What we've been up to lately....

Ok, so I admit it... I'm a really bad blogger.... like.... REALLY BAD. I read so many awesome blogs where they post once a day or so. How do they do it? I don't even have kids, and I find it hard to post once a week. Anywho, I just wanted to give y'all a quick update on what the Mr. and I've been up to lately...

1) The Mr. got into seminary!! Whoop Whoop! We're excited to start this journey to fulfill God's calling.

2) We're still priming and painting our little hearts away. We actually ran out of primer this past weekend, so we'll need to get some more before we can really finish up the trim & interior doors. This is possibly one of the biggest undertakings we've done so far just because it's so time consuming. I'll be so glad when it's finally over!

3) The Mr. and I are running three days a week now using the C25K program. It's tough just because I'm so out of shape, but I know it's good for me. We're on Week 5 of the 9 week program. We should be on week 7, but we got a little off track for a couple of weeks... whoops.

4) I've started couponing! I've found some great websites like savingwellspendingless.com which are definitely helping me. I'm definitely a newbie at the whole thing, but if I can get good at it, it can save us a lot on our grocery bill. I've even made this binder to hold all of my clipped coupons (Thanks to Kim, a lady at our church, for giving me this idea first).

So nice and organized... I love it. Sorry the pic is bad. The Mr. took it at night on his phone.

5) I'm still working on the whole sewing thing. I've bought some fabrics that I hope to make something out of soon. So far, I've only sewn lines on an old t-shirt... so actually making something should be interesting.

Confession: I'm notorious for starting something and not finishing. I get bored easily and have to change up the routine. Also -- I'm a perfectionist (yes, I know, it's not good.... but I am.) I do think I'm responsible when it comes to work (aka when someone is counting on me to do it). However, I find it a bit harder to finish things I'm doing for myself. I just easily frustrated, lazy, or (like I said before) just plain bored. So, since I've acknowledged that I have this problem, y'all should know that I am making an effort to remedy it. Therefore, I'm hoping posting this for the world to see will encourage me to finish/stick with something, be it couponing, sewing, running, whatever. Hopefully, I can stick with all of it.

Another thing I'm working on is trying to get up earlier, you know, so I have more time to ease into my day and not always be so rushed getting out the door. Needless to say, I'm failing miserably at this one... What can I say? This girl likes her sleep. But seriously.... I'm gonna need to work harder on that... ;)

I plan on posting a list that the Mr. and I made of things we'd like to do around the house. Also -- I plan to post pics of the house from before we moved in (aka in its original state). That way, you guys can follow along as we try to mark things off our list and spruce up our home.... it should be interesting...

Hope you guys are having a great day! :)

Seriously!?!

Ok... so you guys are NOT going to believe this. It's actually pretty ironic...

Someone hit and broke our mailbox.


No, I'm not kidding. Someone really did hit and break our mailbox. We thought it was pretty ironic since we had just posted about finally painting the hose clamps that were the "quick fix" in the first place.

One Thursday evening, the Mr. and I went out for a run in the neighborhood. A car passed us, headed down our street, and immediately came back out of the neighborhood. As we turned the corner, we realized our mailbox had been knocked down, completely broken off the post (which, in case you don't remember, is iron). The actual mailbox was dented up a little so that it didn't close completely, but whoever hit it was nice enough to set it in the grass behind the post.

After we realized what happened, the Mr. and I headed out to Lowe's and bought some more hose clamps. After using 4 more hose clamps, we managed to get it up so we could still receive mail, but it was definitely not sturdy. Unfortunately this is the only pic I got of all the hose clamps we had to use. I didn't even get pics of the mailbox all broken and on the ground... I was a little too ill to think about doing that at the moment.

At first, we thought we'd have to buy a whole new mailbox & post to the tune of $305 (as quoted to us since they had to custom build it... blah). But luckily, we squirmed our way out of that.

The day after the incident I told my boss about it and showed him a pic of the once standing mailbox. He realized the ornamental iron on the mailbox was a design that his grandfather made at an iron foundry in town. He still knew the owner, so he called for me. Sure enough, it was a design his grandfather had created. The iron piece was originally $8, but they gave it to me for free. I brought it home and the next weekend, the Mr. and I went to Lowe's and grabbed a $20 mailbox. We also grabbed some primer, glossy black spray paint, and a few more hose clamps. Then, we had to reconstruct the mailbox....

We started by unbolting the mailbox from the iron decorative piece. You can see how it was attached in this picture. 

It was attached to what I call a "t-bar" type of piece of metal, which was then attached the iron decorative piece.

 Since we didn't have the materials to make the little "t-bar section" that holds mailbox, we had to reuse the original one by prying if off the old broken decorative iron.

 
 You can see what it looks like once it's pryed off. It was simply two separate sections that were welded together.

Once we got the two pieces separated, and since we could't weld it all together, we used small hose clamps to hold the "t-bar section" to the decorative iron section as you can see below. 

Then the Mr. took our new mailbox and drilled some holes in the bottom of it so it would sit nicely on top of the "t-bar section." In this pic, he was using the pre-drilled "t-bar section" as his guide to drill holes in the new mailbox.

Then we used some nuts and bolts to hold the mailbox on the "t-bar." 

Then we used some more hose claps to hold the decorative piece the to mailbox post... as mentioned in this post. And then we primed everything.

Lastly, we sprayed it all with a glossy black spray paint.

And now for the big reveal. (Yes, I blurred our house number...)

(Ignore the icky fingerprints we left on it... they washed off in the rain... lol)

Not too shabby considering this what it looked like after we fixed it the first time.

It's all quite humorous looking back on it. It's a good thing we didn't go ahead and buy a new one when we first had problems with it. We're also praising the good Lord that we got a break by getting the ornamental iron piece for free. Small world, huh? So, all in all, we spent about $30 fixing it this time, and hopefully, there won't be a need to fix it anytime soon....

P.S. Our new neighbors actually just knocked down and broke their mailbox... we gave them some tips on how to fix it, but I guess it's just something about this neighborhood...