Bachelor Update: Number Five

Well, Bella’s time on the dog version of the Bachelor lasted for awhile, but it has ended. Sadly, when Burger cut the competition from 5 to 2 glamorous pups, Bella did not make it through. It was a great time for all of us and we had tons of fun. We still think Bella is the greatest thing to have ever walked this earth. I mean honestly she is #1 in our book. Guess thats what happens when your dog is your firstborn. When we do have a child of our own I hope that child doesn’t feel too left out, hopefully we can love them both the same. Hopefully.

Just for fun, here are some photos of Bella.

 

Good luck to the finalists, Juno and Nico, you are both great pups!! 

Bachelor Update: Number Four

I am a day late in posting this, but our nights have been filling up fast. We recently started attending a new church and we are realizing how important it is to be in a place where fellowship is valued. That being said, I have excuses as to why I have been slacking in the blogging department, but I will not use anymore of them. On to the most important part…did Bella make it another week?

She sure did! This girl is lighting Burger’s fire which makes us oh so very proud. The competition is now down to the final 5 and it sure is a nail biter. While we know that Bella is a perfect pup who is oh so made for Burger, others dont know that so we have to work hard to prove that each week. You can see her response to this weeks question by visiting Hamburger’s House. As always, we will share a picture of our beautiful girl in all her finest…hmmm does that work for dogs since they technically don’t wear clothes?

As always, keep your paws crossed for this sexy beast!!

********************************

Oh House Beautiful, how did I ever live without you? I have honestly fallen head over heels in love with House Beautiful magazine (sorry babe, you just can’t compare). I received their latest issue today and honestly I think it might be my favorite yet. It was eye candy on steroids. One thing I really loved about the December issue was the fact that they interviewed a lot of designers asking them what they expected the newest trends to be. Now, I am certainly not ahead of the trends most of the time. I would say I take a moment to warm up to the newest trends to see if they have staying power, and then once I deem them worthy I jump in with both feet.  The reason why I loved this part of the issue so much was because multiple designers predicted that gray was the new beige. If you looked at the mood board I posted of our living room you will see that gray is a color that I LOVE. If you saw mood boards for the rest of the rooms you would really understand that I have a sickness. I am okay with it. Here are a few photos I quickly fell in love with on House Beautiful’s site.

 

Anyone else see a white theme here? Oh how I love the cleanliness of it all…

Have a great weekend!

Our Little Bachelorette

Bella did it! She is one of the 17 finalists (down from 24) in the dog version of the Bachelor. We are all getting more and more anxious about this whole thing. The competition is fierce (a la Tyra Banks) and there is a lot of love for a certain MinPin. Thankfully we feel confident that our Bella is a star and that her and Burger are destined for great things. We are continually crossing our fingers (and paws) as the competition gets more and more intense.

Please keep crossing your paws for our little squirrel!

********************************************

Now for some serious eye candy…

Seriously? I LOVE this room. The black, white, and then the pops of yellow…ADORE. I think that I wouldn’t mind coming home to this everyday.

Some more black and white yumminess…and look at that beautiful natural greenery.

I. Want. That. Ceiling. The End.

I have been in love with the beauty of these chairs. I have seen them popping up everywhere and I want some for my house. Maybe a birthday present? Honey are you listening?!

Ok I need to stop dreaming and remember that currently we are living in 800 sq. feet of yellowish white walls until owning a home becomes a reality. Until that day comes I am just designing the house in my head.

All images courtesy of Canadian House & Home

Trick or Treat

Happy Halloween!!

We had a few photos that we had to post for today. It’s Halloween and we have certainly been getting in the spirit…

Mummy Dogs

Bellakin…or a Bella pumpkin

The hot dog dressed as a hot dog…and she even tried to eat it!

Now go and eat lots of candy, its the one day where it is totally allowed. Over here at the Crain household we are listening to Christmas music to celebrate (try c.d.’s for $1 at Target) and then headed to a Halloween party.

Trick or Treat!

Safety First

The Bachelor Update: 
Fun news! Burger a.k.a The Bachelor left a comment for Bella on the last post! HOORAY! Let me tell you, Bella was dancing all over the place when we read it to her. Yes, my dog can read…but it was much more fun to read it to her as we all danced around in excitement. Ok, well the dancing was semi hilarious considering my stomach and throat were in a whole lot of pain after my whole experience at the hospital and Josh came down with the flu…but it was dancing nonetheless. Anyway, the latest is that there were over 100 submissions and Burger is picking the semi-finalists this week. Keep your fingers…or paws..crossed!!

On to regularly scheduled programming:
So not to be a totally crazy stalker or anything, but the rest of this post also has a bit to do with Young House Love. Yes, I love their blog…and yes I do believe they should be an inspiration to you all as well. Well, let me move on to what I was trying to say and then explain what they have to do with it.

Livearth.org

Joshua and I have been striving to be “green” since we got married. Once we have our house we hope to add in a lot of great eco-friendly elements that should help the earth along with our pockets. We would LOVE to do compost since it is a great way to use up all of our scraps and yard clippings and it also means great nutrient rich soil for the vegetable and fruit garden that I have already been planning. Since we do not have our house yet we have been implementing other things in our daily lives. The biggest one is household chemicals and cleaners. We have slowly been making the switch to “green” cleaners and it has definitely been trial and error. Most people know I can be what they call a GERMIPHOBE. Yes, I admit it and I am gosh darn proud of it. However, a lot of the items that disinfect are the most toxic chemicals in our house (i.e. bleach). This has been our biggest struggle as I try to find something that cleans well, but also gets rid of the flu and cold germs that lurk around our house during this time of year. Even so, we had already made it a personal goal to rid ourselves of all toxic chemicals before we started our family. Babies are a big deal to us and once we are ready to have our own we want to make sure our house is as safe as we are able to make it. We realize how many things are out there that we can’t shield our baby from, that’s what our Father is for, BUT there are things we can do to help. So, we started scratching our heads to try to figure out what to do about this problem. I didn’t mind making up my own cleaners, especially since it would save us money, but most of the items that people would list were things I had never heard of. That bothered me.

Enter Young House Love. Today they featured a smart guy who really knew his stuff about going green. He had great recipes for creating your own cleaners…out of stuff I actually knew! Amazing I know. We plan to start trying stuff out (once we have used up the brand new bottle of cleaner we picked up at the store) and we will let you know what we think. Maybe it will work and maybe it won’t, but we can’t let this one pass us up! Good luck to those of you out there who try it!

XoXo,
J&M

P.S. This is our favorite way to get our dishes clean without being unsafe for our bodies. It is available at Target. Please note that the packaging has now changed and it is now in a resealable bag.