Weekend Whirlwind

I'm tired!

We had a crazy weekend and saw lots and lots of good friends. That made it a great weekend, but a very full one.  This weekend we got a dose of Nikki and Justin at the climbing gym, Steve and Somer, also at climbing, but also at their new house! I love seeing happy clients in their new homes!  The next morning I was up and running for a showing (which has lead to an offer whoop whoop!) and then Alexander and Holly came into town for the game, some climbing, and a dinner date.  Alexander is moving back to Durham so we're excited to be seeing more of him soon. Then Sunday morning Blue came for brunch!! I hadn't seen Blue since my St. Louis trip with the girls and it was so great to see her and catch up. After that, more climbing with Travis and Claire and then off to a going away party for one of our Frisbee friends at Dave and Busters.

Are you out of breath reading that run-on sentence? Cause I am and that's how this weekend felt. Like a run-on sentence. It was awesome though. I love seeing good friends and catching up with everybody.

Friends are hard-work. And not in a bad way, don't get me wrong. But as I've gotten older it gets harder and harder to stay in touch and I come to realize that it really takes effort to see everybody and keep up with what is going on with everybody. In college I would see most people on my way to class or I would have a regular meal date with them or see them 3x a week at Frisbee practice. Now that everybody is scattered, it's harder.  But it's so worth it!

Also, my crazy weekend led me to a doh! moment that I hope my parents will forgive me for! In my slivers of seconds running around I would say "We need to Call Mom and Dad!" And then someone would call or something would happen and I'd be on to the next thing. That happened probably 4 times yesterday! And then at 11:30 I sat straight up in bed and slammed my hand to my forehead while realizing it was probably too late to call Mom and Dad and settled on a midnight text message.

Mom and Dad! Happy Anniversary!! 29 years is truly amazing! From walking in on you lovebirds kissing in the kitchen everyday growing up to now, when it has become so much more clear to me how amazingly you complement each other, I could not have asked for better role models for my marriage. Cheers to you both!

No She Didn't!

Yes I did!

I picked a fabric!! Can you believe it?  It's only taken oh...TWO MONTHS!! And I'm actually committed to this fabric now because it's already on the chair. At least partially. My first idea was this fabric that I fell in love with and got at bargain price of $4 a yard.

And then I put it on my chair and did an instagram poll and decided that the pattern was too busy for a full fabric wingback chair. 

So my lovely friend Alison  suggested I recover my dining room chairs in the fabric and I LOVE how they turned out! That gave me confidence in choosing fabric again because after it didn't work for the wingback I was second guessing myself for falling in love with the fabric. You can see the start of the Harry Potter scarves and cornhole bags in this picture too.  Sometimes I get in over my head...

Well...then I hunted online and in stores for a not over the top expensive fabric and I actually ended up buying this. Didn't know that did you? It's because it got returned promptly.  It's a shower curtain from Target and it was on sale for $10. I bought three of them. Then I put it over the chair and Derrick and I decided it was too much. Ugh...

Back to square one and back to the store went the shower curtains.

Then I ordered fabric samples from an online fabric store. Nope...not going to work.

Here's the problem. I wanted something kind of neutral but I didn't want the chair to be boring. I also really liked the idea of linen on the chair but linen is expensive.  Fast forward to earlier this week when I went back to my favorite new fabric store and Ahhhhhhhhhh (that's a high pitch angels are singing type ahhhh).

It's official so if you hate it, don't tell me! It's already halfway a quarter of the way on the chair. I love it! It's a linen feeling fabric and is still neutral while having just enough interest in the pattern. It wasn't super cheap at $9 a yard but that's also not super expensive for upholstery fabric. 

 I have put over four hours into the chair and gotten this far.

And my apartment looks like a tornado has gone through it. Who thought this was a good idea? There are no good wingback reupholstery tutorials online and I think it's because people start them and then try that first inside wing of the chair and give up! Seriously!

Also, do not try this without an electric staple gun. Take it from my personal experience. Oh, and get an extra box of staples. I've gone through 4 strips of staples on this completed section. What you can't see is that the outside chair is still completely unfinished as well. It's going to be a while folks! But the good news is, I think it's going to look great!!!!!


From Far Away.

Random Blog Dump

How has it been another week without blogging! Seriously! We've had a great week, but nothing significantly blog worthy.  No more week long hiatus' though. That means you might get some a lot of pictures of Crosby but at least the blog will be around :)

This past weekend was really fun. Britt had a girls get together at her house on Friday night. Kristin and Nikki were there plus Britt and Somer who I have started to see more and more and it has been great. Plus Claire was there which was really fun because I made that introduction! I love that my oldest friends get along with my newest friends and this new little girls group that we're forming is really great.

While the girls were hanging out, Travis, Derrick, and their friend Dan (first blog mention of Dan) had a guys night that consisted of video games, football, and pizza.

Saturday we found Nikki's bridesmaids dresses! They are gorgeous and extremely comfortable (which sounds weird now that I read it out loud (yes I sometimes read my blog out loud) but they are seriously comfortable dresses.)  I won't tell anything more because it's not my news to share but I think all the bridesmaids are really happy and Nikki and her mom stopped the hunt early because this dress was at the first store we went to and they knew it was the one!

Yesterday was also a fun one. First off, I never mentioned on here that I won the W.A.G award last week. The W.A.G. award is an award that gets passed around the office. It stands for Work Ethic, Attitude, and Generosity. Each week, the agent who received the award the week before presents it to another agent that they feel like embody those characteristics. I was given the award by a veteran agent in the office and I felt very honored to receive it because she is an agent I respect a lot. It's also tradition for the agent giving the award to dress it up in some way. It had a little blue golfer's hat on when I got it so, for my turn, I injected some school pride into her!

I passed the award on to the administrative assistant, Jessica Tesh. She is always smiling and is happy to help in anyway she can and it's been nice, as a first year agent, to have someone there to answer the dumb questions that I have without judgement. She's also a fellow Wolfpack Fan!

Last night Derrick and I had dinner with some friends, Kari and Eugene! You might remember my  previous post about all of the ultimate frisbee babies that were born earlier this year. Well, Derrick and I went to visit two of them. Our friends Kari and Eugene, fellow ultimate players and my very first clients! had twins in February. They were several weeks early and so, so tiny when they were born.  I posted this picture on Instagram the first time I met them.

And now look at them! This was Derrick's first chance to meet them. He looks a little scared of them in this picture, but he's just sitting far away because he's recovering from a cold right now and he didn't want to get them sick. They are so sweet and so cute! Cal is on the left and Axel is on the right in this picture.  It was so great to catch up with Kari and Eugene. We'll hopefully be seeing them once a week this winter. They are playing winter league and are on our same time schedule so they will be at the fields when we are.

In other news I have made some progress on the wingback chair front! Blog post to come!

Blog Rut

I know I haven't blogged in a while.  It's only been five days but I always get disappointed when the blogs I follow don't update for that long. I just simply haven't been in the mood and don't have much to blog about. Life is rolling along. It's been a busy and stressful work week on my end and Derrick is, as always, working hard at his job. In the evenings we've been climbing and catching up on TV shows. The norm....so there really isn't much to blog about.

I will say that Crosby has been a bit of a mess lately. Derrick and I have concluded that she isn't getting enough exercise so I've used it as motivation to get out and get running again. It still doesn't seem to be enough though. She has taken to pulling food off our kitchen counters and it's driving me crazy! We've had a fried rice, bagel, pizza, nutter butter, and baking chocolate incident. It's very frustrating because she is very aware that she has done something wrong. She usually rats herself out before I've had a chance to find what she's gotten into.

As long as we put things away in the pantry, it's fairly easy to control, which is really a blessing. She doesn't chew or destroy any personal items. I think it's just frustrating because we've been 100% spoiled by her good behavior up to this point and sometimes take her for granted and forget that she is a dog.

A  highlight of my week was seeing Kristin and Nikki for dinner on  Monday night. Monday was a very, very long day and I was exhausted by the time I got to Nikki's but there is something so refreshing and rejuvenating about spending time with your oldest friends...just the three of us, just like it was back in middle school and high school.  AND I'm seeing Nikki again tonight and both of them again on Friday. I love these kinds of weeks!

I don't even have pictures to share this week. I'm such a bum. I'll leave you with this picture of Crosby's grinch toes.

Turkeys for the Triangle

Hey Ya'll!

Derrick and I are going to be participating in this really great community service opportunity that my Coldwell Banker HPW office supports every year. It's called Turkeys for the Triangle and I think it's a great opportunity to give back and remember that not everybody is as fortunate as we are. Basically, how it works is you purchase a raffle ticket for $10.  This raffle ticket enters you into a drawing to win all sorts of awesome prizes including:

- A Trip to New York City
 - A Caribbean Cruise
 - 4 Front-row Carolina Hurricane Tickets 
 - $1,000 Gift Card to Saks
 - $1,000 Gift Card to Nordstrom
 - $1,000 Gift Card toCrabtree Valley Mall
 - $1,000 Gift Cards to the Apple Store
 - $1,000 Gift Cards to Pottery Barn
 - A Home Security System by Omni Security Systems
 - $500 Best Buy Gift Card

With 100% of the money earned from this fund raiser, Coldwell Banker HPW is teaming up with local homeless shelters, charities, and churches to provide turkeys to needy families throughout the triangle. You can purchase the raffle tickets online at www.turkeysforthetriangle.com. 

You can buy as many as you like! The more tickets you buy, the greater chance you have at winning a great prize, but even just purchasing one will mean so much to a local family!

Once you add your tickets to your cart, just put my name in the "How Did you Hear about us?" box. I also have hard copies of raffle tickets with me if you would like to purchase one next time you see me.

Happy Giving!

Dad's Turn

Our Moms got the last post, so this one is about Dad. He just had a birthday at the end of October, so of course we had our birthday "What I Love About ______" (In this case Dad). We tried out Google Hangout for the first time. See how you can see everybody on the same screen below?

Anyways, my "What I Love about Dad" was his funny text messages throughout the day. He'll send random notes throughout the week so you always know he is thinking about you. We'll, last night I got 10 emails in a row from him and I'm pretty sure he was trying to make us jealous. Either that, or he was trying to entice us home early for Thanksgiving. Check out these gorgeous views from the deck.

And then I get these.

I died laughing.  Love you Dad! Thanks for keeping us laughing from 3 hours away!

Mom's In the House!

This past weekend, my mom picked up Derrick's mom and they came up to spend Friday and Saturday night with us. When people heard that our moms were coming up together the majority of people were surprised and we were asked "They get along?"  Thankfully, Yes! Yes they do!

Friday night they came to the rock climbing gym to see what our new hobby is all about. Right before they walked through the door I had a bad fall and had the worst bruise and scrape from climbing to date....that was fun explaining that one. They also got to meet Travis and Claire who humored my mom and posed for a picture.

We stayed up way too late and woke up way too early! Jack had a tournament in Wilmington so we drove four people and two dogs deep to watch him play for the day. He has gotten really good and he gets a lot of playing time so it's fun to watch. My sweet Bear is getting old :( You can tell when you look at his eyes. Also, this is what he looked like by 12:30.

Crosby looked like this!

We grabbed some lunch at the grocery store during Jack's bye and he chose a rotisserie chicken and a huge tub of mac and cheese.  I don't think he even used a fork!

That night we went to Tower 7 for dinner. It was delicious!! It's a mexican restaurant by the water and is so fresh. Jack's best friend, Matt, is his roommate and also plays on the ultimate team. They've been best friends since early elementary school which means I've known Matt for a loooong time. He was able to come to dinner with us which was nice!

Jack does not have great camera skills though...

No more tournaments this Fall but hopefully we'll get a few in next Spring!