Rest in Peace Grady Dog

 We had to say goodbye to our Grady Boy on Thursday, June 17.  He was ready but our hearts were not.  It had been time for awhile but we were being selfish and keeping him alive for ourselves.  That morning when I woke up, he let me know it was time.  He was my baby boy for over 12 years and I loved him with all of my heart and soul.  He was my constant shadow and I miss him like crazy.

When we got him over 12 years ago, it was supposed to be a temporary thing until we found him a home.  But, I quickly fell in love with him and he was my baby boy right off the bat.  We were not sure how old he was when we got him, maybe 1 or 2.  He had a rough start but the 12+ years he spent with us were full of so much love.

I know that his sister Bella was waiting for him when he crossed the Rainbow Bridge that day.  He went to sleep peacefully, on our bed, being loved on by Cody and I as he took his last breath.  I know he is no longer in pain and he's running around, chasing the lights and playing in the water.  And I am sure that Bella is bossing him around just like she always did!

  The worst part about having a dog is having to say goodbye to them.  Even when you know it is their time, it still breaks your heart.  I miss him following me everywhere I went, I miss his drooly kisses and his constant licking.  I miss his snuggles and the way he looked at me like I was the most amazing person in the world.  I miss my baby boy.

I hope he knows how much he was loved and how much we miss him.  He was the most amazingly sweet, gentle and loving boy.  There has never been a better dog than my Grady Boy!

Rest in peace my sweet boy, I love you so much.  We will meet again in heaven.

Broken Hearted

It's funny that 2 out of my last 3 posts were about my job and 2 of my most favorite events.  It's funny or ironic?  More like sad and depressing and unbelievable.  Those are the things that I have been feeling since the end of June.  I thought I would be safe from losing my job because of the Corona Virus but I was clearly wrong.  In March, I started out working from home full time and then I worked 50% from home and 50% in another department.  And then I worked 50% from home and was furloughed 50%.  On June 22, I was told that my position and my department were being eliminated and that I no longer had a job.  My whole world came crashing down around me.  This was the worst possible thing I could imagine.  I LOVED MY JOB.  I gave my heart and soul, blood, sweat and tears to that job.  I planned to work at the job for the rest of my life.  But what hurt more were the lies that came about after all of this happened.  People who were supposed to be my friends hurt me in ways that I never thought possible.  I won't go into details because I don't want to get political but what was done to me and 2 of my co-workers during this whole thing is a complete act of reverse discrimination and back stabbing.  Honestly, I want nothing more to do with that college ever again and it's the college that I graduated from and spent 13 years of my life at.  If karma is a thing, I hope everyone involved in what they did to me gets what they deserve.

I have a new job and I hate it.  I took the first job that I was offered.  It was the highest paying job that I was offered.  It's a retail job so I have to work Saturday's and holiday's.  I am better than this job but for now it is what it is.  I am currently looking for another job at a different college and I am hoping and praying that I get it.  I don't want to work retail.  I just smile and pretend that I am happy but I am the complete opposite of that!  

It breaks my heart that I am no longer doing the job that I love.  No longer will I share the holiday party theme and decor with you.  There will be no more scholarship gala posts.  I have never been in such a low, dark place in my life but I am hopeful that things will get better eventually.  Please say a prayer for me that things get better and that I am happy, doing what I love soon.

Dining Room Hutch Makeover

How is everyone doing during this crazy time in history?  Everyday I say those words..."This is so crazy!"  I work at a college as an event coordinator so we had to cancel all of our external events and our students are moved out and taking classes online.  I am working from home 4 days a week now while 3 of my co-workers are working in facilities helping clean dorms.  Although all of the students have been sent home, there will be about 200 still on campus who can't go home so the campus won't be completely shut down.  Working from home means lots of online meetings using video chats.  When you are doing video chats, you see your home from a different view.  I have had my "office" set up in the dining room and I quickly came to the conclusion that my dining room makeover needed to happen NOW!

These photos aren't so good since they were taken with my cell phone.  I was going to take more today with my camera but it is pouring down rain and dark and dreary out so these will have to do!  I knew that I wanted to paint the built-in hutch in our dining room white, I just never got around to it.

 BEFORE:

My husband is an Auto Body Paint Technician (he paints cars) so he is very good at taping things off and painting them perfectly.  He took off all of the doors and drawers while I worked on the inside stuff. 

I am glad we took on this project yesterday when it was warm and sunny out.  Today is the complete opposite and it would have been a mess! 

I am not the best painter but I just taped off the sides and went to town.  It took about 3 coats of white paint to get it to where I wanted it.  I thought about doing a faux shiplap treatment to the inside but I was too tired and just wanted to get it done. Maybe I will get around to that another day! 

I got all the painting done and got all of my stuff put back in after dinner.  Then it was time for Cody to put the doors and drawers back on. I want to put chicken wire behind the glass and we have knobs to put on the drawers and doors.  Those things will be a project for another day as well!

And here is the finished project again.  This was all in a days work and it turned out better than I imagined!  I am so happy that we took this project on finally.  Now I am ready to tackle the laundry room or our bedroom.  Stay tuned!

Linking Up With:

Love Your Creativity

Make It Pretty Monday

Inspire Me Tuesday

All About Home

Keep In Touch

2020 Scholarship Gala-Purple Reign

Last Friday, February 28, was the Scholarship Gala for the college that I work for.  This years theme was Purple Reign.  We wanted to do an 80's prom theme but no one was on board with that.  This was the next best thing!  I totally embraced dressing up in my best 80's gear and created the best 80's playlist to really set the mood!

Since the invites had triangles, I wanted to do something with triangles for the centerpieces.  I had a vision in my head and I needed to figure out a way to bring it to life.  Thanks to my parents and their woodworking skills, my vision was realized! 

These triangles were built using 1x4's that they made into 2 feet x 2 feet x 2 feet structures.  We stained them with Dark Walnut stain.  For the flowers, I ordered 10.25" casket saddles.  Yep, casket saddles were the perfect vessel to put the flowers in and sit nicely on the triangle.  The flowers were donated again this year, I just asked that they be bright colors.  They didn't give us enough so I had to go buy more but they were bright and beautiful! 

We had about 580 guests in attendance and raised over $500,000 for student scholarships.  We not only met our goal but we exceeded it as well! 

We had a silent auction with about 90 auction items. 

We also had a live auction with about 15 different items.  One of those items was this cute little Golden Retreiver, named Judson.  Even though I am totally against auctioning off dogs, we did get to spend a lot of time with Judson and he went to a good home and friends of mine so I know he will be loved!

This is one of our biggest events of the year and we always manage to pull it off and make money for students to attend college.  Every year is always better than the last, or at least it feels that way in the moment! 

Here is a list of past gala's so you can see the themes and centerpieces:

2019: Puttin' on the Glitz

2018: The Great Gatsby

2017: Mardi Gras

2016: 125 Year Anniversary

2015: Passages 

Linking up with: 

Love Your Creativity Link Party

Make It Pretty Monday

Inspire Me Tuesday

All About Home

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Homemaking Party

Anything Goes Pink Saturday

Seven Swans a Swimming Holiday Party

Every year at work, we hold a holiday party for all of the employees.  A year before I started in my department, they started following the 12 Days of Christmas for the theme.  We are now on year 7 and I wanted to share what I did this year for Seven Swans a Swimming.

This is the invite that I designed.  I looked all over for ideas for this particular theme and most of them had something to do with Ballet.  So, I just decided that I would use rose gold, white, silver, roses and feathers.  The invite really helped me pull everything together! 

Here are the centerpieces.  I used the rhinestone covered vases from this years gala.  The white feathers that I put around the vase came from our 2018 gala and I covered the base of the feathers with sparkly rose gold ribbon.  I then hot glued greenery and a frosted pink rose to the middle.  Inside the vase was a strand of twinkle lights. 

We decorated a tree with some icy white garland, gold ornaments and rose gold pink snowflakes.  I made a sparkly rose gold bow for the top.  We wrapped boxes to put around the bottom of tree and everyone who came signed their name on a gold ornament. 

We hung curtain lights in this window wall and hung icy white wreaths with rose gold ribbon.  We dined on delicious food as always! 

Since this party was held in our brand new library, we used the furniture there to create lounges.  We brought pillows and blankets to drape on the furniture and it was such a big hit with our guests! 

This centerpiece had some soft lambs ear in it.  I bought these napkins at World Market years ago and this party was the perfect place to use them! 

It's very hard to see, but we put garland and lights on the banister going up the stairs.  A Happy Holidays sign that matched the invite greeted all of our guests. 

We hung a rose gold snowflake ornament on each of the lights on the study tables and put a centerpiece in the middle of each one.  It looked so stunning when the day turned into night. 

I don't have any pictures from last year's Six Geese a Laying Holiday Party, but here is a link to previous years parties.  If I come across last years, I will have to remember to save them.  Next year is 8 Maids a Milking and I already know that buffalo check will be a part of it!

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas!

Linking up with:

Love Your Creativity

Inspire Me Tuesday
All About Home
Make It Pretty Monday
Talk of the Town
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Winter Blue's Wednesday
Anything Goes Pink Saturday

Super Faux Shiplap Wall

I have been wanting to add shiplap to a wall in my living room for awhile but we have so many other projects going on that we just haven't gotten around to it.  Yesterday I decided to give it a very faux shiplap look while I wait for the real thing to happen!

I read about this technique on the Wicker House Blog.  With a yard stick, a level and a mechanical pencil, I did my best to make sure the lines were even and straight.  They aren't perfect but I love the way it looks! 

The above picture was taken with my phone so it is not very good quality but you can kind of see the shiplap lines.  Since we were already making changes, I had my husband build me a rustic shelf to hang on the wall and I decorated it with some of my Decor Steals goodies.   

This is now my favorite wall in the house!  I have more things that need to be added and I think it will be fun to incorporate holiday decor into it as well.  I love when I get an idea in my head and then I get to see it come to reality! 

Thanks for taking the time to stop by, especially since I am such a slacker when it comes to my blog these days!

Linking up with:

Love Your Creativity

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Inspire Me Tuesday

Make It Pretty Monday

Talk of the Town

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The Homemaking Party

Fall Into Fall

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Dining Room Table Makeover

I just had to share the makeover I did on a dining room table and chairs that was recently gifted to me.  I had a dining room table that I loved but the leg was broken and we couldn't fix it.  So this was perfect!

I had the week of 4th of July off of work so I knew there was no time like the present to get this done.  I started by stripping off the stain that was on the table top, sanding it and staining it. 

Next I made my own chalk paint and painted the table base and the chairs.  It took 2 coats on both to get the cover I wanted.   

 Next, I recovered the seats with a drop cloth and painted on some stripes in my favorite color.  I then put 2 coats of polyurethane on the table top.  I could hardly wait to get this in my dining room! 

I didn't get a before picture of the whole table but here is a chair and the leaf that I still need to finish so you can see where I started.  Such a huge improvement! 

And now that it is in my dining room, I just had to play dress up with it! 

 Aqua is my favorite color so I set the table to match the stripes on the chairs.  

 Doing this makeover was a lot of work but seeing the final result made it all worth it!  Now I want to do this to all the things!

 It's amazing what a little imagination and work can do to make something beautiful!

Linking up with: 

Dishing It & Digging It
Make It Pretty Monday
Inspire Me Tuesday
Talk of the Town
Sizzle Into Summer
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