Business Cards!

I got my business cards today !!

I was so scared that I wasn't going to get them in time for the Extravaganza tomorrow - because for some reason the tracking numbers never got updated since they got shipped out of Missouri. Ughh. Talk about giving me a heart-attack.

But they arrived this afternoon :D

I love 'em!

Annddd - I had some promo things printed as well.

For folks to take and be my little advertisers - after I take their pictures and they have a great time and they LOVE the results! :D

[oh yes, and special thanks goes out to my brother-in-law&best-friend&nephew for staring in my promo: I didn't tell them they are on it - hehehe - I hope they don't mind :)]

OH - and PS -

Setting up for the Extravaganza yesterday, D's Dad wanted a picture - so he jumped in front of my Christmas scene and I snapped his picture-of course! But, he looked a little scary, so I replaced him with the Coca-Cola Bear :D haha

(it was my M-I-L's idea LOL)

Thankfulness

She came to our drive-thru' almost every Tuesday.

It was always in the later afternoon, but usually right before I would leave for the day at 4.

I'm not sure what her name was. I called her "Mortianna" - you know, like the witch from "Robin Hood"? The one Kevin Costner is in :) Not because she was an evil lady - but because she kinda looked like her, except both of her eyes were the same color and she was super sweet!

We couldn't see the people that were at our speaker out back, we could only hear them. And we always knew when she would pull up in her old turquoise-blue car. She always ordered the same thing:

The country-fried steak special. On Tuesdays at KFC, it was only $1.99. We were under strict orders tho' - no substitutions. See, it came with the steak, mashed potatoes, coleslaw & a biscuit, and if people didn't want the coleslaw & maybe wanted mac-n-cheese instead? Too bad. For only $1.99, you get what's in the picture.

But, not for this lady - we gave her whatever she wanted. Usually it was green beans. And usually she wanted a Root Beer, but every once in a while she'd switch it up and throw us off and get a Pepsi [usually on the days we would already have a Root Beer filled up for her] :)

I remember one afternoon in particular tho' - she came to the window and while I was handing her her food, we were chit-chatting about something, and I don't even remember how it came up, but I noticed she was wearing dog-tags. I believe I asked who's those were - and she responded that they were hers. And she proceeded to tell me that she had served overseas when she was a younger lady. She had done a bit of nursing and a bit of anything else that needed done.

Upon hearing that, I looked her straight in the eye and said, "Well I want to thank you very much for your service to our country."

She looked at me - and her eyes suddenly welled up with tears. And the next words that came out of her mouth were so sad: "No one has ever said that to me before."

This sweet lady? No one had ever taken the time to hear her story and thank her for what she did? She probably saved a few lives while nursing. She's a hero.

Who will you thank today?

Promises

D&I now have real jobs :)

Like - we've both had jobs before - but these ones are new, and real.

Like, working 8-5 and not on weekends - real.

Like, being home for dinner, and having time to make it - real.

Like, having free time and not having to worry too much about money - real.

It's wonderful :)

But, we only have one full bathroom in our castle.

And when 2 people are trying to get ready to leave for work in the morning, well, things can get a bit wacky.

So, that's why I was getting a shower tonight :)

So then tomorrow morning, I just have to get up and do my hair & makeup and I'm good to go. And Derrick can take his time and his shower (oh and did I mention some of the heating elements in our hot water tank don't work so whoever takes a shower first gets the hot water and whoever is second is left with the cold -- yeahhh)

But, it was while I was taking a shower tonight that it hit me:

God totally just answered my prayer.

Story:

We moved into our brand new house, without all the money in the world. We were given lots of furniture, come to think of it- we didn't have to buy one piece. Our house is filled with lots of gifts of love and we are so grateful! And, having been here a little over a month, we have pretty much gotten every room set up and settled.

Except for one: the guest room.

[aka- Adam's room. Adam being Derrick's best friend and our frequent sleepover candidate and the kid we call our "rebellious teenage son"]

All of the pieces are there to make it a cute little guest room - except one thing is missing. A mattress. I have the bed frame - but I don't have a mattress. And mattresses are really expensive! Even twin mattresses aren't cheap! And, I saw that you could buy them at like, Salvation Army. But look: I worked at Rent-A-Center, I've seen what happens to used mattresses and how nasty they come back. No thank you.

The only way I would take a used mattress was if I knew the family who was giving it to me very very well. I wasn't going to fool around.

So. I started praying about it. Just about every night I'd pray a short little prayer before going to bed - Lord, I need a mattress for that room.

I didn't tell many people that I was doing this. A few people knew that I needed a twin mattress and were on the lookout for one - and even fewer people knew that I was praying for one. The last person I told was one of the girls at youth group. We were talking about my house and she was commenting on the pictures I had posted - and somehow we got on the topic of that last uncompleted room, and I just said "God's gonna give us the mattress we need to pull the room together."

Well, God gave us a mattress tonight :D

Derrick & I (totally enjoying our new schedules) had dinner and then sat down to watch a movie. Half-way through the movie, my Mom called me: "Do you still need a mattress?"

She proceeded to tell me that another family - good friends of my family back home - was cleaning house and looking to give away a twin mattress. My Mom found out about it on Saturday and emailed the family back saying, "Kara would really like to have that mattress! But, if someone else really needs it, they can have it."

Well, they got back to my Mom this evening and said that she was the first to respond, and even though several other people had responded as well, she wanted to give the mattress to me!

:D :D :D

And, silly me. It totally didn't even sink in. I was like "Awesome Mom! We'll pick it up when we're down for Thanksgiving. Okay, I gotta go. Derrick & I are watching a movie."

I'm so dumb.

So, after the movie when I went to get my shower - that's when it hit me. Like a ton of oranges. God totally just answered my prayer!! And in just a few short weeks, we'll be bringing home a mattress to finish off the guest room!!

God is awesome :)

Now, on to my next prayer: Lord, please let that mattress fit in my car so we can bring it home!! :D

Lazy Sunday Afternoon

So, the boys are downstairs killing each other [other wise known as playing video games] and I'm upstairs, just relaxing - thinking about the week ahead (you know, what I'm going to make for dinner, what I'm going to wear to work this week - oh snap I guess I need to finish the laundry - how D is starting his new job tomorrow & I need to remember to pick him up on my way home from MY new job, you know: important stuff).

And, I'm thinking to myself how I really want to write a blog post - but I don't have any new and exciting pictures =/ And I could dig up some "old" stuff and blog about that, but that's so old news.

But I was going through some old pictures anyway. Pictures of Disney World (mental note: I still want to make a coffee table book of all the photos I took down there - if only money & time grew on trees and I could just go out and pick some for myself, ya know?) and of my family, of different events throughout the year.

And I came across this one of PJ :)

My best friend has the cutest baby around :) And marrying D made this little stinker my most adorable nephew!

And it got me thinking: what a life - to be perched up on Daddy's shoulder while Mommy feeds you cake.

Wow.

I remember being a little girl once, and being able to sit on my Daddy's shoulders. I loved it. My Daddy used to throw me up in the air and catch me on his shoulders. I would laugh and giggle and then hold on tight because I was soo high above the ground! I loved being able to comb my fingers through his hair and try to spike it or pull it into pony-tails. He would always persevere for a while and then shout "Hey!" and shake his hair back out - to which I would giggle away.

To continue on the random streak: last night I made my Dad's favorite dessert: Congo Bars. They're basically a cake-like chocolate chip cookie that you cut into bars. They are soo yummy. And I introduced them to Derrick. He liked them, but let me know that that's not his favorite type of dessert. He did eat 2 bars last night though and 1 after lunch today and then cried a river of tears when I said I would be taking the rest of them with us to give to the youth group tonight =P

Which concludes my randomness. I wish I had some snappy punch line to pull all of this together - but I don't.

The end.

Our House [Befores and Afters]

I LOVE our new house !! We've been here an entire one month (tomorrow, one month tomorrow - but it's Saturday on Daylight Savings night so I'm allowed to say it's an entire one month! haha) That's one month of having my own kitchen and bathroom and living room and dining room and driveway and address! It's been fabulous! Yes, I know, I have had to share all that with Derrick, but that's okay - we share nicely :)

Anyway, I have promised several people photos of the new house, so I figured I'd show ya'll some before & afters. We've done a lot of work in the last month and we're still not finished. Derrick laughs at me and says we'll never be "finished", and that's true: we have a lot of big ideas for this house, some of which are going to take several years to complete. But I'd consider things "finished" when I can check all the items off of my to-do list [things like touching up paint and hanging pictures]. So, we're working on it and slowly getting there.

But, I'll give ya'll a tour anyway :)

We'll start in the kitchen - the room that's gotten the greatest transformation so far. It started out looking like this: (with my little sister Ruby so beautifully modeling)

Well, with a little bit of help from Derrick's Dad, we got a new sink, new faucet, painted all the cupboards and hardware, and put up a FABULOUS backsplash! And it now looks like this:

I LOVE being in my kitchen! Which is good because it seems that Derrick is always hungry! But that's okay because I love to cook :D

Okay, next is the dining room:

We really didn't do to much to change the room - eventually (it's on our "in the future, we'd like to" to-do list) we'd like to rip the wallpaper down and get a nice new chandelier (I'm keeping my eyes peeled for one) but - for now it looks like this:

Most of the furniture in our house came from my parents, or my grandparents, or another relative (for example the secretary desk in the corner of the room belonged to my Great Uncle Dave). And, the table that is our dining room table - was my parent's first table when they got married! I remember sitting at this table as a little girl - the way the chairs squeak when you rock in them and the way the wheels fell off - it's all still the same and I love it! It makes it feel like home.

Oh! And I have a window-seat! I always dreamed of someday having a window seat :D When we originally looked at the house, we didn't even know it was there because they had all of their moving boxes piled to the ceiling in this room. So, you can imagine how excited I was when we got the keys and walked in and I found it! I want to make a cushion for my window seat - it's on my to-do list :)

If you haven't noticed yet - our house is filled with AMAZING woodwork! Hard wood floors in both the dining and living room (also on our someday to-do list, to refinish them) and simply amazing woodwork all over! It's so gorgeous and warm. I love it!

On to the living room - it was originally painted this "lovely" shade of purple. Yeah, we changed that first thing :)

It's now a golden warm color that complements all the wood. Anndd - you can kind of see in this picture (bottom left corner, with all the duct tape) where we have a spot for a wood-burner? We are getting one next week! YES! It'll help us out so much since this house is heated with oil - yuck & expensive!

Another story: a family from church gave us this couch and chair - and it is from the same set my parent's had in their first house! And that they still have to this day! Just goes to tell you, it's good furniture :) On my someday to-do list, I want to make slipcovers for all of the cushions so they all match - but that'll be someday.

Oh, and tucked away in the corner of our living room, I have my own little reading area :) Our living room has these fabulous built-in cabinets on either side of the fireplace and all of my books found their way in there - so now I have this cozy little spot.

And last but not least - our bedroom :) It used to be this lovely dark green color:

And now, it's red :) I've always wanted to paint a room red - I was just surprised that Derrick let me paint our bedroom this color! He secretly loves it - he really does :) We have projects in here too - like Derrick wants to put in a new ceiling and I want a headboard, but, like I said, in time - it'll all come together :)

And so, there we have it! Yes, there are more rooms in our house - we have 2 other bedrooms: one became the office (which is still a disaster, it seems that that is the room where all the odd boxes ended up "not sure what to do with it? take it to the office!") so, it's a work in progress. And the other room is affectionately called "Adam's Room" and it still isn't put together either. It's going to become my Disney room tho' - whether Adam likes it or not :) I have to hang all my Disney stuff somewhere! And then, our laundry room is off of the kitchen and it isn't finished yet either. Hopefully this week our washer and drying will get installed :) Then I won't have to do laundry at Derrick's parent's house anymore! haha But, for the most part, everything is coming together beautifully and we really really love it!!