new year's resolution: update more. so far: fail

so i know it has been forever since we've updated (note: i also said this in november). but this is for real. im turning over a new leaf and promise to update more. so to start here are a few things that we've been doing on douglas street.

i reupholstered our dining room chairs. one the right is an old one (that sean put a hot tea pot on and successfully burned a circle, and on the left is a new one. it was super easy. involved some on sale (thick) fabric from hancock fabrics and a staple gun.

we (aka sean) stained the ceiling in the man room. this involved hours of sean painting the ceiling and a couple of cans of stain. pretty easy (coming from the person that didn't do most of the manual work). but i think it really cleaned up the room nicely.

if you remember, it previously looked like this. i finally finished painting the posts in front of our house that sean built. and then guided the plants up them so they can start growing in that direction. (note that beautiful crack? don't worry, i have plans).

as one of my christmas presents sean built some frames for my diplomas. here's the uf one (go gators!). isn't it pretty?

here's the start of what is going to be the upenn one. (and there's sean in his christmas pajamas chatting away on the phone.) as you can see in this picture, we had a ton of leaves fall in the last month and they really took a toll on the grass.

new update! here's the penn one!

monica and i went to a compost class put on by the city of austin. it was awesome. and the teacher was hilarious (possibly more hilarious to use because we hit up the blue dahlia happy hour before hand and had some of their $3 glasses of wine, $4 apps, chocolate cake, and ravioli - and yes in that order!). as a bonus we got a free kitchen compost collector. i would highly recommend it. as a follow up on saturday i went to the habitat restore (awesome, if you don't know that it is) and bought some pallets for $1 each and got sean to hammer them together. so now we have a compost system!

here's a picture of kitty just for fun. she's getting more and more awesome by the day. she's napping outside in her bed here.

we cut up our christmas tree (or i asked sean to!) and then i glued the pieces to a board i had painted white. here is it hanging. as a side note, i did a terrible job hanging the thing the first time around and it almost took out our friend steph last night! eeek! steph, you should be glad to know that sean rehung it, and probably did a better job than me.

and possibly most important of all the things that we've been up to ... sean and i got engaged! get ready for lots of wedding craft updates. sean got the ring through our friend amy who takes pictures for an antique jewlery store in san diego. i absolutely love it. thank you amy!

ps - wow i have old woman hands. stupid florida sun.

so here is to a great start to 2012! oh, and i almost forgot a rat update! we haven't heard them in probably a couple of months. and the death toll is up to 15! woot woot! our neighbors even joined in the battle and probably have a tally of their own.