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It Bloomed!

- Melody

Monday night my family came over to help us install a new water heater after our old one nearly burned our house down while we were gone to our family reunion. Yeah. We came home to a house that smelled like a giant Sharpie, opened the laundry room closet and found a black water heater. Scariest moment so far in this house. Thank you JESUS for protecting our home and for allowing us to have an emergency fund to pay for a new water heater. He is good, no?

So since the manly men were installing the tank my sisters and mom and I finally potted the cacti and plants I bought over a month ago. When I went out the next morning I saw my little prickly one had bloomed a flower! If you look close in the last picture you’ll see another little bloom sprouting. Mom says I have a green thumb with cacti. I’d say I do. 🙂

Have you planted any flowers this spring? Blooming yet?

What Happens When You Have No Water

- Melody


beanie: J’s-Target, shirt: F21, necklace: F21, jeans: Target, sandals: F21, glasses: thrifted

So, we had no running water all weekend. Walking through the yard Wednesday Jason found a squishy wet part. I thought he was crazy because it had just rained buckets the day before, but he insisted on “digging it up” and “checking it out.” So what did I find when I drove home Thursday afternoon? A Jason butt pointing up at me out of a giant hole. I stopped in the driveway so he could come explain to me just what in the world was going on. He borrowed a shovel from the school and dug away to find a water pipe with a steady dripping leak. I guess he was right after all. So he cut that piece out on Friday, (thus turning off our water) took it to Lowe’s, and came back with nothing. Because crazy Lowe’s only sells that pipe by the roll-100 feet! We only needed 6 inches.

So Jason called our plumber neighbor to see if he had a pipe. He did. He would bring it over Saturday morning. Jason was up early to wait for the neighbor. We had to leave at 11:30 so he called the neighbor when he didn’t show up before then to gently remind him and to say he could leave it on the porch. When we got back home at 1 AM there was still no pipe. At this point we hadn’t had water since early Friday afternoon. Jason had played basketball TWICE and had no shower. I had showered Thursday night. No washing hands, no cooking, no drinking water… nothing. Fortunately I found a water bottle to wash my face with. That’s fun.

Sunday morning Jason made the decision to go back to Lowe’s and buy the whole 100 ft. roll of pipe because obviously the neighbor wasn’t going to bring it and we sure as heck weren’t going to hire him to fix it. So $30 and 99.5ft of leftover pipe later, we have water. And we are clean. And you can speak to us again. And we are humbled and grateful for water. (You should be too.)

And then I was sick Monday. Which looked a little like this:

And this:

How was your weekend? Water filled I hope.

A Gif for Little Bit

- Melody


dress: Old Navy, cardigan: thrifted, belt: Old Navy, shoes: Buffalo Exchange

So all I had to do Thursday was sing one song in our studio class (a performing class when all the voice students in a particular studio come together and sing for each other) and take a vocabulary quiz in my vocal pedagogy class. Our teacher surprised us by only keeping us 20 minutes of the full hour in class! Woohoo!

It was raining all day yesterday and will continue to storm throughout the weekend. Too bad I’ll be beaching it up next week. 🙂 So when I came home there weren’t a lot of picture options so I decided the “best” spot was in my music room. These were the best ones that came out of 100+ pictures we took. Yeah. It’s an art. I’ve really been wanting to drive around and take “location” pictures. There are a lot of neat places around here! Jason’s response? “Make some money on your blog. Then I’ll go somewhere else.” Plus the fact that Jason is already embarrassed to take them because kids at school have seen him taking them of me in our yard and have said things to him, haha. Like, “I saw you taking pictures of your girlfriend.” HA! Plus, it’s not necessarily his favorite thing to do, believe it or not.

ANYWAY, when we were taking these, I sat on my desk in front the window and LB decided she wanted to get in on some photog action. Here’s a little .gif I made of her…

Isn’t she adorable?

In some sad news, the family cat, Pippin, died yesterday afternoon after his health suddenly took a turn for the worst. That cat was my dad’s world. They were buddies! He was the craziest, toughest, sweetest cat you’d have ever met. He protected the girl kitties from being beat up by bigger boy cats and paid heavily for it with the cat version of cauliflower ears and cuts and bruises. But he survived all of them! We are glad, though, that dad was able to be home with him before he died. If you think about it, even though it might seem a little silly, just pray for our family! Thanks, guys.

Hope your spring break is great! Happy weekend!

Just a Regular Ol’ Tuesday

- Melody

I know I said in yesterday’s post that Jason and I weren’t doing anything for Valentine’s Day, so imagine my surprise waking up to this little spread on the dining room table. Another pack of gummy Lifesavers, a giant bar of chocolate with almonds, and Spongebob. Just because. 🙂 I made him chicken quesadillas for lunch as my gift to him.

My day got even better when all of my classes were cancelled! So I cleaned the house some and headed out to Goodwill with the good intention of only buying a record to test out our new record player but ended up getting a leather vest, a black silk shirt, a leopard cardigan, and some house knick knacks. And two records. 🙂 On my way back I said what the heck and drove down a county road I’d been wanting to go down. Every time I pass this street I see this gorgeous house! Well, it’s the only house on the entire road. I kept driving only to find acres and acres of gray trees and limbs covering the ground on either side of the rough road. I came to a small bridge where apparently all the vultures hang out. When they saw me they flew up in the trees above and it was such a perfect shot I regretted leaving my camera at home. I did get this one though:

I plan on going back with Jason later so I can actually stop and take pictures. Vultures are actually really pretty birds/creatures!

Some other good news, we finally hung our antlers on the wall! My photo collage is coming together underneath as well. Just have to get color ink so print out art and fill the frames. I eventually want to paint some neat design on the antlers as well.

How was your Valentine’s Day?

A Tour of My Office

- Melody

Yes. I have an “office”. The sewing machine sits there and so does the laundry. It has lovely fluorescent lighting and three laundry baskets. It’d be somewhere else but there is no where else. But I love it. 🙂 Care to take a peek?

Ta-da! Isn’t she gorgeous? Remember this post? It’s finally all coming together. That chair is from a dining set my sister-in-law gave us. The four chairs and the table are being used in various places around the house. The bulletin board is part of me. I think I’ve always had one. I just like them. I keep extra fabric in that basket under my chair. Partially because it’s the only place it looked good and partially because it’s the only place that looked good. And that’s a trash can.
Here I keep my paintbrushes, pencils, scrapbooking scissors, push pins, and thread. That’s my wedding binder. 🙂
On my board I keep tear-outs of outfits from JCrew catalogs that I can actually recreate. There are Passion memorabilia, my wedding garters, bathtub pictures of me and my childhood best friend, pictures of my sisters, thank you cards, love notes from husband, and things that make me feel really good.

In my DIY whirlwind on Monday, I painted this on the wall.
Now it’s not so monotone in there!

In addition to this nook in the laundry room I have a small music room that really is like a hallway. It’s in the part of the house where previous owners added on so there are two doorways on opposite walls which makes it impossible to put any furniture in normal places. I’m still working on it constantly but I’ll be sure to post when I feel like it’s getting close!

Do you have an office? Is it girly? Or is it a nook like mine?

An Outfit and a Flood

- Melody


scarf: Old Navy, shirt: pacsun, skirt: f21, tights: target, boots: thrifted

Probably the comfiest outfit I’ve ever worn. That $6.50 skirt was really worth the splurge. 🙂

We’ve had a little bit of a ridiculous few days! Wednesday night Jason noticed the washing machine was cutting off and on. When I walked back to see what he was doing this is what I saw:

Oh. So that’s what the inside of a washing machine looks like. Apparently, that little magic switch that’s supposed to turn the washer on when you close the lid wasn’t working. So magic Jason fixed it.
While he did that Little Bit decided to explore.
So yay! It worked that night.

Thursday morning I heard water running but I shrugged it off. Partly because I knew Jason had started another load before he left but mostly because I was still asleep. A little later I still heard it so I decided to check it out. As soon as I looked towards the door I saw a black puddle in our carpet. All of my clothes that were waiting to be put away were soaked and stained. Our laundry room and butler’s pantry were FULL of water. I went to get the phone from the butler’s pantry and stepped in a half an inch of water. I was still in such a sleepy daze I didn’t know if I should scream or go back to bed. I was home alone and Jason was 35 minutes away in meetings. I frantically called him. He didn’t answer because of the meetings. So he texted me and I typed as fast as I could “EMERGENCY!” But coming from me, he probably didn’t believe me so much. I cry wolf a lot! Example:
Me: “EMERGENCY!”
Jason: “What’s up?”
Me: “We have no chocolate.”
See what I mean? So he calmly called me back after I told him there actually was an emergency. All he could really say was, “…sorry baby. I guess just start sopping it up.”

So I did. I grabbed EVERY available towel, only after strapping on my rainboots. They were immediately soaked. I grabbed the shop-vac. It worked for about 15 seconds then started shooting water out of the other end. Great. I opened the door in the butler’s pantry to aim the shop-vac outside and then it just quit working altogether. Even greater. I finally got all the water up and left for class.

Later that night, I realized that even more of my clothes than I thought were soaked and the water reached the edge of the bathroom. When Jason and I were drying it up he asked me, “You just wanna rip up the carpet?” Ok, sure. Why not? So we have a half wood, half carpeted room. I caught him tonight ripping up our bathroom floor.