Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel

Anthony and I really enjoy going to Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel to get ideas on how to furnish our future house...when ever that day comes. We absolutely love everything they have in these store. Crate & Barrel is definitely the place I want to go shopping for kitchen stuff. they have the cutest kitchen utensils and as most of you may know, I am obsessed with mini things, and they have every thing mini, well almost every thing. For instance, today when we went I saw the cutest mini spatulas...they were absolutely adorable!!! Pottery Barn is definitely the place I dream my furniture will come from....or at least where we will get our ideas from since we probably won't be able to afford it on a teacher's salary.....a girl can dream :). But anyway here are some of the things we saw that we loved that I thought I would share....enjoy.

I am in love with this living room display!

I have to say this is the most amazing table ever. Considering Anthony and I want to have a lot of kids...this is perfect for us.

I am in love with this media center from Pottery barn. It would be perfect with our flat screen and a big wrap around couch.

Great outdoor furniture. Makes me want to sip on a margarita!

We really love this mirror and it would look great in a house close to the beach ;)

How about this organizer for the kitchen...it's like a little bar. Pretty awesome!

& I absolutely love this organizer....they are so useful!

These were just a few :) Hope you enjoyed!

Oh how interesting life can be!

When I woke up this morning, I was in the mood to clean!! Anthony absolutely hates days like today...can't really blame him. When I get in the mood to clean, I simply want to clean EVERYTHING! I like to move furniture from one corner of the living room to the other and vacuum behind every little crack where dust could possibly be. I mean, if it isn't for me cleaning, this house would be filled with spider webs and I can't have that.

Today I started in the bedroom, I changed the sheets and put new sheets that we got from Anthony's grandmother. I love the smell of new, clean sheets, especially when they are nice sheets that feel like silk. I dusted everything you could imagine and I could already tell Anthony was getting annoyed with me. He seems to have selective hearing in situations like these. For instance, when I ask him to dust his night stand or if he could put the laundry in the wash he looks at Chicago, as if I were talking to Chi and not him. I'm sure he wishes Chicago would do chores around the house and I'm almost sure he is envious of Chicago's life; you know, not doing anything, but the basics. Typically conversations about us having kids is a big taboo, but every time we are cleaning it seems his fatherly instincts kick in. He is always saying, "I can't wait until we have kids so they can do all the chores and I don't have too." Our poor children :).

Thinking about Anthony's annoyed face, right now, make me laugh, because I know how much he doesn't want to help me clean, but honestly, at that very moment when he is ignoring me or trying to avoid me I get so irritated with him. I can't really be upset with him because he helps me all the time. He just hates when I get in the Mrs. OCD mood, which I believe I get from my mother. And as this sudden thought creeps in to my mind, I remember how much I hated cleaning when I was younger because of my mother. Oh my, have I become a mini version of my mom? I remember swearing I would never be like her and here I am, exactly like her. Oh how interesting life can be. Well, I guess I am not as bad as she was considering Anthony left to school before I even finished cleaning the bedroom. He had to leave early to work on school stuff, I wonder if he made that up just to get out of cleaning! Ha, sounds like something I would have tried when I was younger.

Regardless, I love Ant! I can't complain about that man because he helps me so much around the house. I think he rather do it in little sections instead of the whole house like I do. Better than him never doing anything at all. And in all honestly, I don't mind being a little like my mother...after all, I turned out all right!

Where it all starts...

I have decided to start a blog basically to speak my mind. By no means am I a writer, or think I am one, therefore, please don't criticize my lack of good writing and grammar :).

Today, as I was thinking of starting this blog, I was thinking of what it means to be truly happy. I always find myself wondering if happiness means the same to you as it does to me and as I think of people in my life, I come to realize that happiness has different faces, but for the most part we all get happy about the same things.

I want happiness that comes from being a follower in Christ, a good friend, a good wife, a good daughter and sister, a good in-law, simply a good person. When I think of the happiest moments in my life, I get this feeling in my stomach that I cannot control. It's the kind of feeling that eases you, yet makes you get jittery all at the same time.....simply unexplainable.

I also think back to the hapiness that filled the people in Africa, the type of happiness that comes from having faith in Christ and believing in the good of the world, eventhough you seldom experience it. Happiness that comes from seeing a child glow because you gave them a gummy bear, happiness from realizing that an iphone can hold hundreds of songs you enjoy (or seeing an iphone for the first time), happiness that comes from eating meat instead of Nzima, happiness because you see your friend learn a verse from the bible, happiness from getting a job that pays $20 a month; happiness we all take for granted. I had never experienced that type of happiness in my life; simple happiness.

I have to say, the happiest moments of my life are simply simple. I can remember these moments as if they were happening now, like, the way I looked into Anthony's watery eyes when we said our "I, do's," or the sound of the African drums, or the feeling I got when I saw the most important woman in my life after 18 years, or the way my eyes watered watching family celebrate the birth of a child, or the laughter that filled the room when catching up with friends, or the reconciliation of a friendship I thought was lost forever, or the taste of the best darn philly cheese steak in the world, or the buzzer going off in your ear because you said one the taboo words, or the sound oof people praying around you, for you, or the day I got to make green eggs and ham for my students....even the days when there is utter silence and I find peace in my heart.

Those are the moments I treasure and those are the days that keep me going. My happiness is not defined by a big house, a nice car, and a lot of money, it's simply made up of simplicity.