Chicago Bound

Well, today is the day. My bags are packed and mom is about 45 minutes away. We board our plane for Chicago at 12:35 today and then we're officially in the whirl wind of Coldwell Banker's Gen Blue conference. I get my 30 under 30 award at a breakfast event in the morning. I've got my badge and some new outfits so I think I'm ready.

I'm actually pretty nervous. You know when you find out about something months in advance and you're like, that will never get here, and then it gets here and you're like "oh crap!" That's how I'm feeling. Derrick sent me to the mall for some new clothes...he knows how nervous I get trying to figure out what to wear to these kind of things, so I'll be sporting my new threads and trying to be as normal as possible. Wish me luck!!

Fairytale Regionals

This past weekend we traveled to Winston to play in our regional ultimate tournament. Raleighwood has had a bit of a rough season with slow starts and low numbers early on but Regionals turned out to be an awesome ending to a long season. We came into the tournament seeded 7th overall and 2nd in our pool of 4. We had an amazing run beating several teams that had bested us earlier in the season and we went undefeated until finals where we lost 13-10 to the number 1 seed Bucket out of Atlanta.

This team started out three years ago as a low commitment, fun team of friends. We only practice once a week and that just consists of a two hour scrimmage if we have enough numbers. It's been the perfect balance of getting to play but no longer committing all of our free time to practicing for a high level team. The great thing is we have enough experience on the team that we've still been able to maintain a high level of play. I really love playing with everybody on the team and I am so happy with how this season ended. We couldn't have written it up any better.

This is 6 seasons playing with this guy! Three years with wHagonweel and 3 years on Raleighwood. I'm so glad we can play on the same team and spend so much time together doing what we love!

And 7 seasons with Alison!! 4 years at NC State, one year on wHagonweel, and two years on Raleighwood. I'm so glad to have a friend like her who has known me since college and gets this whole frisbee craze.

Jack was also playing in regionals for his men's team Ring of Fire and was in the same location we were. We were able to watch him play after our finals match in a game to determine who took their second spot at nationals. They made it and Jack will be flying to Texas in 3 weeks to play in his first club nationals. I'm sure some games will be live streamed so I'll post details here if you want to follow along.

Don't forget your roots superstar! 

 

Thanks to all our family who came to watch and brought us delicious snacks! Derrick's mom and grandma came out all weekend, Trey was out all day Saturday, and my parents came for Sunday!

Laundry Room Re-Do

Our laundry room looks so good! I seriously love it and it's so nice and clean looking it's making me want to always keep it that way. It took most of our long labor day weekend but I think that's actually pretty quick for everything that we did!

Here's where we started. The walls were the same green color as most of the downstairs.

And this corner was a dumping zone.

I painted the garage door yellow earlier in the week.

And then we got to work painting. I had an entire gallon of Serious Grey left over from painting our bedroom so I knew I wanted to use that color. It was free and I knew it would look good.

I got two coats on in just a few hours and then when Jack came into town for practice he and Derrick moved the washer and dryer away from the wall for me so I could paint behind them.

 Two quick coats and Derrick and Jack moved the machines back into place. Then I got to work building our Ikea shoe storage. We bought this thing with the intention of putting it in the foyer but I totally messed up and didn't measure. We made a quick plan B and I actually love it even more!

I then made an awful curtain for the window. It was bad. It was uneven and too small. I was trying to work with a scrap piece of fabric I had on hand.

 It lasted about 24 hours before I went to JoAnne's and got a steal on this remnant. I whipped up this much better sized curtain and it's much better!

We also built shelves and I'm so proud of them! They aren't perfect but we built them and that's what counts. We wanted to utilize that space above the shoe dresser between the wall and the cabinets.

Derrick and I got a circular saw for our wedding and it sat in the box for 3.5 years until this past weekend. I registered for it, I wanted it, but I was always too intimidated to use it. Then Alexander and Holly needed a piece of wood cut down and my little jigsaw was going to take forever so Alexander and I opened the circular saw up and figured out how to use it. Bottom line, it is awesome! I feel like my entire world has opened up and suddenly the realm of projects is limitless!! Alexander and Holly also gave us the scrap wood left over from their shelving project and it was more then enough to build two small shelves for the laundry room.

Two easy cuts later and we had shelves! I covered the kitchen table with a drop cloth and opened all the window and got to painting while Derrick watched the US Open in the living room. I decided to go with the same white oil based paint that I used on my desk. Oil based paint is such a pain in the butt BUT it dries really hard and I knew these shelves were going to get a lot of use. Plus I had enough left over paint to cover both shelves.

Derrick had the great idea of adding a pop of yellow to the shelves to play off the door. He suggested painting the actual brackets which would have been super cool but it also would have been a lot more time and super tedious without spray paint so I opted to stripe the bottom of each shelf instead.

We found these brackets at Lowes for about $4 each and I liked that they were simple and sleek looking.

Lets just say I was pretty darn proud when these got done and sweet Derrick said we needed to take my picture with them.

So! Here it is! We're done!! Sorry for the grainy pictures...I think my camera is slowly dying.

Hm....looking at these pictures you should probably just come by and see it in person! We're loving it!!

True Life: Project Weekend

We had an awesome weekend. Pickleball, climbing, golf, football, and house projects!

This is true life: our house after a weekend of projects.

Today's project is re-gaining control of our house! The laundry room looks awesome though! I'm just finishing one thing up in there and then I'll post pictures!

Grandpa's Art

When I was at Lazy Daze a few weeks ago I kept stopping to look at all the original paintings because it's such a cool thing to have in your house. They kept reminding me of my Grandpa's art though so when we went home last weekend I raided Mom and Dad's storage closet and brought home everything I could find. My parents have a lot of these around their house and I grew up with them throughout my parents house and grandma's house so I'm super excited to have some to display around ours. It's way more personal and I love them!

We have about 11 of them now so they aren't all going to be displayed and I'll eventually have to share with my brothers but for now I'm OK being a hoarder.

This one is my favorite.




For one of my birthdays I asked my Grandpa to paint me a picture of my dog....he didn't paint dogs so he sent me a pink and purple fish picture instead:) I remember being kind of disappointed and pulling one of these:

But now it's one of my most cherished possessions.  I also love this one that's already hanging in our dining room.

Here are a few of the other treasures I brought home this weekend.

I love seeing how he framed these. Mom said he found all his frames at yard sales and this one just makes me laugh because it's a big thick canvas that he just taped into a frame. Classic.

This is another favorite that we'll bring out at Christmas.

I remember Jay and I asking him to paint one in front of us so he grabbed this little piece of foam board and painted this one at the kitchen table with us watching him. Pretty cool.

And this one is GIANT! I think I know just the spot for it but I have to get it back in the frame first.

I don't have a a lot of very specific memories of my Grandpa because he died when I was about 10. My most vivid memory is going on a road trip with my whole family in his giant van. He had one of those huge vans with the tires on the back and a seagull hanging from the rear view mirror. This was pre-Jack so I was somewhere under the age of 7 and I remember him making everybody else sit in the back and throwing a bunch of pillows in the front seat so I could sit up front with him. It was awesome :)

I don't have tons of specific memories but I have very fond feelings when I think of him and I am so happy to have these paintings that will stay in our house. I can't wait for our kids to be old enough to ask about them!

Hello Yellow!

My mom gave me some great decorating advice when we moved into this house. She said pick 3 colors that are going to be the main colors in your house and use these with neutrals throughout your whole house to make it feel cohesive. I'm not a complete follower....hello Wolfpack red! but I have always had that in the back of my mind when I'm on the fence.

I'd say our three colors are blue (navy NOT Carolina), yellow, and green/tealish. The green kind of got grandfathered in because of our green living room. So anyways, all that to say I've brought in some more yellow!

The laundry room is the next room I want to get under control. The only thing I'd done up to this point was add a rug.

True Life: My laundry room is a dumping ground. Just keeping it real.

The plan is to change the wall color, add storage to that crazy dumping zone and build open shelving between the cabinet and the wall to fill in that unused space. Derrick jumped on board so we're forging ahead and moving the laundry machines this weekend to knock the painting out.

Last week I got started and added a little personality to the room by painting the door to the garage. It started here.

And we ended up here.

I love it! And I think it's going to look even better with darker walls. The color is Full Sun by Eddie Bauer and I just got Sherwin Williams to match the color. This door is pretty much only used by Derrick and I but I love seeing this pop of color when we look down the hallway.

I'm excited to see how this room comes together!