My Crazy-Busy, Productive Week of Spring Break

This title is about the best description I can come up with to describe how my week of week of Spring Break was for me...well technically over a week. Since I only have classes 3 days a week, I got a whole week and a half for Spring Break this year- wahoo! Unfortunately, the time flew by way too fast, and I am sad to say I am back in St. Louis again getting ready to hit the books for a therapeutics exam on Wednesday ) : Looking on the bright side though, here is a quick run down of all the things I was able to accomplish on my spring break:
Decide on colors to paint our master bedroom and living room/dining room/kitchen area
Paint, Paint, Paint all these rooms plus 2 hallways and 2 bathrooms
Cooked dinner for my parents and Grandma Leslie (luckily they still ate even after I spilled the entire taco bake onto the stove door as I was getting it out of the oven...they are way too nice!)
Finally frame the LESLIE pictures my sister gave to us for Christmas (picture coming soon!)
Eat lunch with the Dad or Mom or Dad&Mom just about every week day (Mom and me managed to get Chinese twice!)
Spend lots of time playing with our loving puppy Covey and even taught her how to catch apple slices in her mouth...we our working the way up to her catching frisbees
Got my TB test required for rotations...negative once again-praise!
Made it to a wonderful church service where we got to catch up with an old friend from high school
Replaced the 2 ugly light fixtures in both of our bathrooms with much more modern/trendy ones (pics coming soon!)
Made a trip to St. Louis to move the majority of my furniture home to put in the guest bedroom
Got the ever cool UVerse installed in our house the day after it became available to our neighborhood thanks to my dad having a little inside push ; )
Made it to my own birthday party over an hour late...oops. The cookie cake was delicious though!
And finally, held an Open House for family to see the newly painted walls- this was the first time most of my family had even seen our house...

So here are some pics to get you started with the painting progress:


These are 2 colors from Benjamin Moore (Edgecomb Gray and Shaker Beige) that I thought would look nice for the living area. I decided to go with a lighter color than either of these called Elmira White...then after painting a bathroom and hallway decided to go with an even lighter color from Dutch Boy paint called Whitetail deer (My husband and my father in-law who are both deer hunters loved the name...I love the color!)

And these were the colors I was trying to chose between for the master bedroom. I ended up going with the top one, again from Benjamin Moore called Buxton Blue. I went great with the pillows I told you guys about earlier that I purchased from Etsy...pics coming!

And so the taping and painting began. We started Sunday night and didn't finish painting till Friday afternoon. Boy did my back start hurting by Friday! I had no clue what a job I was in for. It didn't help that our textured walls required just about 2 coats of paint to finally fill in all the little holes with color.... Luckily Wal-Mart can match any paint color, so I was able to get the colors I wanted at much cheaper prices than the hardware store, especially after my good'ole discount!

Of course, I took any help I could get. There would have been no way I could have finished everything I wanted to get painted in 1 week without all my helpers. This is my dad touching up the Whitetail Deer color in our living room. In case you are wondering about the desk, we use Brandon's computer as our tv in the living room....it's our sweet flat screen tv...kind of lol.

My mom was a huge help. She was over every day helping tape and edge...sweet thing! This picture helps show the subtle difference between the new paint color and our white trim, which is just what I was wanting. It makes things a little bit more home-y, yet keeps it feeling bright and open...

And here is Brandon's hard-working Dad. He did all my top edging, and let me tell you, this was one tough job having textured walls AND ceilings. I tried to edge the hallway ceilings and he had to come over and fix them! He has an amazingly steady hand.

Thanks so much to all my amazing helpers who came over to paint or clean this week (Mark, Jacque, Dad, Mom, Kara). I couldn't have done it without you.

For those of you who haven't seen our house, sorry these pictures aren't much help in showing you what the finished walls look like. You will have to stay tuned for future posts. Don't worry, I won't keep you hanging too long! I am calling it a night tonight though; I am going to enjoy what is left of my birthday today by going to bed early ; )