Spring Time!

HELLO if your still there. It has been along time since we updated this thing. If you look at that last pics it was middle of winter and we were in chicago. April has been on the go getting famous on wedding blogs so I am doing my first blog ever. I hope it works!.....(Neil)

I wanted to share our new flower beds around the house. I KNOW I KNOW I need to weed some of the areas. "HEY IT'S SPRING STUFF GROWS"

We started with a small flower bed full of only bushes. I moved alot of the bushes around the house and we added flowers. The flowers in the back of the bed (including the one above we grew from seed to save money). DON'T DO THIS IS COST WAY TO MUCH, YIKES!.

All Along the flower beds on the side and the back are starts of plants we got from the RICHARD'S. Thank you Maw and Paw Foster. The area along the back door will be a 10 x 20 deck some day. Now it is mainly Clover. (I stand in the back yard, drink coffee, stare, and dream of the deck.) I think it is 4 weeks away.

Here is our garden. The green spot in the middle is dead basil. (April I promise to replant) The other plants are doing good. In the flower bed you will find alot of different things and I have no clue what they are called. I do know that the all red one is a start that was given to my parents from the MAX'S who got it from the old Graham Farm....I think! 

YES MORE WEEDS, I am great at growing these. Actualy this is a flower bed not yet planted or mulched.  One pay check at a time.

Sara had a small medical issue and was limited to sleeping and laying still for 1 month.  As you can see she is listening to the doc word for word. Actualy it has been hard to keep her from jumping and going for walks.

What to do when you have "The Bean" all to yourself

One of the positives of going to Chicago during the coldness of early February is that not a lot of people are in the typical tourist areas.  :)
More on our trip to Chicago soon!

Master Bedroom Closet: Before and After

Our Master Closet is called a "walk-in", however, I believe it just barely meets the minimum standards. I would call it a "stand-in" closet. Needless to say, we needed to do something with it to make it hold more than just 1 row of hung clothing.
Neil didn't get a picture before he emptied out our piled up mess, but we did get a couple pictures of the empty closet and the old hardware.

I had to do all the hard work of removing the hardware ;)

And, here is the after:

Much better, don't you think?

P.S. It appears that with my computer crash, we lost the adorable footage of Sara opening gifts :(

I guess we will just have to buy her more so we can share her cutenees.

Dear Friends and Family

We sincerely apologize for our lack of updates. We do have several things to update, however, the simple task of getting two AA batteries for our camera so we can transfer the pictures to my computer has turned into quite a daunting task. No, there is not a national batter shortage...there is only a memory shortage when it comes to picking some up when out and about.

Another reason for the time between updates is that my hard drive on my beloved mac died a couple of weeks ago and it took an entire week to get it fixed. I did loose everything on my hard drive. I had most everything backed up... just not my photos :( Luckily, Neil has a copy of most on his computer. Lesson learned. Thanks to a little company called Elan, I was able to replace my hard drive and actually upgrade to a larger size for less than half of what Apple wanted to charge me. Now, I not only am backing up using "Time Machine" (a mac program), I also signed up for Carbonite, an online back up program. I just have too many important documents, contracts, client info, etc. on my computer to chance loosing it all.


So, hopefully, this post will help me to remember to pick up those batteries so you can see our home improvements and the most adorable video of Sara unwrapping presents. :)

we are moved in to our new house!

but...goodness! everything is so much more time consuming than i planned. while some things are going really well and relatively easy, most things are taking extra time and effort. i guess that is all part of it.
some examples:

1. we bought two different brands of paint for our walls: behr and olympic.
the behr went up without a problem and covered quickly and easily. however, the olympic was a huge pain in the butt. we painted two and a half walls and finally decided that it was the paint, not us, that was doing a poor job covering, creating clumps and looking not so great. so, we returned that paint, matched it and replaced it with the behr paint and everything looks wonderful!

2. we bought blinds for all of our windows - all of which we thought were the same width. the blinds went up perfectly in all the rooms but the dining room. for some reason the window was tighter than the rest by about a quarter of an inch. while the blinds fit at the top of the window, they do not quite fit at the bottom. seriously?!? *sigh.* with a little sanding on the bottom panels, we will make them fit...but it is more work.

3. the refrigerator. i really don't want to talk about that. ask neil. let's just say it was ever so slightly too big for the hole it was supposed to fit in - enough to be a HUGE pain in the butt.

4. the boxes. why can't they just unpack themselves???

please do not get me wrong. we LOVE our house. LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE it!!! i sometimes am not the most patient, but once we are finally moved in and have everything in place, it will be downright perfect.

i can not thank neil's parents enough for all the help that they have given us along the way this week - from painting, to hanging blinds, installing hardware, loading and unloading the moving truck, etc. , they have been invaluable! we could not have done it (at least note sanely) without them.

you are probably wanting some pictures...below are some of the finished house. i am going to hold of posting decorating pics until we have our boxes unpacked, but i am pretty darn proud of how everything looks!

Finally, House update.

(This post is picture heavy so it may take a while to load)

Thank you Aunt Joyce for giving me a little nudge to blog again. I didn't realize how much of my time this Crate and Barrel job was going to take. I am now thinking that the discount and measly hourly pay is worth much less than my time. However, I'm not a quitter, so I will finish out the holiday season and be done with it. Lesson learned.

Our cute little house is almost done! We just had our orientation yesterday and everything looks great. Our closing date is the day before Thanksgiving!!! Here are some pictures of the progress since the last blog post:

Our driveway has been poured.

Our kitchen cabinets and countertops have been installed.

Our bathroom fixture has been installed

Doors have been hung

We have started to pack and Sara is sad

The ugly dining room fixture that we are replacing has been installed

The weird stripe that was on the garage before has been painted

Our hardwood floors and sink have been installed. (The cardboard is gone now too)

In other news, for the past week, we had a little visitor at our house, my parent's dog, Duke. My parents were in South Dakota visiting friends and family - mainly my brother who just turned 21. Ugh. I'm getting old! Here is a photo commentary of our life in the past month:

Sara loves too sleep. She is always adorable.

I picked up running outdoors since my gym membership expired. Sunrises are so pretty and motivating when trying to run long distances outside. However, this past week, I have been horrible about running - stupid Crate and Barrel.

Duke loves too cuddle with me. He is allowed on the furniture at our house even though he is not allowed at my parents house. He like me better.

Sara tried to play with Duke...but she intimidated him with her loud playful growls. So he usually just watched. Towards the end of his stay, he got more comfortable and played with her better.

3 dogs = fun and a lot of toy stuffing all over the floor. (The 3rd dog is the one I dog-sit a couple times a week)

Yes, there is a Snuggie for dogs. Duke - this is what you are getting for Christmas.

I coordinated my last wedding of the year the first weekend of November. The weather was divine and the wedding went off without a hitch. I loved the wedding party - they were so much fun!

This is a blurry picture of the priest "getting down" at the reception. He said he couldn't help it - music gets into his bones and he has to dance.

So, that is a brief overview of our life for the past month. I will try, I promise Aunt Joyce, to be much better about timely updates. :)

more house progress

i've lost count of the days...but neil insists i update, so here it is. we have bricks and we have drywall! i'm excited to update on decorating ideas, etc. but i am soooooooo busy right now with school and work. i promise to do better in the near future.
in other news, we have a closing date :) the day before thanksgiving! i guess we will be painting on thanksgiving.
here are some pics: