I can't believe I'm about to do this.

Look what I bought yesterday.....

Yes, it's a yoga/pilates mat. Why would I buy this?? Because apparently, I've lost my mind. My neighbors have started going to a yogalates class several times a week. They keep encouraging me to go with them. I don't really like to exercise. I'd much prefer to lay on the sofa & read a book or watch mindless TV. I'm guessing this could be why I've gained some weight. I've cut way back on Dr Pepper & lost a few pounds but only a few so  now I'm beginning to wonder if it's worth it to not drink the DP. Anywho, I don't like to exercise. I'm sore from doing yard work Sat. Dean likes to tell people "Traci doesn't sweat". A more accurate statement would be "Traci doesn't LIKE to sweat". However, I know I need to do something so I'm going to bite the bullet & try it out. I think I'll be more inclined to go since I'll have people to go with. We'll see. The good thing is there's no contract so I won't be locked into anything.  Well, except for the $13 yoga mat!!

We have a local grocery store in town, Calvin's Bocage, which has THE BEST chicken salad ever!! It's soooo good. They make it themselves & it's so good they make hundreds of pounds a DAY!!  I wanted to have it for lunch this week so I went yesterday to pick some up after I had my nails done. While I was in the area I went to Marshalls. I never go there just because it's out of the way for me & the traffic in this town is awful!! Anyway, that's where I found the yoga mat. Like I said, I paid $13 but I googled it & it sells for $30 so I thought that was a great deal. I didn't find anything else.

I got up at 6:45 yesterday morning. I know, ridiculous for a Sunday. I went to Mass Saturday but Dean stayed home so off he went at 6:30 yesterday morning & I couldn't go back to sleep. I went back to work on the closet I started on Saturday. I swear I don't know where the crap comes from. I wasn't able to finish because I need some storage containers, which I plan to go get at lunch today. Hopefully, I'll get it finished or close to it tonight & then I'll post pictures.

Happy Monday!

Toodles!

Is that the sun???

YES!! Not only has the sun been shining but the temp is like 70! It's great! Yesterday was the same & it was gorgeous. Such a shame that I had to work all day. We've been outside all morning. We pulled a few weeds, I swept the patio while Dean took care of the pool. After Mass this afternoon Dean is going to BBQ & I think we'll spend the evening on the patio. We have to take advantage of the weather because it's supposed to start raining tomorrow. Then I'm sure it will be cold again.

This week has been full of visiting & eating!! The other night I got to visit my friend Liz & her new baby, Michael. I hadn't seen her in awhile so it was fun to catch up. Michael is too cute. He's 7 weeks old & is just so tiny! Wednesday night Dean had a work function so I had dinner with my good friend Allison. We went to Brewbachers, which is a local restaurant/bar. "Back in the day" this was our hangout so it was lots of fun to hang out there again. And we did hang out. For like 3 hours! That's what so great about Brewbachers. You can sit there as long as you want & nobody cares. Last night we went with our friends the Gillio's & the Mitchell's to dinner at Reginelli's. This is a local pizza place on LSU's campus. We hadn't been before & it was really good. Did I mention that I had pizza for lunch as well?? Yeh, I did. There's another new pizza restaurant that's not far from work. They have a lunch buffet so me & "the boys" went for lunch. "The Boys" being our friends Stan & Aaron. They work with me. That pizza was good too but Reginelli's was better.

I've started cleaning another closet. I started this morning before we went outside. Technically, all I've done is taken stuff out of the closet but it's a start. I probably won't finish until tomorrow. I figure if it's raining then that will be the perfect project.  I'll take pics once it's all done.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend.

Toodles!

My hubby is AWESOME!!!

Seriously, Dean is the most awesome husband EVER!!! Look what came today!!

My boots! Peeps, they're FABULOUS!!! I love them! They don't look cheap, they don't feel cheap, they're somewhat comfortable but they were CHEAP!!! $40. Maybe I should say inexpensive. That sounds better.  I love them so much I immediately got online to order them in the camel color. I was so sad when I saw that they're sold out of my size but at least I got the black ones. If you're in the market for a pair of casual boots these are great!!

Toodles!

A REALLY Long Day!

Why?? Because I've been awake since 3:45 a.m. I couldn't go back to sleep to save my life. So now I'm exhausted. On the bright side, I was ready for work early & I was able to go to the grocery store to pick up a few things & CVS. Thankfully, it's almost time for me to go home.

2 posts in a day doesn't happen often but I was able to get my pictures uploaded so I thought I'd share. Several months ago I asked my friends dad to build a corner cabinet for my formal dining room. I told him it was no rush & just whenever he got to it would be fine. Well, he finished right before we left for Disney. He came & installed it while we were gone. I was so excited to come home to this.

Merry Christmas to me!! It's exactly what I wanted! Keep in mind I just told him a corner cabinet & he did the rest. He matched up molding & built it the height of the entrance to my dining room & actually hooked it to the wall so it looks like it's always been there. You can't tell in this picture but it was just primed. The plan was to paint it the same color as the rest of the molding in the room. That's where Sherwin Williams came in. We bought our house when it was 2 yrs. old. The previous owner used all Behr paint colors but in Sherwin Williams paint. I learned the hard way that when you do that you can't go to Home Depot & buy the Behr paint in the proper color & expect it to match. Annoying. REALLY annoying. Have you bought Sherwin Williams paint lately? The stuff is expensive. Try twice as much as a gallon of Behr. Even with the 30% off it was still $40 for 1 gallon. We've painted the majority of our house since moving in 5 years ago & we've always used Behr & we like it. I haven't had any problems. So I paint the cabinet with the gold that apparently is Sherwin Williams & I CAN'T TELL A DIFFERENCE. I just don't understand why it's so much more expensive. Here's an after picture.

I know, you can't tell a  bit of difference but I wanted an after picture. Anyway, it's all painted & dry & now I just have to put the knobs on the cabinet doors & start filling up those shelves! I have 3/4 of a gallon of the fancy schmancy Sherwin Williams paint left. I will find something to use it on!!!

Toodles again!

Awards

Wow, 2 more awards! These were given to me by CAS at An Oasis in the Desert. Thanks CAS!

Rules for accepting this award are:

1. Link back to the person who gave you this award.
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Pass it along to 7 other stylishly and trendy bloggers.
4. Contact those bloggers and tell them about their award.

Here are my 7 things:
1. I have an affinity for rap music especially Snoop Dogg. I LOVE Gin & Juice!!

2. My husband's name is Dean Blanchard & my Boss's name is Dean Blanchard. No, they are not the same person, even though "my Dean" likes to say I answer to Dean Blanchard 24/7. When talking about the 2 Dean's I differentiate by calling them "My Dean" & "Boss Dean".

3. In 1995 or '96 my friends & I were at a Counting Crows concert in New Orleans & Courtney Cox was there. She was dating Adam Durwitz, the lead singer of Counting Crows, at the time. My friends fiance came with me to see her & I made him ask her for her autograph. I still have the signed ticket stub.

4. Friends is my all time favorite show EVER!

5. In 2000 Dean & I were at the College World Series watching LSU play Texas. Kevin Costner was sitting a few rows behind me. Yep, that's right, we had better seats than Costner!!! I did not get his autograph but I did take some pics from my seat.

6. In June when I see NKOTB it will be the 8th time I've seen them in concert.

7. In the entire 4 years I was in high school I never set foot in the cafeteria. I was extremely picky & I wasn't eating anything that came out of there!

Partly because I'm being lazy & partly because I have such a hard time picking only 7 people, whoever is reading consider yourself the recipient of these awards!

I was planning to post pictures of my painting project yesterday but I'm having problems loading the pictures. I'll try again later.

Toodles!

I ROCKED.....Well, not literally

I got a ton done this weekend! Our Friday night fun was a small birthday party for our friend Cliff. There was king cake, coffee & wine, along with Mardi Gras music. It was fun & relaxing to just hang out. Yesterday, I had a painting project which took most of the afternoon. I'll show you that tomorrow. I finished in time to get ready so we could go to Mass. We decided on Mexican for dinner & went to La Carreta. I had tortilla soup. There's is soooo good! This morning when I woke up I seemed to have a lot of energy. It could possibly have something to do with the fact that I had 10.5 hours of sleep Saturday night. HA! I decided to tackle some things on my to do list. First was cleaning out our closet. It stayed really clean for over a year but with everything going on the last month it had gotten out of hand. Soooo, this is me keeping it real...
This is by the door of the closet looking at my area.

This would be Dean's shelves. I just had to show how ridiculously neat he is!

I went through my clothes & found a few things to donate. I even made room for 4 new pair of shoes. When I told Dean that he looked at me like I'd lost my mind. I did donate 4 pair so there's room for 4 more right? Here's what it looked like when I was finished.

I keep all of my short sleeve stuff on the top & it's all organized by color. All of the long sleeve stuff is on the bottom also organized by color. This part of the closet stays pretty organized. On the left side are my pants, jeans & dresses. The cubby's on the shelf above the clothes is where I keep off season shoes. They don't all fit but it keeps some of them out of the floor. My purses are up there too. I want to get a couple of hooks to hang them on to make them easier to get to but I wasn't going to the store today.

Yes, those are footy pj's hanging on the hook. They're WONDERFUL with all the cold weather we've been having. All my t-shirts, shorts, sweatshirts & lounging around pants are organized on the shelves. I have tanks & tights in the tiger cubby's. Socks & slipper socks are in the little white plastic thingys.

The 3 drawer white thingy holds all my trouser socks & stockings. I have a drawer for brown, one for black & one for navy. Look how nice all those shoes look!

The other side of the closet with more shoes! It's really nice to walk in the closet & see all this neatness! Next up was our bathroom.  I just realized that I didn't take any before & after pics but it's a bathroom, not much to see. In the cabinets under my sink I found all sorts of stuff. I had self tanning stuff from years ago, about a zillion bottles of lotion that each had about a teaspoon left. All that stuff went in the trash. Nobody has to worry about Dean or I becoming addicted to pain pills. While cleaning out a drawer I found pain pills from when I had my wisdom teeth out (that was almost 8 yrs. ago) & pain pills from when Dean had shoulder surgery (that was before me, so that means over 12.5 years ago). Clearly, since all those pills were left we weren't abusing them. I also discovered that we have a ridiculous amount of band aids for a 2 person household. Especially, being that neither of us are kids which are generally the prime users of band aids. I consolidated them. I can't begin to tell you how many bottles of various over the counter meds we had that were expired. All were trashed. Now we have a lot of extra room. It's lovely!

Once that was done I finished Allison's Mardi Gras wreath. I'll have pics later. Once I had all of that done, I ate lunch & decided I could reward myself with some book time. I finished reading the last High Heels mystery, Mayhem in High Heels. It was really good but I'm sad I'm finished because the author had a little message at the end that it was the last book of the series. I HATE when author's do that. So, like I said, I ROCKED this weekend getting all this stuff done!

Toodles!

Happy Friday!

I hope everyone's having a great Friday! We don't have big plans this weekend. Tonight we're going next door for cake to celebrate our friend Cliff's birthday. Here's a glimpse of what I'll be doing tomorrow.

I'm hoping to get this project finished tomorrow & then I'll share what I did. Pam at diy Design Fanatic posted about a Sherwin Williams 30% off coupon the other day. Just sign up for their Preferred Customer Club & they'll email the coupon. Well, I did & I didn't get my coupon. Pam suggested I email them so I did.  I mean 30% off is a big discount. I hadn't heard a word from them so off I went to buy the paint. I didn't have time to wait around for them to respond. Well, as luck would have it, I didn't have to have the coupon. The guy just gave me the discount when I said I was in the preferred customer club. Yay! As I'm leaving the store my dings alerting me that I have an email. It was Sherwin Williams saying they'll check to see if the coupon can be mailed to me. Figures.

Our rolling garment bag came in.

This thing is really big. It's amazing that Dean ordered it Monday night & it was delivered last night. Shipping was free so that was really a great deal. Still waiting on those boots. I finally got an email from Old Navy saying that they were shipped & delivery is expected by January 27th. Good grief.

Have a great weekend!

Toodles!