Friday, December 31, 2010

Goodbye 2010 . . . Helloooo 2011!

Happy New Year everyone! I can't believe how fast this year went by and all the exciting things that had happened. Here's a little recap of what's been going on in our lives this past year.

January: I bought my BLUE 2006 Hyundai Sonata. I absolutely love driving around in it! Also Matt and I bought a house in Overland Park, Ks!

February: Matt started his new job at Burns & McDonnell as a Consultant Electrical Engineer and he loves it! I'm soo proud of him!

March: I moved from Ames, Ia into our new house in Kansas!

April: Matt and I flew to California to visit our good friend Scott. While we were there we went to San Fransisco and then to a few wineries in Napa Valley. On our 2nd to last day there Matt proposed to me on top of a mountain at the Pride Mountain Vineyard! I can definitely say one of the best vacations i've ever had!

May: My little brother Paul graduated from IKM-Manning High School, I'm soo proud of you Paul!

June: We had a house warming party for our friends and family to come see the new place and to see the minor changes we've made to it. We still have a long way to go but we're getting there, it's been a great learning experience!

July: Speaking of great learning experiences, at the end of this month I started a contract position with Hallmark in Kansas City, Mo. I met some great people and learned a lot at my time there.

August: Matt and I joined his dad's side of the family in the Ozarks for the Martin Family reunion, it was a fun time catching up with everyone that was there. At the end of the month my good friends Holly and Mike Rau got married! I had the honor of being Holly's personal attendant, and she'll be one of mine in our wedding. Congrats again you two, I hope you have many happy years together! Continuing with the wedding talk, Matt and I set the date this month for our big day to be August 20, 2011!

September: We had a bunch of friends come visit us and met new friends as well. When Angela, Tom, and Dave came to visit we had a blast going to the Kansas City Art Festival at the Plaza, and catching up on each others lives.

October: Another one of my good friends Amanda and her boyfriend Brandon came to visit us. Matt showed them a little bit of KC & took them to Power & Light, where we stumbled upon a free Smashmouth concert! Two weeks later I went wedding dress shopping with my mom, Matt's mom, and my cousins Taylor and Marina and ended up finding my dress! Then the next day I joined the newlyweds Holly and Mike for the one mile zoo run at the Henry Doorly Zoo.

November: This wasn't the greatest of months but thankfully I had Matt, my loving family and great friends to help me through it and to help me just roll with the punches. For Thanksgiving Matt and I traveled about 6 hours to Peoria, Il to visit the Martin clan for the holidays! One of my good friends also let me know that her and her husband are expecting their first child to come in June! This definitely kept me going this month.

December: A much better month, I was able to reconnect with a lot of great friends from high school and spend time with both of our families for the Holidays. I also had three interviews for a Design Consultant position, I haven't heard a hiring decision yet but i'm hoping that something good will come my way career wise in 2011!

Overall 2010 was a great year and i'm excited for the new year to come!
Continue reading Goodbye 2010 . . . Helloooo 2011!

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Holiday Centerpiece Ideas

Ok so it's been a couple of days since I posted my last blog, sorry! Since I skipped a few days and I promised I would try to come up with an inexpensive Holiday decorating idea or tip everyday til Christmas, i'll post a few today to make up time. :) I'm mainly focusing on centerpiece ideas. After I finished decorating our Christmas tree this year, I had a few leftover ornaments and a decorative bowl from Target. So I just dumped out the decorations that were already in the bowl and replaced them with the ornaments. A picture of that is in one of my previous posts.

My next idea was to take a glass cake stand and gather either artificial garland, or go to my backyard and cut a few pine needles off our pine tree :). You can place several different items in the center of the stand, it just depends on what you have on hand or what you're willing to spend money on, and also what kind of look you're going for. Here are a few more ideas that I found while searching online, and they all seem pretty easy to create as well (my favorite one is in the middle). Here is another idea that I just love. Thanks for stopping by!





Continue reading Holiday Centerpiece Ideas

Thursday, December 2, 2010

More Christmas Decor :)

I can't believe it's December 2nd already! Today is also my mom's birthday, Happy Birthday Mom! I love you! So I have had a lot of free time lately and I have been able to clean and decorate the house. I just wanted to share what I made yesterday after reading Modern Jane's blog. It's a free and easy way to decorate for Christmas, all you need is a color printer, paper and a picture frame. You can go here for the free Christmas printable, you can also use this cute one too. Here is what the finished product looks like!

From now until Christmas I'm going to do my best to post a free or mostly free holiday decoration idea or tip. So keep checking back to see what I have come up with!
Continue reading More Christmas Decor :)

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Engagement Photos!!

There here!! I received our engagement pictures in the mail yesterday and I love all of them! It was very hard to choose my favorites because they all looked soo good! I also was just way too excited and I already started designing my save the date and it's pretty much finished (even though I won't be sending those out for at least 2 more months!). Well as I promised, here are my two favorites:







I hope everyone has a great day! :)
Continue reading Engagement Photos!!

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Christmas Decorating

It's that time of year again! When I was growing up one of my favorite things to do was help my mom put up the Christmas tree and decorate it while watching a holiday movie and enjoying a cup of hot chocolate. Good memories! This year Matt and I finally have a place of our own to decorate for the holidays! We got our tree really cheap off of craigslist and my mom was generous enough to take me shopping for lights and ornaments. I decided that every year I want to have a slightly different color scheme, this year will be brown, green and red. Here are some pictures of my progress so far.

We found some cute reigndeer that matched the red bulbs on the tree, and of course theres an M and an A for Matt and Ashley. Hopefully next year there will be one more letter on the tree for a new puppy!

I was able to bring the leftover ornaments into the dining room decor by switching out the decorations in the table centerpiece. Next I would like to finish the tree with a tree topper, and to wrap some garland on the railing behind our couch.

Now I just have to figure out what to do with our leftover string of lights, I'm sure i'll think of something creative!

Continue reading Christmas Decorating

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Making progress . . .

So this past week has been pretty busy for us, last Friday Matt and I got our engagement pictures taken. We did a lot of nature ones at Shawnee Mission Park & then went to the Plaza to get some urban shots. I can NOT WAIT until we get them! Our photographer is talented and amazing and soo much fun to work with, I have no worries about our wedding pictures now. We should get our cd of them in the mail in about three weeks and i'll post my faves!!

We also reserved our ceremony location this past Monday!! It will be at Elmwood Park Grotto in Omaha, and the ceremony will start at approximately 3 pm. Things are definitely starting to come along with the wedding plans. As each thing that I can cross off my wedding planning checklist, I can relax a little more so I can focus on the next thing that needs to be done. The next thing on the agenda is finding a band, florist, and baker for the cake.


Luckily it was set up for a wedding so we could envision how it would be!


Totally switching gears now, Matt tore up our 1/2 bath in our basement and stripped the ugly wallpaper out, so this weekend i'll be able to prime and paint it. The mirror that was in there is the perfect size for the room and vanity, but the color was hideous, so I decided to paint the frame. It looks completely different and I love it!! I love being creative and being able to express it in my home and accessories. I have all these good ideas but unfortunately I don't have the income right now to make my ideas and dreams a reality, but i'm making the most of what I have :). I can't wait until the bathroom is all put together, I just need to find some new hardware for hand towels then it is donezo!
Frame before, plus hideous wallpaper
After! Can't wait to see it hanging again after I finish painting the 1/2 bath!

That is all I have for now, when the 1/2 bath is finally completed I will post more pics of all our hard work!
Continue reading Making progress . . .

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Pumpkin Carvings

 Matt and I decided to get out of the house and go to the Johnson Farm Pumpkin Patch just south of Kansas City yesterday. After we looked through all the pumpkins and made sure that we found the perfect ones, we went straight home to carve them. I prepped the table as Matt searched for stencils online. Eventually he found one he loved and went straight to work. I drew mine free hand. After 2 whole hours of carving we were both finally finished, we still have a couple more to carve but we'll probably get to those later this week. I just wanted to share what we did yesterday! If you can't tell Matt carved Mario and I did a little ghost peeking out from behind a gravestone. It was hard work but lots of fun and I can't wait for our first Halloween being able to hand out treats to the trick or treaters in our new house!


Continue reading Pumpkin Carvings

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Before & Afters

Ok well here goes my fist ever blog post. Matt and I have been updating the house that we moved into in March and I thought I would share our progress so far. While I was fixing up the interior, Matt has been busy working on the outside, specifically the deck. He has power washed it, rebuilt the railings, sanded it down and stained it. It's taken him all summer long to do it, but it looks amazing now! We are far from being finished but it is definitely coming along and feeling more like home! As our progress continues i'll post more pictures!
Ugly floral wallpaper in guest bathroom

Guest Bath After :)


Matt is currently building a frame for the mirror & bought a new vanity to replace this one.

Living/Dining Before



Deck before Matt & Jared stained it



Continue reading Before & Afters