The Pinterest Monster

We are less than one month away from closing on the house.  I am going to spend the next month having that feeling you have on Christmas Eve when you're so excited you can't fall asleep.  Y'all still have that feeling in your thirties, right?  Anyway, we are excited.  I'm so excited that I have already created approximately nine Pinterest boards dedicated to various areas of the house.  This is me:

When Pinterest attacks, it is mighty.   It starts out as a friendly, harmless let's-just-browse-while-drinking-my-morning-coffee, and then all of a sudden it's an hour later and you're late for work.  True story.  Pinterest is at the same time wonderful and terrible.  Pinterest will teach you how to make delicious chicken.  Pinterest will revolutionize your relationship with broccoli.  It will show you amazing outfits with perfect accessories that in a million years you will never own.  However, Pinterest will also trick you into making a banana omelette by telling you they are pancakes.  Pinterest will convince you that ridiculous things are ingenious, like taking your bagel to work in a CD case and the classic using-a-dustpan-to-fill-up-a-bucket trick.  It will tell you seven hundred ways to a flat belly, none of which will make you look like that girl in the picture.  Pinterest also makes it very easy for misattributed quotes to "go viral," as the kids say.  (P.S., Olivia Wilde said that one.  In Cosmo.)   And don't get me started on parties.  Pinterest will unapologetically almost spoil a sweet boy's first birthday party.

But perhaps Pinterest's worst transgression comes in the form of home decor.  People don't live like this this, right?  These kitchens are not real.  No one has the thing where the cutting board pulls out and has a little hole for the trash to go straight into the trash can.  It's exhausting to see these things when you live in an actual house that regular humans inhabit.  Not a house with a tiny built in playhouse under the stairs.  (really? is this a thing?)  Or this house which is totally photoshopped and if it isn't, I'm moving tomorrow.  How is it possible to browse those boards without going completely insane?

See generally here, here, and here.

So the challenge here is to keep the Pinterest Monster at bay with a healthy dose of realism.  I have a great house to work with, but we don't live in a fairy tale.  I'm pretty sure that I can't DIY myself into a treehouse filled with endless wine fountains and an infinity bathtub.  Pretty sure...I haven't run all the numbers yet.  But even if I can't plant a tree in our master bedroom and construct a bed out of natural wood and a hammock, I am not a failure.  Our house will still be lovely.  But in the meantime, dear readers:

Here I am!

Apparently I am blogging just enough lately to keep me from completely deleting this blog.  Throughout the many iterations of this blog (I keep reinventing it...sneaky or indecisive?) I have come to learn several things about myself:

• I started blogging in my twenties.  I am no longer in my twenties.
• I like to alternate between blogging about mundane things and making sweeping, profound observations on Life (capital L life - big stuff).
• I'm probably trying to be a little profound in this post, but just be cool, everyone.
• I like cats.  I am obsessed with my cats.
• I can't run.
• Weight ain't nothing but a number...that tells you how much you weigh.  And is directly related to your cheeseburger and potato chip intake.
• I just can't blog unless I have something to blog about.

So I'm here to tell you that...wait for it...at long last I have something to blog about!  I know that you just breathlessly uttered "what could it be?"  (You've been waiting for this!)  Well, since you asked, it's a little place that looks like this and in one short* month will be ours!

Inside this sweet little gem (which I like to think resembles the house from Father of the Bride...I said resembles, people) awaits numerous poor paint colors, outdated bathrooms (including: The Bathroom Without a Shower and a Toilet So Close to the Tub that Your Knees Touch the Edge and Did I Mention It Has Carpet), more questionable carpet, a sprawling bonus room adorned in peeling wallpaper, and a plethora of what will be empty rooms until we can afford to fill them up.  You, dear blog readers, will be in for a treat as I document each delightful and probably-most-of-the-time boring step as we transform the inside of this home to match the beauty of the outside.  Which is totes amazing.  If you think about it, it's kind of like the opposite of the Biggest Loser.

Also, I plan to talk about our cats.  You're welcome in advance..

*This month will probably feel like agony.  Two-bedroom-apartment based agony.

Another 31 Things Update

Here is an update of where I stand on my 31 Things to-do list.

________________________________________________________________________________

1.  Complete wedding scrapbook.
2.  Run a half-marathon.
3.  Buy a house.
4.  Pay off my car. - completed October 2012
5.  Take Wes to a UGA game in Athens.
6.  Take a golf lesson.
7.  Buy a nice camera.
8.  Host a family holiday at our house.
9.  Frame a shadowbox of wedding items.
10.  Do a detox/cleanse.  - completed 09/20/12 
11.  Color my hair. - completed November 2012
12.  Lose 20 lbs.
13.  Exceed my billable hour requirement at work. - completed for 2012
14.  Write a short story.
15.  Train Ollie to not poop on the floor.
16.  Beat Super Mario Galaxy.
17.  Complete 2010-2011 scrapbook.
18.  Give at least one homemade Christmas gift.
19.  Find a signature scent and start wearing it.
20.  Seriously clean out closet.
21.  Go to the North Georgia Mountains with Wes.
22.  Visit Nashville.
23.  Get a customized stamp once we have a house.
24.  Select and print canvas prints from wedding photos.
25.  Make some Pinterest Christmas decorations.
26.  Get my calves small enough that I can wear knee-high boots.
27.  Create a jewelry display/storage system.
28.  Have wedding rings appraised.
29.  Buy a new car (preferably a small SUV!).
30.  Go rock climbing (indoor, obviously).
31.  Climb Stone Mountain with Wes.

Obligatory Resolution-Type Post

Naturally, it has been a while since I blogged.  And, even more predictably, it is the second-to-last day of 2012 and I'm in one of those introspective moments when I resolve that I * will * blog more in 2013!

But seriously, I am going to blog more in 2013.  How do I know?  Well, for one, Santa brought me a super fancy MacBook Pro for Christmas, and I now have the proper tools for blogging!  My old MacBook was in a sad state and I rarely turned it on, which is one main reasons I never blogged.  Yea, that's it.  I also need to remind myself that it's okay to blog even though I don't have any kids to talk about.

So here are the things that I RESOLVE to do in 2013, or, more accurately, the things I hope will happen in 2013:

1.  Start writing more in an effort to not lose my creative writing skills I once had (read: blog more!)
2.  Buy a house
3.  Lose 20 pounds
4.  Finish our wedding scrapbook
5.  Complete the Publix half marathon in March

I have decided to leave off what would be number 6: get my s&#@ together.  Because I'm already kind of doing that anyway, and, realistically, how do you measure accomplishing that at the end of 2013?  I guarantee that come December 31, 2013, I would find a way to tell myself I still needed to get my s$&@* together in 2014.  So enough with that.

There are some other things I guess I'm "resolving" to do in 2013, but I'm not calling them resolutions because that's kind of a recipe for failure.  These are just things I'd like to do in 2013: visit family in Boston and Ohio several times; purge unnecessary junk from our house; downsize my wardrobe to things I actually wear; buy some grown-up furniture.  I'd also like for my blog to be interesting/well-written and for people to actually read it.

We'll see about that one, I guess.

31 Things Update

Quick update on my 31 Things challenge.  Last week I did Jillian Michaels' water detox.  To be fair, I only did 5 days instead of 7.  I lost a few pounds of water weight, but I'm sure I have promptly gained it back :)  I wasn't thrilled with the detox, mainly because it made me feel sick to my stomach.  I imagine it was the dandelion root tea (which Wes described as tasting like "hot dog water"), since the other ingredients in the detox are just cranberry juice and lemon juice.  And water.  I give the detox an overall rating of "meh."  

I think for now I'll just stick to drinking regular water and "enjoying" my yearly medically-required cleanse.  Jealous? :) 

Where I stand:

Couponing

Ok, so I admit that I'm a little behind the curve with the whole couponing thing.  I'm pretty sure most of my friends on here have gone through a couponing phase and are kind of over it.  Like most things, I've picked up on the craze a little later than most.  Back in Dallas, I will admit that I didn't bother with coupons because I didn't concern myself with my grocery bill.  I'm not proud of that truth, but it is what it is.  And although Wes and I have lived together since 2007 (side note: seriously? where has the time gone?) we did not combine finances until we were married.  We split the bills, but he worried about his money and I worried about mine.  Now he worries about all of our money (a benefit of marrying an accountant!)

So here we are, one year into our marriage and we've made some amazing progress.  We are blessed to both have good jobs and we make a good living, but we have a lot of student loan debt.  Like, more than a house's worth of student loan debt.  <shudders>  Since our wedding, we have paid off all of our credit card debt and are 2 months away from having 2 paid for cars.  (Don't tell Wes I want a new car).  And, since we no longer have the house in Dallas (hooray!), we are saving like mad men to buy a house in Atlanta next summer.  And I can't wait, frankly, apartment living is for the birds.  And by birds, I mean incredibly rude neighbors who never sleep and have terrible taste in music.

I decided to start couponing to see if I could cut our grocery budget in order to speed up the savings process.  And I think I did - in September, I saved $235 and spent about $350.  I do think that the savings will spread out more over time because I definitely bought more items that I usually do, and if I can manage to spread out what we have and plan our meals wisely, our bills should be lower next month.  I mean, our cabinets are seriously full.  The problem that I find with couponing, however, is while we need to eat down the food that we have, I cannot miss shopping a sale!  The one thing keeping me reigned in right now is that we don't have a pantry or an extra freezer, so I'm quite limited in storage.  Also, my fear of becoming one of "those people" on TLC helps me pump the brakes when necessary.

I do have glimpses of life as one of "those" people.  For example, I shopped on Sunday, and I was really tempted to buy some Palmolive dish soap with a final price of 25 cents.  It was a big bottle!  But I didn't buy it because we truly don't need any dish soap (one bottle in use and one back up bottle at the moment).  Two weeks ago, Truvia was on sale for $2.99 and I had a $2 coupon.  I forgot to buy it over the weekend, so I definitely made a special trip to get my 99 cent Truvia.  Man was that satisfying!  And, I think we have seven boxes of cereal right now.  I eat cereal almost every morning, but I seriously can't let myself buy any more boxes until I eat the ones we have!  We also have a pretty ridiculous cracker supply and 4 back up bags of cat food for the lazy ones.  Don't judge...

My strategy is pretty simple.  I clip coupons from the Sunday paper, and enter them into a sortable Excel spreadsheet (nerd alert!)  I also print coupons from coupons.com, target.com, and publix.com.  Then I check the sale ads from Publix & Target, cross-reference with my coupon spreadsheet, and buy accordingly.  If we need something that isn't on sale, then I'll pick a couple of coupons and see what brand is the best deal when I get to the store.  And that's it.  I don't go to multiple stores, seriously ya'll, that is too intense.

I also have a health & beauty supply closet that is ridiculous.

31 Things

In an effort to reignite the old blog and make it about more than running, I decided to make a new list of random goals to accomplish over the next year.  Once upon a time I did the 1001 things in 1001 days challenge, but that was on my old blog and I have no idea how I did on that.  Probably not very well!    Since I will be 31 in a little over a month, this list will be a list of 31 Things.  Stay tuned to see the progress!

1.  Complete wedding scrapbook.
2.  Run a half-marathon.
3.  Buy a house.
4.  Pay off my car.
5.  Take Wes to a UGA game in Athens.
6.  Take a golf lesson.
7.  Buy a nice camera.
8.  Host a family holiday at our house.
9.  Frame a shadowbox of wedding items.
10.  Do a detox/cleanse.
11.  Color my hair.
12.  Lose 20 lbs.
13.  Exceed my billable hour requirement at work.
14.  Write a short story.
15.  Train Ollie to not poop on the floor.
16.  Beat Super Mario Galaxy.
17.  Complete 2010-2011 scrapbook.
18.  Give at least one homemade Christmas gift.
19.  Find a signature scent and start wearing it.
20.  Seriously clean out closet.
21.  Go to the North Georgia Mountains with Wes.
22.  Visit Nashville.
23.  Get a customized stamp once we have a house.
24.  Select and print canvas prints from wedding photos.
25.  Make some Pinterest Christmas decorations.
26.  Get my calves small enough that I can wear knee-high boots.
27.  Create a jewelry display/storage system.
28.  Have wedding rings appraised.
29.  Buy a new car (preferably a small SUV!).
30.  Go rock climbing (indoor, obviously).
31.  Climb Stone Mountain with Wes.