Spring is in the Air!

It's been a    l        o          n                g,  cold, and snowy winter, but Spring is FINALLY here!  I came home after a super fun (and much needed) weekend with the girls and found that the hubby had started a little Spring 'cleaning' of his own.  He had trimmed the lillies in the front yard, cleaned up doggy-poo from the front yard, and moved the HUGE gravity box from the 3rd stall in the garage and cleaned it out a little.  It was very nice to come home to.

I have been busy inside the house...dusting everything from floor to ceiling, cleaning the windows (which is an exercise in feutility thanks to Molly feeling the need to shmear her nose all over the windows that she can reach), and purging stuff from our closets.  It's a good feeling...the feeling of new starts, fresh opportunities, and a clean slate!  Hooray for clean slates...Lord knows we can all use them every now and again.  What are you doing with yours this Spring?  Hope all's well!   Happy Trails! : )

Over the last little while...

So, it has been a while since I have had anything exciting to share...I still don't really have any exciting news...life just keeps happening here in the Stans household.  Zack is working hard both at his job and in school.  Oh!  I remember some exciting news now!  Zack made the Dean's List at school!!!  He gave me a goofy eye-roll and said "it's not hard what I do..." but secretly I know he is proud of himself, and I'm proud of him too!

Molly is enjoying the snow and doing her best to stay warm through this cold streak we've been having.  She spends a lot of time at g'ma and g'pa Stans' house during the day when daddy-o is working.  She loves spending the day with Maggie (the dog) and Oscar (the Cat)!  They are such good buddies...and oh so hillarious to watch!  Molly and Oscar work on their wrestling moves!!!

I have been busy at school...conferences are coming up and we just sent out our first round of reports (what a headache!).  I have also been working on getting my daycare providers license.  I attended my first orientation in November and will go to my last one in February...hopefully soon after, I will be a licensed childcare provider and hope to open our home sometime this summer or at the start of next school year.  We'll see how it goes...it's all a part of the 'gettin' ready for kiddos of our own someday in the not-too-near but not-too-far future' idea.

So that's all for now.  Hope alls well with you all out there in blog-o-sphere land!  Happy Trails!

m : )

North Point's iBand

An interesting new approach to Holiday tunes....Enjoy!

...and the Home Fire is officially burnin'!

Zack is MIGHTY proud of this build...I requested somewhat of a hearth and it turned out beautifully...(we just have to paint the cement portion to match the brick and we're all done)! : )

Keepin' the Home Fire burnin'...or at least getting set up to do so!

So our latest project around Casa Stans has been the prep, set-up, and installation of Zack's most recent brilliant idea...a CORN STOVE.  I know what you're thinking...'what the h-e-double hockey sticks is a corn stove?'...or maybe your thinking what I first thought...'who in the h-e-double hockey sticks puts a goofy thing like that in their house on purpose unless they live in the middle of nowhere?'  

Well, as it is coming together, its becoming less and less of an eye sore...Zack built a nice "hearth" for it because I said that if we couldn't have a real fireplace that I wanted it to at least feel as much like one as possible.  And he is so talented and is so good at making things look nice that it is turning out to be a pretty ok thing.  He also picked out the least hideous looking one that we found at Menards (and believe me we looked near and far...Fleet Farm, craigslist, and everywhere in between) and I love him for that!

Stay tuned for photos...its a pretty interesting sight!  Have a safe and Happy Turkey day!  Enjoy time with family and friends! : )

Happy Halloween y'all! : )

So Halloween this year went off without a hitch...or a trick-or-treater, for that matter...I was kinda hoping we'd actually get some buzz around the neighborhood this year, but that didn't happen.  And it's probably an OK thing since we were late in getting home and I didn't get any fun candy...the kiddos probably would have been disappointed with me.

One thing I did accomplish this year was the addition of a new decoration!  Thank you Target for always making it possible to have a little fun on a budget!  I also got an adorable Dept. 56 spectacles & eyeball soap dish from my Aunt Durene...which is totally awesome!

 

We also got Molly in her Halloween costume...she was a cyclopse, and she was the cutest little cyclopse that you ever did see! : )

How was your Halloween?  Did you go to any parties?  Did you indulge in lotsa good candy?  Hope everyone had a safe and fun holiday weekend! : )

Just Call us Z&M Landscaping!

So here's a little update just for the heck of it:

The weather this weekend was just GORGEOUS...so Zack decided to take advantage of it before things head south (like the birds...and the heat...) and get a head start on edging out our newly installed patio.  He also worked on landscaping out around the new little Charlie Brown tree that we planted two weeks ago...everything's coming along nicely!  

Other than working on this, we didn't really do much else this weekend...I'm hoping to get paint for our bedroom and finish staining the headboard so that I can complete our "grown-up" space sometime before the Holidays (that's my goal anyway).  Oh, and I have been working my way through the house trying to organize and simplify...I am going to an orientation meeting and looking into furthering my dream of doing daycare in my home, so as to prepare for being home to take care of my own little ones some time in the future, so we'll see how it goes and I'll keep you updated as I take more steps.

So have a great rest of the week and thanks for checkin' in!

M : )

All 'Dresser-ed' up!

   

Lately I have been working on re-finishing a dresser for our 'someday nursery.'  My logic behind something so seemingly ridiculous is that if I work on filling the room piece by piece over time, it won't feel SO overwhelming when the time actually comes for us to REALLY be thinking about stuff like that, plus I'm feeling more and more ready about the idea of starting a family these days and I gotta do something to keep myself busy...so anyway... 

We had this dresser that we got from Zack's uncle Ron a while ago and it had been living in our downstairs guest bedroom for the longest time...until I saw this post on my favorite blog, Young House Love.  They took a craigslist find and turned it into a beautiful dresser/changing table for their nursery.  I looked at it and thought, 'hey!  I've got me a dresser just like that downstairs!'  So I scurried my little behind to the basement, brought the dresser up to the garage, and made my game plan.  First I needed to sand the CRAP out of it.  Then it was time to PRIME!  Three coats of primer later, I was ready for paint...I wanted to go gender neutral as I have no idea what our future bean(s) will be so I opted for a light, airy turquoisey-blue with a darker turquoisey-blue color for the drawers...and this is what I ended up with...

So I'm thinking that it can be snazzed up with fuscias and pretty pale oranges, etc. for a girl, or boy-ified with some deeper oranges and browns...and I really love how it works with the walls that I painted like a year and a half ago...again, trying to stay as gender neutral as possible.  So there it is...in all it's FINALLY finished glory...my dresser/someday changing table project!  

For Our Family & Friends!

Hey there all!  So I have been wanting to explore the world of blogging for a while and I have decided to throw together a little something to get started...and here it is!  Zack and I (and Molly) are working hard at our jobs as well as on projects here, there and everywhere and I thought this would be a fun way to document our experiences (both successful and not so much...) and to bring whoever wanted to come with along for the ride!  So I invite you to check in every now and again if you're bored and be ready for a laugh...life for this little family is anything but boring!  Love ya!

megan : )