He Done Gradjumatated

It's true what they say...the older you get, the faster time goes by.  When we first got married Preston still had three years left of school and it felt like it was going to be forever!  Now, here we are, three years and one cute baby later and he's all done. It's almost a little unreal still. No more having him come home for dinner just to go back to school to work on a group project or take a 3 hour exam.  No more spending the evenings and weekends trying not distract him while he does hours of homework.  No more spending hundreds of dollars on books every semester.  I think it's still a little unreal for him too.  He's been going to school for so long.  He served a two year mission for our church when he was 19 so he went to a semester of college before he left, took a two year break, and then came back and jumped back in.  So overall from start to finish, he has been a college student for a really long time.  I just want to give a little shout out to Preston for everything he has accomplished over the last few years.  I know it's nothing rare or special to get a college degree, but I feel he has accomplished a lot and here is why...

• He took (and got A's) in classes with names I can't even pronounce, let alone know what they mean.
• He was never satisfied unless he knew he had done his best or tried his hardest.
• Every time he thought he bombed a test, it turned out that he still got one of the highest grades in the class on it.
• He actually enjoys learning and took his education very seriously.  (in contrast, I skipped class all the time in college and spent most of my time playing.)
• He was always responsible, self-disciplined, and determined to do well.
• He managed to do all of this while being married for most of his college career.  (And let's face it, I'm clingy and distracting.)
• Not only was he married, but unlike most college students he was a homeowner and shared all the responsibilities that go along with that such as paying a mortgage, mowing the lawn, fixing things, taking out the trash, etc. and he never once complained about it or failed to help out, no matter how much homework he had.
• Not only did he have a needy wife and an old house to take care of, but for the last year of school he had a baby to help take care of and spend time with.  Even when he was getting only a few hours of sleep every night he would still help with getting up with Cohen.  He has changed his fair share of diapers, given his fair share of baths, and packed his share of diaper bags. His only chance to sleep in was on weekends but he got up with Cohen so I could sleep in and have a break.  He was amazing.
• Not only did he have a needy wife, an old house, and a cranky baby to take care of but he now had a wife who went from being the sugar mama to a stay at home mama and our income was cut by 2/3.  He somehow managed to work two jobs and go to school full time so that I could stay home with Cohen.  He was gone from 6am til 10pm or midnight almost every day.  He got very little sleep at night, had no social life or time to do things he enjoyed, and he barely ever got to see his new son.  He sacrificed so much!
• Now not only was he taking care of a needy, non-income producing wife, an old house, and a cranky baby but he literally never had a second to himself to catch his breath or relax and somehow he managed to graduate in a difficult major (mechanical engineering), in the top 10% of his class, with a 3.88 GPA

I know for a fact that Preston (who is way too hard on himself most of the time) feels that he has not accomplished any of the things he had hoped to by this stage of his life but I am truly amazed at what he has done.  I never would have had the ambition to choose such a difficult major to begin with, let alone had the self-discipline and motivation to actually succeed---no, excel at it.  Especially with so many other things going on in life.  He would have been completely justified in taking some time off of school or taking out lots of loans so he wouldn't have to work, or slacking off a little in classes to lighten his burden.  But he didn't.  If I know Preston, I'm sure the thought never even crossed his mind.  He's just not like that, and that's one of the things I admire most about him.  I love him so much, and regardless of how little he feels he has done, I am SO proud of him and so grateful for all of his selfless sacrifices for our little family.  If only I could be even half the person he is!

Pink

Most of you who know me know that I don't own very many pink or purple things.  Especially clothes.  Especially clothes that I actually wear.  Preston sometimes mocks me because the majority of clothes that I wear are black or brown (which is true) and that I need to add some color to my wardrobe.  I had to dress professionally for 8 years so of course most of my clothes are dark.  And now that I'm not working, I don't want to spend money buying a bunch of new, non-professional, bright colored clothes.  So now that I'm learning how to sew, I thought I would experiment a little.  I have a whole bunch of shirts, skirts and dresses that are either too big or too small and never get worn so I decided maybe it's time for me to learn how to alter or "re-purpose" some of them.  I have a very pink dress that was given to me by my lovely friend Rebekah that needed to be taken in a little so in the spirit of trying to "brighten" my wardrobe, I decided to give it a shot. 

This is what it looked like before:  (PS. there's no way you will catch me modeling these in pictures so you will just have to imagine what they look like on real people).

I needed to add some length to it too so I found this pink polka dot shirt in my closet (which I also never wore) and cut it up to add it to the dress.  The pinks matched perfectly.  I also added some black trim to the bottom and a black flower up top and this is what I ended up with:

Sorry for the ultra bright picture.  Oh and ps I'm not even close to being that skinny.  I just tied the ribbon tighter around the middle so I could pretend for a minute that I don't still have a hundred million pounds to lose.  :)  Anyways, if you could see it up close you would totally laugh because there are so many parts where I screwed up and it is visibly obvious but I was too lazy to fix it.  Come to think of it, I'm too lazy to fix a lot of things.  I should work on that.  Anyways, all in all, I'm pretty proud of myself for how it turned out considering it was my first time EVER attempting to do anything involving a needle and thread and clothing.  Now the hard part will be convincing myself to wear something bright pink with pink polka dots and a flower.  :)

A Touch of Color

I'm almost finished with the living room, finally. For the last 8 years that I've lived here this living room has been pretty much the same. It wasn't bad, but it was really, ummm...neutral. Everything in it is cream, brown, sage green, and a touch of black. I decided it was time to add some color. Not in the repainting the whole room sense, just in adding some accessories. I love color. I swoon over bright colors in magazines and pictures. I'm just always so conservative when it comes to actually using it my own house. I really need to get over that. In my last post I showed you the new curtains I made which have some turquoise, blue, green, and brown in them. I decided I really liked the turquoise so I took an old, rickety, drawn on and carved on little desk from our garage and turned it into this:

I love the color! I think I am going to find some cute baskets to put on the shelves.

Then I decided to recover our couch pillows and now they look like this:



P.S. I made all of these from old sheets we don't use anymore so they were totally free. Preston lovingly told me that the pleated pillows (which by the way, aren't perfect but I'm pretty proud of them considering sewing is still so new to me) look like something he would find in his grandma's house. I'm sure he meant it as a compliment. :) Don't worry, he followed it up with "well, it's cool that YOU made them..." Hahaha. Boys. I only share this because I thought it was funny. He has actually been very complimentary about everything I have done around the house lately.

Anyhoo, I decided I needed some new wall decor for above the loveseat. I googled diy wall decor and found this:

http://www.thenester.com/2011/01/how-to-make-a-sunburst-mirror.html

Would you believe this was made out of posterboard? Yeah, posterboard. You can get that for 2/$1 at the dollar store. So, needless to say, I decided I needed to make one. I had an old mirror sitting around in the basement that I thought would be perfect so I got some posterboard and went for it. It doesn't look as good as the one she did (I like the shape of hers better) but I still like the way it turned out. And so far I have gotten a lot of compliments so the $2 that I spent on it was worth it. Here she is:



So basically, that wall of my living room went from looking like this:



To this:

Maybe it doesn't even look that great to other people but when you've had a room look exactly the same for so many years, any change seems to make it look better to me. Now I need to do some more pillows for the big couch (probably not more pleated ones because apparently that will make it a "grandma" living room), and next I get to tackle the basement kitchen/laundry room.

P.S. I know this stuff is probably really boring to most of you, (if any of you actually even still read my blog) so thanks for putting up with my craft reports and room makeovers. :)

Bits and Pieces

Life has been a bit on the busy side lately between making major life decisions, getting Preston ready to graduate, working on the house, and Cohen starting to get more mobile. It's a good kind of busy but I will be glad when Preston is officially done with school and we can have more time for fun.

A lot of people have been wondering what our plans are after graduation so here is the scoop. Preston really wants to go to grad school at the University of Texas in Austin. It has the exact program he wants, a great reputation, lower tuition than most grad schools, and it is in a good area with a low cost of living. We have been praying about it for months now and we feel really good about moving to that area, at least temporarily. Unfortunately, because of the bad economy, the engineering program had an unusually high 1,100 applicants for less than 200 open slots and they had to turn away tons of qualified people that would have otherwise been selected. We were one of them. We were really disappointed and not sure what to do but after more consideration and discussion and prayer, we decided that for whatever reason, we still feel good about moving to Austin. We love Colorado and we have always talked about going back but for some reason it just doesn't feel quite right to do it right now. Hopefully someday. So the plan is to look for jobs in the Austin area and when/if Preston gets hired we will move down there. We will establish Texas residency and try again for grad school at UT next year. His second choice school is Texas A&M so if he doesn't get into UT and gets accepted there, it would be an easy move and we would still have in-state tuition. I guess we will see what happens. I have always mocked all things Texan, (including people, I admit) so it is odd that I am so excited about this.

So basically, we still don't have any definite plans. If he finds a job there it could be next month or six months or next year. He still has a job here as a backup, thank goodness, so there is really no huge rush to get down there. In the meantime, we have decided that we are going to sell the house when we move. We thought about renting it out but we would really rather not deal with that if we don't have to. We are slowly trying to fix things up around the house here and there before we put it on the market. A lot of it is just cosmetic, but hopefully it will compete well with other houses like ours when people walk through it. With Preston working and finishing up school, I have been doing most of the work so far...which is fine by me. Anyone who knows me knows I love to do stuff like that. Plus, a lot of the stuff I have been doing has involved being crafty and finding frugal ways to make our house look nicer and more updated.

PS. just a little disclosure (as in, don't have a heart attack when you read this)....I, Amber Hennrich, actually SEWED. Yes, you read that right. I sewed. As in, sat down with a sewing machine (I had to learn how to use it first) and sewed. I, along with most people, never thought that would actually happen, but it has and I have to admit I actually kinda like it. Well, I get really frustrated with it too sometimes, but for the most part, it has been fun learning something new.

I don't have any of the rooms completely done but when I do I will show you before and after shots because I LOVE the changes. But for now, here are some snippets of what I've been up to.

Kitchen Wall and Window Before

Kitchen Window After

Kitchen Wall After (made this from stuff laying around the house)

Other Kitchen Window Before

Other Kitchen Window After

I even made the tie-backs. I love them!

New Curtains I Made for the Living Room-anything beats the black ones I had there before. What was I thinking??? Oh, and I made these out of canvas drop cloths from Lowe's for $9 ($4,50 per window actually)

Fireplace Screen Before-(Please ignore the trash waiting to burned, how embarrassing!

Fireplace Screen After

Amazing what you can do with a little black spray paint and some wire hangers!

Area Rug Before (The black spots are from tank walking on it with black paint on his paws...long story). And yes, that's March Madness basketball on the TV. :)

Area Rug After-Yep, I painted it

Mantle Before

Mantle After-Still a work in progress but at least it has more color

None of these things is really a huge deal but sometimes it's nice to have a change. Once you see the whole room before and after shots of the upstairs kitchen, downstairs kitchen, and living room, it will all come together more. Today I am refinishing a desk (which I am sooo excited about-I'm going bold!) and attempting to slipcover our couch (yeah, I know, good luck right?)

Oh, and just in case this post isn't long enough already, here are a couple pics of Cohen, just cuz he's cute. :)

Isn't he getting so big!?! He's 8 months already!

PS. I dropped our camera in the tub after this shot. Talented, I know.

He can scoot around in circles and go backwards but hasn't figured out forward crawling yet.

He can't crawl but he can pull himself into standing position with no problem and he loves it!

Okay, well that's our life for now. More to come soon!