How To Post A Comment

Posting Comments has been the subject of many conversations lately. I've been trying to figure out the issue and think I have it resolved (bare with us, we're still learning as we go!). See below as to how to go about leaveing a comment on one of our posts. Let us know if this was helpful or if you still cannot post a comment.

• at the end of each post there is a "comments" link you can click on
• click on the link and a new screen should pop up with a box to type the comment in
• once you are done typing, select from the drop down box the "Name/URL" option
• type in your name and do not type anything in the URL field
• click on post comment or continue
• you should be good to go and officially interacting with THE NASHVILLE WATSONS!!!

Pimped Out Pun'kins!

What's Up with pumpkin carving? Don't get me started, don't even get me started!!!

Ok, so I used to kind of like carving pumpkins, until they invented the whole "pumpkin carving" kits. Seriously, I am the least artistic person I know and I take a long time to do things, because I want them to be perfect. So, Me + pumpkin carving kit + slight OCD = 2 hours I'll never get back.

Dear, Pumpkin Carving Kits, thanks for the challenge, you win sir!

Needless to say, Erin carved a white pumpkin in about 20 minutes that turned out perfectly with the words "Trick or Treat". Great Job! (I hope you're picking up on my sarcasm because I am laying it on pretty thick!)

My pumpkin design was really cool, and according to the "kit" it was only a 2 pun'kin difficulty out of 5 pun'kins, should be no problem for a kid that didn't ride the short bus, but I guess I'm special!

Anyway, the pumpkin carving took almost as long as it will take to read this post, but hopefully some kids will think they look cool, which I guess makes it worth it, and we like them too.

I hope my first post makes you laugh or at least smile a little. Happy Halloween!

I Made The Cut

After the post about the garage sale I have gotten a few inquiries about my new "do". Yes, I did cut and color my hair. I did it Thursday actually. I cut off about 6 inches and went back to my natural color. I'm a little bit backwards when it comes to my hair. In the summer I grow it longer and usually do highlights and in the winter I usually go shorter and darker.

This is the shortest I've gone in a pretty long while. I think when I graduated from college my hair was pretty short, but it may have even been a slight bit longer. I'm still on the fence as to if I like it or not. It might still be a little too new for me to tell my true feelings. I kind of think I look like I have a bowl cut. Although, I did spend many formitable years rockin' a bowl cut. Diana loved herself a little girl bowl cut!! I have to admit though, I have very hard hair to figure out so I think after many triesm, she finally gave up. Sorry Mom, you know it's true :)

This is the best before picture I have.

And the after...

Dolla, Dolla Bills Y'all!!!!

Garage sale went off without a hitch this morning. We were ready for the crowds and opened the door at 7am sharp. We were mostly cleaned out by 8, but stayed open until 1:30. The last few hours was mostly chatting with neighbors though. We did get to meet a lot of our community neighbors. They were mostly nice, a few odd birds :)

Here is what the garage looked like when we opened at 7:00. Very oraganized we thought!

And here is what we looked like at 1:00 when we starting to wind down.

And oh, what's that in the next picture??? That's our $420.00 we made!!! YEAH

What's that you say? You're hot? Wait, let us fan you with our cash!!!!

So, we had a great experience with our first garage/yard sale. We will definitely be participating again.

OX

Dining Room Re-Do

Since our community garage sale was canceled last weekend (for the second time, grrrr) I thought it would be the perfect time to go ahead and tackle the project of painting our dining room. I've been debating about what to do with it since before we even moved in. Do I like the dark red, do I not??? If we painted it, what color would we do??

We have a pretty open floor plan in the "living spaces" of our house. The entry, living room, dining room and kitchen are all pretty open to each other. I won't even get started on what's going on in the kitchen right now - that's a whole other thing. But the rest of the open spaces are mostly a neutral two-tone color (light tan on top, dark brown below the chair rail). I'm really happy with those colors; they seem to kind of go with everything we have. The red that's been in the dining room is nice, it just always felt a little too dark for us. While our house is nice is open, it's not really big so we need to maximize space where we can.

So, we decided to paint. We felt like it might make our space feel a little more seamless if we just continued the colors from the living room into the dining room. And, let's face it, it was the easiest decision since we already had the paint and pretty much knew how it would turn out.

And off to Home Depot we went for our weekly Saturday morning trip :) We got brushes, rollers, tape, primer, more paint, etc. Now, I have to preface that Matt and I have never really painted anything inside a house. Matt said he sort of had before, but once we actually got into it and I started asking questions, he quickly admitted he really didn't know much about it! Let's get to the facts shall we... it took us 2 hours to tape off all the trim and crown molding. Then took us another 3 and half hours to prime. Now I know this probably sounds like a lot of time for a tiny room to those who are more experienced painters, but we stepped back and asked ourselves questions and doubted the experience the entire way through. On Sunday we finished with the actual paint and that took about 3 hours total. When we bought the house I thought all the trim and crown molding was wonderful and pretty. Now I just think it's a big pain in the butt!!

So, you decide for yourself. Do you like the red better or the two-tone neutral?

XO

GLASSES HALF FULL?

So, even though I've technically supposed to have been wearing glasses/contacts since I was 17, I absolutely have not. I've had a pair of glasses since 17 that have only graced my face on very few ocassions (Mom - sorry but I hated those glasses and I was never going to wear them). And for anyone who knows me well enough, you would know that I have a weird phobia with eyes and contacts are absolutely out of the question.

For a while now I have noticed my vision getting slightly worse and I've caught myself straining more. I'm not one of those people who gets headaches a lot, but recently I've been getting them frequently. I finally came to the conclusion that I needed to get my vision checked and bite the bullet and get some glasses.

So, with prescription in toe (fyi Glaucoma is still under control and not an issue - yay!) I went frames shopping. Now, we all know how much I enjoy shopping, but this trip was less than exciting for me. I looked for a good while and finally found a pair that I felt suited me. They thing I loved about them most is that they fit me like me favorite pair of sunglasses. And I love sunnies (aka sunglasses).

So, here's a little before and after transformation. I'm still warming up to them, but don't hate them as much as I did my first pair. So you decide, which do you prefer, Single Vision or Double Vision Erin?

XO

The Grass Is Always Greener... In Our Yard - Hopefully!!

When we bought the new house we knew there were some issues with the yard. Mainly, that there really wasn't one. We were told that our lot was the biggest in the neighborhood, but you never would have known it from the way it looked. There was SO much landscaping. There was no grass in the front or side; only mulch, pea gravel, plants and a weird rock pond that was broken. We never really understood the scope of it when we were buying the house. We quickly found out though. After moving in we spent almost every weekend in the yard weeding and pulling plants. Nothing seemed to make a dent. It was beyond frustrating and overwhelming.

In September I finally had my fill and started getting bids from landscapers to remove everything and just put down grass. Well, the bids ranged from $4000-$8000. No way, not happening. So, we took a leap of faith and listed our property on Craigslist under the "free" section. We took pictures of the yard and said "free mulch, pea gravel and plants to anyone who will take". We got like 23 calls in 1 hour - it was awesome. The rock pond was gone that day and in the process one of the guys who came to take stuff was a landscaper and bid on the job. He was over half the price of everyone else so, we pretty much hired him that day and he started work immediately.

The pictures below are a little before and not-so-completely after of the yard transfermation. We currently have some grass but my camera batteries are dead. So, until I get some new pictures of the yard, this is just a glimpse of how far the yard has come. These below are a 4 day time period. I will update once we get the new pictures :)

Having a Garage Sale - Are We Really Those People?

Okay, so after moving we realized we had a lot of stuff from the old house (and the house before that) that doesn't really have a home here in the new place. I must admit that I contribute to this problem more so than Matt does. I'm constantly finding things that I think will be oh-so-cute in this room, or "if we could just paint this it would be great there". Well, 90% of the time it just ends up sitting in a closet or in the garage. This drives Matt up the wall. It takes me a long time to decide how I want a room arranged and I'm kind of a commit-a-phobe when it comes to hanging things on the wall.

Our neighborhood is having a community garage sale and we have heard from several people that it is a big draw. We usually just load up the car and take our stuff to Goodwill, but after some talking (and some major persuasion of Matt - he was not psyched at all) we decided to join the neighbors and do our very first garage sale. We are venturing into an arena we are not familiar with at all, but we hope we have a good experience and we can make some money too!

I must say though that we are getting a little annoyed that the HOA keeps changing the date. We've been pretty well set up and ready to go for 2 weeks and they've changed the dates twice now. Last week we had no idea why it was pushed to this Sat and yesterday we got home from work and BAM, it's changed to next Sat because there were people that didn't want to do it because this weekend is going to be colder than usual. Make Up Your Minds!!

So, while we wait for the garage sale to actually happen, here's an idea of what our garage currently looks like. Oh and FYI, I think the only motivation Matt has to do this sale is so that he can finally park his car in the garage too!

TESTING, TESTING, 1. 2. 3 ...

Hey Y'all!

This our first venture into the whole blogging thing. We have no idea what we are doing, but hope this will end up being a fun and exciting adventure! So, let's get to some background information...

Matt and I are married and live in Nashville, TN with our puppy girl Sadie and our two kitty girls Sophie and Scarlet. We moved to Nashville for my job and we have no family and not a ton of friends here. We find ourselves feeling disconnected from our families and friends a lot, so I thought doing a blog like this could maybe help us reconnect.

We just recently bought our first home and have embarked on a whole new life filled with trips to Home Depot on Saturday mornings, looking at color swatches, shopping for furniture, and constantly starting sentences with, "What if..." and ending them in, "yeah, but how are we going to pay for it?". We feel like we are at a point where lots of things are going on and changing but it gets hard to always share things in emails and on telephone calls. Hopefully this can be a new way for us to stay better connected and maybe even learn some new things in the process.

So, this blog will be a little bit of this and little bit of that, but a lot of Matt and Erin! Wish us luck :)

XO, Erin