On the Verge~Couples ed.: Valentine's day...a little early

Well we celebrated Vday a little early this year. Mostly because hair school starts on the 13th and I don't want to be cramming a holiday into my first week of school. Also because my birthday is on the 18th and is NOT to be combined with Valentine's celebrations:) I'm a little greedy when it comes to my birthday and I suppose I married the right man because he loves birthdays too! Anyway, I kept telling Chance that he was not allowed to get me anything for Vday, because I was spending extra $ to get him a bigger gift that also sort of benefited me, so he obliged. I had to throw out lots of hints to throw him off course, because he secretly likes to try to guess what the gift is and ruin it for me...so I didn't want any close guesses. We have a two bedroom apartment, and the 2nd bedroom has just been sort of where we put his video games and the dog kennels. We always talked about it being an office for him, but never had the time or energy. Well since I quit my job, guess who has time and energy! I told him I was going to keep his gift in my closet but that it was too big to fit so that's how I kept him out the 2nd bedroom while I plotted my room. I love love love to shop around... and my bestie Erin, thankfully, loves to shop around as well. She's super mom, because she totes her baby girl around with us and lets her walk around the store and shop with us all while talking to me about our personal lives in the middle of TJ Maxx, and can see an awesome lamp or frame from a mile away (often even on clearance!)...all this at the same time. Awesome best friend, right? So since she works part time, we had some days to spend with each other roaming around to hobby lobby, tj, world market, target, etc. looking for the perfect items for my room. It all started with these pillows: they were the perfect colors for his office...not too girly, but not too man cave-ish, and warm and homey feeling to me.

The papasan chair is actually from my old house, I bought it from Pier One when I was in high school! I totally thought I would be all cool and study in it and it just ended up being where I threw clothes options all the time. I think I slept in it like once. So needless to say it hasn't been used much. So I stole it from my parents house and brought it over to use for a corner study area for me for the room. Basically the rest was just searching all over trying to find just the right frames, candles, or other decor to get the room ready for Chance. I'm guessing most people don't care where I found things, so I won't list all that out, but it was an adventure of going to the west side stores, then east side stores, then back again, then waiting for things to go on sale...etc. I will just put up all the pictures and give a few shout outs along the way:) I got little chalk board tags to put the puppies' names on for their kennel, a little wooden storage crate for their toys, also with a chalkboard front, and a container for their dog food so we don't have a huge bag sitting around. Not sure why I had an obsession with chalk board stuff, but it just kept happening and I was ok with it.

I was also pretty pumped to get our first wedding picture printed....and in an 18x24! Startin' big!

A few special pieces: Chance had this old computer hard drive that he had shot several times when he was mad at an old computer one time and when I tried to throw it away he told me "No you can't throw it out." Me- "Why?" Chance- "Cuz I have to keep it around to show other computers who's boss...it's like nerd cred..." SOOO...I found a cool shadow box and mounted in on some patterned paper I got at hobby lobby with epoxy and hung it for all other computers to see:)

I also used his old video game holder (which was black and cheap) as a tiny book case type thing and spray painted it brown to match the rest of the room. I was on a small budget, so I had to use a lot of what we had so I could afford things like the desk and chair and frame. I put his two custom discs on it, because he will never actually use them he told me, since they are special and he doesn't want to lose one in the water. One is a "groom" one I got him when we were planning the wedding and the other one I gave him on our wedding day. I also put a few tv dvd collections he had on the shelves, and a plaque we got in Jamaica, accompanied with a few honeymoon pictures for us to day dream about.

The lamp: We actually got this lamp about a year ago because we both loved it and it was on sale, but we obviously never used it...it just sat next to the dog kennels. Erin and I have been Pinterest junkies so we decided to glue buttons on the lamp shade:) Don't even ask about all the projects we ALMOST did and then ditched.

I hung baskets to use for bills or any other papers that Chance might want to keep around...and again with the chalk board pieces, haha:) I got this one just for writing fun messages to each other.

No office is complete without an "I love you" paperweight:)

Chance's parents actually had this at their house, it's one of those pieces where someone takes pictures of things in nature that resemble letters and it spells your name or whatever. I commented on it when we were visiting once and Chance liked it lots and his mom was kind enough to let us use it here! They are entirely too nice! So I spray painted the frame to match the shelves because it was black before and just didn't look right in the room, but I'm so glad we were able to use it! It reminds us of Ellinwood home and gives us warm fuzzies:)

I also wanted this room for Chance because we just sat down and REALLY budgeted our finances since I will be starting school soon and we needed a legit plan...so I made him this make shift checklist he can use every month to check off our bills. I just got some cork board from Target and some card stock and some push pins and drew some not so perfect lines 30 minutes before Chance got home from work that day:)

I lit some candles and made a tiny path to the room so Chance could open his "gift" and we spent forever talking about each thing and sitting around in the room enjoying the weekend:) Chance loved hooking up his desktop and the puppies hung around with us too. It's so nice to have more "sitting around" space in the apartment! Chance was really excited and I am so happy he liked it! I guess when you get married, it's totally ok to do gifts like this for each other and not pathetic that we liked it way more than normal gifts...right???....right??? Happy first married Valentine's Day!!!