So I took my beautiful wife out to one of her favorite places.. The plates of food were only a $1 each and the drink was $1.29… How awesome is that!?!?!!11

Everything started with the fact that our amazing apartment is pantry-less, and we are tool-less. When Grant and I first got married, we never got any tools. We got so many other things, and we figured since we made our wedding so cheap we would just buy some tools later. Well, later has come. Now that we have an income, and a place we decided to buy some tools. The tools that Grant bought were a little bit more on the expensive side, but we wanted to invest rather than a crappy 20 dollar drill that breaks half way through all of our projects.  So here you can see the first set that Grant purchased.

So here you can see the Makita drill set that Grant bought. We used it to put together our pantry,and it worked Great. It came with a flashlight, a drill, and a driver drill? I think is what it is called.

In order to finish this pantry project, we need the wood cut for us at Home Depot because as you can see above, there is no saw of any form in that set. So, Grant and I went to Home Depot. We waited for about 15 minutes because not a single employee could use the cutter, and the ones that did were in a meeting. Grant and I were about to walk out and just go to Lowe’s across the street to have them cut the plywood we needed when the found someone to help us. They turned on the machine, and all we need was our plywood sheet cut into 3,  22” runs of plywood. Then we needed one of those runs to be cut smaller into shelves for the pantry. The man who came to help us told us he couldn’t cut the shelves because the saw only cut vertically. Once we explained to him that he should make the vertical cuts, then turn one of the pieces horizontally to get the cuts we wanted.  The worker, did get this concept for a while, and then ended up cutting on of the pieces an inch too long. This was not a good Home Depot Experience. So we get back to the apartment, and Grant started working with the pieces that we did have.

Here you can see Grant working. He wasn’t too happy with me taking this picture, but he always takes pictures of me when I don’t want it so HA. Anyway, here you can see him using his Amazing Laser level that he got from his Grandpa. Man this thing has come in handy so many times for people like Grant and I are who very picky with how things are hung and spaced.

Grant Drilled the sides of the wood into the wall so we were making as few holes as possible in the wall.

Here you can see the shelves we drilled into the wood rather than the wall -Great thinking Grant! This closet was supposedly for coats, but our bedroom closet is VERY large, and so this sorry excuse for a coat closet is now my pantry WOOT!

Here is the pantry filled which is pretty sad because it is already filled up with stuff. We might have to keep the ugly black shelf after all.  There are still a few organizational things I want to put in there. Above the cans, I want to put some drawers that pull out for some more storage, but other than that I am very excited with how it turned out.

Here you can see that I have doors on this closet which is amazing! So my pantry is looking very good.  I am so happy to have a husband who will take the time to  fix things like this for me, especially when he does such a GREAT job!

Now, you are seeing another picture of a different tool set, Why you might wonder, well I will tell you why. Grant was very frustrated by the fact that he couldn’t fix the shelf that the man cut too big, so we started looking into tool sets by Makita that had saws with them. So, the set that Grant has above is the home version rather than the contractor set. It is more light weight and portable, where the tools below are the contractor grade with bigger and longer lasting batteries.

So, Grant was able to sell his first set on Craigslist, buy the set below for a little bit more money, and he got a lot more tools. They also had a deal going on where he gets a free tool, and he will be able to get the Driver drill that he had in the first set,but not in this set. The main saw that he was wanting is the jigsaw which only works with the contractor grade batteries. So that was the main reason that we switched to this tool set, and of course it has more tools! So, that is the next tool that we will be saving up for.

Next Project = Hanging our shelves for my books!

So while Jessica was filling the pantry I noticed something move.. I wasn’t sure if I did or not, but I mentioned it and Jess wasn’t going to even come close until I found out what it was.  Well it was a camouflaged spider!  I was thinking to myself , “Self what type of spider it that?” Then I realized it was actually paint on it.  It matched the wall paint color perfectly.  It actually had survived the painting of our apartment before we moved in.. Very impressive.  So normally I grab the spider and take it outside and let it go, but I knew this commando spider would find its way back and come kill us.. So for the safety of my wife and I, this spider had to take one for the team. enjoy

Click on pictures to make them full size

Yeah so it def snowed in Austin on Tuesday. Well if you wanna call that snow. It was all melted and gone by wednesday.

Here are the pictures as promised, even if they are a little bit late.

We tried to get a good mix of pictures that will show a good before and after, but we didn’t take pictures when there were so many bins you could hardly walk around, but these pictures still look messy enough so hopefully they still work.

Here you can see our living room after our trip to Ikea when we were getting our bedroom furniture.

We have a fire place which is nice, and today it snowed here in Austin, so the one chance we had to use it was wasted because we didn’t have any firewood since I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my tree.

Here is a little bit better of a picture to show how there were just stacks and stacks of stuff. Our biggest issue were empty boxes/bins that we were planning on keeping, and all of the stuff that we were planning on giving away. It was always in our way.

Here you can see our kitchen area, you can see the black shelf. I am not very fond of it because it will always look messy,but for right now it is the best we can do, and we had the shelf.

As I said before, Grant is happy once his computer is set up, and here you can see that it is indeed set up. You can also see the stools we were sitting on when we didn’t have office chairs. Yeah, they aren’t the sturdiest, and we didn’t want to break them. Now that we have real chairs, I feel so high up. It is great!

Our bedroom looked pretty close to this for a long time.  We were hoping for most of the weekend to clean up,but since Grant’s flight was canceled it kinda of pushed our plans out, but we just tried to work on it everyday when we were done with work.

Me putting together one of the drawers for our bed/ night stand.

RUDY’S!!!!!!!

Grant and I had never had Rudy’s before, but have drank out of their glasses because a few people we stayed with had left over plastic cups from them. So, on the way home from Ikea there was one, so we decided what the heck we will try it.

A few words of advice, don’t tell them you are new there. They all yell… Rookie… I think? But they let you try a little bit of everything that they sell, so that you have a better idea of what you want. Grant and I got their beans which were pretty good, we got their sausage which I thought was great. We got their moist brisket with bread, and their CREAMED CORN!!! I had never had creamed corn before, but this stuff is AMAZING!! It tastes like amazingness. You would never know there are vegetables in there. But anyway I think I ate all of them by myself cause Grant was all about the meat.

I just noticed the glass cleaner… we weren’t eating it,but I love how ghetto stuff gets sometimes.

So, the last picture about the food. I heard that eating at Rudy’s has a great atmosphere, so Grant and I are hoping to go and actually eat there sometime.

Drum Roll Please………

Here are our pictures that are AFTER. They are not perfect, but compared to above it was great progress.

Here is the dining room/kitchen. We are finally able to use our kitchen items like our silverware (thanks Oma + Opa), and the pot and pan set that we got from our wedding.

Here is our living room/office because this is how it worked best for us. You can also see our patio.

A better shot of our living room. Please note our wedding quilt is finally out of storage so we can actually use it! Thanks again Grandma, we LOVE it.

Grant wanted me to include this picture so you can see his bike. We will be trying to hang it on some wall so it isn’t blocking our awesome trunk.

Also, the things will not be staying on our mantel like that, but we just didn’t want them to break so that was the safest place for them.

Here you can see our new bed frame. Anthony and Shea bought our birch one because we wanted it in black brown. This now means that our wardrobes don’t match,but they are in great condition so we will hold on to them until we can sell them.

Our Bedroom still needs some work,but for right now it is good enough… meaning we can walk around in it.

This weekend it was hard staying motivated to keep cleaning, so we made ourselves a dead line by inviting Tanya and Wilson over for lunch after church. We made mexican because cutting stuff up goes fast, and that way I could have it ready on time.  The day was beautiful, the girls were excited and happy running around our place. They almost killed themselves on our coffee table,but other than that we were golden ;p

Mia is trying hard not to be in this picture, but here you can see them on our Porch with the amazing Austin weather. I think it was in the 70s and it was great!

So, this is it for now,but hopefully you enjoy the pictures!