Trying to keep my promise...

...to blog more this year! This was our first weekend to stay Dallas in quite sometime. As much as we enjoy traveling around to see family and friends, it was really nice to stay home this weekend. Friday night we went to the Studio Movie Grill (which is like an Alamo Drafthouse for any Austinites reading this) with some friends to see Gran Torino. Quick review: similar to Crash in some ways - pretty intense movie, but definitely worth seeing in our opinion. Much more so than Revolutionary Road which we also saw this weekend. Matt's review: "Didn't have the magic of Titanic" Honestly - it's a pretty depressing movie, if you're looking for a feel good time, don't go see Revolutionary Road.

On another note - today after church we decided to go to a "Starving Artist Sale", which was held at the Holiday Inn in Richardson (just north of us). They have pretty annoying commercials that come on to advertise it, and that's the only way you would ever know about it, because when I looked for a website for more information, I found nothin. The commercial shows giant oil paintings and flashes "NOTHING over $59!!!!" Anyways - we learned some lessons for our next visit to a "starving artist sale":
- get there when it opens (I think it started at 11 and we were there by 12 and it was already really picked over)
- if you see something you like - do not hesitate to push past people and grab it. asap. even if you're not sure you want it - carry it around with you the entire time, because if you decide to go back 2 1/2 minutes later thinking "surely it will still be there - there were 4 of the same one" ...you'll be wrong.
- The $59 limit does not include a frame...
Despite our lessons learned, we did get something we're really excited about! With the new house I know we'll have a lot of empty walls, so I thought this would be a good time to find a good deal to help fill it up! Despite having to pay a little more than we were expecting because of the frame, I still think we got a great deal considering this painting is larger than our 50" TV and we got to pick the frame we wanted for it!

And - to top off our weekend'o'fun in Dallas, we went out to Murphy again to check on the progress of the house. They called us on Friday to let us know they would be starting the brick/stone and the sheetrock - yay!! Here's some photos to show the progress! (I apologize for the amount of pics to follow - we're really excited to have walls)
p.s. mom - you can click on the pictures to make them bigger :)

We have brick and stone!

close-up of the brick/stone

front porch :)

brick on back of house

Matt standing on the left front of the house

looking into the study

from the entry hallway - looking back towards kitchen/nook and family room

standing outside the kitchen while they were putting up the sheet-rock

standing in the breakfast nook looking back towards the front of the house -- family room is on left, dining room is the through the big open archway, kitchen is on the right

master bedroom

Ok, I guess that's enough for now - if you're actually still reading this - congratulations on making it to the end! Maybe in addition to trying to blog more, I should attempt to make them shorter as well... we'll see.