Happy Fourth of July!

I've decided to try and keep up with this blog again.

This was the weekend of the Fourth of July.  We did some pretty summery things, like getting sundaes & malts, watching The Sandlot, walking around the Mundelein Community Days & getting lunch at the Mundelein Munch.  We swam in our neighborhood pool and it was quite refreshing.

Of course, we also saw the Mundelein fireworks, which we wonderful as always.  The finale was really good this year.  Very cohesive.

It's been a great long weekend!

Fall

The neighborhood by our condo has streets lined with trees that all turned gold.


I took a few photos and they just don't do it justice.

Cupcake Cake

This past Saturday it was Keith's aunt Linda's 60th birthday. There was a surprise party and she was very surprised. It was a good time. I made pumpkin cupcakes for the event. I used a decorating idea from the book Hello, Cupcake, and made a birthday cake out of them. Keith's cousin's wife Lisa helped me make the cupcakes and plan out the tiers.

Sweet Surprise

I had the day off from work today. This morning I walked into the kitchen to get my cereal and found a card & gift from Keith! The card said to relax & enjoy my day off, and that the gift was to make next week at work a little better. (I was pretty stressed this week.)

The card was perfect!


The gift was grey shoes that I had pointed out to him awhile ago.


It's been almost 5 years and it feels amazing to be falling more & more in love with each other every day. <3

New table!

Now we have a place to eat. We can entertain more easily. We can play games. It's wonderful. Next on the list is curtains.

Slowly But Surely

We got a new TV & PS3. We saved for these things and Keith decided that the new TV was his reward for working TONS of overtime lately. We, of course, had to get a new TV stand. The stand is from Ikea and matches the other shelves we have.

We are now using the old TV stand as a shelf for King Triton and video games.



We also finally found a dining room table. It's from World Market. It is VERY heavy. The man at the store said that it was 180 pounds, and he was NOT exaggerating. We still have to put it together and then we will definitely need to have someone help us flip it right-side up. Here's a picture of the table from the interweb.

Eventually we will be settled. Maybe? I hope so.

New-to-me things

My grandma was had me over for dinner and wanted me to look through some boxes of things she was getting rid of to see if I wanted anything. I ended up with quite a few things. I couldn't help it - she happened to have a lot of baking stuff in those boxes! Luckily Keith and I have lots of cabinet space. It's nice to be able to rid my grandma of clutter and gain some fun free stuff!

I did get some new cupcake pot holders that go rather well with the cupcake themed ones & apron that my grandma made for me for Christmas. (The homemade potholders are the pink ones that the new brown ones are on top of in this photo.)


She also gave me some birds and a plant to put out on the balcony. I took the photos at night, so they're not the best, but you get the idea.


We have been rather busy lately. Mostly working. Some social things like Keith's cousin's wedding though!


This weekend we hope to finish up the touch up painting and a few little things. We are having people over on Sunday for the fantasy football draft, so it would be nice to get some things done before then. Too bad we haven't found a dining room table (that is not from Crate & Barrel and is so perfect except in the price department) yet. Some other upcoming purchases for the home: PS3 slim, HD TV (we have yet to decide on plasma or LCD), new TV stand, dining room light, and curtains. When it's listed out like that, it sounds like a lot. Luckily, we have been saving for some of these things for some time now. At work we are all going in on some lotto tickets... so if that works out for me, maybe I WILL be getting that Crate & Barrel table. ;)