I am officially a crazy cat lady.

Today was a much better version of yesterday. I went to get my Georgia drivers license, which I'm pleased to report was a complete success! More on that in a minute. Then I did some miscellaneous chores, and finally went to get my car re-emissions tested because the light had gone off. Sally Mae passed! Thank goodness. Now tomorrow I complete the final step in the process--renewing my registration.

Over Labor Day, Thomas and I saw a great Scoutmob deal for 100% off coupon at a place called The Brickery. 100% off? That sounds like free to me! Well, it was just a free hamburger, but that's still a great deal. So we headed over in the rain to enjoy a fun date night out.

 

We started off with this basket of onion rings. They were awesome! Our waitress learned early on that I liked sauces (especially honey mustard) so she brought us their home made HM and BBQ sauce to try with these. Both were amazing.

I got an old favorite, chicken tenders, off the appetizer menu. All chicken tenders really are to me is a vessel for more HONEY MUSTARD. I'm obsessed.

This was the star of the show (and also the free part), the Caesar Burger. A burger covered in Caesar dressing and shredded sharp cheddar sounded kind of weird, but it was unbelievably savory and tasty. 

We've decided this place is a must visit during my mom's trip here next week. I'm super excited! We have another Scoutmob on Thomas' phone, so looks like another free burger for us:] After everything was said and done, the meal only cost around $15 with tip. 

As I mentioned earlier, I went to get my new license today. I got my last one in Texas in a rush right after the wedding because I wanted it to have my updated name before we moved here, and the picture was so bad. I've felt good about previous DL photos, but this one made me look 50 pounds heavier than I am. Which is a lot. The state of Texas requires the pictures to be a certain size, and I guess I stood too far away from the camera, so they just stretched and distorted it, resulting in something like this:

Ok, so it wasn't that bad, but it was embarrassingly close.

After that drama, I had big goals of taking a great picture today. I even tried out a new hairstyle I saw on my new favorite YouTube channel The Lipstick Diaries. I love the girl who runs this channel because she has a cool accent, she's super cute, and we have the same texture and length of hair. This is important because my hair texture (curly, frizzy, slightly coarse) is pretty rare. Most of the tutorials I come across are of girls with short, fine, or straight hair...so they don't work for me. I watched this video of her curling her hair without heat, and I knew I had to try it for my DL photo!

This method is said to work for people of all hair types. Here was my attempt.

This is the before. I let my hair air dry and used some Paul Mitchell Super Skinny Hair Serum for muh frizz.

Here is the during, just after I wrapped my hair up before bed.

And here is the back. It obviously doesn't have to be perfect. I've got some scragglers going on.

And here is the after, on the way to the DL place. I was making a dumb face, so I covered it with...a dumb face.

Surprisingly I only waited for a few minutes at the DPS before having my number called. I'm pretty pleased with my picture--it could be better, but could be way worse (see above). Here it is on my temporary license.

Don't worry mom, I blurred out all the good stuff (plus my weight DUH).

Another bright spot today was receiving Charlotte's new training bowl in the mail. Why yes I did order a metal bowl off Amazon specifically for my cat to use the toilet in! I never thought I'd be to this point either (who am I kidding, yes I did), but we are well on our way to toilet trained! We're so happy to finally have the litter box and its accompanying boxes out of our bathroom.

I don't think I mentioned before that we had officially moved Charlotte's litter box on top of the toilet as part of the process. Since we had a covered box, the sides were pretty deep. We didn't feel like it was a good idea to force her to jump into the box from the floor, so we left the stacked boxes next to it as sort of a trail of steps:

We left the box that way for around 3 days while waiting for the bowl to get here. For this part of the process, you lift the lid of the toilet and measure the inside rim at its widest point. Then you get a bowl of that diameter (ours was 11.5 inches). [Yes, I could've bought said bowl at a regular store, but I found it on Amazon for $11 and I get free shipping because of my Amazon Prime student membership].

So today we I got the bowl and put it into the toilet,

 And filled it with a few inches of litter.

From here on out, we'll be gradually reducing the amount of litter in the bowl until it's a token couple of teaspoons. I'll keep you all updated on the next steps too.

Charlotte has already eagerly explored her new bowl, but hasn't used it just yet. (Be warned, this is a 54 second video of Charlotte walking around on the toilet. I just filmed her butt instead of getting closer to avoid scaring her. Never scare a cat on a toilet!)

Charlotte really is a smart cat. I've been teaching her to sit on command over this last week, and there will be a video soon!

Not to be outdone, Jack was looking adorable today and begged to have his picture taken.

 

And Thomas and I woke up from a nap today to this record cuteness.

They were literally wrapped in each others arms! I mean, there are siblings out there who don't like each other this much. Probably quite a few actually.

Ok, I'll stop raving about my pets now. Enjoy your day people!

-T, K, J, & C

Floorplanning Like a Boss

Ahh, another Monday. Weekends don't mean much when you're unemployed, but we had a good one anyway. Hopefully that will be remedied soon. Even though I don't talk about applying for jobs, trust that I am! I mean, who wants to read about the job search? I'm pretty sure everyone knows it sucks.

Anyway, on Friday, Thomas and I went on a date for our two month anniversary. I guess you're supposed to celebrate the months up until 1 year, but I'm planning on trying to stretch that out for quite a while;] We used a Scoutmob (of course) and got 50% off at a GREAT Italian restaurant called Baroni. They have a really young/fun vibe and it was the first time we ate in a restaurant that felt like it was really in the city since it's in sort of an industrial area with a lot of high rises. The food was extremely delicious--my ravioli was literally one of the best things I've ever eaten!

Thomas had the Tagliatelle with sauteed mushrooms and sausage. 

 And I had the ravioli of the day, which was stuffed with ricotta and covered in a delicious cream sauce. It was truly amazing.

On Saturday we spent the day putting the house back together. Things are looking great! It's so nice to have (most) everything in its place now, after being here around 6 weeks. We cleaned and worked on the house in the morning, and in the afternoon we headed to Bed Bath & Beyond to look around for something to cover the hole in the living room. We found the perfect mirror, and it's huge. It's $100, but I hate to pay full price...so I'm waiting until a 20% off coupon comes out. Thanks to our awesome friends and family, we also still have giftcards! We went home empty handed, but now we at least have a plan.

Then Saturday night, we watched True Blood and hung out around the house. We're completely addicted, and we're currently in the middle of season 2. If you're into vampires/supernatural stuff, and you don't mind gore or nudity, you should definitely consider watching it. The discs are available on Netflix, which is what we use.

Yesterday marked the first day of Shark Week! I looove Shark Week, so we've been watching lots of Discovery Channel and expanding our shark knowledge. Hopefully we never have to do it, but now we both know how to put a shark in tonic by rubbing it's nose/mouth area. Ha.

I've also been working on a digital floor plan of the house, which I've mentioned before. I used a free website called Floorplanner. It's really easy to use and fun (if you're into that sort of thing) to mess around with. This is another one of those "I don't even want to say how long I spent working on this" kind of things, but trust me...it was a while. I did it for fun, for reference--since we had to take the measurements for carpet and stuff--and to give our family and friends a better idea of what our little house looks like for those who haven't been here. So here it is:

Now when I talk about the house and the renovations we've done, you can better envision the flow of things. Everything is still a work in progress, but you get the idea. Also, the yard is still hypothetical, but we're hoping to work on building it next weekend.

Later in the week I plan to photograph the den, which is finished but had a ton of crap in it, and the other rooms. We still have pretty much nothing to hang on the walls, but we're hoping to remedy that eventually. I'm always trying to remind myself that houses don't become perfect and homey instantly, but I do sometimes get impatient. Overall we're happy with how things are looking, and we have some long and short term goals for improvement.

See you guys tomorrow!

-T, K, J, & C

It is finished.

Finally. I am so happy to announce that it is all finished. Ahhh. Major sigh of relief. Now, here's what happened today.

The carpet guys were supposed to get here at 10. So, of course, I waited around all morning and they got here at like 12:30. Not like I had anything else to do, right?! Ha. Anywho, they put in the carpet, and it was done within 3 hours. It looks really nice and feels great too! Check it out:

Ta-da! Also notice the new ceiling fan.

I had Charlotte in to inspect. She approves!

We've been waiting SO long to have everything finished, I couldn't hold on one more second to start setting things up. Since we bought the craigslist bed on Monday, the mattress has been lying in the front room on the floor, getting in the way of everything. 

 Exhibit A. Lazy.

Even though Thomas is still at work, I got industrious and decided to build the bed. All by myself (independence struck again). Thomas told me it was "more of a two person job" and I may have almost killed myself carrying the mattress(es) in and shoving them on, but I did it! I didn't take pictures of the whole process, but I did take some of just the frame.

Since it's from IKEA, the frame was relatively easy to put together. Hopefully it doesn't break.

There was a mattress that came with the bed, but since we truly care about our future guests' comfort, we decided to stack Thomas' old futon mattress on top of that for added cushion. I even used our actual pillows so you could get the complete picture.

Again, Inspector Charlotte couldn't wait to check things out. She loves the bed and is sitting there still.

 Fair warning: here's where things got a little out of hand and this basically became a pet photo shoot instead of a bed one.

The huntress.

So then of course Jack's like "hey what's this new bed about?" and joins the fun.

He instantly approves and decides to lie down.

I'm sorry, but this is just ridiculously cute. 

We needed to practice for the real photo shoot, which is happening on August 13th.

Awww. I hope our kids are this cute ;]

Being a cat and all, Charlotte remains disinterested (aka she's just pretending).

 "HI MOM!"

And the clicking of the shutter won her interest...

But she prioritized window guarding yet again.

While Jack continued to pose and look sultrily over his shoulder. 

And then yawn (the black spots on his tongue are normal, FYI. Thomas thinks it's because he's a mutt).

Like I said, that's a lot of pictures of my pets. But they are unbelievably cute, and since I'm their mom and this is my blog, I couldn't resist showing you. Needless to say, the bed has been ok-ed by the important ones.

Today is our two month wedding anniversary! I'm embarrassed to say that my mom had to remind me, but now that I remembered, I think we might use it as a reason to go out for dinner! We haven't been out in over a week, and I think we might both explode if we have to cook tonight. Plus, we have a 50% off (thanks, Scoutbmob!) to this awesome sounding Italian place with a mozzarella bar. I can't even really imagine what that is, but it sounds legit. So I think we might go explore it!

Monday I will be posting the final layout of our house that I created using Floorplanner. I spent a ridiculous amount of time on it, but you've all been begging me to see the house layout (kidding. No one has even asked) and I just couldn't hold out on you anymore! It was one of those pointless yet fun projects that I look forward to showing you. 

Hope you all have a fun/relaxing weekend!

-T, K, J, & C

My parents are on the news as we speak...

Which is kind of cool. I'm actually streaming KLBK news in Lubbock in another window as I type. Thanks Internet! The pugs have even gotten some feature time (and of course, they look beautiful). If you'd like to watch, click here at 6:00 to live stream!

Today we went with our landlady Jeanie to choose flooring for the two back rooms, which is the final step in the process. There are actually guys here right now installing the ceiling fans and light fixture in the laundry room. We decided on basic carpet with grey-ish undertones for both rooms, and it's going to be put in at 10:00 a.m. tomorrow. We couldn't believe they had an opening so early, and they said it should only take 2 hours or so to finish. By this time tomorrow, we'll have the bed put up and no more stuff in the front room! We're so excited. It's been a long month, but it's almost over--and the house is way nicer now too!

Something else that we're super excited about is that we get to build a small fenced in yard for Jack, and we're getting a dog door that he can use part of the time while we're at work (which we BOTH eventually will be...ha). We've been measuring, calculating, and planning that project today, so there should be official word on that soon. This weekend, we Thomas may be building a fence:]

I'll also be photographing the newly/mostly finished rooms within the next week or so, and we're also planning to do some shopping (with giftcards of course) for a big mirror to cover the super cute (ugly) hole in our living room wall. There has been talk of using the left over Sage Bud paint from the back room to paint the dining room (the guys left an entire unopened can), so...perhaps. Finally, I'm considering re-upholstering a chair that was left here by the previous owners and using it in the guest room. I think I want it to be turquoise, but who knows. BIG PLANS people.

Here's a picture of the Lady Charlotte being sassy:

Good times, I tell you! 
-T, K, J, & C


p.s. We're totally breaking one of my personal rules and having breakfast for supper. I don't even know if I can handle the spontaneity of our lives.