IF I HAD A LOT OF MONEY: The Introduction

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Dear People of the Internet:

I would apologize for my absence, but frankly I've had better things to do. Like handling my crazy full-time job, planning a wedding in my spare time (spare time - that's laughable), attempting to not look like a fat cow in my wedding dress (ha) and making extremely difficult adult decisions (like buying a car). It's been a busy year, you guys.   

I've made some other minor changes to the house that, regretfully, have never made it here. But don't worry - they weren't all as exciting as some of my other disastrous projects:

  • I re-painted my master bedroom and bathroom, but actually hired a professional this time. This means that the paint did indeed make it to the walls and trim, instead of my hair, clothing, carpet, etc.
  • Eric and I bought a snazzy new desk. (Its just from Amazon - don't get too excited.) It's a wood veneer over MDF (his favorite) and it came as one of those build-it-yourself kits (my favorite). This time, I didn't get involved in the installation process and we had a lot fewer tears and no leftover screws. Huh.
  • I finally hired a pest control company to do a clean sweep through my house. I was ready to stop carrying around one of my Converse All-Star sneakers with me at all times in case I needed it to eliminate a bug or two. Non-strangers of the internet, you will know how frustrating this is for me, because I am a TOTAL OCD CLEAN FREAK AND I HATE BUGS, AND MESSES AND BUGS.

You'd think I was learning the error of my previous ways, but alas, we come to Friendsgiving: 2016.

I was hosting our annual Friendsgiving and was in the middle of the massive post-dinner clean up that comes with cooking a 10lb turkey for four people (why do I do this to myself?). That's when I heard it - the grossest, most disgusting gurgling sound coming from my kitchen sink disposal. It sounded like one of those fugly goblins from The Labyrinth was dying a slow, painful death under my kitchen sink.  I flipped the switch, thinking that the disposal just needed to run and drain properly, but instead the blades whipped around something hard, metallic and which certainly didn't belong in the appliance. It was the second most disgusting sound coming from my kitchen sink. Like two fugly, dying goblins.

As the sink refused to drain and my dishes kept piling up, I resorted to calling Eric and my future brother-in-law (while in tears) explaining that my sink is full of soggy turkey and green bean casserole, it will not drain, I have a dying muppet goblin in my disposal, and all I really want to do is drink more wine. To conclude, I resorted to spending the rest of the evening plunging my kitchen sink and sipping on a nice glass of pinot nior. The best part? The disposal wasn't even broken. One of my bobby pins had fallen into the disposal and jammed the blades. The next week, Eric pulled it out with a pair of tweezers, while I sat nearby, clutching my faithful plunger and sobbing into another glass of pinot.

As Eric and I are planning our life in wedded bliss, (www.soontobeshanklins.com - shameless wedding plug, right there) we are dreaming of what this new adventure could hold for us. The general consensus? More space. 

People in real metropolis cities will laugh (or maybe cry) when I tell you that we're wanting more than the 1,700 square feet that we currently have in my townhome. In reality, all Eric really wants is a bigger garage and all I really want is a bigger closet.

We've started to discuss what our plans may be after marriage. Eventually, we'll leave my adorable townhome in search of a new place - with a yard and a real-size garage and *hopefully* a bigger closet. But in the meantime, I'm trying to make the most out of this little, yellow, three-story gem of mine. 

I've done a lot of back-breaking (or neck-breaking, if you've read any of my past misadventures) work and made many improvements over the last three years that I've lived here. Some of these are my own doing, and some because of sheer, dumb, luck). But before we leave this tiny townhome and I forget all of my plans, designs and far-out ideas, I want to document them here. Mostly so I can go back and look at them later for inspiration, sweet, sweet nostalgia and to immortalize them here on the interwebs. That way, when I'm an old and tired mother-of-seven and my future children decide to research me for a family ancestry school assignment, they can see that I, at one time, was actually cool and had impeccable taste. Or, that I was a freak that talked to strangers on the internet about killing cockroaches with a shoe I carried with me around my house and that time I cried while simultaneously plunging my kitchen sink and drinking wine. 

Thus begins my new "series": IF I HAD A LOT OF MONEY. Documenting my wish list of changes, remodeling, and revisions I'd make to our home.... if I had a lot of money. 

Can't blame a girl for tryin'.