The point was really driven home at HomeGoods awhile back when I pointed out two fabulous X-benches to my husband and explained that I wanted to buy them, paint them, and recover them for either our den or our master bedroom. He looked at me patiently and said hopefully, “Maybe you might want to finish up a few projects before you start new ones?”

Bless his poor little heart – the man practically lives in a war zone of my incomplete projects. The dining room is littered with chair parts . . .

. . . the guest bedroom has become a landing pad everything that has been displaced by baby stuff (example here), the hallway has empty and crooked frames hanging everywhere waiting for me to print photos for a new gallery wall, our master bedroom just looks sad and has a broken curtain rod, the nursery curtains are made and hung but not hemmed, and our master bathroom has a big gaping empty space above the toilet because I stole our wedding photo for the new hallway gallery wall.

As I said, bless his little heart.

Tell me I’m not alone in this – please?!?  :)

I’m sure you’re all faithful readers of the fabulous blog, Centsational Girl – Kate’s DIY spirit and eye for design are always so inspiring.

Well, I’m giddy that today my new gig as a monthly contributor for CG officially started – my first post, Choosing Cabinetry in Kitchen Renovation, just went live!

I hope you’ll head on over there and leave a little comment love.  And if you’ve made your way over here for the first time from Centsational Girl, welcome!!  Glad to have you.  :)  I hope you’ll poke around the blog, maybe check out one of our flips or a recent project we’ve tackled in our home, and stay awhile!

I’m excited about today for 3 reasons:

(1) A photographer is coming to the flip at 9am to take shots for the listing – which means that the flip is about to hit the market!

(2) We have our 38-week doctor appointment – eek!  All of our ducks are in a row and we’re ready for our daughter’s arrival, but it’s still a little crazy to think that she could decide to show up at any moment.

Any last-minute advice for us?

(3) The movers are arriving between 3-5 to deliver all the staging furniture!

You might be wondering why we’re taking un-staged photos in the morning – we like options.  :)

I’m excited about tomorrow as well, for 3 reasons:

(1) Our fifth flip is getting inspected!

Once we get the report back we’ll have a concrete idea of unknown issues that we’ll need to tackle during the renovations.

(2) We’re taking that opportunity of having a few hours in the house to measure and photograph anything in the house that will stand still (for floor planning, permit and design purposes).

(3) We’re listing the flip for sale! Unless something crazy happens we’re going to have this puppy on the market by the end of the day.  I can’t wait!

In other fun news, there’s really no better feeling than someone saying, “I think you’re cool!”  That’s why I was so stoked to receive two blog awards recently – so fun!!

Thanks to Samantha for giving me the Liebster Blogging Award and to Susannah for giving me the Versatile Blogger Award – you chickies rock!

Remember those Ikea slipcovers in our breakfast nook that I painted awhile back?

Well, Lisa started her own version, and they’re turning out great – check’em out here!

And last but definitely not least, my friend Lauren wrote an eBook about flipping!!  How cool is that?

Go on and get you some right here.  I guarantee you’ll learn something in between all the chuckles.

This Post Brought To You By Calgary Apartments.

It turns out that Flickr (where I host my images) recently decided to block all copyrighted images from being pinned on Pinterest – which is a great idea, but there were some bugs that kept my photos from being pinned even after I de-copyrighted them.

Anyhoo, I think all is well now so you should be able to pin away – and I hope you will!  And definitely let me know if you run into any more problems.  Thank you!

And since I can’t give you a post without some sort of fun photo, here’s this:

Can’t wait to show you how it turned out!

We left Friday morning and expected to get to Fredericksburg around lunchtime, after stopping in West at the Czech Stop (a must!!!) for kolaches.  However, that was a little ambitious and we didn’t actually roll into town until around 2:30 – luckily I had made some gnarly CDs to keep us entertained.  :)  We picked up the keys to our B&B from the property management company and hopped back in the car to head to the Alamo Springs Cafe, a little joint we learned about from my sister and her husband.

Apparently every biker within a thousand mile radius had also heard about the famous burgers at the Alamo Springs Cafe because that place was crawling with Harleys.  We were lucky to find a table, where we chowed down on krusty fries (french fries deep fried in a chipotle batter – yum!!), homemade chips, and the best cheeseburgers ever.  We may have overdone it a bit!  The Cafe is run by some salty Hill Country folk, and the food is so good that I didn’t even mind ignoring the fact that the owner was chain-smoking in the kitchen.  :)

Our next stop was Luckenbach, the coolest little “town” in Texas.  Nowadays it’s a tiny country music paradise, where you can drink Lone Star beer under shade trees filled with chickens (it’s true!) while you listen to live country music played by anyone from up-and-comers to the truly famous.

The old post office and general store is pretty much the only original building still standing.

I was a little jealous of Jason’s frosty beverage.  :)

Jimmy Davis and Jed Zimmerman were playing – they were awesome and I loved all of their songs, even though I didn’t know a single one.

We had such a great time, and I can’t think of a better way to spend the afternoon.  Here are a few more snippets from our time in Luckenbach.  (And you can see that I wasn’t kidding about the chickens in the trees!)

We left Luckenbach and finally got to scope out our B&B, which was right above a pizzeria.  I was blown away!!  Jason did all of the planning for the trip so I had no idea what to expect, and we were both in love with the high ceilings (at least 12 feet) and the gigantic living room.  It felt like a house!  We were totally spoiled.

I can’t lie – other than enjoying a tasty dinner, we did spend part of our evening trying to track down a gas station that sold lottery tickets.  After many unsuccessful attempts we were able to buy a few tickets – only to be shocked that we didn’t win $640 million.  So sad, ha!

We hopped up Saturday morning and strolled through all the shops in Fredericksburg – it’s such a cute town and we had a great time.  Then we headed out to Wildseed Farms – it had caught my eye on the drive in to Fredericksburg the day before with its fields of gorgeous poppies.  It was a fun stop and there were lots of beautiful flowers to admire, and we even bought a giant sack of cosmo seeds that we planted in the backyard last night – we’ll see how they turn out!

Fredericksburg and the surrounding areas are chock full of wineries – and even though only half of our duo can enjoy wine these days, stopping at a winery was a total must.  Jason enjoyed a pinot noir from Becker Vineyards at dinner the night before, so that’s where we decided to stop.  The grounds and buildings were totally charming, and I’m told that the wines were quite tasty.  :)

Just ten bucks got Jason a tasting of 7 wines and a cool souvenir wine glass, so he was a happy camper.  They also had live music – all of the musicians looked completely miserable, but they were actually pretty good.

Naturally, a few wines had to come home with us.  :)

The main tasting room was really gorgeous, and we made sure to check out the lavender field before we left.

Our second night was spent in Austin – even though it’s known for it’s nightlife, music and outdoor adventures, we were there for the food.  We hit up our favorite patio for dinner, then called it a night after enjoying a little room service dessert while we watched one of the Final Four games – such a ridiculous luxury that made this pregnant chick very happy.

After breakfast the next morning at the best hole in the wall for breakfast tacos, we hit the road to head back home!

Our last hurrah was so relaxing and we had the best time just hanging out with each other and wandering around the Hill Country with lots of good food and entertainment.  We’re hoping to do it again next March, but with a baby in tow.  :)

Did you have a last hurrah before baby?

THIS is happening right now at our house:

If you’re wondering why I’m so excited, click here to see our old front door – it will all become clear.  :)

A few weeks ago, this little lady helped me sew coral chevron curtains for the nursery.

Right now they’re hanging in our little girl’s room, all ready to be hemmed.  If I ever get around to it!!

We have tile at the flip!!

The bathrooms and laundry room have been fully tiled and grouted – now we’re just waiting on kitchen counters before the backsplash can go in.

This ol’ giraffe lamp is in the middle of getting a makeover.  We’ll see how it goes.  :)

What’s been going on with you?

I like that. I like that a lot.

So awesome.

So I scurried down the hall and was greeted by this ridiculous sight:

?!?!?!?!?

The little one has perfected the innocent, “What, Mom?” look, don’t you think?

After laughing hysterically and snapping an obscene number of photos we started to get a little concerned about how they would get down – so Jason grabbed a stepladder and tried to perform a rescue, à la firefighters rescuing a kitten from a tree:

Needless to say, they weren’t having it.  Those kitties had conquered that mountain and they were going to savor their victory, by golly.

By the way, we did eventually get a glimpse of how they managed to get up there in the first place:

Brute strength and a whole bunch of claws.

And I thought I was going to have my hands full with a new baby!!  Sigh.

P.S.  Our spare bedroom doesn’t always look like that – it’s just been a disaster zone of stuff to be donated/thrown out/sold since we cleared out the nursery a few weeks ago.  Apparently “clearing out” in my book is synonymous with “hide in another room.”  Baby steps, people.

So maybe our cookies didn’t turn out quite as cute as the recipe photo, but I didn’t hear anyone complaining.  :)

Squishing the candy cane kisses into the cookies was my favorite job of the evening.

My dad’s pecan puffs were the hands-down favorite of the evening – there were barely any left over for people to take home!  That’s pretty much always the case.

I went a little topping crazy.  Luckily, the extras came in handy when my sister hosted the gingerbread house extravaganza today!

I know a lot of you were curious as to whether the s’mores bars are as good as they look – and yes, I can attest that they are.  :)  Oh, and 5 cookies was waaaaay too ambitious for the evening.  We never got to these guys, and next time I’ll probably just go for one or two cookies.  We may have had a sweatshop vibe going at one point.  :)

Here is the gingerbread house that Jason and I made.  It was so much fun and we loved the way it turned out!  (And sorry for the sub-par iPhone pics!)

Here’s the little village of houses that the whole fam made.  (My sister and her husband made the one on the front left – it’s supposed to be the W Hotel in downtown Dallas where Khloe Kardashian and her husband are now renting.  :)  It even has a rooftop pool!)

My brother’s house was the winner, hands down.  It’s supposedly set in Santa Fe and boasts many eco-friendly features (according to him).

And that’s how we’ve been getting in the Christmas spirit!  I hope you’ve been having just as much fun, and that your holiday is very merry.  See you next week!

( In case you’re wondering what’s going on, each month I’m posting a list of the 10-15 bloggers that have left the most comments on IGTBH.  I’m also posting links to their blogs in my sidebar that will remain active all month long, and these blogs will be added to the blog roll on IGTBH. At the start of each new month the list will start fresh! )

Links to their blogs will be in my sidebar all month long – I hope you get a chance to check them out!