Being a homeowner is crazy. A lot of my priorities have changed... Things such as, "OMG these $75 pair of heels would like aaaaaamazing on my feet, but yeah I've got a mortgage to cover so I better not." It was a hard pill to swallow at first, but I'm beginning to adjust just fine. :)
I officially moved in to my house in early December and since then it has been crazy-busy! Between having my family over for the holidays and being stretched very thin at work, blogging has taken the back seat. But fear not my friends, I am back in full action and ready to blog away!!!
Here is a picture that I snapped the day I got the keys to my house. It was such an exciting day!
One of the things that I was most looking forward to once I moved in was decorating for Christmas...duh! I know this is a little late, but I still want to share with y'all. Keep this good info in your back pocket for next year! :)
If you don't already know this, Hobby Lobby is one of the best stores ever. Not only are they reasonably priced, but they CONSTANTLY have sales. I'm talking 50% off sales... on Christmas Items... during Christmas Season. It doesn't get much better than that. TIPS AND TRICKS #4: You can visit HL's website and get an additional 40% one regular item coupon. You can always use one of these because, let's face it, sometimes the item we want is not on sale. *Be sure to watch the expiration on these coupons. They expire weekly and HL employees are not lenient on expiration dates.
I patiently waited for HL to get stocked with their Christmas decor. About mid-October I was in Christmas Heaven!!! Christmas is my favorite season and I was so excited to shop at HL and get some MUCH NEEDED decorations for my loft. First day I walked in there, lo and behold, they are having a 50% off Christmas sale. For those of you that don't know, I'm a pretty organized individual (unless you look in my closet) and the way HL has their Christmas tree ornaments organized is absolutely PERFECT... color coordinated! After much deliberation with my crafty Mom, we decided on a white and silver themed tree. This theme was inspired by all the mercury glass craze. I hit up that section of ornaments and bought at least one of just about every ornament HL had that was white and silver. Not only are they reasonably priced and 50% off, they are beautiful! I got all of these decorations for less than $100!
Since I did not get to move in to my house until early December, I didn't think to get Christmas lights for my tree until then. BIG MISTAKE... BIG. I called and searched over 15 stores in my area and the 100 count, white mini lights were sold. out. everywhere. I thought I was going to have a melt down because I had only bought about 5 string sets and wasn't ready to buy the expensive LED lights. After coming to terms with the fact that my tree would only have about 500 lights on them (I like 1,000+ on my tree. The brighter the better), my mom's co-worker said she had some extra! A special thank you to Mary for saving the day! Decorating my tree was so much fun. I was blessed to have my Mom, Dad and Brooklynn there with me to enjoy the special moment. I bought a real tree and within 30 minutes of it being up, it fell over. Long story short, the tree stand was not strong enough for my 9 foot tree and I should have listened to my dad when he kept saying "Casey, the tree looks like it's leaning... it's going to fall." Yes, a few ornaments broke but thank goodness no one was hurt and when the tree was finally up and decorated, it was worth it!
I also want to give a quick shout-out to Pinterest. I found this really cute subway art for Christmas, sent it to Costco to get printed and got a 1/2 off frame at HL all for less than $20. I hung it in my kitchen for decoration and got so many compliments!
Look forward to my next post because it will be TWO DIY Projects. One for Valentines Day (full credit will go to my mom on this one) and the other about my oh so cute bedside tables that I refinished! And I promise it won't be three months until I post about it. :)
LoveMyLoft,
Casey
