Alright, this is kind of weird to admit, but I’m just gonna throw it out there.

I love cleaning products.

Well, let me clarify – I love good cleaning products.

There’s just something about having a pretty-smelling, perfectly-packaged, hard-working bottle full of wonderful cleaning goodness that gets me a little giddy.

In fact, I spend a little extra cash on the “fancy” stuff when I’m grocery shopping. That’s right – no store brand cleaner for this cheap-o. I buy the good stuff.

I know it’s totally dorky, but there is just something about having the “fancy” cleaning supplies that makes it a little more tolerable to do the laundry. Or the dishes. Or, you know, any cleaning at all.

And, as you can see, I’m pretty brand loyal. I’m addicted to Mrs. Meyers (no, they didn’t pay me to say that but I’d gladly take their money if they want to do so in the future), and I pretty much only buy their stuff. The packaging is adorable, the smells are incredible, and the stuff just plain works.

Annnnd that’s my dorky/awkward confession for the week.

Anyone else get a little too excited about a good cleaning product?

Related posts:

After the cash-hemhorraging experience that was Creating With the Stars, Corey and I are trying to be a bit frugal over the next few weeks. That means no fun little purchases like new clothes or new shoes.

Boo.

There’s something about the weather changing that always has me itching for new stuff, and since I can’t buy any of it right now I thought I’d do a quick roundup of a few things I would grab if I had $100 to spend on myself.

(Sources, clockwise from top left: Old Navy – $34.94, Target – $27.99, Old Navy – $29.00, Forever21 – $8.80 - and yes, I know that’s actually like 73 cents over my budget. That’s okay.)

What would you buy with an extra hundred bucks?

Related posts:

My intention for today’s post was to show you our vanity all painted and finished.

But, um, that hasn’t quite happened yet. We’re almost there, but we had a little snafu with the paint so it looks like it’ll be a few more days before it’s done. Whoops!

So, instead, I’m thought we’d do a quick roundup of a few random things around the house that aren’t quite worthy of their own post. Things like this:

Our roses are blooming! I don’t know how they’ve managed to stay alive because, as you can clearly see, we don’t really take very good care of this little flower bed. We both have completely black thumbs and are awful at remembering to maintain our plants, but despite all of that we somehow have lucked out two summers in a row and ended up with gorgeous blooms.

I’m not complaining.

Those of you who’ve been reading a while and remember the great Anthropologie-bedspread-debacle of 2012 (that’s two posts) will be surprised (or maybe not at all surprised) to learn our bed looks like this again.

Ugh.

Corey told me the other day that he wanted to switch back to the Ikea bedding because he had found a hole in our Anthro bedding (AGAIN). For some reason I thought it was just a small, not very noticeable one; I guess since I hadn’t seen it. So, I tossed it onto our guest bed to see how it’d look, and I fell in love. It looked awesome.

But then, I noticed the hole.

It’s HUGE and right in the middle of the bed.

Double ugh.

It looks like this one is kaput, and we’re officially giving up on Anthro bedding for good. With three dogs that like to sleep in bed with us, it’s just not going to happen. So we’re on the lookout for something new, and in the meantime I’m actually kind of loving how much lighter the Ikea bedding makes our room feel.

In other “why us?” news, we found this on the tree in our front yard this weekend:

Need a closer look?

It’s a beehive. A large one. With bees that swarmed around it like a freaking plague. Want an even closer look?

AHH! It’s like something out of a horror movie, no?

We called our pest control company on Saturday, but they were already closed. We figured we’d have them out as soon as we could this week, but when we got home from church on Sunday, the tree looked like this.

Gone. Just like that. Apparently we have a guardian angel in our neighborhood who decided to help us out – we have no idea who did it, but I wish we did so we could properly thank them! All I know is I’m happy it’s gone.

Let’s switch gears to something a little less awful. We picked up this adorable hand towel at West Elm this weekend for our powder room.

The whole room is a complete wreck (as are all of the bathrooms in our house) but this little guy helps…at least there’s something cute in the room now.

And in slightly bigger updates, Corey did some work on the garage this weekend.

I’ll do an official “how we built a wall” post once it’s actually drywalled and finished, but I’m feeling pretty good about what we’ve done so far! It’s kind of looking like it maybe has the potential to actually be a room now, and hopefully over the next couple of weeks we’ll get it drywalled, taped, and get the whole room painted.

Then the fun part can begin. Oh, and in the interest of keeping it real, the other side of the garage looks like this.

Cute, right?

And that’s where we’re at right now! I’ll be working hard on the vanity this weekend so I can hopefully share next week, and fingers crossed we can get this wall finished soon.

What little updates are happening in your house lately?

Related posts:

I mentioned on Twitter earlier this week that Corey and I (finally) joined a CSA – a community supported agriculture. We’ve been talking about doing it since last summer, but we just never actually signed up.

Now that the farmer’s markets are all back in full swing, though, it was on my brain again and we decided to go for it. We went through Johnson’s Backyard Garden and we picked up our first box on Saturday.

Basically, the idea is that every week (or every other week, which is what we are doing), you go pick up your box and it has a random assortment of fresh veggies from a local farm. We had a ton of stuff in ours, and even had one or two vegetables that we’ve never tried before.

We signed up for fresh eggs with our box, and I’m super excited to have farm-fresh eggs in the house again. They’re ridiculous. We may not keep them in our order for every box because they’re insanely expensive…but they’re soooo yummy!

I can’t wait to start trying out all of the stuff in our box, and I’m excited to see what the summer has in store for us! I have a feeling we’re going to love doing this.

Anyone else a part of a CSA? Any amazing veggie recipe recommendations?!

Related posts:

Today is the last day to vote for round 3 of Creating With the Stars! I’d LOVE another win this week – if Corey and I take first place again, we’re planning on finishing out our garage…so help a girl out and go vote, if you haven’t already! 

1. Sleeping puppies. I’ve got lots of that going on at my house on a daily basis.

2. Our new fiddle leaf fig (snagged at Ikea for a whopping $12.99!). I’ve been dying for one of these guys for a long time now, and I’m so excited to have one. I’m just crossing my fingers that it grows and looks more tree-like. And that I don’t kill it.

3. Hulu Plus. Corey and I have been a bit obsessed with it lately, and we’re even talking about dropping cable completely and getting all of our shows from Netflix and Hulu Plus. We love how many shows there are on here, and it’s actually pretty rare for us to flip over to the DVR now – if we can watch it on Hulu, we will. And, we’ve discovered some awesome new shows through having this, like The New Normal, The Following, and 1600 Penn (oh, and Buckwild, but we won’t get into that).

4. Listening to old country music. My favorite morning show recently made the switch from Top-4o to country music, so that means I’ve been listening to a lot more of it lately. I grew up listening to country music and haven’t in years, so the change has had me itching for some of my old country favorites. I created a station on Pandora (based on the song “The Thunder Rolls,” if you’re interested) and it’s basically the most wonderful thing that’s ever happened. The music is perfect and always puts me in a fabulous mood. Oh, and I recently realized you can add a sub-genre to your stations and created the most perfect blend ever by mixing my “The Thunder Rolls” station with my NSYNC station. I may never listen to music from this decade again.

5. These new brass geese that Corey and I picked up at the flea market. I absolutely fell in love with them as soon as we saw ‘em, and for $6 each, there was no way I was leaving without them. 

6. The fact that I don’t have to work on Friday – yay for Easter Weekend! Oh, and the fact that there are only 46 days left in the school year. Not that I’m counting or anything…

What’s been making you smile this week?

Related posts: