopping, seafood-eating and swimming. We even got to see baby sea turtles!

It's been a wild year, but I've loved every minute of it. I love you Michael!

Condo Before-After Reveal

OKAY. The pictures are finally here! Things are not fully done yet, but I felt bad not sharing any after pictures. There is still much decorating and organizing to be done, but here's what we've got so far.

Dining room view when you walk in.  

Dining room view when you walk out of the kitchen. 

Living area.

Note the pink table on the left of this image. I really wanted to paint the powder room that color, but felt it was too pink. So we decided to do a little side table with it instead. And we both love it (I was definitely surprised Mike was on board with a pink table). :) 

When we first saw the condo, I felt like the kitchen was livable. But as our renovation plans continued to develop we decided to just do the kitchen. So we painted the cabinets, laid new flooring, painted the walls and ordered new countertops. Eventually we plan to replace the appliances with stainless steel.

So with the help of my father, I built that large pantry closet to the left of center. With the laundry unit in the kitchen closet, that left literally no space for food. So I got that huge pantry closet for maybe $160. It's quite nice and wasn't too difficult to build...except for the fact that it's taller than me...

We really like our fancy faucet. Check it out here.

And YAY, here's my pretty coral bathroom! Coral Reef by HGTV Home-Sherwin Williams. Love love love it. 

So that was a TON of work and we're not done. It's been so much fun. And we could NOT have done all this work without help from my mom and stepdad, Dave, and Mike's grandad. My mom and I painted and cleaned the appliances while Dave, Grandad and Mike did the floors, replaced the toilet in the powder room and all kinds of other projects.