The Ussery Update

One of the projects on my unending to do list was to "Paint & Redecorate Laundry Room". Well, mission accomplished this weekend. Yippee ~ one project crossed off the list!! We worked last week emptying out the laundry room (which is also our pantry and storage area for all of our paper products and cleaning supplies). Our guest room became the temporary home for everthing in our laundry room for a few days while we worked in the laundry room. Most of Saturday afternoon was spent painting and it was a team effort! I would cut in the walls and John would roll the rest in. Once the room was painted, we took a break for a date night which included dinner, board games and dessert. John had to work Saturday night from 10pm - 1 am (which turned into 2am), so I took advantage of that time to deep clean the empty laundry room, put things back in place and do a little decorating. It made for a fun Saturday night into Sunday morning. We put in a new light fixture and finis...

We're almost halfway through January 2011, but I still haven't posted my "things to be happy about" from December 2010. If you are new to this, I received a bright yellow, page-a-day desk calendar for Christmas in December 2009 and it sat on my desk at work all year in 2010. Each day the calendar page listed various things to be happy about. Throughout the month, I would keep up with my favorite things the pages listed and blog about them at the end of the month explaining why they made me happy. I try to find happiness in the littlest of things and so many things excite me very easily. If you want to catch up, I started this in January 2010 so you can always look through my archive to catch up. I'll miss this activity that I did all of last year, but I look forward doing other new and different things in my life this year. Here are my December things to be happy about... All Dressed Up and Somewhere to Go ~ It's always fun to get all dressed up for ...

Well, I'm two days shy of it being two weeks since I last blogged. Just like everyone, we've had various Christmas and New Year's festivities and activities going on over the last two weeks as well as a few other things in between. We took a trip to Arkansas and have a trip planned this weekend to Odessa (west Texas) to visit my family. John and I had our Christmas together this past weekend, which was wonderful. We had tons of fun over the 3-day weekend as well as were very productive around the house. With the holidays and time off of work, I have spent very little time on the computer. It's been nice! I love our blog, but it's nice to be away from all that is "technology" from time to time. We've taken lots of pictures that I want to post soon. I may have to do a HUGE Christmas post since we've had a couple of "Christmases". I never did get our Christmas decorations posted either, so those may appear as well (better late than ne...

I had high hopes of blogging about various things this week, but it just didn't happen. Life has been busy ~ full and blessed. It's a busy time of year with lots going on here, there and everywhere. You know how it is! We will be loading up our sleigh and leaving town this afternoon...making the trek to central Arkansas to spend Christmas with John's family. We will come back home Monday morning. We are looking forward to a few days off and spending time with family. It'll be lots of fun and there will be an abundance of yummy stuff to eat! Nevertheless, I did want to post our Christmas card! We mailed our cards out on December 1st. I think we mailed out about 125 - whew. We love getting Christmas cards. Due to the fact that John works from home, all through the Christmas season he will check the mail during the day, but save the Christmas cards and we open them and look at them together when I get home. It's one of our little traditions. Our Christmas c...

A couple of weekends ago, we went out for a fun "date day". We started out the day with some shopping and then we headed to the Gaylord Texan Resort for their annual "ICE" exhibit and then ended the day with a delicious dinner. Each year, the Gaylord Texan has a one of a kind attraction where they carve a Christmas exhibit or display out of nearly two million pounds of colored ice. It's a walk through exhibit - a VERY COLD walk through, 9 degrees to be exact! Obviously, they have to keep it so cold so that the ice doesn't melt. Before you can go in, they hand each visitor a parka and also encourage you to bring gloves, scarves and hats. They weren't kidding! Even with gloves, my hands were freezing. It was super cold in there, but super fun. We were SO EXCITED to find out that this year "ICE" would be presenting "A Charlie Brown Christmas". We LOVE the Peanuts gang. We have a little display of Peanuts characters out with all ...