Our First House

This room is the latest one that is mostly finished. We love our sitting room and need more reasons to use it. So come visit us so we can sit and chat in this lovely room! (still needing some art/pictures for this wall above the chairs, but I haven't found anything just right.) Those flowers/vase are my favorite piece of this room. Or the couch. It's a tie.

I got a sewing machine for graduation and have been trying my hand at homemaking/decorating projects. The little bit of color that the valences bring liven up this space a little. We're looking forward to updating this kitchen with some nice counters and maybe some new cabinets. And eventually replacing the floor. And the appliances. House dreams. They never end.

Can you find the vacuum? (thought I got it out of the way...not quite)

We bought these navy burlap curtains, which are pretty rad, but I felt like it added too much navy to the room. To break it up a little, I added the bit of light fabric to the top. I'm pretty proud of how it turned out.

This little corner just kind of happened, and it makes me smile. It's totally random, but that's why I love it.

This room was the first one that we painted and finished decorating (though we still need small things to fill the shelves and such). It's the room we spend the most time in, and it makes us happy:)

We're having tons of fun owning a house, making it our own, and acting like grown ups. There's still a lot of work we're going to put into this house, so keep an eye peeled for updates and the master bedroom and guest bedroom reveal! (Which may happen this year, or in three years.)

Life in the Last 9 Months

It's been 9 MONTHS since I last posted. Oops.

So let me give you a little recap of what's kept me busy (and I'll include pictures when I have them).


December
1. Christmas. Enough said.
2. Spencer's appendicitis! ...on Christmas Eve eve (Dec. 23). He was supposed to have his final interview for his job that day. That didn't happen. Luckily, they let him reschedule and a week later...
3. Spencer got a job! (December 31)

January
1. Looking for a house. Enter Zillow, realtor, and Utah Real Estate. When Spencer and I got married, he always spoke of us getting into a house as soon as we could so that we weren't throwing money towards rent and so we could start building equity. This literally terrified me. Owning a house is such a big commitment and the cost of getting into a house and keeping it up is way more than we were used to. But he talked me into it and we started seriously looking for a house.
2. Deciding on a house. It was actually the first house that we saw, so we really lucked out on our search. That said, it wasn't the only house that we saw. We saw a lot of other houses that either needed too much work or were too far from our ideal location. So we went with the house that had my heart from the beginning!

These are a few of the photos we saw online of the house. It looks pretty different now:)

February
1. Selling our apartment mid-semester. This caused me to be a big bag of nerves because we couldn't get out of our contract and most of the people interested in the apartment were wanting to move in late-April or early-May. But after only a week with a listing on KSL we sold the apartment to a couple looking to move in ASAP!
2. Living with a mouse for two weeks. I actually went to tell the landlord about the issue and the couple taking over our contract was in the office signing their contract. I went back another time so I didn't scare the couple off:)
3. Packing up our tiny apartment.
4. Moving into our first house:)

March
1. Painting our house
2. Decorating our house
3. Decorating our house
4. Painting our house (we seriously painted almost the entire house, with the exception of the bathrooms and 2 bedrooms we aren't using. For a total of 2 bedrooms, 1 kitchen, 2 living rooms, and 2 hallways. I'd be okay if I never painted again.)

April
1. Decorating our house
2. Enjoying my first Spring Break in 5 years!
3. Hosting my parents in our own guest bedroom
4. Graduating from BYU!!

5. Applying for (essentially) my own job at my school. Since I was an intern this year, I was on a 1-year contract and had to reapply and interview again for any position at my school. There were two openings on my grade level team and everyone (other than the administration who couldn't outright say it) was confident I'd get the position. That didn't make me any less nervous.
6. Turning around a few days later and interviewing other candidates for the second open position on my grade level team because they made me the CTL! (CTL=curriculum team leader, so I'll be in charge of our team collaborations and act as a representative for my team in matters relating to our curriculum/supplies/other things I haven't learned yet). It was weird going from interviewee to interviewer in a matter of 48 hours.

May
1. State testing at school.
2. Saying goodbye to my kids. This was seriously the hardest day of the year! I read a book to my kids, not anticipating that I'd start crying, and then I was threatening them to come back to see me next year. My classroom is in the 4th grade hall, so I'll be seeing them all the time. I just hope they'll say hello:)

June
1. Summer Collaboration with my team. We applied for a grant that would pay for us to collaborate over the summer, and we got it! We got a lot of things accomplished, like creating all our assessments for the year, creating a curriculum map for math and reading for the whole year (planning out when we'll teach what standards), and more!
2. More house decorating in preparation for #4 below.
3. Disneyland Trip! (separate post to come).
4. My parents came to visit!


And that takes us to July where hopefully I will be better at keeping this thing up to date. I also promise to finally include more pictures of the house and my classroom:)

Eventually.