LIGHTS!

It was a beautiful Sunday today! 68 degrees, sunny and only a slight breeze. Perfect!

We took advantage of the weather and worked on putting Christmas lights on our home. Even though we own a retail store, we do believe in waiting for Thanksgiving before we get all Christmasy. It's only fair! So, the lights will officially go on Friday after Thanksgiving. Unless a neighbor turns on their lights Thanksgiving night, then I will! 

♥ 

We have so many charming, unique things in our home that I love. One being these amazing doorknobs! We have these on all our doors. 

These concrete hearts were a nice little surprise in the back of our backyard!  

And this beautiful beauty! When we toured the home I thought to myself, I want this house, but once I saw the backyard and this guy I thought, I NEED this house! 

♥ 

Home

The other day I was looking for some photos that I no longer had on my computer. I was happy to know that I could come to my old blog and find those images. Then I stumbled upon a post I had in 2009 where we doggie-sat our friends' dog and then how that made us want our own dog. Then a post on how we got Dexter and Dexter as a puppy. It made me happy to have those memories with pictures for me, but it also made me sad because I haven't blogged in almost a year. And 2013 was a great year. 

Between owning my store and being Assistant Director of Main Street Enid, Inc., I didn't have the energy to make things or to blog. So I let that slip this year. 

Taking a scroll down memory lane inspired me to start again. We just bought our first home and I want to be able to look back in a year and read how that went. My memory sucks and I want to remember the little things! 

***

The story on our first home 

We started looking for a home this August. There was nothing exciting on the market. Well, there was this one I loved but it was not in our budget. We saw three homes just to start looking around and getting the feel for things. About a week into looking, we were over at our friend's house and he mentioned a house down the street was going to be for sale soon and asked if we wanted to walk by and see. We walked to see the home and the sale sign was already in the yard, as well as the owners! I felt a little awkward because I had brought my wine with me, but luckily our friend is incredibly personable and started talking with them and asking them about the house. When I first saw it I immediately thought, this house is totally perfect and totally not in my budget. 

Our friend asked the price they were asking and to my surprise it was in our budget!!!! So, the lady owner gave us a tour of the home and the whole time I had stars/hearts in my eyes! There could have been a huge hole in the wall and I probably wouldn't have noticed. I was screaming in my head the whole time that this home was perfect for us. As soon as we left the home we called our realtor and told her we wanted this house! 

We put in an offer and we went for 2 days back and forth. 2 days was just long enough for 2 more people to put a bid in! I gotta tell you, I was so stressed out and mad at us. We should have just accepted the sellers last offer. I really had no idea more people would want my home! Long stressful story short we out-bid the others and WE BOUGHT OUR FIRST HOME!!  We closed on October 11th! 

That night we drank champagne and daydreamed in our new home. Our allergies were acting up, it was kinda stinky and we were feeling really great so Riley decided to peak and see what was under the carpet. And by peak, I mean rip up all the carpet. 

At first I mildly freaked because I wasn't quite ready for that project, but then I saw all those nasty stains on the bottom of the carpet and didn't freak out anymore. YUCK! 

Luckily, under that carpet was hardwood floors (yay!!) but sadly, there was kilz painted on the wood (oh no!!). 

It took two days to remove the kilz from the floor. It was not fun. 

The wall color in the living room was a brown/olive looking color. We painted them Gray. 

We rented a sander for a couple days and sanded our living room, dining room (there was wood laminate) and hallway. 

I'm so happy to have beautiful wood floors! And a huge thank you to my wonderful husband for working so hard and making our floors look so wonderful. I'm so thankful he knows how to do things. 

♥ 

Lately

It's kinda crazy how many changes can happen in just over 2 1/2 months. 

Here's my lately:

I'm now Assistant Director of Main Street Enid! 

Main Street Enid, Inc., is a 501 (c)3 non-profit whose mission is to revitalize our downtown through promotion, organization, design and economic restructuring. Main Street Enid seeks to promote the quality of life in Enid by strengthening the Downtown as the center of the community. 

I absolutely love it. 

A couple weeks ago I was all sorts of famous and went on Pegasys, Enid's local television station, to do Community Talk. 

It consisted of me making lots of stupid faces. 

Another exciting change this year is WE'RE MOVING SHOP LOCATIONS!! 

We are so excited to be moving our shop into a beautiful building and a better location downtown!

read the article here

We close our current location on February 15th. (We wanted to stay open through Valentine's Day. ) After that we'll start the move over to our new space and have our Re-Grand Opening Party March 1st! SO EXCITED!! 

Dexter recently went to the groomers, and with his little fro and beard he came out looking like Darth Vader. It's pretty awesome. 

♥ 

Lately // October & November

Hi friends! I took an unexpected blog break for the month of October.

I've been slackin' in the personal social media side of things too. I'm very out of the loop. Today, at the shop, we were open for a special event, and I had this cool kid show me the wood mushroom that he made from my blog. He was telling me how he was wanting to make the felt donut but hasn't yet. This seriously made my day. Shoot, made my year. I was so thrilled and it got me missing my blog. It reminded me why I loved blogging so much. 

I thought I would do a lately post to recap my October & November. If you follow me on instagram then these photos are nothing new, sorry! To be honest, I've been pretty bad at instagramming too! We all need a break sometimes, right?

1. It's fall!!! Which meant I had my space heater going and I was knitting lots of infinity scarves for my shop. I gotta admit, I felt like a grandma. 

2. We moved. And I am so very sad about it. I LOVED that home so so much, but the owner of the home needed a place to live, and well, that was that. You know what's freaky? On my August 14th blog post, with a picture of our newly decorated living room I wrote: Thursday around midnight we decided to rearrange our living room. We woke up early Friday morning and bought a new rug and hung up our art on the walls. After living here for over a year we finally decided to decorate it! I think we've become jaded. We move into a new space, decorate it and make it perfect for us and then within a few months or so we are moving again. This current house is the place we've stayed at the longest. We probably jinxed ourselves by decorating the living room! We totally jinxed ourselves. A month and a half later we moved. We're currently saving and hoping to buy our first home soon.
3. On October 15th husband and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary! I cannot believe it's been a year! I'm so happy to be married to my best friend! 
4. Husband and I helped with a fundraiser to raise money for our downtown's annual holiday event. It was Christmas Karaoke. Husband sang The Christmas Song, then after 3 glasses of wine we sang our favorite creeper song Baby, It's Cold Outside. It was our first time to do karaoke, and I gotta say, it was pretty fun! 
5. I've been cuddling lots of dogs lately. If you have a dog, I'll cuddle it! 
6. We've been getting ready for the holidays at our shop! We haven't been able to keep up with our online shop so we had to close that down temporarily. We've been getting lots of emails & facebook messages about ordering products, which has worked out pretty well. So, if you see anything you like on our facebook page please feel free to message us, email us at info@thefeltbird.com or call us at 580-540-8903, to place your order. We take payment over the phone or through paypal! 
7. Getting ready for the holidays = getting lots of fun new items! I love this Mr. & Mrs. mug set! 
8. We celebrated FIL's birthday with some bowling! I beat them all 4 games. I also broke it to my husband that I was in a bowling league when I was little (3-6th grade) and my average was 150. His mind exploded. 
9. Fall means mum time!!! I bought some mums to have outside our shop, and in true Stela fashion, I didn't water them and they died. I was so sad. So, I bought some more and I'm trying to remember to water them daily. So far, so good. 

1. October was coming to an end and I hadn't carved a pumpkin yet! We were planning a Halloween party with our friends and we decided we should carve pumpkins too. I love searching for the perfect pumpkin.
2. I was really excited about being at the pumpkin patch I had to take a picture as a pumpkin. 
3. Our Halloween consisted of yummy food, carving pumpkins and watching It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! 
4. Our black and white striped shirts prevailed again this Halloween! Last year we were burglars, this year (a repeat from 2008, last election year) we were from a wonderful country. French! I'm pretty sure the black and white striped shirts will be used again next year. We're that bad at Halloween. 
5. We dressed Dexter up for the Halloween party as Mr. bones! He wouldn't move. We had to coax him with lots of treats. 
6. Dexter decided to join husband in singing for our shop's November First Friday event. 
7. On November 6th we voted! We were expecting to wait in line since we saw our friends on facebook talk about waiting. We walked to our location, grabbed a ballot, voted and left. No waiting! 
8. That evening we got dressed up and went to our friends loft for election night/fancy party! We wanted an excuse to dress up and drink champagne and eat yummy food. 
9. I like this little promo card we made so I wanted to share!

That's what's been going on my friends!  
What have you been up to?! 
I have a lot of blog catching up to do. 

♥ 

Lately

This past weekend we headed to Tulsa for my favorite craft show, Indie Emporium.

It was a blast meeting people who I've only met through email, blogs and instagramming. 

It's so crazy how well we know these people we've never met in person! I know some think it's a little creepy, but I personally think it's pretty cool...in a creepy way. Just kidding. 

So, of course, in typical Stela fashion I didn't plan my booth till the night before. I hope next year I get my act together and plan ahead. 

Now, I'm putting my focus towards our shop event this weekend and making my owls for the shop, Dwelling Spaces!

I hope to return to my blog regularly this week. September was such a blur, I'm not sure what the hell I did that month. October is bound to be better because October is an awesome month full of all my favorite things; including my 1 year wedding anniversary with my love! 

Enjoy your day!

♥