New House!

Finally a post with actual pictures as promised. Welcome to our new house!  We have a lot of (mostly fun) work ahead of us, I look forward to looking back to these pictures as the "before".

The front of the house- We'll be doing a lot of planting and add some window coverings.

Our entry and (messy) living room area, still unpacking and rearranging. Ignore the fact I was watching Little House on the Prairie.

Our beautiful kitchen, before we moved in and had a chance to use up all the counter space.

Exciting picture of the hallway. Toward the guest bathroom, Master & guest room. Still looking for the box with all our photo "boards" to add to that wall. Our canvas made it only because I'm ridiculously protective of it. That wall is soon to be painted.

Matt's man cave, my craft room is the guest room(which is still full of boxes).

London taking up half the hallway, she does that.

Our pool! Can't wait to spend all summer right here in the sun.

Our "winter" has been wonderful, 75 degrees and sunny in February!

One more, London's favorite spot in the house.

Well there you go, our little house. I have to admit, I'm pretty in love with it already. There is a lot on our project list but I've never been happier to have so much to do. Today I'm painting! It's been so long since I've been able to paint. I grew up painting the house with my mom, every year we were painting and repainting. I think my childhood room has been five different colors. I will just have to control myself now. I'm blessed to have a husband who lets me make all the paint decisions as long as I don't make him paint. Fingers crossed it turns out alright so he doesn't take away my painting privileges.

New & Improved

As you can see, changed things up a bit! New name(cheesy just like me) and layout to celebrate this great month of March. Anyone who knows me will be familiar with my love for all things Irish so it should be no surprise that St. Patrick's Day is one of my favorite holidays and I look forward to it all month. Hooray for more craft projects!

Making some changes

It is quick blog post time. Big things happening here, we are now proud homeowners! While moving and getting settled in has been a huge crazy adventure, it is so great to know that we'll be here long term. It seems so silly to be this excited to put nails in the wall or pick out paint colors. But it's been a long time coming and it's an exciting change.

Next post will be pics of the new house, I promise. In other news...

I believe it's about time to change the name of this blog. It occurred to me recently that we aren't exactly newlyweds anymore. Now we're the comfortably married couple. When did that happen? It seems so strange to be making 2nd anniversary plans already. My blog direction(when I do remember to blog) isn't what I intended originally, it's become mostly updates on our family life. Now that we have a house with a list of projects (and a very healthy Pinterest addiction), it seems right to have a blog name that reflects this new stage.

Expect a change, and more of a commitment to posting regularly, very soon. The new name is to be decided, gotta get my creative juices flowing(and organize my art cave) first. More to come soon.

Gone but never forgotten

This is a post I've been putting off because it's been a rough few weeks. October 22nd, my Grandpa Irish passed away. He's been fighting cancer for years and it was good that he went peacefully with his sons and wife around him. My Grandpa was an amazing man who loved his family, served his country in the Marines, and always had a smile and a hug for everyone. I have so many great memories of him, both my Grandparents spoiled the heck out of me when I was little because I was the first granddaughter in a house full of uncles and boy cousins. I feel so blessed to have had such an amazing man to look up to, it means so much so me that he was able to travel to Arizona for our wedding last year. This summer we got to spend time with him in Vermont and I will never forget that last day, hugging him and telling him I loved him. We all had tears in our eyes and he told me how much he always loved his oldest granddaughter and how proud they were of me. I am so incredibly thankful that we were able to have that, it was a blessing in disguise that we missed our flight that morning and had to stay and extra day and we were able to have that conversation. It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. I'm so thankful I got that time with him.
He will be missed by all of us. Our family is what we are because of him. His funeral was definitely an emotional rollercoaster but it was so good for our family to all get together and celebrate his life and the great man he was.
You will always be remembered Grandpa. We love you.

Our home buying adventure

Our big news for October is that we are buying a house!

Well, we restarted the process last month and have spent the last few weeks looking at houses. It was starting to get really discouraging to see the state of the houses in our price range(we are also looking in a very specific area near freeways and where we'll be at school/work for the next few years). The houses were older then we had originally been looking for but we had also been looking in the Gilbert/Queen Creek area before with newer neighborhoods so we had to change our expectations a bit. Before we started looking, we made a lists of needs and wants. I'll admit I strayed from that and had to be brought back down to earth again and again so that I could realize that a pool/french doors/chicken coop in the backyard wasn't on the need list and didn't merit overlooking being out of our price range or adding 20 miles to our commute. And yes, looking back now I'm not sure what made me think I needed a chicken coop, I can barely take care of our dog much less a bunch of chickens. To be fair, it wasn't just me. Matt fell in love with a fireplace at one house. Then again, it was pretty cool.
We put in offers on three houses and one was finally accepted! We had the inspection yesterday and thankfully everything went well. We were told it is in very good shape for when it was built. We have to wait for the appraisal which can make or break this whole thing. And I'm learning I know absolutely nothing about home buying. This is like a crash course in real estate, mortgages, home warranties, etc. I keep waiting for something to happen so we can't get it. It's a very nerve wracking process.
If everything goes smoothly from here on out we may be closing by mid November. And, in classic overachiever fashion, I have decided to try to take on hosting our first holiday. That's right, we have a trip to Palm Springs planned for the week before we would be closing, and Thanksgiving the week after. Plus about three big projects on the house to get it guest ready in a week. What have I gotten myself into.
Thank you for listening to my rambling, its a scary but exciting part of our lives and God willing we'll get through it in one piece with our sanity still intact. I am definitely up for recommendations for any books or websites that help with the home buying/remodeling craziness. And any thoughts, prayers, and finger crossings are greatly appreciated.

I absolutely fail at blogging(Pic heavy finally)

Okay it's official. I can spend hours online facebooking and of course Pinterest takes up a small percentage of my life, yet I totally forget I have a blog until I'm reading friend's blogs and remember, oh yeah I haven't written anything in eight months. Granted, this year has flown by faster then any other I can remember. And I have had a job that has consumed me for the last seven months. Still, I will consider it my duty to do a better job at this, so prepare yourself for more ramblings and random pictures.
Let's catch up. Fair warning, this may be a very long post.

All the months before June 18th this year were filled with preparations for my great friend Lacey's wedding. A friend of hers and I planned a Bridal Shower for her a couple months before the wedding. It turned out pretty amazing(if I do say so myself).

The wedding was absolutely beautiful, Lacey was stunning and everything came together great. I am quite proud of my first wedding planning/maid of honor experience. Unfortunately she doesn't have her professional pictures back yet so this is the best I can do for now.

In June was also our 1st Anniversary. I can't believe even now that it went that quickly yet I feel like we've been married for years. We spent the weekend at the Montelucia and it was really just what we needed with all the chaos and excitement of the last few months. They gave us one of the best rooms, right next door to the room I had the night before our wedding. We spent the weekend by the pool, had a nice dinner at Prado, shopped at Scottsdale fashion square and had brunch at Olive & Ivy, and ate the top tier of our wedding cake(even though it was a little frozen still).

July we took a trip back East to see my grandparents and my family rented an old farmhouse on a lake. It was beautiful and definitely made me wish I could have an east coast house with a front porch and Adirondack chairs. Unfortunately the visit wasn't all positive, my grandpa was diagnosed with cancer over a year ago and has been in treatment for it since. It meant a lot to me that he was able to be at our wedding last year and it really was important to be able to spend more time with him while we were there.

Also in July I turned 23, no biggie. We went tubing on the Salt River. And I felt officially old because I was annoyed with everyone. I did get this little baby for my birthday, I am slowly learning how to use it:)

August was nothing too exciting, just a lot of work and projects. Like rainbow cake in a mason jar...didn't turn out exactly the way I hoped but probably because I went with the shorter jars because in my mind they were cuter, just maybe not as functional. Though they did come in handing yesterday when I made apple pie filling, much easier to store. Plus Haley was my helper on these and she loved all the colors even if they did look more like baked playdough or fishing tackle.

Also, I've been wanting to do this for awhile...Ideally I wanted to do this pattern on a wall. But since we are renting and cannot paint, I tried it out on three canvases. I have a great link with instructions that I can't quite find right now. I will post soon though(I promise). I love them! They are hanging in our kitchen and our future home will definitely have a whole wall like this.

September 11th, we went to the Healing Field at Tempe Town Lake. It was definitely sobering. I am glad we went, this is the history of our generation and I'm glad people have not become to desensitized to it yet.

I'll leave you with that, October is promising to be quite eventful but that will have to wait.

How is it already February?

Well the holidays came and went. January was one big bunch of busy. We just took the Christmas lights down this past weekend. Hooray for procrastination. Along the same lines, we still have a tree stand in the corner of our living room. It's been way too cold this week to start my project of organizing our storage shed so I have no where to put it yet. I have this dream of a simplified home with a place for everything. Maybe I need a bigger house. Or to organize, but I wasn't really born with that gene, much to the dismay of my mother growing up.

I'm very impatient for the Spring and Summer this year. Lots of showers and weddings for friends, our first anniversary, hopefully some trips too. Plus I hate cold and the past week has made me miserable. I need sunshine! I'm ready for warm weather and sitting by the pool with a cold drink. *sigh*