Instead of going out of town for our anniversary, this year we decided to buy ourselves some gifts. We love a good excuse to buy stuff. We looked online to find out what the 'traditional 2nd anniversary gifts' are supposed to be. The first site we went to said 'china' or 'cotton'. Forget the 'or'...we got both!
We didn't get fine china when we got married, so we decided to pick a pattern and start our collection. We both instantly loved one of the first settings we saw (Chirp, by Lenox). We window shopped for a while making sure we looked at everything available, then decided that we really weren't going to like anything more than the Chirp pattern. It was just our luck that Macy's was having a sale that day, so we got about $40 off the settings!
We have promised each other that we really are going to use it, it won't just sit in our cabinets! Growing up (and still now) my mom always used her beautiful china on holidays, birthdays, etc. I loved it (especially since her china is called "Heather"). I can picture Scott and I still pulling these plates out even when we have grandchildren.
For
cotton, our gift to each other was finally buckling down and tackling a project we've had in the works all summer. We made our own rug! We have a pretty hefty sized living room and have been aching for an area rug to help fill it. In the past I couldn't find anything cheap (and cute) enough to fit the bill. My sister in law sent me
this tutorial and I knew I wanted to give it a shot. Scott and I watched The Count of Monte Cristo (the movie we watched on our very first date) while we made the rug together. It was definitely a two person job.
We absolutely love how it turned out! It is actually pretty thick & sturdy, I think it should last us a while- maybe till we have been married 5 or 10 years! I still can't believe we have been married two years already. Life is good :)
I got the idea right then to cover the red squares with scrapbook paper. I happened to have a sheet of cute orange paper in the house already, so I used a glue stick to cover the red squares with the paper. There was also a bright red outline around the board, so I used a black magic marker to color that in. Then I modge podged the whole thing so that the surface would be even.
Next, Scott decided to make a headboard for the full size bed in our guest room. He bought ten fence posts from the store and built a short fence. He used roofing nails because they are big and shiny, I thought that was brilliant of him. 
We picked three colors and painted it outside in the sunshine. It was dry by the end of the day and now it is in the room. We were going for a bit of a 'distressed' look, so that made painting easy. No second coat!
We bought some frames at D.I. (for .50-.75 cents each). We spray painted them cream, and also painted the base of some plants we already had. 
Here is a closeup of some of our favorite shelves. We got inspiration from the blog young house love. The jar in the far right corner is for postcards that we'll send home to ourselves from vacations we take. It should be a great way to remember fun times. 
We recently had our first fire of the fall season. We love our wood burning fireplace- there's nothing like the sound, smell, and coziness of it! It is one of those things that make the cold months more bearable.
