WAAAAAAAAAAAA HOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Pronounced "wa-hoo", but in an extra-excited, jumping up and down sort of way.....

I am elated, overjoyed, and exuberant as I announce.....

Drum roll, please......

One of my very dear, truly loved friends, Melissa, has met her soul mate, and is engaged to be married to this wonderful man, David!!!



In all the excitement, I have yet to get all the juicy details, but I couldn't wait to trumpet this news, even to those who don't know this wonderful woman!!

She truly is incredible, and I am blessed enough to have been in her life while she traveled some really rough roads. What a gift from God to get to watch someone grow and blossom in such awesome ways.

Congratulations, my dear friend! Marriage is the most exciting journey I have ever been on- enjoy every minute of it!

Can't Hardly Wait...

What?!?!

You're so excited to see my freshly painted walls that you're practically peeing your pants??? Yeah, me too.

You're going to have to wait a bit longer, because we ran out of paint as I was finishing the very last wall! AND, a certain someone, who, ahem, shall remain nameless, came to see the progress of our painting extravaganza, and proceeded to ram her Coach purse into the fresh paint.

While she was freaking out about the paint soaking into the fabric, I was freaking out about the fact the the texture and paint were thoroughly smudged.

Exhibit A:



Onto another paint-related topic.... oil primer.

Did you know that it makes you high? Having never been high myself, I didn't catch the warning signs. But, on Friday night as Brooke and I started prepping my guest bathroom walls for painting by first applying oil-based primer, I discovered a new experience:

Kelli: This stuff smells horrible!!

Brooke: Why are you talking with such an accent?

Kelli: What accent? You have a an accent!

Brooke: I feel funny...

Kelli: Maybe we should open a window...

(commence singing along with the Little Mermaid on Pandora.com with incredibly thick Southern accents)

Kelli: BRIAN!! Come see this how it looks!!

Brian: Holy freaking cow! You guys didn't open a window?? Are you feeling okay??

Brooke & Kelli: No. We should have a glass of wine...

So, I got high on Friday. Literally. Lord knows how many brain cells I killed. Then, when we had that glass of wine, I had one sip and passed out on the couch, with Brian barely catching my glass before it spilled. I'm not kidding, y'all, when Little Mermaid starts coming out in an incredibly thick Southern accent, and you think it sounds good, you're high.

Here's the bathroom, all oil-primed. If the picture's blurry, you know why....



What's next, you ask? The finished product!! But you're going to have to wait, because I have to buy a whole gallon of texture-paint to touch up the very top of one wall, and spot where the coach purse attacked my wall.

Until then....

Furniture

If we (Brian and I) were smart, we would have spent the last 4 1/2 years of our marriage putting money aside each month specifically for furniture. We would have done research and identified pieces that we wanted to purchase, and once we had enough saved for said piece, we would make that investment. If we were smart and had done this, we would have a house full of nice, grown-up furniture. As it is, we have a house full of our old college furniture with a couple of nice pieces thrown in here and there.

We have been so blessed to have a family (grandparents and parents) who have gifted several pieces of furniture to us, and wonderful friends who gave us a beautiful dining room table. So, dum-de-de-dum......

WAIT FOR IT!!!

...Our house, for the first time ever, actually looks like a grown-up house! We have stuff on the walls (it actually looks like we're living there, as opposed to looking like we had just moved in). We have filled our gymnastics room (so termed by the Stout's who LIVE for gymnastics) with furniture, even though we think a formal living room is totally pointless at this point in our lives. Check it out!!


Formal Living Room

And!!!

WAIT FOR IT.........

We have received permission from our landlord to paint! So, we'll be painting over the awful wallpaper in the next week or so! Debbie G! Are you ready for this?!?! (Debbie is our wonderful Realtor who swore when we moved in that this house was a find, even WITH the God-awful wallpaper. And, she even offered to help us texture and paint over it! The time has come, Debbie!)

Pictured below is one of the primary reasons we need to paint...



Oh yes, my blogger friends, that is a sparkly panda sticker covering up a hole in the wall in our guest bathroom. (Just for the record, both the hole and the panda sticker were here before we moved in.) Surrounding the panda sticker, you get a lovely view of the really dark wallpaper in our window-less guest bathroom. You can imagine the cave-like experience that guests have while using our facilities.

So! Get ready for Kelli & Brian to grow up! Or rather, have our house grow up! We have been truly blessed with this home, and really believe that God has called us to be good stewards of this home while we live here. Meaning that we will treat it like our own. Meaning that the wallpaper must go. Also, I feel a compelling need to make a beautiful home for my husband. (Am I nesting!???! What's this about??) :)

Get excited!