I was ready to read about the last firefighter in The Man on Fire Series by Samantha Christy, but the 3rd book isn’t out yet. So that meant I had to venture off and read something different. I had never heard of Ilsa Madden-Mills, but I hadn’t heard of Samantha Christy either. Something caused me to go ahead and take a chance. I’m really glad I did. However, I did find this was a stand-alone that was the third of another series. Stand-alone as in you can read and not miss anything, but I read this series out of order and wished I hadn’t. So news flash, this is the 3rd book. Start with I Dare You and then I Bet You before you read I Hate You.
After reading Igniting Ivy I was leery to read this next book. While reading Igniting Ivy I kept wondering who was going to be the next firefighter to have a book. I had it narrowed down to 3 candidates and this one was one of my 3 choices. I love that it was Denver in fact. Especially because you saw part of his story in Stealing Sawyer. We got more of the story and we were able to watch it all unfold. I was cool with that! (more…)
This book ticked me off. In all the female characters and even some of the male characters that Samantha Christy writes, they overthink, over-analyze, and sometimes are just a total pain in the butt. I wanted to scream at Ivy. She really upset me. She was being stupid. I’m glad that she was a book character and not a real-life person. She might need a bitch slap (pardon my language). I’m just glad that there is a man on the cover of this book! And by the way, one thing I love about Samantha Christy’s writing… you see both main character perspectives. (more…)
Woohooo… go me, right? Oh… but… here’s where I mention that I baked an Angel Food Cake IN. MY. OWN. KITCHEN. WHAT!!??!!??
Yes! You read that correctly. I baked a cake in my kitchen. In my oven. So super exciting if you ask me!! Today I think I’ll focus on said kitchen. Then the next post will be about said Angel Food Cake. Deal?
So… here’s a little back information for you about me and Vanities because I’m sure you wondered… My whole life I’ve never had a vanity with drawers. There, I said it.
Growing up at my parent’s house and now back there again, my bathroom sink doesn’t have drawers. I do remember when my parents were building the house I asked for vanity sink drawers, but it didn’t happen.
Moving on to the dorms at school… The sink was sort of free-standing in a way. It just hooked to the wall. It wasn’t completely down. Plus the one in our room I had to share with a roommate. It was the kitchen sink as well as the bathroom sink. It also had… you guessed… NO drawers.
We had community bathrooms in the dorm I lived in. They didn’t have drawers either. I was like vanity drawer deprived.
It just so happened there was an auction for home remodeling the Saturday after we bought our house. How convenient. It also happened to be one of the coldest days of the year thus far, other than when we had snow back in November.
The girls went with us. Poor them! We finally sent them out to the truck with the keys and my phone (Tbug had hers) for entertainment. It wasn’t going fast and boy was it cold. I think Cold is an understatement at this point. Holy cow!
They had cabinets, flooring, wood, paneling, sinks, fans, you name it… We walked away with the tile for the backsplash of my kitchen, which apparently at this point I can’t find a picture of. I didn’t have my phone (read above paragraph) and hubby never sent me the pictures I took :).
We called it quits long before the auction was over. It started at either 9 or 10. We left at 1. It was cold and boring, and the things we wanted still hadn’t sold. I talked to a couple who went to these often and they said that one of the previous auctions lasted until after 7pm the last time.
I’ve been back and forth and back and forth again. Do I want to post all while this is happening or not? So many questions. I finally decided I’d love to have a journal of it all and why not post it here. So we’re going backward, back to November 29, 2018, to be exact. That’s the date that we closed on our house.
Hubby and I may have been a little excited to sign on the house if you can imagine. We got to the place early and there is a coffee shop around the corner so I convinced him to get coffee. A morning coffee date :). He also sent our realtor a message asking if she’d like coffee. She said she was good. Can’t say we didn’t try.
Every year, I really feel like one of the true starts to the Christmas season is the trip to Ft. Worth. Since the hubs and I have been together, we’ve been able to attend Fort Worth and the NCHA Futurity every year. This year was no different.
Thursday night we headed out after everyone got off work. We made it as far as Dennison, TX, before calling it a night. The next morning, we woke up and off to Fort Worth we headed. Before we left the hotel though, we grabbed breakfast. Abug did her own hair for Breakfast. Who is to argue with a 4-year-old?
Then we were off. As we got closer to Ft. Worth, we dealt with more rain. Usually, we have to rent a vehicle to haul all of us. This year we had a white Ford Expedition. On the lot, they had a Chevy Suburban, but we thought we’d like the Ford better. After getting home, we weren’t sure if we wouldn’t have liked the Suburban better? Possibly more cargo room… but I guess one will never know. (more…)
I’ve been back and forth on do I share these before pictures now or wait until I have finished pictures of each room. Now or wait? Hmm… now or wait? I couldn’t decide. Finally, I decided… I guess now. A lot of people have been asking me what the house looks/looked like. Let’s just do this thing.
Here is where I also state that the house was described in terrible terms to us. If you look at these pictures, the house really isn’t “terrible.” We are remodeling it. In fact, as you saw the other day I had a kitchen/bathroom combo. Luckily, that has gone away. There is now a dividing wall again. We even have a bathroom floor!! There’s no plumbing so don’t plan on using the bathroom or kitchen for that matter any time soon.
My bathroom vanity is now in along with the sink. I have a bathroom mirror. We know what potty (yuck I hate that word… haha) we are going to get, but we haven’t yet. Our bathroom won’t have a bathtub, just a shower but we know what we want.
Kitchen appliances have been ordered as well as kitchen cabinets. So we’re making progress. Oh… my bathroom faucet should be in any day. The shower um… spout (word??) is in. So we’re making progress.
So without further ado, here are the before pictures I actually took before we even signed for the house. They had accepted our offer at this point, but we hadn’t signed. Our realtor came out and let us in so I could get some measurements and I went ahead and took pictures too while I was at it. This was the Monday before Thanksgiving.
Bedroom 1 (only because it’s the first one I’m showing you :))
So here’s the good thing about this bedroom… our plans are to repaint the walls, tear up the flooring, new lighting/fan, get rid of the window AC unit, and do something about the trim. Oh and curtains or something for window covering. Otherwise, it’s not in terrible shape.
Everyone is all talking about Christmas and Holiday Home Tours and I’m over here like wait, WHAT?!?! I want to do that. Oh, wait… I can’t. Why? Well, look above. Do you know what you’re looking at? If not, I’ll tell you… It’s my open concept bathroom/Kitchen. Why put a wall between when you can make them one and take a shower while stirring something on the stove, right?
I’m kidding… sort of… I’ll explain. Right here on the left side of the wall (look for the shovel leaning up against the wall on the right side…) you really are looking into the kitchen and bathroom. And there really is no wall separating the two. They always say be prepared if you plan on doing something like this because you don’t know what you’re going to find. Well, what we found was there was a leak for what appeared to be YEARS in the bathroom where the bathtub/shower combo was and the floor was rotted. In fact, the wall behind where the window is was rotted all the way through and you can actually see the back side of the siding through the house. That’s not normal. Nope, not normal at all. (more…)
