Thanksgiving and Our Christmas Tree

It's been so long since I've blogged, and November's already coming to an end! I don't know where this month went, it seems like it's been a blur. Since we've gotten back from San Diego, I've been busy working, but have also had time to relax at home (watching Hulu, Netflix and Hallmark movies!), and spend time with friends and family.

We got together with our families for Thanksgiving. We ate a lot of food and had a good time with family. The day after, I got some pretty good deals shopping online for Christmas gifts, and I spent the afternoon putting the Christmas tree up and decorating the house while Trent was working, as is my tradition!

This is the eighth (!!) Christmas we've had this tree, and it's the first one we've ever had. We got it right after I moved into the house, on sale at Target for Black Friday. It looks almost the same every year, except we always seem to get a few new ornaments every year, and it's been in a different spot in the living room since we got our sectional a couple of years ago.

It's strange to think that it used to be in front of this window. Now the couch is there, of course, and all we see is the reflection of the tree in the window. :)

It's actually a prelit tree, but most of the original lights are now burnt out. Last year, we had to get a couple of new strands of lights, and some are brighter and "less golden" than the others - I think due to being LED, so you can actually tell if you really look closely, that the lights don't match!

I still like our tree, because it's small enough that I can haul it out of the closet myself and set it up without Trent's help. It's easy to set up and fits perfectly in our living room, but this might be the last year that we have it... We'll see! I haven't decided yet if we should go another year with the prelit lights not working. I guess it depends on whether we find another good deal on a tree we really like!

On another note, this month was our 7th Housiversary! November 21, 2010 is when I moved in with Trent into this house. Usually I do a whole "Housiversary" post, but this year, we can just consider this my housiversary post. Close enough, right? :)

Next Tuesday I leave for another work conference, in Columbus, Ohio again this time. I'll be gone until the following Saturday, so expect another small leave of absence. The busy-ness continues!

Living Room Wall Clock

Hey guys! I bought a few new things for the house online this past week. One of them was a new wall clock for the living room. Our old one had been broken for a while now. No matter how many times I changed the batteries, it always seemed to get "off." So I did a lot of looking online, and a little in the stores, too. In the end, I decided on this one from Target:

I like the distressed wood look that it has, and it was on sale for $35.99 from $40. It's pretty big - 24 inches. Our old clock was 18 inches, but the space is big enough to fit a larger clock, so we decided to try it.

It just came in the mail this week, and we hung it up today! Since it's bigger and heavier than the old one, we had to hang it a little higher and use a reinforcer with the screw.

I'm really digging it!

Here's the old one for comparison:

The new one is a bit trendier, and I feel like since it's larger, it makes more of a statement.

Definitely liking the new look. Happy Saturday, everyone!

Rug Cleaning Adventures

Hi all! I know I haven't blogged in a couple of weeks, but today it's Saturday and I'm home watching Netflix, so thought I would share a recent adventure we had involving rug cleaning. I know, it sounds super exciting. But it actually was a pretty exciting day in our household.

First off, our living room rug has seen better days. I bought it back in 2013 (remember this post?), and Saleen likes to rub and lick on it because of her allergies. In short, it's gotten pretty disgusting for that reason. Yep, having a dog has made us learn "we can't have nice things." I'll spare you the "before cleaning" pictures.

We had gone a while without cleaning the rug, so we decided to rent a Rug Doctor at our local Dollar General. You can rent it for $30, along with buying the solution that goes in it for about $5.

We gave it a good vacuum first. Then Trent filled it with a mix of water and the solution, and I held the edges of the rug in place while he ran the Rug Doctor over it.

While you run it over the rug, it releases the mixture of solution and water, and also has brushes underneath that vibrate while it runs.

We had to continuously refill it with more solution, since it goes through it pretty quickly. And we ran it over the rug row by row, several times to make sure we got the dirt out the best we could.

Once we were done, instead of letting it dry in the living room, we took the rug and the rug pad underneath, outside and hung them on the fence for a little over a day to fully dry out.

We didn't want it to hold onto any water between the rug and the rug pad, since that might leave a little "mustiness" in the air, and no one wants that.. Eww!

I think leaving it out in the sun probably helped bleach the stains a little bit, too. At least we like to think so. So here's the "after":

It's not perfect, but it looks visibly cleaner, for sure! I'd say renting the Rug Doctor was worth it, not to do all the time, but I'd maybe do it once a year or so.

At first I was really hesitant to let Saleen into the living room again, and wiped off every stain she left. Haha. But now I've come to the conclusion that it's inevitable that the rug WILL get dirty again.

So, moral of the story, having a nice rug + a dog with allergies, do not mix! But a good rug cleaning every now and then makes things a little nicer, at least for the time being.

Birthday Day-Off: Around The House

So I shared what I did for my birthday last weekend, but I also took some photos around the house on my actual birthday, Monday. I had the day off, and yes, I spent my birthday at home getting things done around the house. I did dishes, two loads of laundry, dusted and cleaned the house, and I found places for my new decor items I got shopping in Bishop Hill! It was actually a pretty nice and productive day.

Though it was cloudy most of the day, the sun even managed to peek out for a little while. Saleen was thrilled, as you can see.

I got to try out my new mug with some nice coffee on Monday morning - from my couch. :) 

And that is a selfie, from my last day being 28. So sad. It's the last year of my twenties. I'll go cry now..

I did spend my birthday getting the living room cleaned and de-cluttered. Can you say #adultlife?

Just me and Saleen hanging out. It was a grand old time.

And aren't my bee coasters and this cute candle holder perfect additions to the living room end table?

Then there's this cool glass box, which was a birthday present from my aunt. Mr. Turtle seems to like it pretty well.

All in all, my 29th birthday was a pretty good day spent. Though it did end with some scary excitement. We got severe weather in our area at about 11:00 -11:30 that night. There was actually a tornado pretty close to us, and we went down to the basement, Saleen and all! We were all ok in our area, though. No damage here, luckily - though a couple of surrounding towns got hit pretty badly. Let's hope we don't get more of that kind of weather for a while.

Happy weekend, TGIF! :)

Cold Temps, and A Christmas Decor Update

Everyone keeping warm out there? We're in negative temps right now. It's COLD. Needless to say, I'm not stepping foot outside today if I don't have to!

This is the temp right now...feels like -25 degrees out there!

We were supposed to go to our friends' Ugly Christmas Sweater Party last night, but they decided to postpone it, because the weather was pretty bad. Blowing snow and ice on the roads. So, instead we went up town to the bar with Trent's brother for a little bit. Trent still donned his ugly Christmas sweater :) They're supposed to have the party on the 30th now instead, so hopefully we'll be able to go then, and take some fun pictures. :)

Now for a Christmas decor update! We never got any lights up outside this year. :( Trent's been working 6 days a week for the past month or two, so we've been too busy to put them up. Oh well - there's always next year.

I did get the front porch decorated with some of the usual decor items. I didn't get a picture yet, though...but maybe before Christmas I can still get one.

This weekend I've been home watching movies again. Today we're both home, and hope to get some cleaning done. Trent already vacuumed this morning. I'll be spending the afternoon washing dishes. Woo-hoo.

Most of the Christmas presents are done and under the tree. I think we're running out of space for them!

After Christmas, I'll share a little post about the gifts I put together. I did kind of a different theme this year.

Well, it's back to movies and the dishes. Have a good rest of the weekend, everyone! :)

First Snowfall

Happy Sunday! Today's my first full day being back home after a long work conference in Omaha this week. I got back yesterday afternoon. (More to come about the conference soon!) Today, after finally getting a full night's sleep, I woke up to the first snowfall of the year. 

This morning, I'm watching a movie while the snow falls down. Even though they've only been saying 1-3 inches, now it's looking like more than that.

It's so pretty when it's falling, and as it first starts to cover everything outside. But, I'm not looking forward to driving in it!

When I first put the tree up for the season, I discovered that the top lights went out. Trent thought it was a fuse, but after looking at it closer, nothing seemed to get them to come back on. So, we picked up a small string of lights from the store, and I added them to the top of the tree.

They blend in pretty well, don't you think? Now the tree looks the way it should be again. :)

I guess we will continue to watch the snow fall and see how many inches we end up with!

I have a feeling we're going to get a lot more than the 1-3 inches they say we'll get. :)

Thanksgiving Weekend

Hello all, did everyone have a good Thanksgiving? After a long holiday weekend, it's now Sunday, and we're spending the day at home today.

My weekend consisted of watching a lot of movies, amid getting together with family, and binge-watching Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life on Netflix. Anybody else finish the series already? AMAZING!

We had the usual Thanksgiving get-togethers with family on Thursday. And Friday was my Gilmore Girls watching day. Complete with coffee. What else?!

I also managed to take all of the fall decorations down, and put up the Christmas tree and some holiday decor. If you look closely at the tree though, the top lights are out. :( Trent thinks it's a fuse and is going to look at it. Hopefully he can get the lights working again.

We've been using this same tree since 2010, when I moved in. This is the first year the tree is in this corner of the room. Changing things up this year because of our new sectional sofa!

Of course I got my holiday pillows out again, too.

Today I'm hoping to finish up the front porch. Then this Tuesday I'm leaving for Omaha, Nebraska for work. Planning to be home again on Saturday. Have a great last day of your weekend, everyone!

Updated Living Room Tour

Since we got the new couch last month, I figured it was time for some more updated living room photos. We stayed home yesterday and spent most of the day cleaning, doing laundry and washing dishes. While I tidied up the living room to take photos, Saleen just hung out on the rug and watched.

 So I had to take my photos with Saleen in the room. :)

Here's the new couch that we're still loving! It's so comfy and we love spending time in here and each having our own section of the couch when we watch TV.

And here's Saleen watching me take pictures. She thinks I'm a weirdo most of the time.

I did catch a couple of cute shots with her, though. Her hair has grown thicker over the winter so she looks extra furry this time of year!

Here's the TV side of the room, which I don't know that I've shared yet since getting the new couch. It looks pretty much the same as before. Not too much has changed in here, decor-wise, other than losing one of the end tables and the storage bench. We moved those upstairs since we don't really have the space in here anymore.

You can tell where my space on the couch is. It's a little sunken in and wrinkly. Haha. I guess I could have straightened that up before taking the photos, huh?

Overall we pretty much still love the new couch. I love the color and the fabric; it seems just so much softer. And there is plenty of room for all of my throw pillows. And that's important.

Saleen loves it, too. Even though she's not allowed on it. :)

So there's the updated living room tour, complete with our pup.

Hope you enjoyed it as much as we do!