A Little DIY To Warm The Home & Heart :)

Wow! It's been so long...

We have had so much going on lately! After moving, and getting settled, we have had a blast getting to know our neighbors here at Lejeune! It can be scary meeting new people, but I have had a wonderful experience! :)

Along with getting to know our neighbors, I have had so much fun decorating our home! It seems like every week we add something new! Just this last week we added our kitchen table (picture posted below..). I had such a hard time finding a dining room table at a reasonable price that sat more than four people! I don't know about you, but we are an entertaining family, we love having company, so only being able to seat four people just wasn't going to suffice! I found our table on a site that is similar to Craigslist, but this one is people selling things just in our area.. which is nice. I love our table and I considered it a real bargain. :)

Our other latest addition this past week has been our living room and dining room curtains! I crafted them this last week, and I had some people interested in how I went about making them, so I thoroughly documented the ones I just finished today, so that I could post step by step instructions!

So here goes...

I first purchased simple white curtains from IKEA. I got them on Amazon because, of course, there is no IKEA even close to us (SO sad)! They were $20 for the pair (two panels).. so I purchased two so I could make one set for our living room, and one set for our dining room. I honestly thought $20 for two panels was a good deal. I have searched high and low, online and in stores, for curtains and the average I saw was $40, PER PANEL! "Nuh-uh," I said.

Second, I threw the wrinkled curtains in the dryer for about 20 minutes to try and get some creases out! You can also iron them if you want, I did that for the first one, but that was entirely too difficult! So the dryer worked just fine. :)

I then used my drop cloths I had purchased from Lowes back when we painted our living room. I have always been a fan of cloth drop cloths, because they truly have a longer life than the hard to handle plastic ones. (Also, plastic drop cloths are no bueno for this project, as the paint will seep through the curtains when you paint it, causing the plastic drop cloth to stick to the curtain and seep in a weird and worse way than a cloth one would.)

So, you have your curtains and your drop cloths down.... [curtains on top of the drop cloths, of course ;)]

Then I got my yard stick out, and I wanted to measure the stripes evenly. I went for 12" stripes. So first I would start from the top of the curtain find 12", make a mark, one on the left, one on the right, and one in the middle of the curtain, so that you can then use your yard stick to evenly connect the dots...

Onces you have your lines marked down the middle, you can tape them!

Make sure you watch your lines, so that you take into consideration the tape width...

I taped my first line under the pencil mark, my second line on top of the pencil mark, my third under again, my fourth on top, and so on until you've taped them all.. This will keep the painted stripes the same thickness as the curtain colored stripes. (I hope I have explained this well enough!)

Next, you can begin your painting! I was lucky to have a ton of extra paint from when we were painting our accent wall in our living/dining room, which is exactly the color I wanted on my curtains.. so I lugged out the paint can and our paint brush & began to paint...

Once you have painted, I did one coat, but you can do two if you choose.. my curtains were very thin, so one coat actually looked better. But the curtains will soak up and leak paint under, so two coats might be good!

Next, you will want to remove your tape. I removed my tape about 15 minutes after I finished painting all the stripes on one whole curtain.. 

As you can see in this pic, I did try using a plastic drop cloth & I did NOT like it. 

Then you wait, and wait, and wait. Drying takes forever! I would recommend, if you have TWO people, about 45 minutes after they have been laying drying, for each of you taking one (width) side and lifting it up and then placing it back, just to separate the curtain from the drop cloth. This helps it to dry a bit faster. Be careful to put it back in its original spot, so that you don't get some of the paint that leaked on the drop cloth on part of your unpainted curtain! No big deal if your all alone, just let it dry... I know its hard, I'm really impatient too! :)

Then once all are dry and happy, you can hang 'em up! And you have yourself very pretty, inexpensive  curtains! 

Living Room!

Dining Room!

The total I spent on this project- $40. Make sure you clean your brushes thoroughly and let your drop cloth completely dry so when you fold it up, store it, and then drag it out in the future, it isn't stuck together from the wet paint that was one it! 

I hope I didn't leave anything out! Comment if you have questions or ideas! 

-Ogden Love

Kansas City, & Making Our House A Home

After Brent's TBS graduation he was granted a month of leave. Even though we had just both been to KC for our wedding just a few weeks prior, we were told by everyone we knew that when you are granted any sort of leave, we must take it! So we did that and headed to Kansas City after finding our home at Camp Lejeune!

Here are some pictures from our Kansas City vacation:

Brent and I both were able to hang out with our nieces a BUNCH during our stay, which was awesome!

Uncle Boris and McKenna playing her first ever game of Jenga!

They even had a few days of playing together, which is always interesting-

Ahnisty and Addi having a tea party in the back yard :)

Ahnisty and Addi at McKennas birthday party. 

Of course we were all able to hang out with our best friends. Brent and I have been truly blessed with sharing our friends and having friends from each of us become friends with each other, during our time away! That makes it so much nicer and easier to spend max quality time with everyone!

And of course, we got to hang out with our families!

We were all able to get together one day while we were in town and catch a Royals game with the whole Ogden clan!

Brent and I always have an amazing time with our friends and family, we have the best ever! But it was way past time for us to start living as we were.. married! We were sad to say our goodbyes, but we were ready. We hit the road, and we headed back to our home for now, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

We got back to Camp Lejeune on Aug. 23rd, which was the day our household goods shipment was to be delivered to our house, but while we are driving, we get the call that says they are going to be a WEEK late with our shipment. Not because it didn't ship on time, but because the moving company was a week behind. Ridiculous! This means our stuff would be sitting IN Jacksonville, but there would be no way for us to get it. How cruel! So we began to cope and realize we better go shopping for an air mattress...

Our fancy bed for the week we didn't get our things...

With there being absolutely nothing we could do about our shipment being a week late, I began to brainstorm what we COULD do with our time.. and I decided we needed to paint! I love painting and I plan to paint every home I live in, throughout our life in the Marine Corps. There is nothing like freshly painted walls, and there is nothing home-ie about hospital white painted walls.

TRIM!

Dining and living rooms complete! 

Kitchen accent done, begin of wall painting!

Kitchen Complete! We absolutely love it!

Master Bedroom Trim

Master Bedroom Complete

I have always enjoyed painting! Brent had never painted before, and he isn't too sure about it. It was great for us to kill time when we had nothing. 

A week later we received our household goods shipment....

We never realized how much we would miss the little things that are ours! We loved seeing every box come off the truck, it felt like Christmas in August! 

Now, we have been very busy creating our home! I am absolutely loving decorating! Those pictures will hit the blog as soon as we get the rest of our furniture delivered. A room by room post to come. :)

Ogden Love

Remembering We're Blessed, Even When We Feel Absolutely Defeated...

We have had yet ANOTHER hectic, crazy past couple of weeks! After Brent's TBS graduation, we hugged mom and dad Watson goodbye, and slowly began our journey to Camp Lejeune, in Jacksonville, North Carolina. Before we journeyed there, we got the opportunity to stay with Brent's Aunt and Uncle who live about two hours from Jacksonville. What an incredibly fun and relaxing time we had. There's nothing better than hearing stories of my husbands younger days with his brothers. What a goofy group of young boys they were, and probably the best was hearing some unforgettable stories about my father-in-law, and the things my husband would say to his mother and father in his younger years. Now I completely understand why he was called, "Boris" all growing up. Describing him as ornery doesn't quite suffice. Mom and Dad, he was worse than ME! ;)

After our awesome stay with Aunt Linda and Uncle Gary, they made sure we were fully stocked with food and they sent us on our way to our new home area. We were going to Lejeune to attempt to get housing at Brent's new duty station. We had no idea what the housing office would say. We didn't know if we would be able to get a house on base, or if we would have to get an apartment while they put our name on the waiting list for housing. Well, we got lucky! The housing office at Lejeune (for some reason) had more than 30 homes available for immediate move in, and they were able to put us in a house right away! We even had the opportunity to go on a walk-through in the housing options (a one or two story house) before we committed to one. After walking through, what now is our house, we knew that's what we wanted! We went back to the office, and were told we could get the keys on August 6th, and we sat there thinking, "Hm...." Oh, no! We wanted the keys right then, but that wasn't going to happen. We had no idea what we were supposed to do for a whole WEEK until we got the keys to our house. But, mom Watson came through and saved the day, like she always seems to... I called her and explained how we had a week to spare before we got the keys to her house, and she was hanging out with a friend that owns a beach house at Ocean Isle Beach, in North Carolina, which was only about two hours away from base. My moms friend said we could go stay at their beach house for the week until we moved in! How amazing! We definitely lucked out with getting the opportunity to stay at a beautiful beach house for a whole week.

Annnnnnd, we have moved into our new home. We love it! It's little, and it's perfect. It is a one story, three bedroom/3 bath home on base at Camp Lejeune, in North Carolina. We have hardwood floors, a kitchen with nice new appliances, and a very BIG master closet! We also have his and her sinks. :) Our house came with a TWO car garage, and with our luck in the past three weeks, the garage is something that comforts us as far as security goes.

If you're curious what we mean by needing to feel an extra sense of security, here's the story-

We were robbed, again. Last time it was Brent's legacy sword and dress blues cover, and this time it was a little bit of everything. We drove out to Camp Lejeune a day early to attempt to figure out moving our things from Shawnee, KS to our new duty station, and also look into buying some furniture. We were excited! After all, these are supposed to be the exciting days of our lives! Moving in together after being newly married... We got our excitement toned back quite a bit after the robbery. We stayed at a local Jacksonville hotel the night before we got the keys to our home. We had my Acura filled with luggage and random moving things, and Brents Honda was also filled with stuff from his room at TBS. We just wanted a good nights sleep, and at about 5:45am we got a pounding on our hotel room door. It was the Jacksonville police informing us that they had gotten a call that one of our vehicles doors were wide open. My heart sank. It was Bren'ts car and sure enough when we walked out with the police, the doors were wide open. There were two suitcases in the back seats, and one bag in the front seat, and his trunk was FILLED with a list of very expensive uniforms and various items. The trunk was not open, so we had no idea what the robbers actually got away with.. We knew that Brent's Marine Corps Dress Blues were gone, and a ton of my clothes all of which were in the suitcases in the front and back seats of the car. We were told not to touch a thing, because the police were having try and get fingerprints. This just happened to us a little over a week ago and this Honda was turing into a nightmare for us. After fingerprints were taken, we were finally able to open the trunk and answer the question of, "How bad is bad?" I am thanking God still to this minute that the trunk had not been touched! Everything that was stolen is replaceable. I am thankful for that. We had another answered prayer happen when we called our insurance company to check and see if there was any chance car theft would be covered... Good news, our renters insurance, that I called and added to our policy the day before our theft was going to cover this theft! The adjustor on the phone said that our renters insurance came into effect less than eight hours before we called our insurance company. Praise God, or what?! Through the heartbreak, our ever-faithful God, our friends and our family were able to comfort us more than ever! Counting blessings even in defeat can lift your spirit more than you know!

This is the beautiful beach house we were able to stay at for the week we were waiting to get into our house!

This is our new home for the next few years! I can't wait to add some beautiful flowers and of course, our American Flag! (This picture is before I ripped up that ugly bush to the left of our front door.)

That's all for today!

Next Post? Freedom tour, our vacation to Kansas City and making our house a home (with no help to the moving company, of course!).


-Ogden Love

"How do I tell Dad his 31 year old sword was stolen?"

What a CRAZY week we have had!

To start it all out, we had the blessing of having mom and dad Watson fly in from Kansas City on Tuesday evening to sit beside me (Destiny) as my husband accomplished his SECOND major feat in his Marine Corps career. Besides Mama Sheila, I couldn't imagine anyone else I wanted to share my happiness and express how proud I was of Brent than my parents. It was also perfect for us to be able to show them around the town(s) I have been driving around in, living in and getting familiar with for the past six months.

After my parents flight got in, we drove them to the Marine Corps Museum where they were having Bravo Company & their families meet for guided tours, and just enjoy the company of other Marines in Bravo Company. Brent was so over everything though, he was ready to leave and get dinner, so needless to say, my parents didn't get the whole Marine Corps Museum tour that my dad was eager to get. Don't worry, we plan on taking them today before they leave town!

So, we headed to a nice relaxing dinner at Applebees, and afterwards called it a night to get some rest. Brent had to go back to his barracks and clean, so we dropped him off and headed back home to sleep!

They made it safely! 

Me and my freakishly good-looking husband! 

Wednesday morning we woke up and had to be on base by 0830/8:30am to begin the graduation celebrations. Good thing we have some smart planners in the Marine Corps, because they came prepared to feed and wake up the families with hundreds of boxes of Dunkin' Donuts and Dunkin' Donuts COFFEE! Anyone that knows me knows, I hate coffee... but I was happy my parents were able to enjoy a nice cup of joe to open their eyes. After all, it is an hour earlier for their bodies and minds!

We were able to get a tour of Camp Barrett, where Brent had spent the past six months training, so we of course walked to the O-Course (obstacle course) on Camp Barrett. We were able to have Brent walk us through the different obstacles, and if anyone knows me, I wanted to try!

Snapping a pic before I got all nasty and sweaty from attempting the O-Course!

He made it look WAY too easy! 

Dad giving it a go!

My mom as cute as ever, isn't she the cutest?!

This was very difficult! Hahaha 

This one wasn't what we expected- I was hanging very limp on my rope and we wanted a picture with both of us smiling at the camera, and well, my rope said, "Not in my house!" But this still ended up a pretty cute photo!

After our exercise at the O-course, we were ready to head back to the house and take a nap. Brent went to get his car and we drove to Mama Sheila's house to relax before graduation later that evening. This is where our day went way south immediately... When Brent got to Sheila's we were unloading his car so he could have his uniform in the house to get ready for graduation. As we were unloading the car Brent started to notice things were missing. One being his dress blues cover, and the other being his Mameluke sword, which is a legacy sword passed down from his father. This is the sword his father used while he was in the Marine Corps. It is a 31 year old sword that had both his father's name and Brent's name engraved in it. It was missing. Brent's heart sank and we both immediately started calling around to his buddies and thinking of all the possibilities this sword could have ended up. We called the barracks where Brent lived at TBS, they checked his room- nothing. We called his buddies and begged them to check their cars multiple times thinking there could have been a CHANCE their stuff got mixed up- nothing. We came back with nothing. As the afternoon progressed, we began accepting the fact that this sword, that had a irreplaceable value, was gone. Gone. Brent was supposed to be celebrating accomplishing some of the roughest months of his life, and he couldn't do anything but focus on how he was going to tell his father that this sword was missing. After Brent recited the previous evenings happenings in his mind over and over, we came to no other conclusion than it was stolen from his car. How could that happen though? On a Marine Corps training base? We couldn't wrap our heads around it and we were just heartbroken. 

The day carried on, and so did we.. we had to make it to Graduation by 5:30pm. We began pulling numbers for pawn shops in the area to just make sure they were aware to look for a sword if someone was trying to pawn it. We contacted Military Police but they said we would have to go in and make a formal statement, but that was going to have to wait until after graduation. Graduation was awesome, I was able to experience an amazing Marine Corps "tradition" and see my husband walk across that stage and know that WE DID IT. We made it through these horrible six months! (Graduation pictures will be posted at the end)

After graduation, Brent said his goodbyes to his buddies he's lived with and grown very close to over the past six months. He said goodbye to his "Guy Babes" as they all call each other. Aw, cute right? Hahaha (rolls eyes) ;). We made our way to the Military Police to make a statement about the sword. My parents waited in the car while Brent and I went in together, but after a while I decided to go check in with my parents and let them know it wouldn't be much longer. As I was in the car I was praying over and over for a miracle and that this sword would just show up! I held on to Brent's phone at graduation, so it was turned off and as I was waiting for Brent in the car I turned his phone on by the off chance that he may have gotten a message about the sword...? Well, sure enough God answers prayers! He had a voicemail from one of his buddies at TBS telling Brent to call another TBS buddy because he had info on a sword... MY HEART DROPPED! I didn't want to get my hopes up, but HOLY COW, THE SWORD! I immediately called the fellow Marine that we were told to call and I just blurted out, "Where is it?!" I pleaded for him to know or have it, and he said he didn't have it but he had the contact for the Marine that found it! We then contacted another Marine that we heard had it, but he said, no I don't have it but a 2nd LT in Bravo Company walked to his car this morning and found it, laying in the bed of his truck, ALONG with Brent's dress-blues cover! We immediately called the LT that had the sword and he was as confused as ever as to how this random sword ended up in the bed of his truck! We, ladies and gentleman, experienced a miracle! I RAN into the police station where Brent was writing a statement and I just said, "They found it! SOMEONE FOUND IT!" Unbelievable, really. The Military Police were just as shocked as the both of us. 

We don't know exactly what happened.  How did it end up there?  Did it sprout legs and walk over to the truck?  Did someone take it, realize it had two names on it and was thus worthless to them, and just dump it in a truck?  Who knows. There were countless visitors, Marines, and civilians on base yesterday.  Whatever happened, we're glad it turned up.  

So, our day ended with smiles on all of our faces and our hearts rose with extreme happiness and relief! 

TBS GRADUATION:

Brent Graduating

Me and HUBBY after Graduation!

Mom and Dad Watson, with us!

A few of the, "guy babes!" Wait, is Shulkosky smiling?

Now, Brent and I are off to Lejeune to sort out some housing! Brent has a month off, so we plan to relax and do some traveling. We will keep you all posted on our happenings and adventures. 

Keep checking back! Wedding pictures to come! :)

So, the journey continues......

.... and so it begins

If you're reading this, I have successfully posted our first, "blog post" on the new blog!

I had many reasons for wanting to start a blog, the main one being it will be such an amazing way for our family and friends to be in the "know" about our life as a married couple in the Marine Corps! I kept thinking to myself, "I can't keep writing novels on my Facebook status' about the happenings in our life, there's got to be a better way!" & here, I've found that. There will be ups and downs on our journey and I plan on being as transparent as my husband will allow ;)... But seriously, we are open diaries ready to be scribbled in, laughed about, and cried on.

To get a good start on this & to fully make it a successful post, I feel I need to express how the last six months has changed my life, and how my life has changed in the past six months. First of all, I was a child of civilian parents my whole life, so every single step I've taken into the life of a military spouse has been... different. With the help of my husbands amazing parents, & my brother-in-laws wife, (who have spent, and are spending a good number of years in the military as well), I've been able to keep my sanity, while keeping a smile on my face. I will have to keep my promise of transparency here-- this life is still hard. There's not another way to put it. I have military friends and family, and I see their struggles. I am aware in my days as a military spouse I will encounter hardships, but any life outside of a military life also encounters hardships, even though they are very different hardships. I have learned patience & I've been angry. I've learned what ghost turds are & I've learned all about the chain of command. I have cried, and cried, and cried. We have also been able to visit one of the coolest cities in America on a weekly basis! We have learned we are in this together & the journey ain't always gonna be easy. ;)

My husband is graduating TBS (The Basic School) on Wednesday! For anyone that doesn't know what The Basic School is, it is his second round of training in the Marine Corps. Officers go to TBS after they have commissioned, or in other words, taken the oath to serve & protect our America. At TBS Marine Officers learn the skills of provisional rifle platoon commanders. At TBS, the officers learn what their MOS will be (military occupational specialty), and he will learn all about their MOS. TBS is in Quantico, Virginia, which is about 40 miles south of Washington DC. It is a six month training school, which in my husbands words, "HAS SUCKED!" He has found out that his MOS is an adjutant. He has done a phenomenal job, but he and I are more than ready for the next phase! We have been living separate from each other for the first part of our marriage, so wifey is ready to have a home with her hubby. We are off to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina & we are ready!

So, the journey will continue.....