3 column blog and and My First Award!

I am volunteering at my daughter's school tomorrow...early bird style. So I will get right to it.

One tiny bit of boring stuff:

Can any of you tell me how to get my blog to have 3 columns? I am using one of the minima templates and I think I am supposed to insert some html to get the column on the left....?  The left side of my blog looks so lonely.
*UPDATE - I figured it out.  I went to Cutest Blog on the Block and they had step by step instructions. Super easy! Thanks Helene for the tip!

Now onto the juicy part:

I won my first blog award!  It was bestowed upon me from Chantel at Growing Up...Townsend Style!
Chantel has made my week!  Thanks Chantel, I am so very honored!

I will leave another post soon (I need to get some details from Chantel) to tell you how you can become a winner of this fabulous award, too!  I get to choose 6 people....So excited!

I also have been working on some Halloween decor that I can't wait to share. 

Mamma's off to dreamland now!

Don't...I mean, DO fence me in

One of the first items we tackled at this house was building a new fence.  When we moved here the fence was completely rotten and falling down. 

Like This:

My hubby and his friend worked tirelessly all weekend to get most of the new fence up.  It took tons of wood, tons of concrete and much sawing and nail-gunning.  Oh, what fun we had!.....not.

Here is one side of the fence after the posts were in. Now we just had to wait for concrete to dry...tick...tick...tick:

And that was only one side.  There is the entire street side of the fence, too.

See here:

Then, there are 2 gates to build.....IN. THE. RAIN.

Doesn't this project look like it was just so much fun? NO??

How about in the rain AND in the dark?

See? NOW we are having "fun". 

After all of those good times, here is what we ended up with:

Sooooo worth it! It has been 2 1/2 years since this fence went up, and man, what a job! Mamma is so glad to have that checked off her list.  Onto the next!

Before and After - Powder Room

It's my Texas Bathroom!  Or at least that is what I call it.  I grew up in Texas and sometimes I get all nostalgic when I miss it, and that is the result of the inspiration in my powder room.  This is one of those projects that we thought would be fairly straightforward.  But, just like all of my "this will be so easy" projects, it ended up being more difficult than it should have been.  Everything went smoothly except the toilet install. It took like 4 days because of installation issues. My husband could NOT get the base screws to properly attach to the house's original thingies on the...oh forget it...i dont know what I'm talking about...It was hard, ok?!

I knew I wanted to gut the entire bathroom and put in a new toilet, sink, faucet, hardware, mirror, lighfixture and crown molding.  My dear hubby is the one that does all the labor around here, and he was so good about letting me add to the list of things I wanted to do in there. I think he felt safe that since it was a small room, I couldn't go too crazy with my wish list.

Anyway, here is the before pic of the downstairs bathroom.  Can you believe I lived in this house for 2 YEARS before we did anything to this room? 

BEFORE:

HOW DID I NOT GO CRAZY!  Probably because there were 100 other more important things to tackle in this house first.

And now....ahhhhh, so much better!

AFTER:

This little box holds/hides extra TP.  What do you think? Wrong spot? Too big?

And finally:

Don't mess with Texas.

I grew up in Texas so I LOVE this.  I made it from a birthday card my best friend sent me.  I saved it for about 4 years before I finally framed and hung it.  It is perfect in my "Texas" Bathroom.

I am always messing around with the items on the shelf and I cannot seem to get it just right. Sometimes, I think the shelf is too low. Sometimes, I think the accessories are too small. Sometimes, I want to move the pic.  Sometimes, I feel like I nut, sometimes I don't. 

Hope you are having a WONDERFUL weekend!