So....Wanna See My House?!

Since you've all been obsessively checking my blog this week to see pictures of my house, I'll post them as promised.
Okay, so, probably I'm the only one that obsessively checks blogs to see pictures of people's new houses. I'll still post some pictures for you.

First, you should meet my best friend of the neighborhood, thus far. His name is Cooper.


I'm pretty sure he's obsessed with me. I'm ok with it though. He's pretty adorable.

Best friends. My other neighbors are pretty awesome too.

Ok, ok. I'll show you pictures of the house. Please observe:
Kitchen (obviously):

Main floor sitting area:

Stairs (I'm in love. I have a thing for cool stairs. Don't judge.):

Landing/nook on top of stairs (again, love):

Spare Bedroom:

Master bedroom (please ignore gross carpet, it will be replaced):

Upstairs bathroom:

Basement Family Room (Please ignore the even more yucky carpet. We're hoping to get this replaced within the next few days):

Another bedroom:

So, there you have it. What do you think?!

A lot of people have been asking me how repairs are going, and I'll be honest, they're going a lot slower than we anticipated. We've had a few setbacks. It took us a couple of days longer than we thought it would to get the water turned on and it's pretty hard to do anything without that. Patching the walls for painting also took longer than we anticipated, so it's been a bit frustrating. Let me give you an example. Wednesday night we were SO close to being ready to have the water turned on. We were replacing the very last plumbing thing we needed to replace and the seal of the hose bib got melted during soldering and it was 9:45 at night. Then we couldn't get it figured out Thursday either, BUT we finally got it today and we FINALLY have water. So, we're a couple of days behind, but such is life.

However, I'm actually having a lot of fun learning how to do all of this stuff. So far I've learned how to caulk corners, patch big and small holes before painting, sand, re-texture with mud, and better paint techniques. I have to give a special shout out to my dad, who taught me all of this. Have I ever told you that my dad is the coolest EVER? Well, he is. Seriously, he's so talented with this stuff. Seriously, I knew he was good at it, but this past week I have been absolutely blown away by his knowledge of all of this. He's also the hardest worker I've ever seen. Monday, right after we closed, he pulled up, took out his Little Giant Ladder (ok, seriously, have you ever seen one of these? They AMAZING) and starts fixing our gutter. So cool. So far, with his help, we've done the following:

• changed out locks


• fixing a droopy gutter


• killed ants (we did this one on our own, not to hard..)


• fixed a few plumbing things, which entails fixing two hose bibs, re-soldering the main water valve and getting it a new handle, replacing downstairs cold water stop and upstairs shower valve, fixing a bad drain, and one other small leak where on the hose hook up.


• paint prep for the basement family room (we're basically done, thankfully!), which entails: spackling and re mudding holdes, re texturing with mud, taping, and caulking corners.


• my step dad and my mom also came over and helped us clean and dig up some chain link in our back yard, which needs to go back up as a fence where it belongs.

Wanna see some pictures of us working?

Taping

caulking

mudding

cutting a hole to get to the hose bib

So, I always thought cutting into a wall would be fairly hard. It's not.

I mean, you can't just go around cutting into walls, right? Wrong. The above picture transformed into the below picture in like ten minutes.

Before we move in we'd really like to get the painting and carpet done in the basement family room. We really really hope!!!! We were originally planning on getting more done before moving in, but since we ended up closing a full two weeks after our original closing date, we got set back quite a bit and then we got set back again with the plumbing stuff, we're going to just have to move in before everything is done. But, I think this will actually be kind of nice, because we won't have to drive all the way back to our apartment every night after we're doing working, which will save us time and we'll get more sleep. We've devised a plan to not have furniture in our way.

So, wanna know what else we're going to do? (In the near future anyway. There are always projects for a house, no matter how long you've lived there, right?)

• paint the basement famly room


• tear our old carpet from family room


• put new carpet in the basement family room


• get rid of the textured walls on the main level (this may turn out to be the biggest project yet)


• paint main level


• clean carpets in the bedrooms


• re-fram door downstairs


• hang two new outside doors


• put up a few small sections of fence


• get rid of hand rail on stairs that is cheap, ugly, and uncessecary


• kill weeds in the yard


• maybe replant the yard?


• maybe haul lots of dirt out of the yard?


• fix gutter


• put ice shield on roof


• take swamp cooler off roof


• go to home depo about thirty times


• and, the very best of all...DECORATE!!!!

Well, I hope that didn't bore you to tears. I hope you at least liked the pictures. We sure are in for a lot of work, and even though it's not going as fast as we'd like, it will be so worth it in the end.

Also, I picked out my accent wall color for the basement family room. It's called Pale Jade. I'm aboslutely in love with it.

It's Official...

Jayson and I offically..

OWN A HOUSE!!!
Can you believe it?! I'm still in awe. We've both been giddy all day. We'll just stop and look at eachother and squeal out, "We bought a housee!!!!

Oh goodness. I highly recommend it. It might be one of the most fantastic things ever.

The welcoming commity welcomed us with open arms (the three dogs that live next door). They came running out as soon as we pulled up. One in particular is already quite fond of me. I won't lie, the fondness is reciprocated.

Then, as we were showing some of my in-laws the house two horses (yes, horses!) came strolling up to the side of our house. Our neighbors were riding by on said horses and wanted to come and greet/meet us. Awesome?! YES. Another neighbor stopped in front of our house as he drove by to come and meet us too. We already love our neighbors. So friendly.

We even started our improvements today! I have been so stoked to get them started.

DAY 1:

• placed welcome mat


• gave first tour


• my dad fixed a droopy rain gutter


• my dad fixed some plumbing valves or stops or something like that


• started prep work for painting the basement


• made a trip to home depo to buy plumbing parts, a new door for the outside, ant killer, hardwood floor cleaner, spackle, and some other random things.


• killed said ants. hopefully.

I will post pictures one of these days, but right now I'm super tired. I just wanted to let the blogging world know that we officially own a house and we're so excited about it.

stay tuned...

Pinch Me

Last week I was talking to my co-workers about our future house and I think that was the first time that it really hit me. We're buying a house. I think it was the first time it really felt like it was truly our house.

We went for a little drive in our new neighborhood this past Sunday and it was absolutely wonderful. The neighborhood is beautiful, there were kids outside playing, and our future church building is really cool. Somehow we always end up in old church building and I love it.

We are suppose to close in one week from this very day. I am so excited I can't even stand it. My dad and I went over the things we need to do as far as repairs go and I surprised even myself about how excited I am to start learning and doing them all! I'm getting so antsy waiting to start. I don't know how I'll wait a whole week more. I guess the same way I've waiting for the past eight months, eh? (can you believe we've really been going through this buying a house process for eight months? Not just on this particular house, as this was our third offer... but- Holy cow.)

On Saturday I made the first two purchases for the house and I'm super excited about them. Please observe:



You like? I've decided I have a thing for blue and yellow. I kept going back and forth between color schemes, but blue and yellow is a combo I've loved for years- ever since middle school when I first laid my eyes on Cory and Topanga's (Boy Meets World, incase you're confused) little apartment, with its blue walls and yellow couch. So, I know this isn't just a combo that I like now but might change my mind later.

Did I mention that I'm super excited?

Have I told you how much I love this house? Probably not, because I've spent so much time fretting about the whole process and telling how much other people being less than positive about it. Well, I decided I don't care. Why? Because I LOVE it. I seriously think it's going to be perfect for us. When I was standing in it the other day I was just overcome with love for this house and I realized I just needed to put everyone else's thoughts aside and focus on how I really feel about the house. Well, turns out, I love it. I love the house, the area, the yard, and I could go on and on. It also happens to be in one of my favorite cities in the the valley. Sigh.

Is this real?
Someone pinch me please.

16,000 Words

Some really random, beautiful, hilarous pictures that I always meant to post, but never did. Maybe even a few I never really intended to post, but saw them while I was looking through my pictures, and couldn't resist.

Has anyone ever seen the above picture? When I found it I had no recollection of it at all, which is a shame, because I laughed about it for hours after I saw it. I'd keep thinking about it and laughing. In fact, I'm still laughing.

I hear a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, there you have it. 16,000 words for your viewing pleasure.

A Memorial Weekend of Memories

Have I ever told you how much we LOVE camping? It's a mighty good thing we do, because all three of our families like to do it A LOT. Memorial weekend was no exception. We spent the weekend with my Mom, step-dad Todd, step sister Britnie, Britnie's fiance Ben (Did I tell you my step sister is engaged?! She is! Pretty exciting, right?!), their dog Cheyenne, step sister Shelbie, My grandparents, and another family that we go camping with every year. It was a really fun trip and the weather actually wasn't even as bad as we thought it was going to be! It was fairly cold, but nothing some long johns, a few jackets, and and a nice warm camp fire won't fix. It didn't even rain until Sunday evening! Ok, yes, it was SNOWING when we woke up Monday morning, but we were planning to leave that morning anyway, so it didn't really matter all that much. At any rate, Saturday and most of the day Sunday were great as far as the weather was concerned.

Now, most of you probably know, my family really likes to fish. I mean really, A LOT.
I, however, do not.
But, I'll always go along for the ride. When others are fishing I usually read, which is wonderful, of course. I really think there's nothing better than sitting near a large body of water, with good people, and a good book.
But, sometimes I do things like...
experiment with my camera....

I was trying to make the sky the background of the picture. NAILED IT. Do you see that sky? Doesn't it look fake?! But, guess what?! It's not. Oh. My. Goodness. It was so beautiful!

Here's Cheyenne trying to get into the chair. I don't know how exactly that got on the middle of all of the sky pictures, but cute nonetheless.

For some reason I am obsessed with the above picture. Isn't it great?!

Seriously. Look at that sky!

Oh, here I am trying to make the lake the background of the photo. FAIL.

Shelbie and Papa Todd fishing away...
Britnie, Cheyenne, and Ben. Is this not hilarous?!


I bet you can't say you've ever caught a crawdad with your fishing pole before....

We also played games, sat by the campfire, celebrated Grandpa Norm's birthday, and I even got to have a marvelous conversation with my Grandma Betty, just her and me. It was so nice to get some one on one time with her. I don't think that has happened in years! Camping is such a wonderful opportunity to spend time with family without technological distractions. LOVE.

P.S. The day after Memorial Day I bought the new Death Cab For Cutie CD. Have you heard it yet? It's brilliant. Give Stay Young, Go Dancing and You Are a Tourist a listen.
Monday Morning and Unobstructed Views are also among my favorites. It's really just a great album.

P.P.S. Jayson's car FINALLY passed inspection. HOORAH! It always fails the first time, but it's always relatively cheap to fix. Can you believe it's still running? Neither can I. We always joke that one day we'll be rich and we'll be driving around that car because it just won't die. I love it!