Friday, December 30, 2011

Shaggedy Shag

The floors in our house are cold. I don't know if it's inferior insulation, or what. On the rare occasion that we eat dinner at the coffee table, the girls always have to pull out a blanket to sit on. (No food on the couches!) Pair that, with the fact that playing the Kinect that my grandparents got us for Christmas on said hard floor is hard on the ol' joints and Viola..... time to go rug shopping.

I had seen a rug I really like at Home Depot when we first moved here, but we decided not to buy it since our living room was carpeted. Since that was three years ago, of course they didn't have it any more. It was a nice rich chocolate brown with tan, cream, and robin's egg blue woven into the shag. LOVED IT!

After trips to every store we could think of that had rugs, in the rain, with disgruntled girlies (How dare we drag them around rug shopping on their vacation?) we decided to try the Lowes in Hampton. We had already been to the one in Newport News and didn't find squat. I looked at every rug and remnant they had and... nothing. Then, I pulled back one of the sliders that the special order rugs hang on and, like a ray from Heaven, the light fell on the color swatches for one of the rugs. There it was.... My rug from three years ago. I had skimmed past it because the display rug was beige. After doing a little dance of joy, I drug Den and the salesman over and ordered it! PLUS they were running a 20% off special order rugs deal AND we got a 10% off military discount. Oh, and it ships directly to our door for free.

This is the rug we ordered. You can't really see the other colors woven into the shag,
but I promise when it gets here I will take a close-up. It's made by Shaw Living and is the Shaggedy Shag 8x10 area rug in Cocoa Multi.
Since, my new brown, blue, and cream rug no longer matches the red window valances in my great room, I guess I'll be needing new ones :). Oh, and a new kitchen rug since it's all one big room. And maybe some new dish towels......

We took all the Christmas decorations down yesterday and now I can't remember what I had on the mantle, so I will be looking for ideas over the next few days. That's another post for another day.

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Surprise!

After months of telling the girls that they were getting too old for Disney World, we surprised them for Christmas with a Spring Break trip with our awesome travel buddies, the Lindlers.



Sunday, December 18, 2011

A Christmas Surprise

About a month ago, Dennis told me not to make plans for December 17th, that he had plans for us and that we would need to dress up. I said OK and didn't think anything else about it. Little did I know that he had one of the most amazing evenings we've had in a long time up his sleeve.


The original plan was that we would all just wear our Christmas dresses to his surprise. Unfortunately, as with most things involving Christmas this year, it got put on the back burner and promptly forgotten about. Thanks to my Grandmother, who sent this dress for Paige in the mail earlier in the week and having a dress or two left over from cotillion last year that would fit Summer, we still able to get all dolled up for our big night out.

I made Paige take a picture of me since when I was putting together the calendars that I make for our grandparents every year I noticed that there are very few pictures of me. New Year's resolution number 57 I guess.



The first half of our surprise - dinner at The Melting Pot, which really was a surprise, because, like all men, Dennis always says that there is no way he is paying that much money to cook his own food.

The second half of our surprise just about had me in tears. I have been wanting to take the girls to a performance of The Nutcracker since they were born. It was a Bucket List item for me. So when we pulled into the Ferguson Center, I was SO excited. It was everything I hoped it would be. The dancers were superb and both girls sat completely enraptured for the entire 2 hour performance. Afterwards, they both pirouetted there way to the car and danced all around the house. They still are this morning. Happy momma!