Fire Pit

Jason and I have been wanting a fire pit for a while now.  This fall, we finally got one.  We've done a few hotdog or s'more nights, but we also just enjoy sitting by the fire and enjoying our back yard.


Warm Day:

Cold Day (Tyler and I were all wrapped up.  Jason still decided it was shorts weather):

Decals

For a while now, Jason has wanted to find some piece of art to go over the cut-through between the kitchen and living room.  We looked at lots of options, but since the wall is shaped weird (not very tall and very long), we had a hard time finding something that would work.

Jason's coworker recommended we look for nursery decals from a company called Dali Decals.  While looking for those (more on that once I post nursery pics), we found a decal we liked for our living room -- a dandelion.

It's actually pretty easy to install.  You map out how you want it to look on the wall.  Then, you peel off the backing paper and stick the transfer paper to the wall.  They provide you with a plastic "squeegee" to press the decal onto the wall, and then you oh-so-carefully peel off the transfer paper.

The result:

Yes, each of those seeds is an individual decal.  It was a bit time-consuming, but I'm really happy with the results.  I better be, because I'm certainly not going to take it down any time soon!!!

Sunnin'

A while back, we had torrential downpours.  We're talking all-day pouring rain that flooded surrounding areas and drenched anyone who had to venture out in it, even if only for a few seconds.  The next day, everyone enjoyed soaking in the sun, including our squirrels.

Check out this guy, sunbathing on our deck:

Jason actually took this picture for me, because it was the day I had first pulled my abdominal muscle and couldn't get off the couch to come see the silly squirrel.  I thought it was funny, though, and wanted to share it with all of you.

Determination

I've mentioned before it's like Wild Kingdom in our backyard.  One of our favorite things is watching all the birds eat at our two bird feeders.  At any given time, we've seen up to ten different species eating within a ten-foot radius!  We buy squirrel-proof feeders because our squirrels are greedy and like to dump ALL of the birdseed on the ground at one time.

Well, the squirrels don't know the feeders are "squirrel-proof":

We watched this guy try every acrobatic position he could think of to get to the seed.  Sorry, buddy, you'll have to eat acorns instead.

Deck Living

I mentioned recently that we had just purchased a new set of deck furniture (see story here).  Well, last Saturday, we finally got a chance to use it!

Jason had been working out in the yard cutting down trees and mowing, while I was cleaning up inside.  I decided it would be perfect to eat lunch outside and enjoy the day.

New Furniture:

Lunch:

Since it was a nice, warm day, I decided to go with a cold lunch -- toasted bread, apples, assorted cheeses (havarti with dill, gouda, smoked cheddar), salami, olive oil/balsamic vinegar dip, brown mustard, and dried cranberries.  Before anyone says anything, the salami was just for Jason (it's on my no-no list, *sigh*).  Odd assortment, but it was actually pretty yummy!

Hear Him Roar

He is Jason:

He has a chainsaw:

He cuts down big trees:

And chops up the trees... and stacks them on our ever-growing wood pile... and mows the grass... and blows the leaves... and is straight-up awesome.

Well, Hellooooo!

First of all, thanks to all of you for the encouraging comments, emails, and phone calls.  We're blessed that our biggest hardship right now is dealing with roaches... and that our friends and family are there to support us through our breakdowns. :)

Ok, back to the light-hearted stuff.  I found this guy on our deck one evening, enjoying a meal.  He actually let me get very close to him to take photos, but he never took his eyes off of me the whole time.

Being Honest

I learned a long time ago that public internet is not a place to air my dirty laundry.  However, by always being upbeat online, I don't get to be fully honest with what's going on in my life.  I learned a really valuable lesson last week, one too valuable to not share with those I care about the most, so that's what I'm going to do now.

I mentioned before that the first week of homeownership was about 95% fixing up old house and 5% living in new house.  Last week was the second week of homeownership, and it was a rough one.  We've been living in limbo.  Afternoons were spent at the old house, and nothing seemed to go right.   Then we'd come home, and nothing would go right here either.


To keep this from being the world's longest post, I'll sum up some of the events of last week.  

~Tried to replace faucets at the old house, which turned into a three-day struggle where at one point, Jason considered taking a hacksaw to the pipes
~Every task at the old house took about three hours longer than expected, largely because something we needed was at the new house instead of with us
~Tried reprogramming the programable thermostat, which then reverted back to its default settings (85 degrees during the day) for some reason
~Bought a tv console that weighed 160lbs (really fun carrying into the house...) and was premade, but none of the screw holes were where they were supposed to be, so Jason had to drill new ones
~Dishwasher wouldn't clean dishes, even though I put detergent in the right place and it sounded like it was washing
~Sewer gases leaked from our half bathroom, which resulted in lots of online research, emails to the former owners, calls to the septic tank people, and me squirting water into a secondary drain of the toilet with a turkey baster (which reminds me... I need to buy another turkey baster...)
~We discovered that we have a flying ant problem... and a roach problem

Everything kind of hit rock bottom on Thursday.  We had been spending so much time at the old house, but there were pretty serious problems (like the sewer gases and the bugs) that really needed addressing at the new house.  At one point, Jason looked at me and said "Why can't just one thing be easy?"  We were at the the end of our ropes, and that's where the lesson was learned.

We were trying to do this by ourselves, and all our efforts weren't enough.  So we cried out to God.  Jason said he was so overwhelmed with house stuff at work one day that he just stopped what he was doing and prayed.  At home, I was doing the same thing.  As Christians, we are not promised a life of ease -- quite the opposite, actually.  It's through the hard times in life that we cling to Christ.  Once we realized the God was in control and that He would see us through all of this, our attitudes improved, and so did our work!  If you're struggling right now, I hope that these verses will be an encouragement to you as they have been to us this past week.

"My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience."  -- James 1:2-4


"And He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.'  Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me." -- 2 Corinthians 12:9 (one of Jason's favorite verses)


"Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."  --Matthew 11:28


"Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."  -- Philippians 4:6-7 (some of my favorite verses)


I leave you with a great quote from Mother Teresa that really sums it up:

        "I know God will not give me anything I can't handle.  I just wish that He didn't trust me so much."

Wake Up Call

Jason took off the whole week after our move to help us get settled in (which turned into "work at old house").  I was sooooo glad to have him around!

One morning, I woke up to my phone ringing.  I rolled over and looked at the caller ID.  It was hard to see without my glasses on, but I thought it said Jason was calling...

"Breakfast is ready!"

He had actually CALLED me on the phone to let me know he had cooked breakfast!  When I walked downstairs, I was met with the delicious scent of bacon.  He handed me my plate of eggs and bacon and said "A house is not a home until it smells like bacon."  Well, I guess this house is now our home!

Fixin' Up "Old House"

Our first week as homeowners wasn't what I expected.  We ended up spending nearly every waking hour at the old house fixing it up to put on the market.

We estimate it will be up in less than a week (yay yay yay!).  We got there early each morning and stayed until 7 or 8 each night.  I packed us PB&J sandwiches each day for lunch, which we ate on our living room floor (since there's no furniture there anymore!).  Here are a few shots from the days I remembered to bring my camera:

Living Room -- fresh coat of the existing paint color, Brown Teepee.  It's kind of hard to get an accurate picture of the wall color, so here's the color from the Behr website:

Kitchen: We had plans to paint it the same blue as the half bath, but our realtor suggested we use the brown teepee in there as well.  We now call our house "tan house."

Upstairs: We went with a lighter tan called weathered sandstone.  Here's the paint color.  It's very deceiving because it's sometimes tan, sometimes cream, and sometime (gulp) peachy.

Vaulted ceilings + husband on ladder = very scared (and very prayerful!) wife

Sooooo glad to say we're finishing painting!!!!

I Get By With a Little Help from my Family...

Ok, a LOT of help from my family!  After getting some moving quotes and finding out that we had free access to a moving truck, we decided to move ourselves.  After some phone calls, we had recruited several family members.  Then, our friend John actually volunteered to help us move!  Awesome!

Here are a few shots from moving day.  Special thanks to my aunt Carol who took my camera and documented for me, and my apologies to anyone not pictured.  Usually they were doing scary stuff (like maneuvering my dresser down a flight of stairs), and we didn't want to distract them with telling them to smile for the camera.


Packed up house:

Family freebies -- items we didn't want anymore, but were too nice to goodwill or throw away.  (PS, this is where Jason's cordless phone ended up):

Loading up the moving truck:

Lunch at the new house (some of the best-tasting food ever, we were so famished!):

After lunch:

Done!

Life Lessons from Moving

Back in June, I wrote about life lessons learned from painting.  Well, we also learned quite a few life lessons from moving recently.  Here are a few:

Life Lesson #1: Start Early
My last day at school was June 12th, and I pretty much started packing then, two weeks before moving.  That said, we were STILL frantically packing things until the last minute.  How in the world was so much stuff in our teeny tiny townhouse?

Where did all this stuff come from?!?

Life Lesson #2: Expect Some Conflict
Jason and I get along really well.  We rarely have any conflict at all, so I was surprised when we had several, um, discussions while packing.  We had very different priorities when it came to moving.  I wanted to pack up boxes and prepare for the move up to three weeks in advance.  He wanted to patch up holes at the old house up to the night before we moved.

We also surprised each other (and maybe ourselves) with the things we wanted to hold onto.  I refused to throw away a $15 MDF storage box that he deemed too "college" to keep.  He balked at my suggestion to throw away (or goodwill) a cordless phone that we found in the guest room.  He thought it was something good to keep (even though we don't have a landline!).

Life Lesson #3: Expect the Unexpected
My husband is a closeted box-collector.  It turns out the majority of our attic was full of empty electronics boxes.  Who knew?

We knew unexpected things would happen on moving day, and we just needed to roll with the punches.  Here's a few of those unexpected things:

1. Our dresser drawers didn't come out of our dressers.  Trust me, we had three engineers and three other people look, and they are definitely screwed in.  Did we freak out?  Nope.  We got extra boxes, and the contents of both our dressers were packed in about 10 minutes.
2. The screws to our bed frame disappeared.  I put them in a labeled ziploc bag in my nightstand along with a bag of screws for my dresser mirror.  We looked all around the old house, checked the other nightstand, and emptied (and inverted) my nightstand to see if they had ended up behind the drawer.  We still to this day don't know what happened to those screws!
3. My dad was abandoned and locked out of the new house.  After the first truckload, the old owner came by to pick up a few remaining possessions.  My dad got to talking to him out in the backyard about ham radio and he said the next thing he knew, everyone had left to go get the second truckload.  No biggie, he'll wait inside.  Oh, except we had locked up the house!  Thank goodness we have a shady yard!



Life Lesson #4: Plan, Plan, Plan 
A week before moving, the weather prediction was 99 degrees.  After groaning and moaning, I took action and bought lots of water, gatorade, and soda, and put some in each fridge (old house fridge and new house fridge).  We also had towels set aside if anyone needed to wipe sweat.  Thank goodness, since it ended up being 105 on moving day, not 99!

Other ways we planned -- we took all our food and clothes over to the new house before moving day.  We knew the trip would be faster those days and that we were more likely to forget these things if we waited until the craziness of moving day.  We also talked about what order we wanted to move things, labeled the boxes with their destination and contents, and labeled all our belongings (especially cleaning and painting supplies) that were supposed to stay at the old house.

All our planning really seemed to pay off.  No one died of heat exhaustion (thank goodness!) and we had all our stuff in the new house (2 truck loads) by 1:00.  Score!


Life Lesson #5: Don't Sweat the Small Stuff
Since I was home during the day (yay summer vacation!), I did that majority of the packing.  I was fine with this, until it came to drinking glasses.  I have no idea why (I had no problem packing breakable dishes), but packing the glasses (especially our four wine glasses) filled me with dread.  After putting it off for weeks, I expressed my anxiety to Jason.  Then Jason told me that the 4-pack of wine glasses had cost him $6.  All this stress over glasses that could be replaced for $6 if they got broken?!?  Ridiculous!  I packed those bad boys up with confidence and went on my merry way!

I'm now a wine-glass-wrapping expert.  Loosely stuff newspaper inside the glass and around the stem.  Wrap in bubble wrap like a burrito and tape it securely.

We did it!  Plus, we learned some life lessons along the way.  Tomorrow, photos from moving day.

Homeowners

Closing day went really well.  We closed on Thursday (June 28th) and moved on Saturday (June 30th).  We were in and out of the lawyer's office in less than an hour, which Jason said was really fast for closing.  After lunch and a trip to Wal-Mart (where we coincidentally ran into our realtor less than an hour after seeing him at closing), we changed into what we call "sports clothes" and did some moving into our new house!

Now, I know I have only shared the front of the house here, but now that the house is officially ours, I feel more comfortable about sharing more.  It will be a while before we're settled in enough to have people see it in person, so hopefully this will satisfy you til then!

Welcome to our house!

Entryway

Dining Room

Study

Living Room

Kitchen

Master Bedroom

Master Bathroom

Jason's response when I asked him to come pose with me....

Hallway with bedrooms to the left and right and bonus room straight ahead

Bonus Room