1st Young House Love Inspired Project!

Since I'm sans a job, therefore sans income :(, I can no longer afford to keep up with my shoe or shopping addiction. But I can't say I'm addiction free since being a stay at home wife (for now!) brought on a new addiction...HGTV shows, and pretty much any channel with a home decorationish type show! Sadly I was becoming a major couch potato, so I traded TV time for internet time which lead me to the world of blogs and to the great guys over at Young House Love. And what do they do best? DIY projects!

Which brings me to my first YHL inspired project! Now I'm by no means crafty or good at building anything like John and Sherry, but my goal is to start of small and work my way up! Since I just started cooking and collecting recipes I decided to organize all the random recipes from magazines or internet printouts that I started slowly collecting and using.

Rule #1 for me is that it must be cute and inexpensive. And who has cute, stylish and inexpensive items...well Targeyyyy of course! So I headed over to the Target nearby and bought a cute binder and a package of plastic inserts, add a pair of scissors and here is what I did:

My Target purchases :)

Cut out all the recipes from the magazines and printed out some more from the internet.

Final product! A much better way of storing my new recipes, no more flipping through old magazines and bye-bye clutter as well :)

Once I was done with my new recipe binder, I had to find a new home for it in the kitchen. Which lead me to do a mini kitchen corner makeover:

Before Pic, showing my messy corner.

After Pic, a much cleaner look...I think!

Close-up showing binder with my other recipe books :)

I know, I know...it's the baby of all DIY projects, but like I said baby steps people! DIY project numero dos will be spray painting! God help me on that one! :)

Introducing our Baby Boy!

Ok you already caught a glimpse of him in my previous post, but I really feel strongly about dedicating a whole post to formally introduce him. So this is the story of Nico, our beyond cute, beautiful 2 yr old Cavalier King Charles :)

We hadn't been dating for a long time (about 5 mths) and the now hubs started talking about how he wanted to get a dog and of course I didn't discourage him since I'm a big dog lover! After doing some research he really wanted a Cavalier, so we went on an interview with a breeder about 2 hrs away from Boston. Yes, a lot of people think that going in for an interview before you can buy a dog is a bit much, but after going through the process I thought it's a smart thing that all breeders should do for the sake of the doggies. I won't bore you with the details of what we talked about but it's basically going over what our life was like and then how we should expect it to change once we introduced a puppy to our lives.

So after talking for an hr or so we finally got to see all the dogs. She opened the door and in come running about 10 dogs or more! They were all different sizes and colors (ruby, tricolor and blenheim), and all beautiful. But the smallest one there ran the fastest and straight into my arms. Kid you not he melted my heart right then and there, it was love at first sight/smell! And he hasn't left my lap since, literally he is still on my lap right now as I type on the computer :). But I'm getting a little ahead of myself...we saw all the dogs and spent time with them and the breeder then sent us back home to think about it and cool down before we committed ourselves to the purchase.

If my memory serves me right, we went to pick up Nico (then named Sheldon) about 2 wks after that initial meeting and he has brought so much joy into all our lives. He has been so loved and cared for that it makes the hubs a little jealous sometimes. He even spent 3 mths last winter in Mexico with my parents before our wedding. My parents love and adore him and so do my in-laws. Needless to say we are happy they can't get enough of their first grandchild ;).

I'll leave you with a few pics of my baby:

Nick at 4 mths old, sooooo adorable!

Nico wrapped in his blanket on his grandmother's lap. I told you they love him!

Here he is trying playing hide and seek :)

Taking a drive with Mom and Dad.

He really is a lap dog! He'll sit on top of anyone that will let him.

He likes sleeping on warm clean clothes once I take them out of the dryer...cute but not so helpful!

Spread eagle on his bed :) Yes he will sleep like that sometimes.

Did I mention he loves laying on top of clothes?

Trying on his Halloween costume. He was a New England lobster :).

The little lobster out trick-or-treating in MD :)

Home sweet home!

As I mentioned before we have a new condo YAYYYYYYYYY. And then I realized we have no furniture and I change my mind every 5 seconds on what our joint style should be. So please don't judge me and the lack of furniture/decorations!

After looking at the first house pics my BFF's at YHL posted, I don't feel so bad anymore. They took their time and after 4 years have an amazing home (and admit to painting and re-painting many times, thank goodness it's not just me!). So without further ado here are the promised pics from our first home!

This is the kitchen which we love. So many storage space it's re-donkydonk and 75% of it is currently empty, but gotta love the potential there people! And a big round of applause for all that granite counter space :)

The kitchen opens up to the dining/living room area, we really love the open floor plan. The hubs likes loft-like spaces but I like some privacy so it was a good compromise. And the hardwood floors aren't that shabby either ;)

Yes sir, we even have a fireplace and nice size balcony with beautiful magnolia trees outside. And yes, that's Pitbull on the TV, guilty no comment.

Here's another shot showing the hallway to the bedrooms and bathroom. That is our little peanut Nico in the right bottom corner of the pic, he loves hanging out on his bed :)

We only have 1 bathroom, which initially we wanted a place with 2, but you can dance around in here!  We love it, 'nough said.

I know, it's a really bad angle and doesn't show much of the room, but I'm so proud of the furniture and the color of the room that the rest right now doesn't matter!

Another odd pic, but you can see a little of the closet without really seeing my mess inside.  The hubs installed the Elfa closet system and it's a beauty!

Couldn't help but include a close up of Nico! This is him catching some rays on the balcony...THE END.

How does this work?

I have been reading all these amazing blogs lately...and by lately I mean like every single day for the past few months...yes guilty as charged! It's like my new found addiction, just as I was recovering from my home improvement show addiction :(. Sorry HGTV, I still heart you and miss you but I just couldn't continue to dedicate my life to you. Back to the main point...so when I'm reading all those amazing blogs I tend to admire the pics, layout and everything that I pretty much see.

When I started my baby blog I failed to realize that this is no joke. I mean it's actually harder than I thought to make my blog feel more personal and give it its own flare/touch. Therefore I find myself thinking: how does this work again??

The great thing is that I don't have a flock of followers just yet, so there is plenty of time for me to figure this out and perfect. I tend to give up quickly on tasks I don't know how to do but I'm hell bent on creating a great blog all for myself!

Home, Where Art Thou???

As I mentioned in my first post, I recently got married and moved to Maryland. This was a pretty big adventure to embark on since the hubby and I both lived in Boston and didn't know the new area we were moving to. All things considered we got really lucky and with the help of our realtor found our new place fairly quickly. Plus I have to add that the hubs has moved at about 10 times in the last 13 yrs, so he was way cooler about all this than I was.

Of course the first question the realtor asked is what type of home are we looking for. An important thing to mention here is that for the past 6 yrs I lived in the best city in the US (Boston), in the best neighborhood possible (the North End), and was in walking distance of anything and everything. Can you tell I really loved Boston? :) Basically I don't care about the sq feet, I care about location, location, LOCATION! I can happily live in a tiny studio as long as I'm in the middle of where the action is, but as it turns out being married means I have to share my space (including the closet) with someone else. Not only that, but this someone else has a major say in where we end up living and in my case the hubs wanted more space.

So this is how I found my dreams of living in DC shattered...and the search for a townhouse or condo in the MD burbs begins! We drove around to different areas and the further away from DC we went the more I would cringe inside and the bigger the lump in my throat would get. I was literally speechless and even though some of the houses we saw were beautiful, I just couldn't picture myself so far away from civilization.

I know I'm being very dramatic :), but I basically wanted that neighborhood feeling that I had in the North End and wanted to be close to the Metro because I don't like driving at all. Long story short we made an offer on a 2 bedroom/1 bath recently renovated condo in North Bethesda, and viola!! Home sweet home, we found you! 

Now my decorating saga begins :), but i'll leave that for my next post!

Here goes nothing!

After much thought I'm finally writing my first blog! Before I was even able to write those first words, I had to tackle my 2 main dilemmas. So this is pretty much what went on in my head for a few days:

Dilemma #1: What will I even write about?? Well I guess the first rule is to write about what you know (duh, i know) and whatever it is that you are passionate about with the hope of making this at least semi-interesting to someone :). I'm not a great writer as you can probably already tell (sorry Mrs. Brickner, you really were a great teacher! It's just not my forte), so I figured I would keep it simple and write about my new life as a wife, new homeowner and recently unemployed young woman. I'm sure at least my mom will find this interesting! 

Dilemma #2: What to name the blog? I was trying to be funny/smart/creative...and then that didn't work out so well for me. So I figured the next best thing to do was to come up with a name that helps summarize where I am in my life right now. My life changed pretty drastically a few months ago because I got married, so abracadabra! My blog is called "Married Life".

As a quick summary of my life, when I say it drastically changed I mean that the rug underneath me was literally yanked so fast that my head is still spinning and I'm still trying to figure out where north and south is! Don't get me wrong, being married to my husband is the best thing in the world and I don't regret a single moment of it! However getting married, moving from Boston to Maryland, having to quit my job and becoming a new homeowner all in less than 6 mths has me a teeny-itsy-bit overwhelmed.

So here goes nothing! :)