Holiday House 2015

    Christmas is my most favorite time of year. I love the lights, the trees, the cheer, the family, and the joy. This is our first Christmas in our new to us house and I have been looking forward to decorating since we moved in last March.

The day (or week) after Christmas is the best time to shop for Christmas decor and new trees. Last year I lucked out and bought two trees for less than 20 dollars. I found a 6 foot flocked tree, and I love it, as well as a 7 1/2 foot super full evergreen tree! So this year I have a total of three Christmas trees in our little abode and I love love love it. We have the flocked tree in the living room, the big tree in the guest room, and the white tree in our room. I am on the hunt for a tree for Camber's room next year. I also have some projects for my dad and Cam to complete for our front porch decor.

I have found myself doing more dreaming and wondering about the future this year than ever before. It is the most fun to be able to sit and wrap presents by the Christmas tree and feel little baby kicks.

We have hosted a few family dinners at the house and I love showing off my decor and cute little home. Our house has come a long way and I am more proud of it now than ever. I finally feel "home" and am completely comfortable. I may never take my cozy Christmas decor down.

I have been looking for a wreath for the front door and 

just haven't fallen in love with any!

These milk cans are from my Great Grandpa in Akron, Colorado.

Our nativity is still one of my most favorite wedding gifts that we received!

These are the stocking my gram sewed up for me 

and the ladder my dad made. I love it!

It is so fun to see her sweet little name. 

Next year that stocking will be full of all the small things!

I made an ornament out of the original house key.

One of my favorite things to do is buy an ornament 

on each vacation or new place we travel to. 

This is our honeymoon ornament!

These candles were Sue's, Mike gave my mom and I a set. 

Griffey has done great with all the decor for being his first Christmas!

I am excited for him to try to open up presents on Christmas morning.

Here he is taking a bite of an ornament because he thought I told him to "get it" instead of get next to the tree.

I tried to get a picture of both of the dogs by tree... Didn't work so well. 

But, I couldn't leave out our old boy Deuce. 

I hope each of you have a very Merry Christmas and

 enjoy all the time spent with whomever you love most! 

Our first home

     We have been living in our house for a little over two months. I am starting to feel more comfortable in it and it is feeling more like ours. I know making a house a home takes time and is a process, but I often times forget that and think that it should all happen over one weekend. It's been many weekends and I only just started putting stuff on the wall and we can finally say that we no longer have any leaks from any plumbing. I am going to go ahead and not hold my breath on that one... Seriously every day for two months someone (mainly my dad) was over working on a leak somewhere in this house.

I am starting to love our little home. I am moving on from the feelings of being claustrophobic in the small living area. I am also getting over the fact that my floors will always have paw prints, mud, dirt, sand, you name it on them.

With two dogs, one being a wild puppy, it's almost impossible to keep anything clean. The OCD clean person inside me is freaking out and the other part of me is singing "let it go" and laughing while watching the wild puppy jump from couch to couch. This crazy, unsure, not too comfortable season of life is where we are right now and I am learning to love it. I can only imagine what God is preparing my heart and mind for in the future with this season. On the daily I am texting cam at least 4 times asking when he is going to get home... because I just can't handle the dogs anymore.

And before you get too judgy just know that our yard has no fence other than the fence our neighbors put up. That means that my dogs, who normally listen fairly well, can explore and run just about every where. And that they do. I have to go to the back door every 5 minutes to make sure they have not disappeared. Once again, I know this is some type of lesson that I will need to have learned in the future and I will look back on this and roll my eyes out of my head.

Anyways... back to our Fixer Upper. I have a constant list of ideas and wants that pop into my head and am constantly texting Cam and my dad new plans. They both remind me that we have to go "one step at a time" and sometimes I want to throw something at them when they tell me that. But really our to do list right now consists of the following

• Mow and clean up the yard... the dogs do love playing in the grass that is taller than them, but we are starting to look like we abandoned the lot. Our yard is also full of just random stuff the previous owners left and we are contemplating what to do with it. I am itching to start our garden and flower beds! We have plum trees and a pecan tree in the front yard and I have big plans for the back yard.
• Paint kitchen cabinets- y'all I am getting my white cabinets! I cannot wait to share more about this... that would require me to take pictures, so I will get working on that. 
• Clean oven and fix the vent hood... we have been living like college students, running back and forth to our parents and eating pizza on the reg
• Fix front and back door... we have a beautiful old rickety screen door on the back porch and we have to figure out how to fix it so the door closes or get a new one. If we do get a new one I am hoping we can convert the old screen door into our pantry door!
• Speaking of pantry... we have to get that together too. It currently has two random shelves and that leaves no room for anything. I have big plans for that little pantry!

Next up... House inspiration and some before pictures!

House update

Oh, where to begin... I left off with snowy pictures of our house. Here we are almost a month of being home owners and there has been so much done and so much not done. It is actually hard to see what we actually have done because I kinda feel like it hasn't been much and then I feel like all we have done is work.

So what have we done... We cleaned and cleaned and cleaned some more and will continue to clean this weekend. Y'all, the house was empty for 6 months and I am not sure it was all that clean before they left, but dust stacks up that is for sure. We moved all of our furniture in. The living room and bedroom are the only rooms set up. We currently have boxes stacked on the walls of the other two bedrooms.

We fixed water leak after water leak and still have some to fix this coming weekend. I killed entirely too many spiders and unknown bugs. We have raked several piles of leaves and have about 400 more to rake. Cam mowed the grass it was so tall and it is so green!

Our kitchen cabinets need the shelves replaced and hung up so they remain empty. Our pantry has stuff in it, but with only two shelves its not much. That is a project for the coming days as well.

Our bedroom... we have a bed and two night stands! I put everything in our closet and it is semi organized.

I learned that I cannot function properly if everything in unorganized. So, before cleaning I had to organize those boxes of stuff in the extra rooms.

We bug bombed today so I am hoping to go home to dead bugs and no longer alive ones. Or really I would rather come home to no bugs.

Oh yeah... also we went on a trip to Arizona to watch some spring training games and we came home and picked up our puppy! You can go ahead and call us crazy! More about both of those later. For now meet Griffey Mav. :)

Apartment living

    Cam & I have been living in our apartment for over a year now and we just (hesitantly) renewed our lease for a few more months. Living in an apartment has taught me a handful of things... mostly that I need my own space and so does Cam. I have also learned that not having roommates (well besides ya know Cam & Deuce) is awesome! I love being able to come home to a semi clean and quiet home everyday! Speaking of cleaning... 10 minutes and I can speed clean the whole 700 square foot place. Pretty awesome.

I love reading and looking at house tours on other people's blog. I dream of having a beautiful, spacious, full of natural light home that I can show off on blog land. And while day dreaming and sitting on the floor in our living room trying to figure out my new fact camera and decided I would snap some pictures of our apartment. These are things I want to remember and to have documented. These pictures will be fun to look back on in ten years to remind us of our younger selves. This is our first home and it is something to be proud of! So without further a dew? is that a word? Here were go...

Our living room... Can you find Deuce?

We were given both of these couches for free from a family friend

they have been perfect. My gram & I made the pillows

This guy basically runs the house

That book right there is gold... you should read it. 

don't pay any attention to the fact that our Mr. &  Mrs. frame still has no picture in it or that I have a picture frame covered up with another picture...

He lays here basically all day (when not on the couch) and waits for Cam to come home

I am kind of obsessed with this rug

Our tiny pantry complete with the chalkboard sign used at our wedding

Cam's bar... I surprised him with a "stock the bar" party for his 24th birthday

good days start with coffee & you

We do have a bed... our first purchase as a married couple! I am a ding bat & forgot to take a "real" picture of it. 

    I figured this should be documented as well because this is a lesson I am going to need to teach my sons. I came home from class one night to find my West Elm bedding taken off of the bed and this Camo bedding on... Future men of America do not do this to your wives. That husband... he is a funny one. 

I am still learning my own style and have had fun decorating our little space. It is amazing what you can do with things you already have and little to no money.  Oh, and I guess I should mention that we do in fact have indoor plumbing, our own shower and even a fairly big shared closet! We also have a closet housing our washer & dryer in the kitchen. I can only imagine where we will be 10 years from now, hopefully not back in apartment, but ya get what ya get and ya don't throw a fit right?!