Updating of our apartment

Peter and I have the same stuff that we came to our marriage with 2 years ago, but in worse condition. They are wonderful pieces of furniture, mind you, they just needed some updates. :) Also, I think Peter and I have a phobia of clutter and stuff. So our walls were fairly empty, and that also needed to change.

Recently Grapevine had a citywide garage sale. At said sale, I got these awesome antique paintings of these birds. After some painting and windex, we got . . .

These! The pictures pp a lot more with the new paint and I am obsessed with them.

We bought some stain (meaning I did, the person who knows absolutely nothing about home improvement) and stained the bookshelf that was passed from mom (thanks mom!) to amanda to us. It looks pretty dang good if I do say so myself, although you can't really tell much from the picture.
We also redid the hutch that Uncle Mike gave us (thanks Uncle Mike!) and you can't tell from the picture either but it is a dark gray/dark brown. We spray painted the hinges and handles, and it looks great.
We are still thinking about staining our table, but I think that project will have to wait for when we have more time, because our table is massive!

I love Texas! or at least, the general area we live in. Not so much the dry parts . .

I decided to take some pictures of the beautifulness I see on my way to work. It has been brisk fall weather lately with rain pouring at least a few days a week. On the day I took these the clouds were looming, and we had an awesome lightning storm that night.

Here is the most Texas property/house I have yet seen, and I don't know if you can read the sign but it says "The Bear Creek Plantation." This property has beautiful trees down the walkway to a gigantic house (that if you look hard enough you can see between the gates) and loads of grass and some cows in-between. So awesome.

Next is some property nearby that is part of a huge acreage with a house and barn and these fantastic trees all over the property. It also looks like it has a little creek running through too. I told Peter that we need to have another reception because this is my dream location for one. I will save my pennies to buy it one day . . .
In this next picture you can barely see the water tower of Grapevine, which saves my life. Whenever I get lost around here, which is often, I just look around for the nearest water tower because I know that will tell me what city I am in. Also, look how green it is here!
This farm is one of my favorites because the cows sit by the fence and eat the flowers most of the day. They weren't there when I took the picture, but the field has such a dreamy quality.
And this is the stoplight Peter and I sit at for at least a few minutes a day. At it, we face train tracks and a huge open field which we saw a coyote in.
Hope you guys come visit soon!

Texas State Fair!

Peter and I as well as the Dutchers and some other friends from work all went to the Texas State Fair on Saturday. Biggest in the country, and also known as the Fried Food Capital. Unfortunately, the weather didn't match the event and it was kinda chilly, but still so fun.

As soon as we walked in, they had a Chevy test-driving station and since Peter forgot his wallet at home, I got to drive us around in their fun cars! I tried to gun it, but since the course was pretty small, I didn't really get anywhere. :)

Our first stop with the good old south was the animal section where we met the 1100 lb pig. Sick! The poor thing couldn't even stand up when it was eating, it just laid there stuffing it's face. Next to the fat pig was a feeding area with emus, a baby giraffe and zebra, lots of big and little goats, a kangaroo and some other weird animals. I guess the smell of gross animal pens made us hungry, so we stopped by to get some food and saw this sign:
Not only were there these fried foods, but there was also fried snickers, fried lattes, fried s'mores, cheesecake, and pretty much anything else you could want deep fried. Peter and I shared a corn dog (or corny dog, as they call them here) and that was about all the grease that I could handle. But it smelled so good everywhere!

After eating we hit up the auto show where a sweet old man started telling us about a car crash he got in when two corvettes were racing and the one in his lane didn't manage to get over in time. He said that he saw the corvette blow up and melt on the pavement. Another interesting thing about Texas, everybody talks to everybody and especially old people as they love to tell stories.

We raced to get over to the pig races in time and that was probably the highlight of the night. They had three rounds of races and I was so surprised how much Peter got into cheering for our little pig to win.

Also at the fair were the show animals (goats, horses, and cows) and they were the cleanest animals I had ever seen. Clean enough, I guess, for this guy to take a nap with them!
And I guess, clean enough to wear a hat?

But really they were just like puppies, and just wanted to be scratched.