Broke!

Well, the time finally came. We made the first of many mortgage payments. Nothing can prepare you for having to write that check.

We finally bought our queen mattress!!! After 3 days of laying on different mattresses. Can't wait to pick it up in a couple of days and finally sleep on a bed where I'm not hanging off the side b/c Melanie's hogging the center of the bed. Yay for upcoming good night sleeps.

The other good news is that we finally got the time to remove all the blue painter's tape in the dinning room. As Melanie says "It looks so much better once the tape is off." So as I cleaned up the tape and paint from the windows, she put the fancy dishes in the hutch. I don't understand it, but for some reason this made Melanie super excited. She said "The colors in the plates completes the room."

I'm still trying to figure out the fireplace. I tugged and pulled for 30 minutes trying to get the doors open in the living room tonight. This fireplace is quickly becoming a huge puzzle that I can't solve. Being an Engineer and not being able to solve something is extra frustrating. And literally just now, my wife goes and makes me feel like an idiot by opening the fireplace doors. Apparently one handle needed to be turned to the right. So now, I have the job of cleaning out the bird's nest and figuring out the flue.

The urge to go out and fly my R/C planes continues to eat at me. But I keep telling myself the time will come when all the work on the house is done and I'll be able to go play.

Until next time,
NT

I Couldn't Survive Being Single

It's official, going grocery shopping by myself is not fun! Tonight I went to Wal-Mart for our bi-weekly grocery trip. Nick had to work late, he was asked to join a meeting from 5 until 6 earlier this week so we knew he was going to work late, but we didn't realize how badly we would need to go grocery shopping before Friday. I almost took a picture of our pantry to show people how little food we had in there. I've gone grocery shopping by myself once before today and that time wasn't that bad because we only needed a few things, today was a lot harder shopping trip.

Here's why I hate going by myself -
1. There's no one there to remind you of things you need. This leads to lots of extra walking and coming home to realize you forgot to buy something.
2. There's no one there to help you with math to determine which comparable item is cheapest, which leads to not getting the best deal.
3. I can't pick out meat by myself - it's overwhelming and I don't pay attention to what cuts of meat we eat! Thankfully Nick was able to talk me through it over the phone.
4. Apparently Nick is the one that keeps our cart organized and neat. Today my cart looked really full and I was worried about having to pile things on top of each other. People probably thought I was shopping for a four-person household.
5. There's no one there to help me load the items onto the belt at checkout. So I get tired and I feel like I have a never-ending amount of groceries in my cart!
6. I don't have Nick's help to load the bags into the cart so it ends up looking like a hot mess. I'm so glad the carton of eggs did not get smashed.
7. There's no one there to help load the groceries into the car. This is a very hard task for me. Maybe it's hard because of the 100 degree heat outside.
8. And the biggest reason I don't like going grocery shopping without Nick, it's fun when he's there because I get to beg and joke with him untill we agree that I can buy sweets that I don't need, but want.

Thankfully Nick was home when I was done shopping so I did get his help carrying the groceries inside and putting them away. I cannot organize our freezer to save my life! When we were dating I would go grocery shopping with Nick and when we would get back to his apartment, I would put everything away and not touch anything that belonged in the freezer. I still do this. All those boxes, bags of chicken, chicken nuggets, meats, ice cream, etc. how do you make it all fit into the freezer??! I can't do it!

Greatness Takes Time

Paint & organize the living room - check!
Change out the locks - check!
Find Mirror for over the fireplace - check!
Buy Queen size bedroom furniture - check!
Organize & Decorate master bathroom - check!
Change hardware & mirror in the guest bathroom - check!
Change out light fixtures in the upstairs hallway - check!
Paint & organize the dining room - almost there.

We still need to -
Paint the hallway
Paint all the doors white
Find curtains for the dining room, guest bedroom, & master bedroom
Find & buy a patio set off Craiglist
Find & buy 2 area rugs
Change the hallway bathroom's light fixture
Change out 3 ceiling fans (maybe 4)
Touch up paint in 2 bathrooms
Buy a queen size mattress set
Find & buy sheets for our bed

We have made tremendous progress on our house. We get so excited when we can cross things off from our to do list! We are extremely fortunate to have such supportive parents that have helped us over the lest 4 weeks. My parents have bought us tons of stuff we needed for our house, helped us move in our bedroom furniture, gone on shopping trips with us, helped us change out light fixtures, and given us coupons to help us save money. Nick's mom made us 2 sets of curtains, 3 pillow covers for our window seat, and she is also making our window cushion and another set of curtains for us. We feel so blessed to have friends and families that are willing and wanting to help us. We cannot wait for everyone to see what we've done with the house! There's still lots of painting & decorating that needs to happen before the 14th!

Thanks for reading!

I'm In Love With You

Getting away from blogging about the house, I'd like to write about marriage. I've been thinking quite a bit about marriage lately and for several reasons, first reason being the most obvious, because I am married. I've also been thinking about marriage because about 95% of all our friends are married. But the biggest reason I've been thinking about it is several people have asked me recently, "how's married life?" and "how do you feel about marriage?" And my answer has been, "it's easier than I thought it was going to be." I think there's several reasons why I feel that way. 1) Nick and I were best friends before we dated, we became even more best friends during the 2.5 years before we got married so there's a lot of comfort there. I know that Nick accepts me 100% for who I am and there's no doubt in my mind that he loves me. I feel completely comfortable around him and him with me. (right, babe?) Also, many people don't know this but, I knew a week into dating Nick (September 24th)that I wanted to marry him. Nick knew less than 2 weeks after I knew (October 1st), so less than a month of being together was all we needed to know that we were going to get married. With that being said, during our dating period we always thought in terms of our future. 2) When you're really comfortable with one another, enough to be yourself then you pretty much have all the possible, big arguments you're going to have before you get married and not after. I've heard of some people not discussing certain things before they get married and that was not an option for us. We told each other everything and we still do so there hasn't been any surprises. 3) I always plan for the worse case scenario, therefore I had this idea that marriage was going to be extremely difficult. While I was engaged my married friends would give me advice (without asking for it) and the advice always involved how difficult it was going to be to live with each other, not to go to bed angry, to always love each other, etc. So I just went into marriage thinking, "man this is going to be hard!" And I had a lot of "what if" questions like, what if he changes? and what if we can't make it? It's no secret that 50% of all marriages end in divorce and coming from parents that haven't always been happily married, I must admit, I had imagined marriage to be extremely difficult. So to tie everything together, married is easier than I thought it was going to be because I imagined the worst and it's easy when you love the person you're married to and can't and don't want to imagine your life without them. I hope I always feel the way I feel about Nick. He is my best friend, my confidant, my #1 fan, and my greatest love. We don't always agree and I know there will be times when we may feel like marriage is difficult, but we love each other and we know that marriage is about compromises. When we were planning our wedding and trying to pick our first dance song, we narrowed it down to several songs and I'd like to end by sharing one of those songs with you. It's not the song we ultimately picked, but the lyrics explained exactly what I believe marriage and love are really about. The lyrics are great and it's a beautiful song, it's worth listening to, if you get the chance to listen to it.

"I'm In Love With You" by Joy Williams
I've been waiting all my life for this morning
Just to wake up next to you holding me
And your head is resting gently on my shoulder
Like you're whispering to me

I'm in love with you
I'm in love with you
So glad I found you
I'm in love with you

When we're leaving dreams and rolling back the covers
All at once we're getting ready for the day
It's when you look at me in the mirror while you're shaving
Before I go on my way, you say

I'm in love with you
I'm in love with you
You're the one I choose
‘Cause I'm in love

Love is joy and love is pain
It's kissing in the rain
It's doing dishes when it's late
Isn't it, baby
It's the art of compromise
It's hellos and long goodbyes
It's the picture of our lives
Isn't it crazy

So I'll call you when I get to where I'm going
And I'll tell everyone we know you said hello
And without fail they'll ask me if I miss you
Of course I do, you know I do

‘Cause I'm in love with you
I'm in love with you
You're the one I choose

I'm in love
I'm in love with you
I'm in love with you
I love you just the same as I did the day
I fell in love with you

Another great song that explains marriage and how I feel is "When I Say I Do" by Matthew West.

Productive Sunday

We got a lot done today! We painted most of the trim work in the dining room, hung up drapes in the living room, sprayed the perimeter of the house with bug killer, and we managed to do 2 loads of laundry!

We have our housewarming party set for August 14th and I have to be honest, I'm a bit nervous about getting everything done in time for the party. The dining room painting is going a lot faster than painting the living room did, I think it's because we're more determined and motivated to get it all done! We hate painting! The mess, getting paint all over your hands and legs, random blue tape getting stuck to your clothes, almost dumping the whole gallon of paint on the floor, sweating, blisters....yeah we hate it! And just think after we get done with the dining room we have to paint the hallway and all the doors downstairs. It wouldn't be so bad if we didn't have 8 doors to paint!!! How construction workers paint day in and day out I have no idea!

My toughest design decision so far is which fabrics to put where. Our dining room features a lovely window seat with a nice size bay window. It's one of several main selling features of our house. We are super excited about it! I think all the excitement of it and looking forward to using it is why I'm so stressed out about how to decorate it. I'm trying to be bold with my decorating by choosing patterns, not just my usual safe choices of solid colors or stripes. I love stripes! My love for stripes is a whole other topic that I won't bore you with. I'll just say, I think it started with this bright striped Bible cover I started using and then a matching journal/notebook that soon followed and then my obsession began. Anyway, I'm thinking about bringing my samples to my girls Bible study on Tuesday to see what they think. I really need at least a few people's opinion on this. I think the pressure comes when I think about having people over and then someone saying or thinking our window seat looks ugly because of all the clashing patterns or colors. I'm probably setting myself up for a bad dream tonight about this, lol. Speaking of dreams, we are living in our dream house! I never thought I'd be able to say that. The only thing that could make our house more enjoyable would be if we had a wrap around front porch and/or a 2 car garage. Those would be nice, but we don't have to have them in order to say we're living in our dream house. I often find myself thinking, "I live in a 5 bedroom house! That's crazy!" Then I have days when I think, "how are we going to keep this house clean? It's so big!"

That's enough blogging for now. Thanks for reading our blog! - MOT :)

You know what bugs us? Flies in the house. The past couple of nights I've had to kill an average of 6 while watching TV. The most frustrating part is not knowing where they're coming in from. I've sprayed Raid at 3 locations we think they're coming in from. So far, none of them are the sources. I'm fed up with it, so it's off to Home Depot to get bug killer to spray around the foundation of the house.

Another thing bugging us is what sounds like a bird's nest in our chimney. There's two problems here: 1)We have an insert and know nothing about it and 2) the chimney is taller than the roof, so I can't get up there and look down the chimney.

Given the condition of the yard when we moved in and all these flies and birds, I'm beginning to think the previous owners did zero maintenance on the house for about 2 months prior to the sell.

Despite all this and all the painting we've been doing, we still love our house. I especially liked how I finally flew my R/C heli in the backyard Thursday night. It was nice and relaxing. We like how quiet it is at night here. Each night we fall asleep to the music of cicadas and crickets.

O speaking of painting, we got the dining room walls painted blue today. Good thing we did too. We've run through the two gallons of paint we bought for the walls. The green that was in the dining room was darker than we thought and it took two coats to cover it. Hopefully tomorrow we can get the trim painted and be able to start using the dining room.

-N.T.

Fourth of July Weekend

This weekend was a longer weekend because we both had Monday off from work. Saturday we went to two Fourth of July cook-outs, one at lunch time and one at dinner time. It was great seeing our friends and family. It was also nice getting a small break from painting and housework. On Thursday and Friday before the weekend, Nick mowed our entire yard, all .73 acres! It took him about 8 hours between those 2 days. The reason it took so long is because we're guessing the grass hadn't been mowed in 3 weeks so it was extremely long, especially in the back yard. We got home at about 9:30 on Saturday night so we didn't get any painting done. On Sunday we painted for 12 hours! Nick painted most of the remaining trim work that needed to be done. I would say that we equally painted the entire living room. I did most of the paining in the beginning and he did most of the painting towards the end. Once all the trim work was done and we removed all the blue tape, the living room looked amazing! It looks and feels so much brighter and bigger than when we first moved in, prior to all the painting. We are super happy with the final result. On Monday my parents came over and helped us position the furniture and set up the room the way we wanted. We got our entertainment center situated and electronics plugged in, and all our movies put away. We have still not put anything on the walls, I'm hoping that will change this weekend after I have a chance to buy some white picture frames and print off some wedding pictures. We've been married for over 3 months now and I have not printed a single wedding picture or honeymoon picture, how sad is that??! We will have plenty of wedding pictures hanging up around our house once it's all said and done. For now we are enjoying our living room. We can relax on the couch, watch TV, play the Wii, spread out on the floor with a board game, and watch movies. Last night I thoroughly enjoyed being able to watch The Bachelorette while my hubby watched some airplane show in our guest bedroom. We usually like to watch shows together, even if it's the other person's favorite show, but sometimes it's just nice to watch a show by yourself.

I can't wait to have our house warming party! I'm hoping we can finish the dining room by the end of this month or by the middle of next month so we can invite all our friends and family over to see our house! Tomorrow I am going to start taping up the dining room so we can start painting. The living room took us 2 weeks, let's hope the dining room takes less time since it's a smaller room...we'll see! - M