4 Days till Christmas

Stockings are hung, guest room is ready - 4 days till Christmas...bring it ON! Later on today or tomorrow I'll post a photographic tour of our home all decked out for the holidays this year and also some details on the stockings and holiday art.

It's all about the timing

The other day I nonchalantly went to Target during my lunch break to pick up Bret Michaels latest CD... :) more on that later and as I was strolling around the store I noticed the summer stuff (already) was 75% off so I took a gander to see what they had left and LOW AND BEHOLD the Ceramic Garden Stools I've been WANTING were ON SALE. These stools are normally $70 to $90 dollars, but they were marked down to $23 dollars I have JUMPING for JOY! I'm sure you could understand. I would have bought all of them I couldn't believe the price but I only got two. I love them, we put one in our living room and one out on the balcony. It's so cool. I also picked up two outdoor pillows for $3; that was an amazing shopping trip.

I still haven't cut the price tag off the items because I still can't get over the great deal I scored! AWESOME!!!! Happy Shopping to you!

New Year Organization

Over the holidays Fer and I were fortunate enough to have a two week staycation, we were off from work and for various reasons decided to stay home and just 'BE'. I was able to get A LOT of things done around the apartment as you have already seen from some of my posts and here is another major accomplishment that I completed while on my staycation.

ORGANIZING THE CLOSET!

Of course I have been trying to get to this for several months now and this was finally the time. I got rid of so much stuff by either donating it as you can see from this picture or throwing it out, it feels so good to de-clutter and only have the necessary on hand that I can actually feel the flow of the apartment is better and I feel like I lost 10 pounds (at least) in the process of this recent de-cluttering.

Here is the final result. All things hanging neatly, laundry hampers ready to go, purses hung on either the door with this cool purse hanger thingy I got from the container store a while back or on the wall with command hooks - I love those hooks!

We started renting a storage unit here at the apartments, mostly for the bikes but that afforded us some extra space so I could take all the Christmas decorations I had in my closet and move them to the storage room, which gave me more breathing room in my closet.

Here's a better picture of the door purse hanger and also you can see that I have a lot of the storage boxes on the left hand side of the closet. I was using those for all my crafts which I downsized considerably and also got different storage boxes for so now I'm using the craft storage boxes for my shoes. I may paint or cover the boxes to be more uniform looking but for now that works. I also opened up a standing bookshelf that I had shoved in the closet and am now using it for more "vertical" storage of things.

It's such a pleasure for me to get things organized and now it's a pleasure to go into my closet and get something. Yeah!!! Let's hope it stays this way for awhile.

Halloween Decor

well as usual my eyes are bigger than my stomach LOL, meaning I planned to decorate the apartment with many more halloweeny things, but in the end this is it. We will be dressing up and going to a party on Saturday night and we will be dressing up Zico Biscuit and taking him "trick or treating" but that's about it. I got a lot/most of my ideas this year from this blog post on Sherry and John's Young House Love Blog

displayed my "scary books" by taking off the covers and displaying just the gold and purple spines.

gotta love this skeleton, he can do anything.

like I said I got all my ideas from the Young House Love Blog here's some bleeding candles.

then I used mason jars and put some colorful candies in them for some more decor.

So that's it for the halloween decor around the apartment. I hope you all have a happy and safe (and scary) halloween.

plans for the weekend

I've been in an ambitious mood lately to once and for all get our home organized and in tip top shape. Although we're pretty much there, there are always a few things like CLOSETS that we need to really some dedicated time to tackle properly.

Therefore I am hoping to get to the following this weekend:

Organize the closets
Organize all papers (file, toss, process)
Print out some photos, frame and HANG THEM
Play Tennis
De-clutter my email inbox (unsubscribe to junk emails)
Grocery Shop
Have Fun!

I think that's enough, we'll see how much I actually get to.

Zico's Everyday China

The other day I was checking out this blog and found a great idea for Zico's "feeding station". Instead of the typical dog food and water bowl, I took two large size ramekins (I love ramekins) and a rectangular platter plate for the bottom. I think it looks great and of course I can just throw it all in the dishwasher from time to time to keep them clean. I think it's a nice fit too for my kitchen. The two ramekins cost about $2.75 each and the platter cost $9.00 so for under $15.00 voila you have a great looking doggie food and water bowl.


and it seems that Zico likes it too. :)

no complaints from him. He's so sophisticated he loves the parisian look to his feeding station. :)

December Daily: more and more like christmas everyday

This will be a simple Christmas this year since it's just Fer and I so we didn't feel the need to go nuts with hauling home a big Christmas tree, etc. etc. But I'm thinking it may be one of our most beautiful Christmases yet - just in the simplicity of green and red and the white lights around the apartment. I love it.

follow the "yellow" brick road

so where did that path lead...

... to the meditation garden isn't it beautiful.

Here it is at night.

find beauty in your own backyard

they say beauty lies right in your own back yard, well if that's the case here some pictures from the "backyard" at our new place. :)

These are photos from the courtyard area, it's a nice little green area where you can sit and relax, hang out with friends or perhaps barbeque some hamburgers whatever you'd like. Check it out.

or is this considered my backyard? do you see the gnome?

it's all about a beginning, here is the beginning of my next little garden. Some flowers and some herbs (mint for the mojitos and basil for everything else.)

tomorrow we will find out where this leads...

busy ... busy ... busy

Fer and I have been so busy lately, as can be expected with a recent "interstate" move. :) We're really enjoying our new place and the surrounding area, it's so peaceful here. I've been cooking up a storm lately and if you saw the pictures of my new kitchen you'd know why, it's awesome.

Here's a few more pics from the new place and things I've been cooking :)


We are in Georgia now it's all about peaches here.
This was a dish I've been wanting to try from the time I knew we were moving to Georgia, it was from one of Rachael Ray's magazines and it's called a Georgia Peach Chicken Sandwich (something like that) The chicken is breaded in bread crumbs and pecans and then you put peaches on top of it in the sandwich when it's done cooking. YUMMY
Chicken Pot Pie with biscuits
served up

Cinnamon bread, the "bundt" pan was given to me by a friend at work as a going away gift it's made by a local artist in North Carolina the cinnamon bread was delicious! perfect with some ice cream. 40 cloves of garlic with chicken - c'est manifique!
so that's some of the stuff I've been up to more to come later.

new blog banner

check it out. a little sample of my trip to new england.

The Gnome needs an Umbrella

What a rainy day it is at least the herb garden will be happy.