Christmas Spirit

I am beyond excited that it's beginning to look and FEEL like Christmas in Austin! I've been having fun and spending time with friends and family doing Christmas type things.

We went to a gingerbread house making party. One word: FUN! Some people showed up with their A game and made some incredible houses! Scott and I had fun building our "starter home," compared to all the other mansions. I had fun with eating the accessories..."One for me, one for the house."

Some houses were complete with solar panels(top left), and a car port(bottom left). Thanks to Thane and Amy for hosting such a fun party!

Last weekend we Scott hung the Christmas lights, and we put up all of our Christmas decorations, which is not very many. I plan on buying up deals after Christmas to add to our collection. We did get some stockings as a gift from my aunt, which I'm very happy about! She said it was against the law to not have stockings.

I'm on the look out for some cutesy doggy stockings, so if you know of any, let your girl know!

Last week, Scott joined me and some of my work friends for our Holiday Happy Hour. I had a great time, minus overcoming my sickness. (I was so sick last week!! Sorry for the lack of posts).

I love my co-workers, and I'm glad we get along so well! We need to have another outing pronto!

Continuing our Christmas outings, last night I went with my future mother in law and my mom to the Austin Symphony Christmas Sing-along! I LOVE this Christmas tradition. This was my third time going to this concert. It puts me in the Christmas spirit, and gets me pumped up for the season. I love that the whole auditorium sings along and all the joyous kiddos excited to see Santa, Rodolph, and Frosty.

 Happy Wednesday friends!

Linking up with Shanna for some randomness Wednesday!!!

Life as of Late

With the last post, I was feeling a bit stressed and overwhelmed, but things seem to have subsided for the time being. Thank you to those of you who helped encourage me. Y'alls sweet comments mean so much. It's amazing the friendships I'm already making through blogging!

This weekends forecast included rainy, windy and slightly chilly temperatures. Does that mean fall is here?! I don't know about you, but I'm pretty excited about the changes! Fall is my favorite time of the year. Boots, football, Thanksgiving, holiday breaks! BRING IT ON!

I planned on staying inside, reading and vegging out this weekend, but my to-do list kept growing and growing and I decided that it was time to get at it.

Starting off with a little bit of shopping...

I purchased some new curtains for our living room from World Market. They have really given the room a different feel. This picture is terrible. Maybe I'll give you a tour when it's closer to being finished. I will say the curtains are the exact colors of my walls in the living room and dining room, and they tie the two rooms together, which is exciting. Am I the only one that loves buying home decor?!

I'm in the market to buy a "Jackie O" style dress for one of my wedding showers later this month, and came across this beauty at Anthropologie. I was in love, but def NOT willing to throw down $187 bones. I'm checking out some vintage shops after work, wish me luck :)

 In other home updates, we are getting closer and closer to our guest bedroom being finished!

This is a new addition to our dining room. I got it from my mom for my Birthday and LOVE it. She did a great job!

We purchased a new couch and loveseat. Scott makes the loveseat look so tiny, but it's my favorite seat in the house! You will see more of them in the home tour!

Got snuggle time with this precious puppy. Isn't she adorable? The sad thing, she's not mine :( But now I have the puppy fever. Scott has been talking more about our future puppy lately... Maybe he's got the fever too? :)

Yesterday we got together with my family and celebrated my Uncle's 50th Birthday! It was so much fun, and great for his "low key" request. We ate at Opal Divines, mmm! This is him with his signature silly smile. Isn't he a goof?

I hope your weekend was fabulous and your Monday isn't too hard on you.

How I painted a horizontal striped wall

I didn't want to say "how to" paint a horizontal striped wall because, I soon found out, there are SO many different ways you can do this! I just wanted to show you a step by step procedure on what we did and what worked for us.

We had just finished priming and painting the guest bedroom and I was really anxious to try painting a horizontal striped wall. First we decided it would be an accent wall, so just one wall would have stripes.

We chose the wall that the bed will be against, kind of like the one in this picture:

via
(Just to be clear, this is sadly not my house, just an example of a striped wall.)

I also knew I wanted it to be neutral, so I went with Behr Sail Cloth and Behr Casual Khaki.

Before we began taping and painting, I measured from floor to ceiling and decided on how wide I wanted the stripes to be. I found out that our ceiling wasn't exactly level, but about 94.5 inches. We went with 8 inch stripes with the bottom one being a little more narrow.

We started measuring from top to bottom 8 inches all the way down.

We used a laser level for this project and let me tell you, it was a life saver!!! I read different reviews on how to paint a horizontal striped wall, and a lot of them suggested we not use a laser level. uhhh I'm not sure how we would have finished this project without it.

Basically you just follow the laser with the tape and put it either above or below the line, depending on where you will be painting. This part is very tedious, and trying. You must have patience.

Oh, before I painted, I used a credit card to smooth out and bubbles, or creases to prevent the paint from bleeding through. 

Now for the easy part, painting! I just simply painted about the tape first, then used a roller for the middle part. Super simple and quick! The little pieces of tape are just a reminder for me not to paint in that area.

Next, I removed tape and marked errors and a little bits of touching up. 

p.s. I changed that electrical outlet and 3 others, because I'm that handy

Lastly, the finish!

I have feeling I will be spending more time in this room.

I so wish this wall was in our bedroom, but I guess that mean we just need to repaint ours.... Two rooms with stripes? Too much? nahh!