Life Lately

Guys, life lately has been spent with my two favorite furry ladies. 98% of the pictures in my phone involve these little girls but I wouldn't have it any other way. 

 

Rory has been loving her new life and home. We've been spending a lot of time outside in the beautiful spring weather. She loves playing with her big sister and often they can be found chasing each other around the yard. Puppy zoomies might be the cutest thing in the world! Rory is the happiest puppy and is just thrilled to be included all the time. She has no idea why Sophie gets excited but runs alongside her excited as well, just thrilled to be along for the ride! 

Oh Sophie our neurotic princess! She absolutely adores her baby sister and bringing her home was the best  thing we could've done for Sophie. She loves being a big sister and is so good to Rory. She's so gentle with her and lets her climb all over her but also so playful. It was truly the best decision to get a second puppy even though it was a crazy first month as a family of 4 (+1 cooking!).

You don't often see one without the other, they stick pretty close! 

We took Sophie for her most recent grooming appointment and Rory worked on riding in the backseat with her sister. We were nervous at first but they do great in the backseat together. Rory is learning how to look out the window like her big sister does. We did discover she is a lot calmer than Sophie in the car and when we brought her home while Sophie was getting groomed, Rory was sleeping in the back seat...something that has never happened with Sophie!

Tim has been bringing home extra turf from work for us! Our goal is to get all the dirt areas in our backyard covered with turf to keep out house less dirty. We are hoping to have this done soon and possibly get our front yard done this summer too.

Please ignore our mess of a deck, we desperately need to get it redone. I'm hoping this might be our project next spring...right now we have too much else to get done first!

I still have a ton to do in Ellie's room, but my mom bought this cute E print from Marshalls and I love it! I need to find and order a rug and need to complete our closet DIY, but we are working on it! 

I have been very into clearance shopping for baby Ellie! You guys know I am always on the hunt for a deal and baby shopping has been my main focus lately. If you see any great deals please let me know!

Last Saturday I headed into Walmart where I found diapers for $6 and onesies for 75 cents! I also headed to TJMaxx where I spent $50 on a ton of clearance finds.  I know we will be getting a ton of gifts for Ellie and that everyone loves to buy baby clothes, but I just can't help myself. I love getting a good deal and I really don't want to pay full price for baby items.

Again, if you see any diaper/wipes/baby deals please share them with me!!

I hope you are all doing well and I will try to do better at taking pictures in the future!!

Welcome Rory!

 I know I promised I would be better about updating the blog. I have a TON to say and life has been so busy lately.  I have a list of posts to write up and do plan to get better about updating as we go forward.

Today I wanted to share the newest addition to our family! No, not our baby girl who will be arriving in September.....

Meet Rory!

Last July/August Tim and I had been struggling with infertility for over a year and were looking at starting fertility treatments. We knew we wanted to bring a sibling into our home for Sophie and that she would love having a sister so we put ourselves on a waiting list for a goldendoodle puppy. The day I found out we lost Baby B we received an email that we could pick up Rory on April 4th. It was a true miracle. 

Rory's first weigh-in at the vet came in at 13 pounds! Sophie was 18 pounds when we brought her for her first vet visit so Rory feels significantly smaller than her big sister did. We keep commenting on how fragile she seems but luckily she's been a great eater and we can already feel her getting bigger every day! 

As far as puppies go Rory is extremely easy-going. Our vet and vet tech kept commenting on how easy-going she was during her visit. She loves to play and has been in heaven with the huge selection of toys we have collected around here. When she gets the zoomies it is absolutely adorable and she can often be found sleeping on top of a pile of pillows.

I'm sure you're curious about how big sister Sophie is adjusting to having a sibling. Well, she couldn't be better!! The first day we were very nervous and Sophie definitely seemed a little jealous. After that initial jealousy, we haven't seen it since. The two of them are best friends and play together, cuddle together and just generally enjoy each others company. Rory is obsessed with her big sister and Sophie is very sweet about letting her cuddle. It is so adorable and I love watching their relationship. 

I am excited for Rory to get a tad bigger so I won't be quite as stressed out about their wrestling matches but I love to watch how Sophie rolls on her back and lets Rory climb all over her. They also play a ton of tug and Sophie has always wanted us to chase her around the yard and she finally has someone who will do it non-stop.

Overall adding Rory to our family has been one of the best decisions we have made. She is sweet, snuggly and so playful. While having a puppy is certainly stressful and I'm not sure I would recommend any pregnant woman to add the stress of it to their life I am so glad we did it now before having a baby. We will all be adjusted before we get thrown for that loop in September. 

One of our friends who came to meet Rory said it best when she said, "You guys seem to thrive on chaos."

I can't even disagree with that statement because we just love to have some sort of project going on. If there's not something going on then life gets too boring! 

Halloween Weekend 2020

Hey friends! Did everyone have a great Hall-o-weekend? It was very low-key around here (like most weekends around here) but I thought it was great to have Halloween on a Saturday. I think we should observe Halloween on the last Saturday of October every year, anyone else with me on that?

Sophie loves her toys from her Barkbox and I love that each month the theme changes. We were of course thrilled to see Halloween themed toys and Sophie has been enjoying her Vampy-corn, Barry Bones, and Ghouly Worm. If you haven't signed up for Barkbox and you have a pup it's a great idea to get a year-long subscription as a Christmas present for them! We truly enjoy having this box come each month and I think the price is 100% worth it!

Guys, it snowed here on Friday!! My poor pumpkin and mums enduring the storm, they look so sad!

We spent a lot of the weekend cuddled up on the couch and Sophie was thrilled with all of it! I love how sweet her face is in this picture. 

I feel so lame. This is what I did for Halloween trick-or-treating. I made 30 treat bags and left them out for our neighborhood kids. We ended up with 5 leftover so it ended up being just about the perfect amount. Even though I put out a pumpkin and some little Halloween decals on the door, I didn't really do much outside decorating for Halloween. I always intended on going back out to pick up more pumpkins/gourds and make the front steps look nicer but I just never did. I felt especially bad about my decorating skills when I saw what The Blonde Abroad had done....

(This picture is a screenshot of @theblondeabroad Halloween post on Instagram)

How cute is her setup?! Her dog Bailey looked so cute as Harry Potter and I couldn't believe all the awesome decor she had. If you aren't already following her on Instagram she is one of my favorites. Normally she is traveling non-stop but has recently purchased a house in San Diego and is doing some home decor content which I love! I felt very inferior when I saw her decor versus what I had going on outside!! I always say next year....

Last week at BJs I picked up a huge box of Swiss Miss Hot Chocolate mix and I kicked off hot chocolate season on Halloween! I love fall and have enjoyed having my fall decor up inside our house but I am ready to decorate for Christmas. 

It seems like more than half the people I follow on Instagram started decorating yesterday for Christmas. I didn't start yesterday but I am planning on starting very soon. Tomorrow I have the day off from work so I will be taking down all of my fall decor and giving the house a good deep clean and I plan on decorating for Christmas maybe next weekend. Let me know when you are planning on decorating for Christmas, I would love to hear how long you are waiting this year.

Speaking of tomorrow, it's my husbands birthday!!!

Happy Birthday Tim! You are the most patient, kind, wonderful person in the world and I cannot imagine my life without you. You are my match in every way and I am so lucky to be married to you!!

Birthday Weekend 2020

Well, it's happened. I am officially 32.  

Despite 2020 (and my age) I managed to have a great birthday weekend! We started off on Friday night with a birthday dinner at my parents house. My mom, dad, my brother, my brothers girlfriend, Tim, Sophie and I celebrated with takeout from one of my favorite restaurants, Pasquales. It was delicious, I absolutely love their penne alla vodka! 

I didn't take any pictures at dinner but I took this picture of my birthday gift from my parents.

My mom and papa both have similar birdbaths and I wanted one so much. I found this one at Walmart and requested it for my birthday. My sweet mom ordered it and my sweet husband lugged it into the car for me to take home. I have it set up on the side of our deck in the corner where it meets our new fence (post on that coming as soon as it's completed) and I plan to plant a ton of things in this area next spring! I want this to be a little secret garden area. 

I also got a special birthday package from Rachel with this cute t-shirt inside! I panicked when I saw the mailman coming with an Amazon package because I couldn't remember what I ordered and I have been known to order so much stuff that I can't remember what is coming!

Sophie was feeling awful sleepy on my birthday Saturday! She slept almost the whole day while I puttered around, cleaning the house and getting ready because we had some visitors coming over.

Brittni came over with her family! Sophie can't contain herself around these girls, she is a nut! It was so nice to have them over for a pizza party and just hang out together. They brought me some beautiful flowers, KitKats and paintings they had done. You can see on the tv what our entertainment was- the girls love Hamilton!

My awesome husband also made me feel so special with a sweet sappy card and some KitKats (can you tell they are my favorite??). We decided to not do big gifts for each other this year since we generally just buy ourselves whatever we want anyways. We also would like to work towards our savings goals AND I just bought a new car so I don't really need anything gift wise ;)

I'm writing this on Sunday and this sums up our plans for the day...

Lots of hanging out on the couch! 

I hope you had a great weekend and are ready to take on this new week!!

 

Outdoor Fall Decorating/ Life Lately

To every person who reached out to me through comments/emails/texts after my post last Friday, thank you. It means the world to me that you are here and while my world and story aren't always picture perfect  I am so thankful to have each and every one of you here for it.

On a lighter note today I'm sharing what we've been up to lately...which honestly isn't much! Are you still laying low where you are? In some ways it seems like things are a little more back to normal because I feel more comfortable going into stores, school has started in person/hybrid here, and it just feels like life is a little more normal. However, on the other end of the spectrum everyone is still in a mask all the time, I still work from home nearly all the time, and we don't have a lot of plans besides being around the house! I love being at home so I truly don't mind that part of it, but it leaves me with not too much besides house updates!

This past Saturday my papa and his girlfriend Vivian stopped by to visit us (well mostly Sophie) and it was so nice to have some visitors! Sophie was fairly well behaved and loved being fed a million treats and gaining a new toy. While they were visiting they mentioned stopping at a farm and once they left Tim and I decided to head to a local farm to pick up some outdoor fall decor. We love going to Shickasheen Farm and if you are in the South County area they are a great side of the road farm stand with awesome prices! Our friend Emma and her husband run it along with their family and we loved getting the chance to chat with Emma a bit and pick up a pumpkin and a couple of mums for our front steps. Emma mentioned that they were going to have some more pumpkins soon, so I will definitely be back for some more decor soon!

I love having a bit of fall sprinkled on my front steps. I also recently replaced my front door mat and bought a new buffalo check mat for underneath as well. Both were purchased on Amazon and I love them! Quick question for you, how often do you replace outdoor mats? I am finding that mine wear out super quick, but they are exposed to the elements (no overhang) so I suppose it makes sense. I just assumed they lasted a bit longer, but maybe I just paid no attention when I was younger and living at home!

Oh, football is back! Thanks Soph for the reminder! 

We have been busy drafting fantasy football teams and watching the first week of games. I was quite pleased that the Patriots won on Sunday afternoon and even more pleased when Tampa Bay had a terrible game. Brady and Gronk weren't looking great and I selfishly enjoyed watching those traitors suffer. If you've been around for awhile, you know I have always loved Gronk so I feel a bit betrayed by him. Brady I think all of New England is angry with but I don't know what he expected to happen.

It's nice to have football back on for another bit of normalcy since Tim and I spend most of our Sunday with football on the tv!

We are still going on a lot of walks around here! Tim said to me the other day that no other dog in the neighborhood seems to be getting two walks a day...but this girl does! I have been doing a healthy living program lately and I will talk about it soon, but it is definitely encouraging me to get out and be active every day! 

So that's what's been up around here lately. Let me know what you've been up to!

 

Sophie's April Barkbox

Another Monday working from home! I think we are on week 6 now and I never imagined that I would ever be allowed to work from home for 6 weeks but here we are! Sophie is thrilled, especially since Tim is home with us part of the time so she has all her humans in one place.

Today we are sharing Sophie's Barkbox for April. She always knows when the box is for her, it is so cute. 

We were waiting for Tim to open up the Barkbox with us at this point, because it's a full family event.

Neither of us will open it with her without the other because we both love it so much! She gets so excited and it's just the cutest thing.

Clearly she was getting tired of waiting for dad. 

This months Barkbox was themed "Night at the squeakeasy" and we thought it was very cute! I also want to point out that one toy is missing from the above picture because as soon as the lid opened Sophie grabbed the first toy she could get to and ran off. 

The toys that Barkbox sends over are always super intricate with so many details! I also love that there are toys inside most of the toys so if your pup destroys them then you have a ball or something like that for them to play with.

This is the bouncer who looks super angry.

A two in one toy, the whiskey glass with an ice cube inside. Sophie is loving the whiskey glass because she can stick her face right inside it and make crinkly sounds.

This is the toy that Sophie ran off with, she seems to like this one a lot too!

As usual all the treats are a hit with Sophie. She ate her long term chew in about three minutes and we've been giving her treats from the bags whenever she's a good girl which is pretty often. 

Do you get Barkbox for your dog? If so, let me know what toys you got this month!

Paint Touchups

It is a really rainy Monday around here today! We are supposed to have rain and strong winds that could potentially cause a 72 hour power outage so that should really add some interest to this whole quarantine thing! If I don't show up on Wednesday you'll know why :)

Today I'm just sharing a quick project that made our kitchen look a little more put together!

In the kitchen, under our microwave there was a strip that wasn't painted. This is left over from when we moved our cabinets and microwave up a bit and hadn't been touched up since. 

It just looked dirty and gross and needed a quick touchup.

I not only had this gross area to touch up (luckily the previous owners left us all the paint that was used- the whole house was repainted right before we moved in), I also wanted to touch up the baseboard where Sophie chewed up a storm.

After I sanded the area, Sophie was very interested in the area again but luckily she wasn't biting the area anymore, just sniffing.

I want to point out that the floor is dirty from the sanding and I didn't vacuum up till after taking pictures so you'll have to ignore my dirty floor!

Now it's not perfect but it's painted and blends in much nicer now! I also had to paint the baseboard opposite of it where she had bitten the baseboard but not nearly as much as the other one.

All painted!

And here is the area below the microwave...

So much better! My painting isn't amazing or anything but as long as it blends in that works for me! Also it's driving me nuts that the dishtowels are uneven in this picture. I will show you why I was distracted during this time....

Someone is a paint sniffer :)

This girl makes me laugh so much and keeps us on our toes every day!

Have a great day everyone!

March Barkbox

Last week we received Sophie's Barkbox in the mail! I'm telling you one of the few things that can give us that much joy in the mail is her Barkbox. Especially with everything that is going on we were so excited to open it.

Sophie couldn't sit still when Tim was trying to get her to sit, she was just SO excited!

The theme this month was the Australian Outbark and I was so excited when we opened the box and saw that! What a cute theme!

Every box has three plush toys. The ones we received in our box were:

A koala

A platypus

and a crocodile.

They are all super cute but the biggest hit so far has been the platypus. For some reason Sophie is drawn to it and we played quite a bit of tug with her with this one. 

In your Barkbox they always have a picture of all the other toys that went out. I love the lizard and the kangaroo! I'm always so tempted to order more but really does this girl need more toys?

We the answer seems to be yes because I added this piggies in a blanket toy to her box because I saw it on Facebook and thought it was funny!

We always give her one of each kind of treat so she can test them out and both were instant winners. The "long term" chews aren't quite as long term anymore. She can suck those down in a couple of minutes, but she still seems to enjoy them at least!

The only picture I managed to get of her during the box opening. This girl is always blurry when it comes to her Barkbox. She has the platypus in her mouth in this picture. (Turtle pictured is not from Barkbox and was gifted to her back in the fall)

Do your dogs get Barkbox? What toys did they get this month?