gswarfield

There are a lot of different things that I like, but lately with Christmas coming closer and closer, I just keep seeing beautiful Christmas type decorations! Here are some of the things that if I had money, time, and a place to arrange them would love to do! It is funny how I have a very modern taste in furniture and art, but tend to like more traditional type decorations for Christmas. I am a sucker for Silver and Red so sorry about the repetition.

I don’t know if I would do this quite they way they do, but I thought it was a fun way of displaying some fruit rather than using a fruit bowl.

Grant and I were lucky enough to be able to live with Tanya and Wilson for about 6 months after Grant and I moved to Austin to find jobs. Tanya and Wilson had been in a similar situation, and they definitley made life awesome by letting us live with them. We wanted to show them how grateful we were in a way that would really help out. We could have just given them money, but then since they have kids it would have most likely gone to helping the girls instead of using it selfishly. This of course is a good thing,but since we lived with them, I knew certain pieces of furniture that they were saving up for which made my job a lot easier.

So, I knew that I wanted to do this make over, but first I had to convince Grant. But before I could do that, I had to figure out how much everything would cost, but I had mentioned it to my mom and told her not to tell anyone because I didn’t want them accidentally finding out, but of course, EVERYONE knew about it then. So, I kept getting calls with more and more funding coming in which I was not going to refuse, but made everything a little bit more confusing. So, eventually I had a plan with everything that I wanted, and when my older Sister Kira was in town for a visit we went shopping and got pretty much everything but the furniture. My older brother Daniel went and picked up a bed frame in Houston for us that we had found on Craigslist.

Then came the whole dilemma with Tanya said she would be induced to have her 3rd child (Now Emily Ashlyn Robertson) the 27th of November, so everything was planned around then. My mom and sister were going to visit at that time to help with the girls and the make over, while I was working on the room, etc. But Tanya was induced on Monday the 23rd which was acutally my cousin’s birthday which made him happy,but it threw off our schedule! HOW dare Tanya have her baby when it doesn’t fit in with my schedule!!!! ;p So anyway, I went to work Monday morning, Tanya went to the doctor’s and then the hospital to be induced while awesome neighbors watched the girls. My mom and younger sister were on their way from Houston to watch the girls while my sister was in the hospital. During this time Grant was at our house getting all of the furniture and accessories that I had bought packed along with 200+ other items that I needed. My cousin Simon was also on his way from Houston to Austin with the bed frame from Houston.

When I got home from work to Tanya and Wilson’s and all of my stuff had been brought to their house, it looked like a total mess, my nieces kept telling me that they wanted to paint, and Grant and my mom had taken before pictures, had moved everything out of the room, and they had taped everything off! Shortly after me, my cousin arrived and we started painting the walls.

Here you can see the before pictures of their room.

This set up was our problem set up, because of how pictures would hang above the bed, it would mean that once we moved the glider and the crib thingy back in it would look bad. So, we did the reveal so they would see it normally, and then we mess it up and move it back.

Here you can see that everything is taped when I got home from work which was VERY awesome because I had work on Tuesday too, so after work was all I had.

We were trying to take pictures throughout, but we just weren’t fast enough since we were all in a hurry to take pictures every couple of moments. We painted and had lots of help! This was the first time that Grant and Anthony had painted, so I hope it wasn’t too bad of an experience. We had one little hiccup where the bed frame that we had gotten off of craigslist was adverstized the wrong size. We weren’t ripped off price wise, but now we have a full size bed frame in a style that we don’t want to keep and are trying to sell it now.

So, Monday we took pictures, moved stuff, taped, and painted. Then we put the wrong bed frame together, took it apart and had had enough for that day. Tuesday I went to work, but Simon and Grant had to go to Ikea to pick up the correct bed frame, so once that was done putting furniture together was most of what they did.

Here you can see my nieces wanting soooo badly to help, but pretty much just being in the way most of the time. But this is what I came home to on Tuesday.

Then I started making dinner for everyone while Grant and Simon followed my instructions on where I wanted everything in the room to be hung. From mirrors to pictures to curtain rods. Here Simon is using the Laser Level.

There were a few times when I thought that Tanya and Wilson might find out what we were up to. For instance, on Monday Mia talked to Wilson on the phone and told him that she is painting with Grant and Simon, but luckily she has a painting set of her own so they didn’t think anything of it. Wilson came home on Monday to put the girls to bed, and he realized what we were doing, but he only saw the paint color, and he made sure not to see it while we were doing the other work. Then when I was at the hospital with Tanya seeing Emily for the first time, she kept asking me questions and it was really hard getting around some of them to not make it sound suspicious, but in the end we pulled through it and Tanya was surprised in the end.

Here are the After Pictures!

Here you can see how close the bed and the chest of drawers are, this was not how I wanted it, but this was one of those pieces that Tanya and Wilson wanted in their room for sure. No matter how we moved it, it would not fit better, so we gave them options if they wanted it moved somewhere else, but at least all of the drawers open completely without hitting the bed.

Here you can see everyone in the room after the reveal and the girls fighting over their new little sister. Then we had to move everything to fit the crib and stuff, but eventually it will look nicer again.

And here is the Video with Tanya’s Reaction!

 

Another view from my iphone

Even though I was a total tomboy growing up, I have definitely found and embraced my girly side. I love purses, shoes, and clothes.  Grant and I are actually on our way to Arkansas right now to get more clothes out of our storage unit for winter. I decided that this was a good excuse to get in some blogging since lately I have been making a lot of excuses to not blog.
So, even though I love those items, I don’t not buy things blindly, it takes me a long time to make decisions about more expensive items like coats, shoes, and purses. I have waited 2 years to get a coat until it was on sale and I knew I wanted it enough. So, I have been looking for a new purse for some time, but since I am so picky about things I just couldn’t find one I wanted.
Grant and I are now living in the Rivas’s house in Lakeway, and we went driving around to see which stores were in the Galleria by our house and came upon a Marshalls. This is a great store, and I decided we should go have a look. Of course, when I shouldn’t be spending money I find a purse that I really like, but I knew I shouldn’t get it so we went home with nothing and tried to forget about the lovely purse.
One week later, my sister Kira was in town and we were shopping mainly to hang out and went to Marshalls, and I wouldn’t let myself go see if that purse was still there because then I would want it more, and I should be forgetting about it. After our shopping trip, I came home to find the purse that I wanted on the island of our kitchen with a note from Grant. I don’t know why he bought it, but OF COURSE I LOVED IT.  We don’t have a good excuse like a birthday or anniversary, but it was such an awesome surprise.
So here are pictures of my new purse in all of its glory ;p! It is a guess purse that normally retails at $115.00,but believe me it was much cheaper than that now, but it still makes me happy to know it was a great deal.

I also got a new wallet, my sister Kira had an awesome one, and mine was literally busting at the seams, but I didn’t want to get the same one that I had before because it would probably break in the same places again, so, I liked how sturdy Kira’s was, so I went to the Stein Mart and found one by the same company but a different look. I am VERY happy with it, and hope that both of my new purchases last a long time!

The Young Marrieds in our church do a variety of different activities, and this month, the social team decided that it would be a fun idea to have a fall festival which consisted of going to a pumpkin farm and taking pictures, picking out pumpkins, going to our house/Rivas’s house, having a pot luck, and carving the pumpkins. Grant and I were planning on doing all of those activities, but as the time got closer with everyone coming to our house, I realized that we were still too far behind on cleaning so we didn’t go to the farm.
Grant was so excited that we weren’t going since it was farther away from our house than we had anticipated in the first place, but once everything was clean and my portion of the food cooked (Chili and Spiced Cider) everything was a lot better. Everyone came over and we had a better turn out than I was expecting consider we only had 2 couples say they were actually coming. I think that we had about 11 couples show up which was awesome. All of the food was great, and I even got a few compliments on my Mother-in-Law’s cider recipe which made me happy because that means I didn’t mess it up.

Here you can see some of the ladies in the dining room carving some pumpkins.

Some more people carving pumpkins, I am glad that the Rivas house was as large as it was, otherwise it would have been very crowded.

Here is a cool picture that Grant took so you can see a few more people.

Some more pictures of the great pumpkins.

I am not completely sure whose pumpkins this was, but I think it was Andy Luksys’, and it was the biggest pumpkin I think out of all of them.

Here you can see the two lit up, they definitely look awesome!

Here is my pumpkin … I decided to go with something different than the usual face, I got my inspiration from a magazine, and I would say once Grant gave me a power drill to make the circles everything was smooth sailing from there.

Here you can see it lit up which is pretty cool. I was kind of sad that we missed out on the farm thing because I would have loved to have some of those cheesy photos because Grant and I hardly EVER take pictures since it is just the two of us. But I will just have to force him to take more pictures of us because I feel like we haven’t been documenting our time very much.