JOSH'S BIRTHDAY CAME EARLY

So last night Josh got a 6 week early birthday present... the new Iphone 4. (He got the black one but I really like the white one too so I decided to show you both.) He is beyond excited. His old phone was so slow and almost died every night before he could get it back to the charger - ridiculous. It was time for a new one. Here are some of my favorite quotes from him last night...

Right after we got the phone and we were walking out of the store... Josh - "Look at this picture (quality)." Becca - "I know..." Josh - "No you don't, you have never seen anything THIS good!"

When we trying to make a U-turn to go back to firehouse subs for dinner Josh was getting stressed at the traffic and said, "I don't like my Iphone seeing me frustrated like this."

Later after dinner as we are walking to the car..."I've got my wife in one hand and my Iphone in the other... life is good."

O babe you are so funny. I am so glad you like your early birthday present. Love you.

DINING ROOM RENO

When Josh's family was in town a couple of weeks ago we stumbled across a great buy on a new dining room table and chairs. (I would say that our previous dining set was probably our least favorite piece of furniture for both looks and functionality.) We inherited the old table from my dad's condo which we were so thankful for but were ready for a change. We had been keeping an eye out for a new table that would be bigger but still fit in the smallish space - and hopefully be able to fit in the kitchen of a future house! Here is the picture of the dining room before...

After finding the new table... we decided to give the dining room a mini-makeover by painting above the exisiting chair rail and trying to give the room a little more depth. It only took us a couple of hours to paint and I think it made a big difference. Nothing too loud like our other accent walls - but interesting and maybe a little more sophisticated?

We absolutely love our new dining room table!! We got it at Z Gallerie on clearance and they also threw in a nice designer's discount for yours truly. (I love my field!) It is a dark solid wood with charcoal gray legs. The wood is somewhat distressed which we think will be great for future little ones - this way we don't have to worry about it getting damaged. Yet, it is not "country" by any means... the metal legs give it a contemporary feel.

While Josh's family was here we got to immediately test out the functionality of the table by having a full dinner for 6 people where everyone and all the food could fit at the table. Very nice.

Even Molly's area was part of the dining room reno... we picked up these new food and water bowls for her at Homegoods. Very cute and it was time to retire the hot pink ones seen here. Josh was very excited as you can imagine.

WORK IN AUBURN, AL

Last week I took a quick one-day trip with my boss over to an apartment complex in Auburn, AL called Eagle's West that our company owns and manages. We decorated and staged a one-bedroom model to try and entice some more people to rent at this location. This was my first real stab at decorating a model (which is something that I think we will be doing a lot more of...) We did most of the shopping for the model the day before we went. Our budget was $3,000 (not inlcuding major furniture items) and we ending up spending $2,700. I must say it was very fun getting to shop and put together something like this overnight - it almost did not feel like work... does this mean I like my job? :) Here are the pics - how do you think we did?

BATON ROUGE IN AUGUST WITH NO A/C

I must say that the title for this post pretty much sums up last weeks trip with work for me... it was HOT. My boss and I drove down to Baton Rouge last Monday and came back Friday afternoon - we went to work on a project that Capstone is opening tomorrow (Saturday) called The Cottages at Baton Rouge. We were primarily working on decorating a clubhouse for the cottages complex - adding furniture, rugs, art accessories... making it look "lived-in".


Avantages to this trip:

- LOTS of free T-shirts... we were changing our shirts 3 times a day :)

- Got to have lunch one day with my good friend Sarah Rawlings who drove up from New Orleans to see me - I had not seen her in over a year!

- We got to get out of the office for a week and see an awesome student living facility that is so great it makes me want to go back to school just so that I can live in it.



Several disadvantages to this trip:

- We were in LSU country - their fans are always the worst!

- No elevator working to carry heavy items upstairs (i.e. lounge chairs)

- NO A/C IN 117 DEGREE HEAT INDEX...we would walk outside from the clubhouse and this hot weather would feel actually cooler than it was inside


Hot as it was down there... this is a really neat project - the clubhouse is 20,000 sq. ft. and comes complete with a two-story gym, tanning beds, steam room, game rooms with pool tables, poker tables, shuffle board, dart board, TVs for watching game, etc.


Check out the website link to the site... it is really cool. I did not get any pics of the clubhouse as it was still not cleaned once we left. We are hoping they will take professional pictures ASAP. It really was a neat project to be a part of... I learned one thing last week - my job description as an Interior Designer was just broadened and I wil never again take the sweet feeling of air conditioning for granted.

O ALABAMA...

So, remember how I pointed out the lovely TV commercials that we have the pleasure of viewing every day here in Alabama? Apparently the News Stories are not much better...

HEWIETTS & HEWIETTS VISIT THE HEWIETTS

So I am a little behind on my blog postings... the past couple of weeks have been quite busy. Last weekend Josh's parents and grandparents came to visit us here in Birmingham and then this past week I traveled to Baton Rouge for work. (I plan to do a later post about the very eventful work trip....) The picture you see here is 3 generations of Hewiett men.


We had a lot of fun with Josh's family. They arrived on Friday night and where we promptly proceeded to the nearest Jim N' Nicks BBQ for dinner - DELICIOUS. There is just nothing like those cheese biscuits. On Saturday morning we got up and made the trek to Edgar's Bakery for breakfast - very Yummy! We then proceeded to split up into two cars and while the boys headed out to the Bass Pro Shops (which turned out to be a 3 hour tour... literally!) us girls made the rounds to the Vera Bradley store, Charming Charlie's, Calico Corners (to meet my old peeps!) and a few of the ritzy neighborhoods in the Ham.

The line-up outside Edgars

Later that day I took the fam on tour of my office :) Everyone liked it. Guess that means I'm official now?

On Saturday night we had an interesting occurance... our apartment complex gave notice that the city had to turn off our water in order to change the water main for our complex. We prepared for the worst... 6 people in one small apartment with potentially no running water for 12 hours... it turned out fine and it seems that the water was only off from about midnight to 4:00 AM and so most of us slept through it.

On Sunday morning we all got ready and headed off to church at Brook Hills. We were so exited to show Josh's family our wonderful church. They were glad to see everything and hear David Platt preach in person.

The Hewiett ladies ready for church

On Sunday afternoon Josh and I made a very exciting purchase - a new dining room table and chairs! For anyone who has ever been to our place and had the pleasure of eating a meal at our small table, you will appreciate the new one. We found it on clearance at Z Gallerie and once they threw in a designer discount for yours truly we decided to buy it. Since the table was fully assembled and rather large... Josh and his Dad had to rent a truck from Home Depot to get it home... but home it is and it is lovely. (Will post pictures at a later date... we are toying with the idea of a dining room mini-maker over now that we have a new table and it will need a post of its own.)

Molly of course had an absolute blast this weekend... she got to spend lots of quality time with her Keith.... we then had to deal with her deep depression that ensued after he left on Monday morning. Thank you to all of you for coming! We love you all :)