This week..

-- ended with a fabulous trip to Omaha! I'm convinced the only thing better than the joy of a sweet baby is sharing that joy with those you love! We were able to spend a few days with my parents & brother as well as a not-long-enough visit with Great-Gma, Great Aunt & Uncle! The trip was a nice balance of "work" and play. My brother snapped pictures of our family (including the one in this post!) while Grandma and Grandpa danced around to make Elle smile. We also made it to Nebraska Furniture Mart to pick out living room furniture and a new TV! The bonus of this trip was spending an evening with friends from Dallas who happened to be also spending their weekend in Omaha. Like I said -- it was a great weekend of good people, good food, and good fun!

xo,

Krista

HO2-- FINAL WEEK

Dreaming about furnishing the new house..

This week..
--  T is finally home from Florida! He thoroughly enjoyed his training and is motivated to get to work tomorrow! He keeps reminiscing about speakers he liked, books he wants to purchase, and even challenged me to take a personality test to see how our results compare. He will now work mostly in Kearney so he's currently replanning his daily routine (gym in GI then commute to Kearney? Or commute to Kearney and hit the gym there?). We also need to remember to package leftovers into convenient containers instead of just leaving them in the fridge for him to snag on his lunch break. Little things!
-- was my last week of cardiology - for the month AND for my training! It's wild to see the older class of residents graduate and welcome a new set of residents this coming week. It's also wild to be on the final countdown and working to maximize my last 12 months! I am so grateful to know where I'll be practicing next so I can tailor my training.
-- we will be spending the 4th of July at the new house! We don't have any significant plans (other than a few chores..) but being there is still such a treat! We are also beginning to day-dream about furnishing at least the first floor so I'll be perusing Pinterest and Houzz when I have free time.

xo,
Krista

HOI--- WEEK 33

E, T, Mom, Dad, S, and R @ A-Basin

This week..

-- we placed an offer on a house! Spoiler alert - they chose the other offer because we couldn't close for 60-90 days. Totally understandable! It was a busy week trying to get all of the details worked out for the renovation-included mortgage we were planning to use. T was amazing and made probably close to one hundred phone calls. He even drove to Walmart for printer ink in the freezing cold at 11pm so we could print-sign-scan-email a second, late-night offer. We were disappointed but it would have made our finances super tight for our remaining months in Omaha so it may be for the better!
-- we also listed our townhouse for sale and had our second viewing. Everyone seems to really enjoy our home (we sure do!). We have a few more interested in walking-through this week, hopefully, we will have a buyer under contract soon (and we can quit keeping our house so tidy!)
-- T and my family were able to spend the long-weekend in Colorado. Originally it looked like I would be able to join them but then my schedule was changed. Huge bummer! My days are basically wake-work-eat-sleep-repeat this month so I didn't have many bored moments at home. Plus, I treated myself to take-out on the way home each night. YUM. This coming week I switch to nights so I'll be at Children's 5pm to 7am. Wish me luck!

xo,
Krista

M3-- WEEK FORTY SEVEN

This is a prewritten post because I hope to thoroughly enjoy my Memorial Day by hanging out around the lake camping with some of my family! I didn't want to leave you hanging, so I thought I'd write a little post with a couple updates we've done around the house.

- FIRST -

I switched out the knobs on the bifold doors in my office. My desk faces these doors so the chipped knobs with evidence of their former pink color have been on my mind. This change did not photograph well but I love the glam update to help the doors feel refreshed!

- SECOND- 

You may or may not remember where the kitchen update left off.. but it was looking pretty plain jane. I had plans to recover the seats of the chairs but I couldn't find an affordable fabric I liked. Many of the "home decorator" quality fabrics would have cost me 50-100 dollars! That is too much for this DIY gal. My friend had the brilliant suggestion of using a curtain panel or tablecloth. Genius! One trip to Target, two trips to the hardware store (I thought I double checked the staples I grabbed!) and one trip to Bed Bath and Beyond -- and we were ready to get to work! Since I picked a fabric with white in the pattern, I decided to cover the seats with a layer of plastic (that was where the BBB errand came in). So here are the results:

The leftover strip of fabric is also a perfect width for a runner! Time to break out my sewing machine I was generously gifted for Christmas to finish the raw edge :)

The kitchen isn't totally finished -- the wall above the table is still completely blank. I also dream about switching out the blind for a white one. But this change puts some serious pep in the room!

I am excited to take some time away from studying to enjoy the long weekend with some family! I hope you also have fun plans for the weekend! 

xo,

Krista

M3-- WEEK FORTY ONE

As I mentioned last week, I'll share some pictures from our recent projects around the house! Working in medicine provides enough daily drama.. so I've been slowly transforming our house into a calm oasis. It was a little crazy on the main floor of our home for a couple weeks but thankfully we are almost put back together. On to the pictures!

(I should have closed that silly door!)

She's still a work in progress.. there are no seats on the chairs and the walls are pretty bare. But we're getting there! It took a lot of painting.. scrubbing..  

More painting.. priming.. painting.. sealing.. At one point, every inch of the kitchen was either painted or supporting something that with wet paint! You had to move very carefully.. (Shout out to my dad for his help!) What you can't see from these pictures is the peeling finish and nicked edges of our table that prompted the refinishing.

In the middle of all that work, we replaced the baseboards in both the living room and the kitchen:

The baseboards are much more substantial now! Plus, we had areas on the first floor where the baseboards were totally wonky - cut too short and angled incorrectly. The baseboards are a subtle change if you aren't looking at them specifically but they are a huge upgrade! Here are a few "after" pictures one more time:

That's what has been keeping us busy! We've been thankful for these gorgeous spring days because we've been able to open up the house and air out the lingering fumes ;) You probably can't tell by these rainy-day pictures.. but the new colors really brighten up the space and make it appear larger. Eventually we will re-cover the seats on the chairs and hang some art/pictures. Suggestions are welcome!

I'll be in the clinic in Plattsmouth again this week (everyone there has been super great!) Feel free to send us some good mojo because we have an A/C repair person coming this week -- we'd rather not blow our whole tax return if we can help it! You all enjoy your week!

xo,

Krista

M3-- WEEK THIRTY THREE

I spent the majority of this past week with GYN Onc -- and it was even more heart breaking than I imagined. I did enjoy being back in the OR! One of our cases this week used a da Vinci robot:

(image source)

A case with the robot begins as any other laparoscopic case does, however, once all the instruments are in the inflated abdomen, robotic arms are attached to the instruments. The surgeon then controls the robotic arms from a separate console in the OR. I had heard about this technology previously but it was really neat to see it in action! It will be interesting to follow this technology over my lifetime to see how it continues to be used. As someone who is very interested in a sustainable health care system, I'm not sure how we can afford these surgeries.. The other interesting thing to think about with the robot was the possibility of tele-surgeries. I can now imagine how it could be feasible! 

Speaking of tele.. I attended a lunch meeting sponsored by our rural health student organization this week and the presenter was a physician that works in a tele-ICU. He basically monitors ~50 patients at a time via computer for rural hospitals that cannot feasibly keep an intensivist in house all night long or wants a second set of eyes on their patients. The ICU rooms using this technology have a camera system in place so that the tele-doctor can see the patient and interact with them as needed but the tele-doctor interacts mostly with the local doctor as problems arise. It was amazing to see the money tele-ICUs are able to save a hospital by keeping such an intense watch over patients! They can play a big part in preventing complications such as hospital-acquired infections and helping patients transition off ventilators quicker, etc. If you think about it, a physician can only be working in so many rooms in an ICU at once so this can be a great solution! It could also be a great option to extend the careers of physicians who can no longer physically run around the hospital but are still capable of quality patient care. 

(image source 1, 2)

Finally, I have to brag about my husband's handiwork this weekend-- Our laundry area has been sub-functional since we moved in. There was a shower curtain rod suspended in the corner over our dryer to hang shirts on and whatnot. But, if you loaded it up, your shelf no longer became useable. So then your laundry soap and dryer sheets end up on top of the dryer and you knock them over when you reach for the knobs and other annoyingness. So T found a couple of hooks and (with his bare hands!) screwed them into the joists in the ceiling so we could transplant the curtain rod and clear up that corner shelfarea. It's one of those totally unglamorous but functional home improvement projects. Plus! It cost us zero dollas - holla!

(Next time I take before and after pictures showing the usefulness of the corner shelf, remind me to wait until I have the corner shelf loaded back up! Blog fail!)

I took my OB/GYN shelf on Friday so tomorrow I start my next rotation - psychiatry! I'm headed to the VA for the next few weeks (a much different population than I've been with recently!). Take care!

xo,

Krista

M3-- WEEK TWENTY SEVEN

Want to see my redesigned office?!

Last year, I painted it a bold blue with hopes to make it a fun-uplifting space. Well, it just kept collecting furniture until it held 3 desks, a filing cabinet, 2 bookshelves, 2 office chairs, 2 floor lamps.. etc. It was way too much. So we went for the total-overhaul approach!

Over the past little while, the office furntiure was downsized and rearranged, a new chair and rug were purchased, new storage was bought/assembeled/installed (thanks T!), and the room was painted. We bought the chair from Restore, the rug from Garden Ridge, the cabinets were on clearnace at Lowes, and my mom found the art on clearance at BBB -- so the room was redesigned for very little $$! I had plans to construct built-in cabinets but happened to search for pre-made cabinets since we already had one (and because the price of building cabinets was going to be outside our budget for a while..). These pre-mades miraculously still fit the room nearly perfect! It was meant to be :) I ended up buying every cabinet in Omaha because after I installed the base row, I decided we needed more! Poor T.. he never knows what I'll come home with..

Distraction-free zone!

I will still probably recover the chair and paint it white. Otherwise, I'll eventually switch out the bifold door knobs and find cute pillows for the chair.. but it's finished! I don't know that I ever said that about a room in this house.. or had so little left on the to-do list!

As fun much as I love my "new" office.. I should probably document a little about our busy/fun week! Here is a quick run-down (my pictures are uniformly terrible from the past week. I don't think my phone is focusing as quick as it used to - I am ending up with loads of blurry pictures!)

+ We started Sunday night with a wedding between two of our friends from my medical school class. It was fun to be back at our wedding venue! We ate good food, had good company, and I enjoyed time on the dance floor while T watched some football with the men!

+ NYE we went downtown to Blue for sushi with 8 other awesome people. The only downside? We got a speeding ticket on the way (Farnam St is only 30mph! You can thank me later..) and Blue was so booked with reservations that they wouldn't let us order additional food after round one. Lame! After sushi, we crashed at our friends' house, watched Creighton basketball, ate more food (quesedillas and Jacobo's salsa), and played games. Bonus points for you if you noticed that S and I wore the same dress!

+ We watched the Husker game with a lot of the same group from NYE. It was the perfect setup - a huge sectional, a huge projector, and lots of delicious food (protein and carbs only! our favorite!). It was totally worth waking up early on Jan 1 for the Husker win!

+ Thursday night we were treated to dinner by one of my favorite people from my medical school class. He is incredible! It was supposed to be a group thing but ended up being a perfect night with 5 of us trading stories from (the forever-ago) college days. (fail! I took zero pictures!)

+ Finally, T and I planned nothing this weekend so we would have time to do whatever we pleased! We made buffalo chicken egg rolls for dinner.. worked to input Gma's family history work online.. watched sports.. and enjoyed a few quiet minutes before school gets busy again!

Tomorrow I start with labor and delivery.. bring on the babies!! I'm hoping this rotation will solidify my decision between pediatrics and family medicine :) Keep warm this week!

xo,

Krista

M3-- WEEK NINE

This week was the end of my surgical rotation! Friday morning I took my SHELF examination and then I've spent the rest of the weekend with T! (As a side note.. I'm already super out of practice at taking standardized tests. This one was only 100 Qs (2.5 hours) and I was antsy and ready to be done like one hour into it.) So, since my surgery rotation is over, that means no more dressing like this:

As much as I enjoyed dressing like an astronaut during joint replacements, I am ready to move on to the next rotation - Family Medicine in Grand Island. I have a feeling this will be a long two months since I will be away from home. I'm sure I'll be counting down the seconds until I am (1) back in Omaha with T and (2) back at Children's Hospital in November!

This weekend has been crazy trying to balance catching up on life / getting organized for my next rotation / having fun. Saturday morning I would leave one room to grab something for a project and find myself starting another project then walking back to the first room and getting distracted in a third project! There was just so much that I wanted to do! I did accomplish one project:

Spending time in the OR with the orthopedic surgeons made me want to drill something -- so I switched out our cabinet hardware. It's driven me crazy since we stained the cabinets (well, since we put up the backsplash really) that we had brass hardware. It was a quick project but it was still nerve-wracking to drill holes in our kitchen cabinets!

One of the best parts of this weekend was spending a lot of time with friends. I've done nearly nothing social since school began July1. Friday we went out with some of our friends from T's work for drinks/food and Saturday we had friends over for the Husker game. I'm super thankful to have Monday off so that I can spend the day getting packed!

I'm going to keep this short & sweet so I can spend as many of my last minutes in town with T as possible. Have a great week!

xo,

Krista

M2- WEEK THIRTY SEVEN

♫ SCHOOL'S OUT.. FOR THE SUMMER! ♫

Well.. only sort of..

Classes are over for the school year- but now the serious studying begins. I'll be taking my Step 1 USMLE Boards (United States Medical Licensing Examination) in 35 days (June 10th). This test is the first of a series of examinations to prove I am a competent physician. This test also holds a lot of weight to residency programs so it will be one of the most important of my career. (Thank goodness I didn't know the insane number of standardized tests I would take when I took my first one in 3rd grade! I would have been so overwhelmed!) I will be putting in about the same amount of time/day as I do during the school year, but my days will be entirely studying on my own instead of lectures. In fact, after 13 years of public school, 4 years of undergraduate, and 2 years of medical school, I am done spending my days in lecture halls. Notice, I didn't say done with lecture halls.. but lectures will now only be a minority of my week. Weird! It doesn't feel real. I am twenty three years old and I've spent nineteen years in school.

As you may guess, I celebrated the end of school with a new project! T and I have been throwing around the idea of converting our flower bed to a small patio for a while now. One way or another, it needed some serious attention. We talked about redoing the landscaping but we decided that low-maintenance works best for us. We had some super weedy weeks last summer (sorry neighbors!). We have been the eyesore on the strip for a while now. If you know me well, you know that I do a ridiculous amount of research before I start a project. In some ways, that held true here. I've been watching prices for patio furniture and stone for months. Thankfully for us, the weekend we wanted to do the project had the lowest prices for materials yet! Yay for good timing! However, we did purchase an extra 8 stones because I created the plans too quickly. Whoops!

Saturday morning we ate breakfast at a local boyscout fundraiser and then borrowed my parents van and (in the frigid weather) headed to Menards! Although it was cold, (windchill of 33ºF and sprinkling) the wet ground made the plant removal much easier. We spent a couple hours on the project and then took my parents out to lunch at El Aguila in return for lending us their van. We finished up this phase of the project after lunch but we still have a few steps to go: (1) remove the dish (2) add the last stone (3) seal the stones (4) fill sand in between the stones (5) wait for our lawn to regrow!

Other highlights from this weekend:

[a] T and I babysat our cute next-door-neighbors Saturday night. Sometimes I think T and I enjoy their toys more than they do! We are going to miss them when they move in a few weeks!

[b] My sister is going to her first-choice for graduate school this fall!! We are stoked for her! T is already plotting a trip to visit.

[c] A picture from lunch that I mentioned above.

[d] We had a farewell dinner for my brother Friday night. R is headed east for the summer to work his tail off. We are going to miss him but we are excited for this new adventure!

Have a fabulous week! And don't forget- next Sunday is Mother's Day!

xo,
Krista

M2- WEEK THIRTY ONE

Boy, spring break flew by! We stayed busy, busy with projects and had a blast!

The highlights:
+ much more time with T than a typical week
+ celebrating Gma's birthday with a fabulous party
+ 3 fantastic mornings with my preceptor
+ adding some jazz to our upstairs bathroom
+ having a chipotle burrito with one my favorite people ever
+ an awesome/uplifting/inspiring women's meeting for church
+ many hours spent in the kitchen (my favorite!) but this time working on cabinets
+ a trip to the temple (always fabulous)
+ watching the craziness that is March Madness

Bathroom- BEFORE:

 
Bathroom- AFTER:

A teaser of the kitchen (in progress!):

And some behind-the-scenes from Gma's party (courtesy of my handy iPhone):

PS- I forgot to tell you last week that I am headed to Grand Island for my family medicine rotation next year! That means I will be spoiled with lots of Grandparent time :)

M2- WEEK TWENTY TWO

This week I accomplished a few less-than-thrilling-chores. You know the ones... the chores that no one will notice you accomplished but they are so necessary. For example, my computer needed some serious attention. I have been snapping pictures like crazy but have spent little-to-no-time organizing them. So I plopped down in my office for an hour or two and organized until I caught myself deleting many pictures so that I didn't have to sort them. So then I stopped. For the sake of my pictures.

I also had a design/decorating fail. People occasionally ask me how we've pulled off some of our projects. Like, how do we know they will work out? Well, the truth is, we don't. We just jump in and hope for the best. Usually our projects can be corrected with a new can of paint or piece of drywall if it goes wrong. But this week I had a disappointment. I decided to buy slipcovers for my living room chairs. Our living room has been a hodgepodge of hand-me-downs, estate sale finds, and thrift store purchases. The bones of it have potential, but it needs some touches to pull it together. I've been struggling with the colors because I've always felt bound by the pattern in our chairs and haven't fell in love with any scheme that coordinates. So I gave myself permission to cover them so I could turn my living room into the glam room I imagined. So the story goes like this:

1. I fell in love with a slipcover material and color
2. Bought the slipcovers and brought them home
3. Quickly draped one on a chair
4. Realized a cover made for a wing chair won't work with my style chair
5. Planned to exchange the cover for the other chair style
6. Realize that the only chair style in this material is for a recliner. FAIL.
7. Decided to try a different material slipcover that is made for normal chairs
8. Brought it home and draped it quickly on one chair
9. Realized that the color is exactly the same as my current chairs and the fit is pretty big
10. Feel totally defeated because I got my hopes up for this glam living room that will not happen yet

Picture 1: Chairs now
Picture 2: Love the fabric, hate the fit
Picture 3: Hate the fabric and the fit

In the world of slipcovers there does exist the product I am looking for. But they are more expensive (of course!)... and half of the funds for this project were in gift cards.. so for now, we are going to continue with the tan-yellow-green-purple-orange-burgundy-black-white room that we have going on. Someday it will come together!

Thanks for letting me rant. It's helping me get over it.

In happy news! I found a delicious sugared almond recipe! I know they aren't difficult to make, but the last few recipes have been to.. um.. thick? Does that make sense? They just weren't as good as this one. So this is my new go-to recipe. If you don't know, I eat oatmeal every morning and some sugared almonds on top are so, so good! It's my little treat when I need to change things up. Here is my oatmeal station at home:

And! You can see a glimpse of it in the first almond picture, but we got a new dining set! Our friends graciously passed it along. Thanks friends! The bonus with this set is that the table is larger and there are an additional two chairs. Plus, two of the chairs have arms--> T's favorite. (If you are interested in our  old set, my parents plan to place it on Craig's List. So let us know and we will pass along the link!)

Table w/o the leaf

Finally, if you are bored and looking to read something, this article (well.. rant) is very interesting. I was told, and I've told many people that you don't go into medicine for the money, but this lays it out a little more clearly. Again, only if you are into that kinda thing.

Have a great week! It's a test week in this house so we will have lots of nose-in-book moments. What are your plans?

M2- WEEK TWENTY

I sure packed a lot into this last week of break. I knew that I needed to make every second count. The majority of my time was spent finishing things up around the house. I was so sick of looking at this site as we sat on the couch:

Those scraps of drywall have been leaning on that wall since this summer when we tackled the basement. After completing one room of the basement, we quickly realized that we should have extended one of the walls another 6 feet or so. Trust me, anyone who wasn't tunnel visioned into the project would have noticed the obvious oversight. So we hung on to the drywall for another time.. when we had the energy to - cut, drill, hang, tape, mud, sand, prime, paint - all over again. 

This break, I ran out of excuses, and I completed the tedious job. SO much work for such a little change.. but it was necessary. Dontcha think?

AFTER: 

Another project that we've had laying around for months was new door handles upstairs. I snatched new handles for $0.99 each during one of probably a hundred Menards trips this summer. But instead of taking 5 minutes to install them, they have been sitting in linen closet upstairs. We had some very interesting handles throughout our home, so it refreshing to have them all match.

Cleaning was also at the top of my list this week. I scrubbed nooks and crannies of this home that have never been touched before. Such a good feeling! Heading back to school with a put-together home is an absolute must for this gal.

So are you convinced this whole week was chores? Because I promise we had a lot of fun too! We ate some awesome meals, watched a lot of sports together, fit in a few workouts, played some new games (this & this), spent New Years Eve with some fabulous friends, and watched the Husker game with family. Life is so good!

And for you chronic-Sunday-blog-checkers, you may be pleasantly surprised to see that I will probably be posting much earlier in the day than last year. Each year, the time of our church fluctuates. Now, we will start at 1 in the afternoon, so I will probably blog in the mornings. How do we feel about the switch? I think it is going to be amazing during these next few winter months-- last year we slept in zero days. Now we can lounge around and eat a serious brunch together! However, last year we snuck over to the cabin in the afternoon when the weather was nice... so we will have less of that. So, like everything in life.. it's what you make of it!

Have a fabulous week!

M2- WEEK FIFTEEN

HOUSE
Christmas came early for T and I when we noticed the prices on fitness equipment this Thanksgiving. We welcomed an elliptical machine into our home this week! Thankfully the assembly wasn't too bad.. but our basement does still smell like axel grease. For the most part, T and I work together very well because he jumps into the project and I read the instructions meticulously.


We love, love, love where we live but the one bummer is that we don't have an electrical outlet out front. We compromise with lighting our windows from indoors. This year, we changed them up. What can I say.. I am a classic white light kinda gal.

T and I made an awesome improvement to our home this week. It's something that we should have done ages ago. (And I was a bad blogger because I didn't take a before picture. Sorry!) Our office window had a set of mini blinds on it that had a section missing. Not too big of a deal.. except we usually leave the office door open.. which means that hole looks right down the hallway. So walking from the bathroom to the closet.. yeah.. you are completely on display to our parking lot. Thanks to some friends who had an extra set of blinds, we are now covered! It was one of those things that should have never worked: I brought home this random set of blinds, that are tan, made for an inside mount, made with measurements for my friend's home.. etc. And what do you know? They work awesome in our living which allowed us to move our living room blinds upstairs. And no, our two windows aren't the same size either. Total scramble- but it worked out!

FAMLY

Saturday we got to hang with some of our favorite people on the planet- my family! Dad and Gma were on reuben-making duty.. and they took their job very seriously. There is a right way to make a reuben. The second picture speaks for itself. Let's not talk about the game itself...

Other than that, T and I have been on a quest to simplify our lives. We are constantly trying to rid our house of clutter. We almost always have a donation pile stacked high somewhere in our home. Today we spent a few hours going through some of our storage areas and weeding out things we don't really need. As motivated as we are to downsize, not having much $$ makes some of these decisions very difficult! I'm sure there is always a reason to hang on to things, but we are doing our best to not get too attached.

How is Christmas shopping going for everyone? We have a few ideas we are super excited for (and over our budget- whoops!) but we are struggling for a few others. That's a pretty typical story, right? I hope you are finding some great deals! Have a great week!

M2- WEEK SIX

Friday was the first day of medical school so far that I can remember feeling emotionally defeated. I was sick of studying. I felt totally sorry for myself. I so wanted to have a life where I could cook a serious dinner each night, keep my house clean, and.. imagine this.. spend time with my husband on a regular basis.

I guess I had a mini-moment like this last weekend too. I told T that I felt like my life outside of school was spiraling down- chores were piling up, it had been a long time since I'd seen my friends, and I missed him! He asked what chores around the house I was talking about and the first thing I blurted out was our front flower bed needed some attention. So, what did T do the next minute he had free? He headed right outside and started pulling out our dead plants. He is so fantastic. He does so much to support us and is willing to do even more if I just let him know it's on my mind! (Now, I need to add that life is totally not spiraling down. We aren't even very behind on chores. Sure our floors are dusty.. but our clothes are clean, our dishes are dry, and most surfaces aren't too cluttered.  So these emotional moments were just total burnout from studying.)

How did I deal?

Well, Saturday, I put my nose in my books and accomplished a lot. I feel so much better when I am productive. Then, starting Saturday night, I took time away from school and hung with my fabulous husband, did something creative, and visited with some friends.

T and I started with some good food: grilled pork and zucchini! We shared a good laugh when we, like last time we grilled indoors, set off the fire alarm and clogged the house with grilling smoke.

T has been begging for an apple pie. So I bought the best frozen pie Hyvee had to offer (it was super good!). Plus, I got to use my cool Pampered Chef help-me-hold-in-all-the-pie-goodness-please contraption.

Finally, I hung the shelves I bought off Craig's List a few weeks ago:

Please imagine the frames filled and painted!

I love all things clean-lined and simple. I know these are way out of proportion for our bathroom.. I probably should have hung all three and worked with smaller frames.. but today? I LOVE IT. I have so many awesome black frames I have been hanging on to until I had the perfect space for a gallery wall. Who knew I'd end up with gallery shelves.. in my bathroom! But I am excited to play with stuff around our house to find the right mix.

A short story about these shelves:
I saw a picture online of someone with wall-to-wall floating shelves in their half bathroom. I figured to make that happen I would need to build my own shelves. So, I bookmarked some plans online and then forgot about them for a while. Fast-forward a few weeks and I am browsing Craig's List for some patio chairs and I run across some floating shelves. I click on them for kicks and giggles, and what do you know.. they are the exact size of my half-bath wall. Like, to the 1/8th of the inch (43 and 5/8th inches if you were wondering). So I snatched those up with some birthday cash and they have sat in various parts of my house for a few weeks until today, when I had the patience to perfectly center and hang them on the wall.

The final bit of awesomeness for the weekend? OUR WEDDING ALBUM!! I proofed the pdf a few weeks ago.. but it now we have the. real. thing.

Here are a few of my favorite spreads (photographed in poor, poor light):

Oh, and PS, I was famous this week: ARTICLE & VIDEO HERE