SHOW US YOUR LIFE - Your Family

It's time for another "Show Us Your Life".  Instead of sharing about my husband and puppy (whom I adore and could talk about forever), I'm going to share about the family I grew up with!

The most recent family picture, 9/2009

My parents were very young when they had me and during my early years they worked so hard to make sure that I would have a great life.  They had a lot of help as I was growing up (my dad is one of 6 so I have a ton of aunts and uncles and both of my grandmothers were instrumental in raising me), but they had to grow up very quickly.  They were and still are the BEST parents.  I consider my mom to be one of my best friends and my dad is always the first person I turn to when I need help or just someone to laugh with. 

Don't get me wrong, I was a very typical teenage girl and between the ages of 12 and 18, my mom and I were not friends.  I'm pretty sure we didn't even like each other (there's a huge difference between loving someone and actually LIKING them).  I thought she didn't know anything and she thought I was a brat.  Luckily, it was a stage.  As soon as I left for college, I realized how much I needed them and how well they took care of me.  I talked to my mom a lot more than my friends did while I was away at college and in the 4.5 years since I graduated, she's become the first person I turn to when I need to vent and when I need to make a decision.  We like the same books, TV shows and movies and shop at the same clothing stores.  I am SO glad that we have the relationship that we do, I couldn't ask for a better mom or friend.

I am a total daddy's girl.  I'm pretty sure I always have been and I don't think that will ever change.  My dad is one of the funniest guys I know and he loves to hang out and just relax.  We have the same sense of humor (often finding movies and TV shows hilarious while my mom looks on in confusion) and loves helping people and taking care of things.  He doesn't talk much (not many of the men in our family do, the women do enough of that), but when he does, it's important or hilarious.  Also, my dad can fix anything!  Seriously, he always has the right solution and the right tool to do the work!  Whenever we prepare to fix or build anything, my dad is the first call...and he always knows just what to say!  My dad has supported me through every step of my life and never failed to mention how proud of me he was.

My brother Marc is 10 years younger than me and while we've never been best friends, we're as close as we can be (he was 8 when I went away to college and I haven't lived in the same house with him on a long-term basis since).  When I got to high school, we had nothing in common and there wasn't much for us to talk about.  But when I went away, I realized how much I missed my brother, how I hated that I wasn't around as he was growing up.  Every summer break, I spent as much time as I could with him and we've reached a good point in the brother/sister relationship.  He's old enough now that we can talk about life, share music, go out to lunch together and I can give him advice. It's incredibly hard for me to believe he's 18 and I feel like just yesterday I was holding him in the hospital the day he was born. Marc is incredibly funny, a little sensitive and loves his car. Despite not being super close when we were younger, I love my little (but much taller) brother more than I can say and hope I get to see a lot more of him now that we'll live closer.

I am extremely close to my family.  I'm in my late 20s and have had no problem living with my parents and brother for the past 2 months.  I know this wouldn't fly with most people...but my parents are my friends and after living over 1000 miles away for the past 4 years, I value any time I can spend with them, long or short.

SHOW US YOUR LIFE - Alma Maters

HAIL TO PITT!

Kelly's SUYL this week is all about Alma Maters.  I'm super excited to share this one because I LOVED The University of Pittsburgh and everything that went along with it.  I chose to go for two reasons:

1) My really great friend Pat had applied and I didn't want to go away to college alone...
2) I was required (by my parents) to stay in the state for money purposes.

Regardless of the reasons, I loved the city, the people, the classes, the parties, the activities, etc. and I look back on those 5 years as some of the best of my life.  Here are the main reasons for that:

  

My sorority sisters

  

My pledge sister class



My fabulous little sister



Resident Assistant staff (best job ever!!)



Being in Pittsburgh when the Steelers won the 2006 Superbowl!!!



Meeting my two amazing best friends!



Finding my husband <3


I bleed Blue and Gold and I'm proud to call myself a Panther.  I love the University of Pittsburgh :)    



SHOW US YOUR LIFE - Guest Rooms

It's time for Guest Room pictures!  Despite living in Mississippi, we actually have had guests!  Granted, those guests happened to be my parents and brother once and Mr. L's parents twice, but they stayed here and used the guest bed!  This room is small and I really didn't take any time to try to make it super pretty, but I'll let you look at it for yourself!


View from the hallway.  The armoire came with the set, but it's empty now.

  

View of pretty much the entire room from the doorway. 



The Guest Bed! 

The bed, side tables and armoire are from IKEA.  This set was our very first purchase as a couple when we lived together in Pittsburgh.  It's not made of much, but it held up pretty well until we bought our current set.  My favorite part of the bed happens to be the throw pillows.  When we move and get the chance to be more creative with our walls/colors, I want to base the theme off those pillows (from Pier 1!)


View across the room. 

The closet holds my wedding dress, wedding bouquet, graduation cap/gown, and our exercise ball (which hasn't seen any use since Florida).  It's a catch-all place for things we like to keep out of the way.  The bookshelf was mine in grad school and holds my Real Simple magazines and stuffed animals that I'm not sure what to do with :)

This was my grandfather's.  He loved light houses and when he passed away, I took these two (the other is on the other night stand) to remind me of him.

Our "name" sign.  I've done a good job of keeping our name out of the blog, but I love this sign and wanted to show it off.  We went to Seaworld one month before we got married and had one of the vendors make this sign to showcase what would soon be both of our last names.  I LOVE it, but had a hard time finding a good place for it.  I think it works in this room!

Thanks for looking around!!!!

Oh yeah...HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!  We didn't "celebrate" exactly.  Last night was our trick-or-treat, but Mr. L and I got tickets to the Mississippi State/Kentucky game, so we went to the game instead (which was awesome!).  This is year number 2 that we've missed handing out candy to the kiddies...we'll give it a shot next year :) 

SHOW US YOUR LIFE - Office

So far, this post is empty.  My office pictures are currently on my camera and my camera is not here :(  As soon as I can get some time to upload the pics, I'll update this post!

SHOW US YOUR LIFE - Dining Room & Kitchen

I am so sad that I'm so late on these entries!  I was so excited about Kelly's Korner show us where you live series, but I just haven't been able to keep up!  So, even though I couldn't link up to her entries, I decided to post mine anyway!  I've combined the Dining Room & Kitchen posts, since in our house, they are pretty much the same room!  Onto the L's Dining Room!

This is the first view of the dining room when you come in from the living room.  We bought this set recently and with the leaf, it can seat up to 8 (though we only have 6 chairs!)

Here's the view from the kitchen.  We love the half wall because our house feels like one big room, even though we have really distinct spaces.

An upclose of the buffet.  We were initially looking for a tall hutch, but due to our budget we went with this low buffet.  It has great storage and I love that it can hold all my miscellaneous stuff!

The sign above the buffet.  Pretty much how we feel about our weekends (we feel this way about our weekdays too, we just don't have the time to enjoy them that way!)

One of my favorite pieces in our house.  For obvious reasons, Mr. L and I are really patriotic and we love anything we can add to our home that emphasizes that.  The national anthem is played on base every weekday at 5:00pm and I have to say that I still sometimes get choked up when I hear it, so when we saw this plate, we knew we had to have it in our house.

My table centerpiece.  The flowers are from Kirklands and the blue bottle is one of my favorite things in the house.  When Mr. L and I got married, his brother and sister-in-law visited and got a bottle of wine for the four us to share and talk about our marriage over.  They took the bottle with them when they left and the next time we saw them, they presented us with this flattened bottle...it's the bottle of wine!  My sister-in-law explained that someone had done that for them when they got married and they use theirs to serve cheese on.  For now, the bottle sits here on our table and I get to see it every day, which I really love.

And here is the view from the dining room into the kitchen (see, just one big room)...

View of the kitchen from the living room.  We have tons of storage and a really nice layout.  It's easy for both of us to move around in the kitchen together, even with a dog under our feet!

Here's the sink and our window that looks out onto our screened in porch.  The stuff on our counters is a mix of Bed, Bath & Beyond and Hobby Lobby.

This is the BEST part of the kitchen.  We use this island EVERY day, whether we're preparing our food or using it to hold bags from the grocery store or shopping, to setting out food buffet style when we have people over.  All the cabinets and drawers are full, thank goodness for all the storage!

Here's the view from the kitchen to our living room.  We love the open floor plan.

Our "nook".  This is our catch-all spot.  Our laptop, the mail, our change, family pictures, keys, our phone, and our calendar take up this space and sometimes it's so full you can't find the computer or see the actual desktop.  It's been nice to have this space, but I will admit sometimes I wish it wasn't there so the clutter couldn't hang out there!

Just wanted to share these.  We got these plates as wedding gifts from my wonderful friend Nancy.  They were so beautiful that we wanted to share them, so they found homes on the top of cabinets where everyone can see them!

The way out! On the left, the two doors are closets (a large one for a pantry, a small one for a broom closet, but I use both as pantries!)  Beyond that on the left is the door to the garage.  The door straight ahead is our half bath and the door on the right is the laundry room/Lily's room.

Thanks for looking around!! :)



SHOW US YOUR LIFE - Master Bedroom

I can't seem to get these posted on Fridays!  Anyway, I'm participating in Kelly's Korner Show Us Your Life again this week and it's Master Bedrooms.  I'm not terribly fond of this room in our house...it works, it fulfills its purpose, but the arrangement is a little strange and it's not exactly what I envisioned for our room.  However, I do love the white bedding with green accents, I'm pretty sure I'll hang on to those for a while.  I figure I'll work on that when we get to our new place *fingers crossed it's new*

This is a (very dark, my camera isn't great) picture from the door and looking to the left.  Lily wanted you all to see where she sleeps every night.

This is what you see as you walk from the hallway into the room.  There's just enough space for the dresser against the wall and still have space to walk into the room.  The frame was a wedding present from a friend who speaks Arabic and wrote us a message.  The vases are from Kirkland's and the frame is from Hallmark and has a wedding picture in it.

This is our gigantic bed.  We bought this furniture set about 2 years ago when we lived in an apartment that had an over-sized master.  We didn't measure or anything and it fit just great.  Here, not so much.  My night table has to sit sideways to fit and the room feels like a closet with the huge pieces in it.  Also, because of the room layout, we had to cover up the large window which made me sad.  The bedroom set is from Rooms-2-Go, the bedding from Bed, Bath, & Beyond and the lamps are from Target.

A look to the left.  My dresser that I love.  That door leads to the master bath (another day!)

This is my dresser!  The TV was not always there, but due to Mr. L's early bedtime, I need the TV to keep me occupied when I decide to go to bed when he does.  Also, we both like falling asleep to a tv or movie.  The pictures are a wedding photo and a picture of us from his college military ball.  The art reflected in the mirror is from Walmart.

And lastly, the way out!  That little sliver on the left is our walk-in closet.  The door on the right goes into the hallway.  The art on the wall is a print I picked up when I went to France in high school.  Thanks for looking around!!

SHOW US YOUR LIFE - Living Rooms

I follow a blog called Kelly's Korner (love her blog by the way, her daughter is too cute!) and she does this great thing called "Show Us Your Life".  I participated in few in the past, and after a break for the summer, she's back at it!  This time, it's house tours and I'm soooooo super excited for it!  One of my favorite things to do is to sneak a peek into other people's homes (okay, that sounds creepy...I'm just really into seeing how other's decorate!!)  This week is Living Rooms and I decided to not only look at the pics, but participate as well.  Behold, the L's living room!!

**Disclaimer: I LOVE interior design and everything that goes along with homes...but I'm not super great at making it happen in my home.  I'm forever looking for better ways to make our house scream "us", but I'm a terrible shopper and am incredibly indecisive.  So, I pretend I'm awesome at it :)**

This is our living room view from the kitchen/dining room.  We live in new privatized military housing, so while the square footage and layout is AMAZING, the tan walls and tan carpet leave much to be desired.  We are allowed to paint, however we are currently in training, so we don't plan on staying longer than a year and a half, so I just don't feel like repainting (which is required) before we move again.  Of course, our couches from our previous home just so happened to match the carpet and walls, so I was left with a pretty bland canvas.  We bought dark wood tables when we moved in to offset the light colored everything and I tried to invest in dark accessories to help tone it down.  Look closely and you'll see that Lily made sure to be involved in the house tour too (along with her favorite frisbee toy)!

This is the view from the front door.  Lily once again needed to be in the picture (she takes after her momma).  As you can see the living room is ridiculously oversized for me, Mr. L and Lily, but it does come in handy for football parties!  I recently got bored and moved the couches around (picture the short loveseat in front of the half wall, that was the layout for a year).  Now, the room feels smaller because I cut part of the room out (see next picture).  We'd love to mount the TV, but once again due to a *hopefully* impending move, we just aren't going to do it.  Also, that large open space in front of the half wall should house a chair with an ottoman...since we don't have the funds right now, we just pretend there is one :)

This is the space directly to the right of the front door.  We chose to purchase a sofa table when we bought the coffee table and it houses some books, decorations and wedding pictures.  You can see the back of the love seat and how I "cut" the room into two parts.  I had NO idea what to do with this area when it was open to the couches and now that I can't see it due to loveseat, I just don't look over there!

A close up of the couch area.  As with all the other windows in our house, we don't have curtains.  I WANT them so badly, but it's just something I didn't get to.  The art on the wall is a black and white picture of the Eiffel Tower (a wedding present from my GLittle!) and the small squares are from Hobby Lobby.  Despite the lightness of the couches (the dark spots are not shadows, they are wear :() they are the most COMFORTABLE couches in the whole world!!!! We spend ALL of our time on these couches (we're huge TV people, so we even eat our dinner on them most of the time!) They were purchased from Ashley's Furniture about 3 years ago and I'm hoping to maybe slipcover them in the future so we can keep the comfiness!

Thanks so much for touring!  Can't wait to see everyone else's!

SHOW US YOUR LIFE - YOUR CHINA PATTERN

I'm a few days late on the SUYL, but I wanted to post my reply anyway!  When I registered for wedding gifts, my hubby and I decided to forgo the fine china.  We're very laid back, super not-fancy people and have never hosted a dinner party before in our lives.  We were much more interested in just getting a very sturdy, nice-sized dinner set.  We searched everywhere and had no idea in which direction to go (plain, designs, solid colors, etc.)  And then, we found it.  The perfect dinnerware set. 

Concepts Eggplant 16-piece Dinnerware Set. You can find it here!The plates are an amazing size, much larger than other plates and the bowls are super deep.  We chose the eggplant color, though this set comes in other colors, even though we have NOTHING in our home that's blue (our kitchen/dining room is red and yellow).  We figure we can deal with that since the plates are so awesome.

SHOW US YOUR LIFE - Things that you LOVE/make you happy

My husband Mr. L. He's amazing. His patience, love and determination for everything in life is really admirable and he loves me unconditionally. I just don't know how I got so lucky!

Our puppy Lily! She's a little over one year old and she's a rescue from the local shelter. She's a terrior mutt, all black, with a docked tail and a sweet personality. She's our furry child :)

My family (mom, dad, and brother). Being away from them as been the hardest part of military life so far. They mean the world to me.

Music. I love to sing and dance and I love every kind.

Pittsburgh Steelers & Panthers Football!

Tropical vacations (this is our honeymoon, Punta Cana, Dominican Republic)

Spending time with great friends and making great new friends!

The colors red, yellow and pink

TV...I am a HUGE television junkie (favorites include Glee, Supernatural, Criminal Minds, and all the CSIs)
My sorority, Theta Phi Alpha. I adore my sisters and miss them terribly <3

SHOW US YOUR LIFE - Your Hometown

I found this idea on my friend Amy's blog. Since I haven't been doing a very good job at blogging at all, I figured this was a way to start small. I like this idea...every week a women named Kelly posts a "Show Us Your Life" topic and people who follow her write their own answers or experiences. Topics range from your favorite books to what your typical day looks like. This week's topic is "Show Us Your Hometown".

My hometown is Easton, Pennsylvania. I've moved away, but my parents and family still live there and I will always consider it home. Easton is a really great city located right on the Delaware River. It was one of the first locations that the Declaration of Independence was read after it was ratified. We still celebrate this with a reading of the document on the first Sunday after the 4th of July in the town square.

Our other claim to fame is that Easton is the home of the Crayola Crayon Factory! If you turn over any box of Crayola product, you'll see the name of my hometown! The actual factory is tucked away in an industrial park, but the Crayola Factory was built in the downtown and anyone can go and learn how crayons and other products are made. It's a ton of fun and there's a huge store connected where you can buy ANYTHING and EVERYTHING associated for crayons!

Easton is about an hour away from New York City (on a good day), 2 hours from Philadelphia and 1.5 hours to the Jersey shore. I think it's pretty typical city. There's a Walmart, Target, Barnes and Noble, a mall, tons and tons of restaurants and pretty much every kind of store you could ever want in the immediate area. The high school is huge, probably at about 3500 students now. I loved every second of growing up there and would love to return when Mr. L and I finally get to pick our location!