Happy Fourth. We saw a few fireworks shows from our house tonight, and I can still hear fireworks blasting around town. We could have celebrated with friends tonight, but the rainy day mixed with headaches made a lazy day at home much more appealing.
There are a million things to talk about with the party and business things, so this post might be a little random. Roll call of photos above (click to make larger):
- This is what our dining room looked like before we painted - yellow. Yellow's not a bad color if executed well, but it didn't combine well with our color scheme.
- The new color, a.k.a. guest room teal, a.k.a. some sort of grayish greenish blue. It's almost close enough to be called a Rye Designs' blue. Whichever, the room looks much better now. The furniture is in, we'll be ordering photos for that room this weekend, and I'm looking forward to the finished product.
- Our celebration invitations were sent. I was able to get rid of half a stack of paint chips - the ones I was drowning in back in February. Dan gets props for coming up with the idea himself before we ever moved.
- We love these solar-powered lights. They were easy to install (thanks to handyman Dan) and look great. Any product that can turn itself on and off at appropriate times is priceless in my book. We hardly ever use our porch lights because I don't remember to turn on the darn things.
- Our business cards arrived during the week. Last weekend I went back-and-forth on where to order them. I assumed we would get an order of 50 from our print house, but they don't round corners. I found a company online that does rounded-corner business cards, a quantity of 100 for about the same price after shipping and details, but the rounding wasn't deep enough. I ended up ordering from our print house and they turned out pretty good. Now we just have to round them ourselves. Next time I might try something different.
- Sort of an odd angle, but this is a table that Dan is sanding for staining. It is a table that my dad made in high school and along the way it was loaned out, scratched up, painted (that green color you see), and sitting in my parents' shed for a while. My dad offered it to us with freedom to re-do it, and we're staining it to match our other furniture. I think it's awesome that something he made back in the day is still in sturdy and re-doable condition, and can be a part of our home.
Other bits and pieces:
Our
celebration is two weeks away, and our to-do list is two miles long. It's good to get these projects done that we've been putting off since move-in. Mainly things like getting bedrooms together, getting things on the walls, decorating, and unpacking more.
Speaking of getting
bedrooms together, we got a new king-sized bed a few weeks ago and moved our old queen-sized bed into the guest room. Then, we had to sleep in the guest room for a week or so because I couldn't decide whether I liked the comforter set we bought. It's a long story, Dan really liked it, though. I finally washed the sheets and we're sleeping in our
new bed with our
old duvet. We still don't have a decision on a new comforter set. Ha.
This week we went
car browsing. Just browsing. We like the
Ford F-150 crew cab and
Mazda CX-9 for cargo space and towing, and the eventual little people. I got to test-drive both since my car will be the first replaced down the road, and the CX-9 did not disappoint. I would be willing to drive a truck if that's what Dan really wants, but he knows where my loyalties lie (wink, wink). I think we're staying within these two dealers because Dan's grandpa retired from Ford, giving us discount options. After crunching the numbers from the dealers, we're not willing to swing some $700 car payment right now, so thankfully we don't NEED to buy a new vehicle right now.
In
business news, I spent a bit of time tweaking our logo last week. A couple small things had always bothered me and now they're fixed - mainly the kerning on a couple letters and the contrast of our light brown. Of course, changing one thing means changing everything, so I took the time to change things like our contracts and form images, and cleaned up folders.
Productivity grows like a weed. Now that I've done the business cards and fixed up most of our documents, I want to do more and more. I recently scheduled the engagement shoot for Dan's cousin who's getting married in September, so I'll have the chance to figure out my workflow again, and Dan's family has three boys who want Senior shoots this year. AND, Dan has handed me financial duties of the biz-nass, so I need to figure out how I'm going to organize all of that - little daunting.
My, my, my...
this is the dream. I just need to figure out how to balance it with everything else until it can take over for good.
For now, I'm going to rest my 400-mile-an-hour brain. The plan for the rest of this extended holiday weekend is simply:
whatever. The only thing I
have to do is figure out where our frames are going, and what's going to the print house.
Make it a great holiday weekend.
