Spray-Paint Crazy

So, over winter break I got on a Spray-paint kick and went a little crazy! Lucky for me, it turned out well and we now have a few more "like-new" pieces to spruce up our little apartment!

This was the first piece I did! I wish I had a before picture, but sadly I do not. It used to be an off white color with gold trimming. It was in my Grandmother's house and she first hung it there in 1980. It could be much older than that, but I have no way of knowing! Anyway, I saw it in the storage room at my parent's house over the break and knew it needed to come home with me :) But it definitely needed some touching up, so we headed out to wal-mart and purchased a can of spray-paint/primer mix...and I went to town!

Newly Painted antique mirror! 

We made this jewelry holder using the frame of an old broken picture frame, wire cut from wire hangers, hot glue and of course spray-paint! 

I took an old wooden shelf and spray-painted it brown to look like new and match my other stuff! I also took a purple flowered wall hanger and a wooden wall hanger and spray-painted them both brown to match = perfect scarf hangers! 

I found an old small-wine glass and spray painted it brown alone with adding a foam heart to the base and a ribbon to create a cute little watch holder! I also added two paper doilies to the inside of the glass for cushion.

So, Moral of the story is this: We're a broke newlywed couple but it doesn't matter because all of this cost us roughly $5 ..and that was for the spray paint can. Everything else came from my parents storage room and they didn't even know it was there! Boom.Up-cycling at its very finest!

A Lesson in Every Tragedy

Happy Thursday everyone!

Today, I'm feeling grateful. I should feel grateful everyday because I am very blessed, but today my gratefulness is off the charts and this is why:

We just had a freak winter storm and several pipes froze and busted in our apartment complex. My husband and I were fortunate enough to have somehow eluded this mess leaving our apartment nice and dry. There were at least three other apartments who have severe water damage, including my friend's apartment...right.next.door. It could have just as easily been ours, leaving us with weeks were of damage to clean up. When I walked into their living room I saw a ceiling with 5 or 6 tiles completely gone, exposing all the inner workings of the apartment. The next thing I saw was a concrete floor where the nice vinyl floor used to be, along with a mass amount of water dripping from the saturated insulation above their living room. It got worse from there: a couch ruined, pictures soaked and a home in complete disarray.

My heart is aching for my poor friends who did nothing wrong but are still suffering the consequences of this unfortunate happening.

I got to thinking about it late last night after we had helped our neighbors move some of their valuables into the spare room in our nice, dry apartment. I was very thirsty, so I poured myself a big glass of water and drank the entire thing. Water. I just cannot wrap my mind around how one thing can be absolutely vital to our lives and yet, at the same time, can completely destroy our lives. Then it dawned on me; everything in moderation.God gives us everything we have. He gave us life. He gave us a home. He gave us each other. He gives us jobs and money and friends and everything else under the sun. He teaches us too, that we may learn to live lives of moderation. This, of course, is all a metaphor for the "flood" that happened next door considering they did not choose that for themselves. It simply has taught me that a lot of a good thing quickly becomes a very bad thing. I believe this is true for every good thing in our lives.

In Galatians 5:13 it says, "For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another."

So as an adult we are given the freedom to make our own choices, but we should always remember that abusing that freedom will surely lead down a road of ruin. This doesn't mean that we can't indulge in life's greatest gifts to us, but that we should simply do everything in moderation and remember that we are here to serve one another and not ourselves.

5 Life Lessons From Living in a Dorm

Unlike most Universities, my special private University had a strict rule that we HAD to live in the dorms on campus all 4 years of our undergraduate careers. My first thought was, "are you kidding me?" How could I get stuck in a stupid dorm when all my friends at other universities were moving into their own apartments and getting their freedom to come and go as they please?

And me, I was stuck in an all girls dorm which included a curfew of 12am on weeknights, 2am on weekends, oh yeah and we could only have guests (aka boys) over from 7pm-10pm on week nights and 7pm-12:30am on weekends. Not that bad...oh just wait.. we also MUST keep the door OPEN and light ON and feet HAD to be touching the floor. Can you say PRISON maybe? Oh yes, and once a week we had a "room check" and if the trash wasn't taken out, the bed wasn't made and our floor was a mess we would get points which would add up to a $fine$ eventually.

This was the end of the world, it must be.

Well, 5 years and a whole lot of maturing later...

I have come to realize that those years in that "prison" taught me so much more than I could have ever imagined at the time. But I will sum it up into 5 big things.

1. I learned how to respect the person I lived with, which my husband is so grateful for today. I don't turn on lights in the morning when he is still asleep, I am quiet when he is busy or trying to accomplish something and I keep my things tidy out of respect for him and his space which we now share.

2. I learned that it is not a good idea to be alone with someone of the opposite sex in a room with the door closed. This hasn't been something I have used yet, but I think this will prove as an essential rule for me in my marriage. There is such a thing as a male friend, but boundaries must be implemented in order to avoid sticky and potentially tempting situations that may or may not threaten my marriage and my faithfulness.

3. Nothing good happens after 12am, so there is no reason to be out past then anyway. ;)
Also, sleep is vital to our health and wellness!

4. I learned that a clean space is a happy space! I don't have to talk myself into cleaning my apartment because i'm already in the habit of having it clean at least weekly, this including laundry and dishes. We were not allowed to have a dirty dish out during room check, so our dishes always needed to be done and no trash could be in the trashcan so that always needed to be taken out! And now, lets just say the bugs steer clear from our nice and clean apartment :)

5. Don't leave personal things in the bathroom. This was a rule our university had for the dorms I lived in, mostly because someone came in and cleaned them and we shared them with at least 5 other people. I now share a bathroom  with my husband and consequently neither of us ever leaves any dirty clothes or towels in the bathroom, and it always stays neat and tidy, ready for company at any time!

Good thing my husband and I had a great University to teach us how to successfully share a home together!