Architectural Project

Project: To take this house and downscale it while still maintaining the architectural detail and integrity of the exterior and the features of the interior.

Sussex house

I will be eliminating the basement entirely because it is supposed to be a house plan that could be used locally. How many basements are there in Mississippi? ;) Plus it will take away a lot of unused square footage. I'm still trying to decide what to do with the back stairs? Take them out completely? Raise them to give access to the second floor? Ideas?

One of the main features I fell in love with was the kitchen/living space. It is large, open and such a good place for a family to gather together.

It is absolutely amazing. Points of interest:
- I like how they added cabinets along most of the walls (look at the 1st and 3rd kitchen pictures).
- Check out the ceiling - I love the wood accents!
- In the first picture you can see a small butler's pantry tucked away to the right side of the stove
- You can't see the pantry too well in the pictures but it is a large walk-in pantry (7'-0" x 7'-0" according to the plan, not square but more triangular because of the wall angles.
- I like the generous size of the bar and island.
- I am definitely keeping the second sink that is by the pantry.

1st floor. Honestly, how many families need 2 2-car garages? ;) Check out the size of the master closet and bathroom. Or the whole master suite for that matter. *sigh*

If you click on the link above it says there are only 2 bedrooms. Yeah, there are definitely 6, including the second master suite. And they aren't small bedrooms either. The second floor also includes a 3rd living area.

The basement includes a ridiculously large recreation room with full kitchen, a playroom, a 2nd office, a ridiculous amount of unfinished storage and a home theater. How many "real" families actually need all of that? Note that I said need not want. ha

What is your favorite feature of this house? What should I keep and what, other than the obvious, is unnecessary? 

Anyway, that has been on my brain lately, along with the MS-CPAS exam, which I took yesterday. I am still going to do my protein frappe recipe. I ran into technical difficulties every morning when I had time to actually take pictures. But at some point, it will come.

And then she bought groceries

I had to cave and buy a few groceries. We are still well under our $100 budget for the month. If I wasn't so lazy, I would get up off the couch and give the exact total but I am totally not feeling it right now. Just keeping it real.

Work was exhausting tonight. We weren't busy. In fact we were dreadfully slow. I hate slow. It made my 8.5 hour shift feel like 14+ hours.

Anyway, we bought bread(loaf, hoagies, hamburger buns, hotdog buns - seriously a LOT of bread but we plow through it like no bodies business), milk, some reduced meat and a few little things that we needed to make some extra meals. It was $27ish. I think we did alright for several reasons:

- This was a non-planned(as in NO coupons) trip

- A hungry husband accompanied me to the store

- And a very tired wife was just ready to get home(read: didn't say no as much as she should have ;) ha)

Honestly, some people might not be impressed by the number or our progress. But I feel great that we have gone 2 weeks without buying groceries, we still have plenty of food to eat from our freezer and pantry and I ONLY spent $27. As long as we stay under our $100 goal for the month, I will be a happy lady. I plan on doing some coupoining over the next couple of days but most of it will be household items rather than groceries.

Pantry Challenge

Somethings have come up and/or changed, so in order for us to make our Disney trip happen in February, I am taking on a challenge.

Through couponing, I have been able to make a very little "stockpile" of sorts in my pantry, freezer, and fridge. I did an inventory of what we have a few nights ago and I came up with 26-28 different meals. Most of these include side of veggies and/or bread and are large enough for leftovers. This does not include 3 "meals for 2" frozen veggie dinners I have, frozen burritos, canned soup or any sandwiches. I excluded these because those are what I consider to be our fall back plans or quick fixes.
I am challenging myself to cook using what we already have, only buying milk, bread and other perishables. I know that this would completely deplete my stash and I don't want to find myself having to do serious grocery shopping at some point in February, so T and I decided on a compromise. I get $100 for the month of January to buy our perishables and then use the rest for couponing and sale shopping only. If it isn't on sale or if I don't have coupons for it, I won't buy it. We will see how we do with this. I was totally shocked once I sat down and looked at all the different meals I could make with what we have on hand. I had NO idea we had that much food stocked up. And T was shocked too. ;) He always says, "Well, what is there to eat?", never saying we don't have anything but certainly making it sound that way. He couldn't believe how many meals I came up with. He asked if I really had the groceries to make all of that on hand. As if I would make something like that up. Ha.
We work on a ridiculously limited budget anyway and I know if we can do this it will save us so much money. Think of how much you would save if you did it? Want to see others who are participating? Check out Money Saving Mom and Life as Mom!

I'll be home for Christmas

Hey there! Welcome to the humble Spence apartment. Thanks for stopping by!
Some of you might have seen my tree portion of the post before for Kelly's Show Us Your Life Christmas Tree Tour. But don't skip the post because then you'll miss out on all of my other Christmas decorations. ;)

Our Christmas tree is decorated in maroon, cream, and gold.
Most noticeably, it is highly Disney themed. If you have been around for any amount of time, you shouldn't be surprised. ;o) I adore Disney. Since our first Christmas as a married couple was spent working at Disney it seems rather fitting. We used our Christmas money from my Grandmommy to invest in Christmas ornaments that we wanted to have for our first Christmas and many years to come. I have no doubt in my mind that our future children will love Disney. It's in their genes, after all! ;)
Anyway, on to my tree.

(please ignore the fact that it is lopsided. This issue has since been rectified - literally)

I am not going to show pictures of all of my ornaments but I am going to share my favorites of our Disney ornaments! Most of them are a part of Disney's Gift of Love Christmas Collection (I tried googling to give a link to the collection but couldn't find anything. I do know that they were park exclusives last year).

Kissing under the mistletoe - Love it!

This ornament was given to me by my friend and sorority sister, Ila. She was working at Disney with the Disney College Program when we got married. She missed the wedding but she got us incredible discounts on our honeymoon and greeted us with this lovely ornament.

It was after our honeymoon that we decided to go back to Disney and participate in the College Program. 2 months later, we moved to Orlando to live, work and play at Disney World for 7 months. =)

Just married. *sigh* =)

More kissing under the mistletoe. By the way, I am on the search for mistletoe to make a "kissing ball". We will see if I succeed or not. So far, it's not working out. Haha

Magic Kingdom *another happy sigh*

Trevor picked this up for our little mini tree last year. He worked at Hollywood Studios the whole time we were there. I worked at Magic Kingdom but then transferred to HS for many reasons. Anyway, he wanted this ornament since we both worked at HS our first Christmas season together.

I have yet to put a picture in this ornament frame. Sad, I know. But I am waiting for the perfect picture. And since T doesn't like taking pictures - that perfect picture might never happen. ;o)

I really liked the way this picture turned out. I think it very well might be my favorite of them all. Just because of the Disney "Love" hanger and the honeymoon ornament.

Here are some of our other, Non-Disney ornaments. =)

On to our mantle. I used a simple, unlit garland and embellished it with white mini lights, extra garland, and other little extras. =)

I found these candle holders a few weeks ago for only a few dollars at a local antique store. I thought their cream and gold color would go perfectly on our mantle.

I used the leftover maroon and cream "berries" from the mantle to add a little extra to my wreath. The glass, framed "S" hangs over our mantle regularly and it fit perfectly inside of the wreath. Not sure if I will ever to do again, but it worked for this year. ;o)

Here are a few pictures of the mantle with the living room lights on. I love sitting in the living room with only the Christmas lights on. It's so cozy and peaceful!

I didn't hang our stockings on the mantle. They just didn't seem to look right with the garland. Instead they are hanging on a wall adjacent to the mantle underneath one of our shelves.
Our stockings were made by my mother and one of my sisters. My family has always had hand-made quilted stockings like these. My parent's still have mine and Trevor's original stockings but last year they mailed us our "own" set of stocking.

And how completely fitting for us that they have Disney print on the back. ;o)

I have 2 of these little trees on either side of the fireplace. I won them as door prizes at our church's choir retreat in August. The decorations were Christmas themed since we were kicking off learning our Christmas music. I won two of the table centerpiece trees.

This little mini tree is on our entry table. It is decorated in gingerbread and candy ornaments. The table also includes some of my Christmas gingerbread collection.

Thank you so much for stopping by! I can't wait to look at your home decked out in all of its Christmas splendor, as well as all of the other homes being shared. I love getting a sneak peak into other home and seeing how they add personal touches to their decor.

This post is linked to:

The Christmas Tour of Homes


Hooked on Houses


The Inspired Room


Southern Hospitality Blog

Funky Junk Interiors

My Baking Day Success

If you have ever seen MckMama's Not Me Mondays, you know they can be quite comical. I have never participated but I have enjoyed reading them on occasion.
Yesterday could have been a Not Me Wednesday. Seriously. Need a TINY example of the many things I most certainly didn't do? Here is one of my facebook status updates from yesterday.

Ashley Clegg Spence survived the hike to and from Brookshires in comical form. I DID NOT go through a hole in the fence to cut off a 1/4 mile each way. I DID NOT try to get my hair out of my face(thank you, wind) and smack myself in the head with a bag of groceries. And I most certainly DID NOT trip on my shoe lace and almost fall flat on my face on the Old Canton Rd sidewalk. =)

Yes, ladies. I slept until 9-something. Woke up, made a detailed list of what all I wanted to make and then comprised a grocery list. Let me just add that T's classes were not canceled and he had to work so he had the car. Being the genius that I am, deciding to do a baking day the night before said baking day, I didn't plan it out very well. I needed a quite a few things. So I put my Red Beans and Rice on in the crockpot and walked over a mile to Brookshires, our closest grocery store. The walk there was a piece of cake. Coming back with multiple bags of groceries... not so much.

Over all, it was a rather successful baking day.
I made:
Red Beans and Rice (1 full meal and lunches)
Corn Bread Muffins
Chicken and Dumplins (4 lunches)
One loaf Sourdough Bread
4 dozen milk chocolate and peanut butter swirl cookies
1 block white chocolate macadamia nut toffee
Homemade Cinnamon Rolls (14 rolls)
and 1 bunt cake Amish friendship bread

Not too bad for a rather spur of the moment baking day. There was so much more that I wanted to do but I can't do much with our little freezer. One day I WILL have a deep freezer or some sort of additional freezer space. ;)

We had some of the red beans and rice for dinner with some corn bread muffins before heading to church. When I got home from choir I unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher, washed all dishes that wouldn't fit in the dishwasher and then thoroughly cleaned my kitchen. It was so nice to go to bed with it completely clean. I try to have all the dishes done at night but lately, with getting home from work after 11pm, it hasn't really been happening. =) Just keeping it real.

I plan on having another baking day soon. It was so much easier to go ahead and do a lot at once rather than in small bits and pieces.

Thank you all for your encouraging comments on my last post. It's nice to know there are actually people who understand and care. I appreciate it!
It might be a couple more days before I can post. And look back Monday for My Disney Resort Christmas Tour - Part 2!

Fall? Yes, please!

I am beyond exciting about fall. So in honor of fall, my good mood, and the lovely fall colors cast across my living room as I watch TV by candlelight - here are some cute, but inexpensive fall decorating ideas. I am quite in love with the changing of the seasons. =)

Fall/Harvest decorative storage boxes

Adorable pumpkin candle holder. If it was a little more round, then it would look like a pumpkin coach. =)

Two tiered serving tray.

I think I might try to make something similar to this. We'll see later on if I actually follow through with this.

Seriously the most ridiculously cute pumpkin salt and pepper shakers. I love them!

I think this wagon and the wheel barrow would be super fun coffee/side table decorations!

I like crosses, so here are two fall crosses that I thought were pretty. =)

We'll see how much decorating actually get done this year since we are on a tight budget, but either way - I had fun looking through pictures... and it never hurts to have ideas for the future, right? :o)
The best part? I think the most expensive piece was $17.99. My kind of shopping. ;)