Photography project

So I'm working on a project for my photography class and I was hoping for some input from others out there. Also, I can cheat and work on this blog post while still technically doing homework! :)

We have to do a presentation and have a collection of photos that represent a specific theme, but each photo needs to speak for itself.
I've decided my theme is going to be life in its simplicity. I'm using black and whites as a technique to help emphasize the simplicity part.

Paying bills

doing homework

cooking

relaxing

What do you think? Good idea, or boring idea? These are just a few quick shots I took. I'm going to take more to play around with the idea some.

Any suggestions are much appreciated!

Mini Vaca

Welp, I said I would be back on Monday to tell you guys about my little weekend vacation... but I wasn't.

My excuse? Sometime last week I became addicted to the Bachelor. I know, I'm a couple of months late to the party. But, it's all I heard about for a couple of weeks and decided I needed to find out for myself what the fuss was about. Therefore, my house is a complete disaster (still...), I haven't written a single post this week, and I just changed out of my sweats like 20 minutes ago because Alex has company over.

Good news though, I finished the season about an hour ago, so I can have a life again! As everyone knows already, it was a dramatic story. All I'm going to say on the issue is that it really does seem like Ben and Courtney are a good match for each other. I think it was obvious that they could both be themselves with each other, and they could be a little nerdy (which I am clearly a fan of).

Alright... Back to real life.

Our mini vacation was great! We left Thursday night for Bend/ Sunriver, which is east of us. It's a beautiful town that we are considering a move to, but we'll see what happens.

The weekend was full of intense (and a little bitter, on my part) games of Settlers of Catan, a trip to the High Desert Museum, checking out the local college campus, eating great food, and staying up late to star gaze in the hot tub.

Of course, no trip is complete without Bret trying to be a stow away.

The animals at the High Desert museum were fun!

Above are our friends, Michelle and Allen.

And then of course my hottie husband below!

Sunday was his birthday! Happy Birthday baby! I love you so much and had a wonderful weekend with you! I can't believe how much our lives have changed in the last year and I am SO excited to start the next chapter in our lives! You mean everything to me!

Since his birthday was the day we were heading home I wanted to do something fun, just the two of us. So we went on a gorgeous drive from Bend to Portland.

It was so pretty! We drove right past Mount Hood, and through some awesome desert land. Of course since we were driving the whole time I didn't get a lot of pictures, but just know, it was the best view of Oregon I have ever seen.

When we got to Portland we stopped by Ikea, {of course :)}

and I surprised Alex by buying him a new guitar!

{Imagine awesome picture that I forgot to take of Alex's surprised face and beautiful guitar here}

All in all it was a great weekend.

And, I saw some signs that spring may be on its way!

Ok guys, that's all I've got for now. 

Enjoy the rest of your week!

Dresser, Before & After

So this weekend we took some time to paint this dresser that we got about two years ago. It was a craigslist find. Lovely reddish brown with ugly handles.

Before:

Broken drawers.

After:

New porcelain knobs and silver pulls

These next pictures are a little shameful... Don't judge me.

We have ugly carpet :(. We are renting so we have an excuse. I hate showing pictures of our rooms simply because of the carpet. The downstairs has nice carpet, the upstairs however does not. We almost didn't want to move in just because of the carpet (it was installed after we had agreed to move in). If my landlord happens to see this: I'm sorry! We just aren't brown carpet people and it makes it very hard to decorate.

We tried to cover up with a few rugs, but they are expensive and never big enough. We might buy another one of these from Ikea just so it covers a good portion of the room.

We made these crates and I had them on the wall, but I took it down to use it on top of the dresser. put some books, a ball jar and an old picture I took in high school for a photography class. This is my old dog Tilly. She was such a good dog. She passed away a few years ago. RIP Tilly.

Mine and Bret's (our cat) view from the bed. Much better and more complete. Eventually I will have a whole before and after of our entire room. Once it is finished of course.

Enjoy the rest of your week!

Linking up to:

Table, Part 2

Finally! My table is done almost done. I am way too impatient to wait until it is finished, but in the pictures it will probably look the same. We fixed all the problems we previously had, wood glue and wood filler were our saving grace in this project. No wobbly legs, no gaps between the boards! I was really frightened that it was going to be a complete disaster turning our first project into our last project. Thankfully that did not happen. The only thing we have left to do is potentially put another coat of paint on the legs and then seal it with polyurethane.
Also, those chairs that I was working on the other day... I just finished them yesterday. I've been working on a lot of random things so it takes me longer to finish each project. I also have a bad case of going to the fabric store and finding five different fabrics I want, buying at least two and then don't ever start the project. I'm pretty sure I got that one from my mom. (I love you mom!)

Well, here is the semi-finished product...

I love it!

This picture hardly captures the actual look of the wood or the color. Again, I'm working with a cheap camera.

Now we just need to work on getting rid of that monster shelf next to it. Not sure if you caught a glimpse of those old windows behind it, those are a current work in progress (will hopefully have a post up about those soon).

Since my last post I also made these flowers to spruce up my lamp:

Just used some left over fabric I had from the recent pillows I made for our couch.

And will soon be working on this:

There's Bret, he couldn't handle being left out.

Replacing these purple pillows for white ones. I went a little crazy with color in my living room, we also have some turquoise blue that isn't shown in this picture. It was all becoming too much for my eyes to handle. Also I soon hope to be doing some upgrades to this futon chair, the cats are driving me crazy with this thing. I am going to attempt at making it just a regular chair and attaching the cushion so it doesn't sag any more. I will also be covering it with some pretty fabric and potentially painting it again.

Well, that's all I've got for now. Thanks for reading today!