Entryway Ideas

Every since we got the keys to our apartment I have been dying to decorate.
The Lord is teaching me patience on this one :)
 While Matthew has been baching it up at our place until I move in after we are married I have been searching Pinterest and blogs for decor ideas. One thing I really want to do is add a console table in our "entryway". Matthew liked the idea of it and is on board with it, too!  We don't really have an entryway because this is a one bedroom apartment but there is plenty of room for a console table.

I would love to have somewhere for us to drop our keys, phones, and mail all in one place when we come in, and make it easy to find these items on our way out. I also thought the idea of a mirror above the table on the wall would be cute and helpful. Last minute mirror checks before heading out for the day! Its a huge blank wall so a mirror would go perfectly there!
 If we add some cute decor to it and style it up a bit and I think it will really add to our living room as well.

Here is what it looks like now. It will go on the wall that the air freshener is on. 

(I forgot to take a picture when I was there last so I had Matthew send me a picture this morning lol. Thanks, babe!)

and here is the mirror we bought last week at Kirkland's that I mentioned on Friday. 

I just LOVE it and love it even more that is was 50% off!

Now here is the console table we picked out! We found it on Amazon for a really good price, and it will match the color of our living room furniture!! 

So here is what we are thinking for our "entryway"

I am so excited and I've been looking at different ways to style it on Pinterest. There are so many cute ideas!

We also are wanting another one. Call us crazy but we love it!

This one would go in our dining area. We got the idea from the model apartment at our apartment complex when we did our first tour!

Here is the picture from the model apartment

and this is our dining area now. We are wanting to put it on that back wall (beside the back of the door) I think it will also really add to our dining area. 

Here is the table we found on Amazon. It's black which will match out dining set perfectly!

 Both console tables are cheaper on Amazon. I found them on other websites for $100+  than they are on Amazon. Gotta love good ole Amazon!

Here is what we are thinking for this one.  Just something simple, probably not as much on it as the picture below but something similar to this. We don't wan't it to look cluttered.

Above it we are going to add some of my antique plates we have left over after our wedding

Except they won't be plastic plates ;)

We'll only put up between 6-8 plates, depending on the sized of them because I don't want it to be too much. 

And that's all the ideas we've been throwing around for console tables!

 Do any of y'all have an entryway or did you make your own "entryway"?

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Entryway Ideas

Friday Ramblings

Happy Friday! Since I have a lot to share I'll share in list form - Tonight I am going with the SOC to The Cumberland Caverns for a singing. I haven't been there since I was in the 5th grade so I am excited to go and see it again. Even better, a singing night, if y'all have been around here then you KNOW singing nights are my favorite.  Singing in a cave...can y'all imagine how that's going to sound?! Here are some pictures I found online of Cumberland Caverns

- We are going Saturday to pick out the groomsmen suits! Well, we already have them picked out we are just going to get them. They are on sale at Men's Warehouse so they are getting a pretty good deal! - Matthew and I HAVE to get our passports this weekend. I don't know why we but we just keep forgetting about them.  - I am hoping to finalize our guest list by the end of next week, so I am going to work on it this weekend when I get some free time. I designed them and we are having them printed through Vistaprint and they are having a good sale going on. I have already priced them and with this sale we can get our invitations and RSVP for over $100 cheaper so we will be ordering them before this sale is over! Also,Vistaprint sends plain white envelopes for free! -The weather this weekend is supposed to be really nice and I am so looking forward to that! Bring on that warmer weather and sunshine!!!! - HAPPY 1ST DAY OF SPRING!!  Can't wait to break out my sandals and white pants :)

- Today is food day at work, and this months is a salad bar. I am a little too excited about this! Currently counting down the minutes until it's my lunch LOL - P-Hood (what Matthew and I call it) or also known as Parenthood...we are obsessed!! I remembered hearing a lot about it back in January when the finale aired so over the snow days I decided to start watching it. As of last night I am in the middle of season FOUR! It is so good and I got Matthew hooked on it, too! I usually can't get through an episode without tearing up lol

- Kirkland's...I can't stay out of that store!!!! We bought a mirror there this past week and it was on sale! I absolutely love it and can't wait to get it hung up! I'll share more on that next week! :) Have a good weekend!! 

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Friday Ramblings

#CoatsApartment: Our new furniture!

I am finally sharing with y'all a little tour of our apartment with the furniture!! We came across a good deal that Matthew's parents told us about. Pretty much you can furnish a one bedroom home/apartment for a reasonable price. It's actually called "The big deal".  Here is what is included in that:

Includes 21 pieces:

• 7 Piece Living Room Set
  Includes sofa, loveseat, 3 tables and 2 lamps
  
  
• 7 Piece Bedroom Set
  Includes dresser, mirror, chest, queen headboard, footboard, rails and nightstand
  
  
• 5 Piece Dining Set
  Includes table and 4 side chairs
  
  
• 2 Piece Mattress Set
  Includes Queen Size Extra Plush mattress and box
• 
  

They have an online website we looked at first before going so we could kind of have an idea of what we were looking for. The store is pretty big and there is a lot of furniture to choose from but only certain pieces are included in "The big deal", and they have those all marked with a little tag to help out with that. Looking online and picking things out first definitely helped. We just went in there looked at it in person and tried out the couches to see if they were comfortable and then we were done! I have to be honest though, laying on the mattresses in the store both grossed me out and made me feel really awkward lol.  Living room This is the view when you walk in the door.

Ignore those cords, we still have some cord management to work on with everything! There is a white book case to the right of the fire place we plan on hiding those cords behind! I will update on that later lol.

The couches are a dark brown

Our end tables and coffee table might just be my favorite pieces of furniture, ever.

We were thinking about getting two couches instead of the couch and loveseat combo for more seating, but after we measured we realized we couldn't fit two couches. So couch and loveseat combo it was! I think it will be plenty of room though.

Dining Room  Walk right around the corner from the living room and you have our dining room!

 A simple black table with matching chairs. The chairs have a white cushion built into the seat which we LOVE. My dining set that I have at my apartment right now does not have cushions in the seats and can get a little uncomfortable after awhile.

There aren't any decorations up yet so the walls are really bare. Bedroom We found the bedding online at Bed Bath and Beyond and we both really liked it! We didn't want something too girly and we didn't want something that was too dark and looked like a guys comforter. So when I found this I really liked it and emailed Matthew the link and he liked it a lot too!

These two lamps were included in the deal and we put them in the bedroom since we got the other ones and they match the knobs on the furniture in there.

 There is a dresser and chest of drawers in there too, I don't know why I didn't think about making a picture of them lol. Like I said, I will update later!!

The furniture is not black like it looks in these pictures, it is a dark brown like the living room furniture. On the website it says "Dark Amber Finish" Here is the picture from the website that shows the color a little better.

And that's it! We love everything and I am dying to move in already!! Only 130 more days to go! Since we are on the third floor we paid to have it delivered. Matthew and I both agreed that was the best delivery fee we have EVER paid. I am SO excited to decorate, add some color in there, and make it ours!! If you are on Instagram you can see updates on our new apartment before I post them on here. We are using #CoatsApartment

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#CoatsApartment: Our new furniture!

Healthier Lifestyle - Part 2

If you missed part 1 yesterday you can read it here! Thank y'all so much for all of your sweet comments yesterday. Y'all are so sweet!
I told you yesterday I would share some things that I am eating now that are healthier options. 1st I downloaded My Fitness Pal, I had it before but quit using it and deleted it for more space on my IPhone so I had to download it again. I'm watching four things mostly with this app. Calories, sugar, sodium, and protein. It has helped me to keep it all logged, sort of like a food journal. There are days where I don't log it because I simply forget, as in this whole past week. 
Breakfast For breakfast I have been mixing it up between hard boiled egg whites and yogurt with cinnamon pita chips. Usually 3 days a week I will eat 4 hard boiled egg whites for breakfast. Surprisingly this holds me over better than the yogurt and cinnamon pita chips! I work 7:00-3:30 with two 10 minute breaks and a 30 minute lunch. If I am having my egg whites for breakfast I will eat them around 7:30 and then not eat again until my lunch at 11:00, with lots of water in between. If I bring yogurt and cinnamon pita chips then I usually eat my pita chips around 8 and my yogurt around 10. I tried eating them both around 7:30  but was absolutely starving when my lunch rolled around at 11:00. I occasionally have a rice cake with peanut butter, too.
Both of these are VERY simple and require hardly any work. I boil my 4 eggs at night or in the afternoon when I get home from work for about 20-25 mins and then I put them in a zip lock back and keep in my refrigerator for the next day. The yogurt I buy and the cinnamon pita chips I bag the night before as well. I count out 7 chips as that is 1 serving size.
I got my pita chips from Kroger. 

The yogurt...this is the ONLY kind and I mean ONLY kind of yogurt I can eat without gagging and almost throwing it back up. Weird I know, but I have tried (and wasted money) trying other brands, and I have tried almost every other kind. Even the kids yogurt packs. Haley let me try this flavor and I LOVED it. I went to the store the next night and bought some. I even got brave and tried the blueberry and banana cream one. I seriously want to lick the little bowl it comes in because it's SO good! The banana one tastes just like banana flavored pudding. AND only 80 calories AND 12 grams of PROTEIN. This is also a good snack for after you workout, too!

The rice cakes are good! Very good and a great choice for a small snack if you need something to hold you over until lunch or dinner. There are a lot of different flavors. My favorite is the caramel corn. 1 rice cake is only 50 calories! Add that with a 1tbsp of (Kroger brand) peanut butter at 90 calories or you can eat them plain!

So if you are doing the hard boiled eggs for breakfast 1 hard boiled egg white is 17 calories.  I eat 4 eggs, so 8 halves total: Calories: 68 Protein: 14 grams  Sugar: 0.9

If you go the yogurt and cinnamon pita chips route: 1 pack of yogurt is 80 calories and 7 cinnamon pita chips is 140 calories. Calories: 220,  Protein: 15 grams Sugar: 17 grams
If you go the rice cake and peanut butter route: 1 rice cake is 50 calories and 1 tbsp of peanut butter is 90 calories. So total: Calories: 140 Protein: 4.5 grams Sugar: 5 grams
Lunches I am still working on this. Trying to find new things that are healthy to give myself a variety. I get really burned out on stuff if I am continually eating it over and over again.
-A lot of days I have about 4 ounces of grilled chicken with brown rice and mixed vegetables. Some days I will do about 2-3 ounces of chicken and add 1 hard boiled egg white.
-Some days I got to Subway and get a 6 inch flat bread with black forest ham and turkey, American cheese, onions, green bell peppers, lettuce, and sometimes light mayo. If I get chips I get the Sun chips because they are actually better for you than baked chips. I usually don't get chips unless I am really hungry. I will usually bring a pack of yogurt to eat with this.
-About 2 times a week I go to Salads-N-More and have a fresh salad. I always add in green bell peppers, egg whites, and onions. I top it with their fat free Ranch, because I just can't eat a salad plain. 
-Some days I will bring homemade spaghetti. Mine is a little different and it is definitely a small portion. I fix mine without meat if it's only me, only because I don't want to take the time to cook the meat and I am only having a very small portion for lunch. I use wheat noodles and I find the lowest calorie and lowest sodium spaghetti sauce I can find. I measure 1/4 cup of mozzarella cheese to sprinkle on top. And a huge thing for me...NO bread with this meal. This is really hard for me as I love love love garlic bread with spaghetti.
-Some days I will bring sandwich meat and some sea salt pita chips. (no bread) 
and that's about it for lunches so far. Still trying to find more options! If you have any send them my way!! :)
Dinner I am also still working on this. I eat A LOT of grilled chicken for dinner. As in 3-4 nights out of the week.
-I meet Matthew half way between here and home for dinner one night out of the week. We had Mexican this week so I got 1 grilled chicken and cheese quesadilla with lettuce on the side. I also didn't have as many chips and salsa as I used to (very hard to do!)

-I also have found A LOT of recipes from Julie over at her blog! 

-I usually have brown rice with mixed vegetables with my grilled chicken.

-Tuna is also something I like!


Dessert Brookside Chocolates. These are seriously the best! I usually eat 5 of these after lunch or dinner...or both :) I count out 5 and put in a zip lock back to take to work with me so I won't be tempted to snack on them all day, because they are THAT good! 

-Sometimes I have a yogurt for dessert after dinner 

-Smoothies. I haven't started making these but I plan on trying a few out over the next couple of weeks. Haley gave me her old blender so that I can make my own and I'm really excited! She has one that she likes to make in place of a strawberry milkshake. She uses vanilla almond milk, strawberries, and the strawberry cheesecake yogurt (the one I talked about at the beginning of this post) and blends them together. She usually adds some of her vanilla or strawberry protein powder in to it. She says it tastes just like a strawberry milkshake from sonic!

-Cinnamon Pita chips, those are so good and so addicting. I eat 1 serving size (7 chips) for dessert sometimes. I really like crunching these up and putting them in my yogurt.


Snacks -If I plan ahead I will bring an extra hard boiled egg white or two and snack on during my morning break of afternoon break. 

-Apple slices and peanut butter (A good snack to eat about an hour before I work out)

-Bananas and peanut butter (A good snack to eat about an hour before I work out)



I lied, I am going to have to break this up into three posts. Monday I will share with you some of our workouts so far and the workout plan she made for me for the next three months. Like I said, I am not an health expert by any means, and I still am learning. I still have the urge to drink a Mountain Dew when I walk by the drink machine in the break room or really want to stop when I drive by Chick-fil-A but I haven't (30 DAYS Y'ALL!!!!) 

Thank you again for all the encouragement! This weekend we are going FURNITURE shopping!! We picked a lot out online already but we are going to see it in person this weekend. And we bought our bedding set! We found a really good deal on a 12 piece set online at Bed Bath & Beyond and I am in love with it. Can't wait to show y'all next week! Happy Friday :)

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Healthier Lifestyle - Part 2

Productive weekend

Friday night we had our annual back to school night with the SOC. Every year the 1st Friday back from Christmas break we all get together and do something. Last year we rented out the Fit and then went back to the SOC house for life size jenga. This year we had junk food at the SOC house and then went to a local church's gym and everyone played all types of games.  Matthew decided to drive up after work to surprise everyone. I knew he was coming Thursday night and was giddy all day Friday at work. Everyone was definitely surprised to see him and we all had a good time.  They are cleaning out their apartment and Matthew already has majority of his stuff packed up and taken home, so we didn't think about where he was going to sleep. Thankfully his bed is still there with the mattress. He took some extra blankets and a pillow from my apartment for the night lol.
Saturday I woke up and we had gotten a little bit of snow

As much as I HATE winter, it's still pretty. Thankfully it warmed up throughout the day and it all melted :) I made it home in time Saturday morning to watch my sisters second basketball game and then went to lunch with my family. After lunch I hopped on 840 and met Matthew. We were meeting with my aunt to go over wedding planning. She has grown up in the wedding industry and knows EVERYTHING about weddings and the planning process. Which is good for us because we hardly know anything, ha! Her grandmother opened a dress shop up a long time ago and then her mom took over it and runs it now. They have a ton of wedding dresses as well as prom dresses. Kim advised it probably wouldn't be good to go on a Saturday because right now because it is prime time for high school girls shopping for prom dresses and they are usually packed on Saturdays. So Kim's mom has offered to come in on a Sunday and open up the shop just for us so I can look for MY WEDDING DRESS. I am literally so excited I can't stand it. So incredibly grateful.
Kim went over everything there is to know in the planning process. From how many tables we are going to need for stuff to the flowers. I'm telling y'all, I am clueless on this stuff. Also on that Sunday we go look at dresses we are going to the flower place in Nashville, to pick out and price what we want! I honestly just want simple flowers, nothing crazy fancy or crazy expensive. Because let's face it, they are going to die. Which also leads me to the option of fake flowers. She used them in her wedding and I honestly thought they were real until she told me this past weekend. We will have a mixture of both!
Matthew received an email from the leasing manager from our apartment and she said we can come see our actual apartment this past weekend, a week sooner than planned. So after we met with Kim we booked it down there to see them before the office closed. We walked in the front office and as soon as she saw us she started apologizing. She got the apartments mixed up and the apartment across the hall from us is the one that was available to do their walk through this past weekend. BUMMER. We were pretty bummed, but on the plus side we got to see who is going to be living right across from us. They are a cute young couple!! Who knows maybe we'll be friends one day. So we left but decided to drive around the apartment property again since we were already down there. Seriously, so EXCITING.  THIS coming weekend we get to do our walk through and see our actual apartment. So it looks like we will be going back down there this weekend. Woo hoo!

Sunday after church I worked on my bridesmaid gifts. I wasn't able to work on them at all last week so I am determined to finish them this week. I ended up deciding that I didn't like what I had originally worked on so I redid it this past weekend (about 3 hours on Saturday night worth of redoing, but it'll be worth it!). I went Sunday afternoon to get all the stuff to put it together. Slowly but surely these bad boys will be making their appearance to the blog!   
This is a really long post with only one picture, so I will leave you with this...hilarious!! 

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Productive weekend

Our 1st place!!

**Note: I wrote this post on Monday but blogger for some reason wouldn't let me upload pictures and I finally figured a way around it TODAY. I have been dying to share this with y'all! This past weekend was very busy! Friday night we went to a Preds game with Matthew's parents. We stopped at one of their favorite Mexican places in Nashville and filled up on yummy Mexican greatness before heading to the game. It was a really good game and was pretty close until the end and the Preds came back and scored back to back and we won! 

    Saturday Matthew and I went to my sister's basketball game. They won and were really excited. It's so great watching them play basketball in the same exact gym I played basketball in for three years.

 As soon as their game was over Matthew and I headed to the Mt. Juliet/Nashville area to look at different apartments. After the first apartment tour we were already starving, so we stopped at Red Robin (YUMMM) in Mt.Juliet for lunch! I got just the basic cheeseburger with a side salad instead of fries. Did y'all know there isn't any extra charges for that AND it's bottomless like the fries?? I had no idea, but got really excited when I saw that. I just had one side salad though, even their basic cheeseburgers are big in my opinion. We spent all day looking and touring apartments. Apartment shopping is pretty exhausting!! I can't imagine what it's going to be like when we buy or build our first house, ha! We ended up looking at about 7 or 8, I honestly lost track because we went to so many.   The second to last one we looked at ended up being the one. As we were riding around on the golf cart with the leasing manager looking at the property, and then actually seeing the inside of the apartment. I just knew, and Matthew just knew the look on my face. Matthew said I looked like a child on Christmas morning LOL. It seriously went above and beyond all the things we wanted. The main thing for me besides the price was safety. Would I feel comfortable staying there by myself, in the case Matthew will have to travel for work (which will only be a 2-3 weeks or so out of the year.) but still I wanted us to be safe regardless. We knew from the beginning we were more than likely going to have to spend more to stay safe or live in a safe area in Nashville. Here are some pictures of the model apartment we looked at. This is the view from the door looking into the living room and dining area.

This is also in the living room. Y'all, that fireplace. I die. 

  

The hallway. The laundry room is the first door on the left and then the bathroom is the next. With the bedroom at the end of the hallway. The laundry room is a pretty good size!!

The dining area. I am in LOVE with the big double windows. I am all about some natural light coming in.

The kitchen!!

 I like that it is an open area with the dining room but we have that wall in between the kitchen and living room.

Here is the bedroom! It also has to big double windows. It's pretty big compared to some apartments we looked at. The leasing manager told us it can fit a king size bed in there. The living room and the bedroom will BOTH have ceiling fans in them, so excited!

The closet! It is a pretty good size one!

 The bathroom! I am definitely liking that little bit of extra counter space on the left!

And here is our little patio! 

That door is a storage closet

As soon as we got in the car and left the apartment Matthew looked at me and said "That's the one, isn't it?" I just grinned and nodded my head because I was so excited/emotional. How in the world did we get to this point?? I feel like yesterday I was picking out his boutonniere for senior prom and now we are looking for our FIRST PLACE TOGETHER. This is so crazy to me, but so so fun. We went back the next day after church and signed the papers!! Matthew will move in next month and I will move in after we get married in July!!
I still just can't believe we found a place already!! They have some pretty great amenities, too!
They have three pools total. Here are two of them.

Their fitness center is incredible!

They have a weight room with all kinds of different machines and free weights.

They also have a room with treadmills, ellipticals and other cardio machines.

If you look out the window that is the third pool.

And probably the coolest part of the fitness center...

  They have a small room where a projector screen comes down and you can pick any type of workout video that they have that you want to do. I will be doing lots of spin classes for sure!

 They also have an indoor racquetball court. Matthew LOVES racquetball and so does his brothers, so when they come to visit, we know where they will go lol.

They have a quarter mile walking trail that is well lit at night. I am SO excited about this!! On nice days there is nothing better than getting outside and going on a walk to get some fresh air. 

They also have a sand volleyball court, self car wash, small laundry center, and dog park!

We are SO stinkin' excited and quite relieved it didn't take us weeks to find something.

We will be on the third floor, which as crazy as it sounds, is exactly what we wanted! The third floor apartments only have one shared wall so we are pretty thankful for that. 

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Our 1st place!!