2 down, 18 to go

Garin has officially been in the Coast Guard for 2 years now. Crazy, huh?! So far we have been through: 2 months of Boot Camp in Cape May, NJ; 2 months as an enlisted seaman at Small Boat Station, Emerald Isle, NC; 4 months in Officer Candidate School in New London, CT; and 1 year and some change in Naval Aviation Flight Training in Pensacola, FL. Whew, lots of transition!

Right now Garin is in between the Primary and Advanced phase. He should be starting up Advanced (which will be his Helicopter training) at the end of April; this phase should take between 6-8 months. So, right now it is looking like we will be making our move to our new duty station at the end of this year. We have no idea where that will be, but we should be staying there for about 4 years, so we'll finally get to "settle" down somewhere!

Congrats on reaching the 2 year mark, sweetheart! You make me a proud wife :)

Something Old, Something New

Due to the excess time on our hands of late, Garin and I have taken to refurbishing some old furniture and building some new furniture for our guest room. We are fortunate to have some pretty cool thrift shops around this area and I have found some pretty neat pieces of furniture there. The one you see below is one that I saw in the back of a thrift shop and it really "called" to me and so Garin agreed to help me bring it back to life.

So this is the before picture: And this is the after picture:

Yeah, so it might not look so good in these pictures, but I was pleased with how it turned out. I did a "shabby-chic" type finish on it to give it an antiqued look. Garin did a pretty good over haul on the structure, so it should be good to go for years to come! Oh and the other day I actually saw almost this exact piece in an antique shop (and I had done a MUCH better finishing job on mine than this one had), it was selling for $199...I bought mine for $45 and spent about $30 on the overhaul. Looks like I made a good buy :)

Next, we needed a head-board for our guest room bed. So, I told Garin what I was wanting and then he built it for me (its so nice to have such a handyman for a husband!). I did the same shabby-chic finish on it even though its not exactly an antique. I hope to find an older side table that strikes my interest so that we can redo it and make a complete bedroom set (and one day when we move into a more permanent dwelling I'm gonna actually paint the walls to compliment my finds/designs...cause its kinda hard to see them with the white walls behind)!

As you can see, the guest room is ready to go now and is ready to receive visitors! Please make sure you book your stay soon so before we run out of vacancy :)