All Moved In!

We are all moved into our new house! It is beautiful and we absolutely love it. We got the keys on Sunday afternoon around 1:00 and immediately started loading up the two pick up trucks with all our junk. It went pretty quick as we had a couple guys help us out. (Thanks Jon and Thad!) After we got all the big stuff over, Matt and Jon went to Lowe's to get all the panels and chain link fences to finish off our back yard for Cookie. They worked on that til it got dark and I worked inside, unpacking boxes. We were pooped by the end of the night and very sore the next day. But it was so worth it!

The to-do list is getting smaller, but we still have a few things to do including putting together our new dresser for the master bedroom, putting up decorations, exchanging a bar stool, unpacking the remaining boxes in the garage and office, and lastly, cleaning the rest of the old apartment for our inspection on Friday. Not much left to do until we're "done" with the move. I love having a house so far! It's such a feeling of freedom that we can repaint or put in something new if we want. We are just so lucky that there is almost nothing to remodel because the previous owners really kept up with remodeling in the 7 years they lived here. The only "big" project we have ahead of us (and definitely not right away) is the mater bathroom. It is just a bit outdated with linoleum flooring and a bronze-colored shower door.

Here are a few pictures for your viewing pleasure. I cannot show you the living room and our bedroom yet because my mom hasn't seen our new furniture yet and it's a surprise.

I love the tree in our front yard right now.


One major factor in buying this house: the SUN ROOM!


Guest bathroom, recently remodeled


Guest bedroom (no bed yet, but feel free to use the air mattress!)


Aaaand...my AMAZING kitchen! It's like I designed it myself. I love the color and the counters.

More pictures to come :-)

How's it going?

Has it really been two weeks since my last post? Are you even still reading this blog?? What a slacker I've been. I guess it's just because there hasn't been a lot going on nor have I been inspired to write about anything special.

We got a lot of packing done today. I still have the whole kitchen to take care of though, which I'm kind of avoiding. I don't know how we accumulated so much stuff in just a year of being in this house.

The good news is....we get to move in a week early. We will get our keys a week from tomorrow. Seems like forever ago when we first saw our new house and now, we're about ready to move into it. We have quite a list of things to do the next two weeks before our rent is up. We have to schedule an inspection for our rental townhouse when it's completely empty. We also have to rent a carpet shampooer and do the floors. So in a span of only 24 hours, we will probably be cleaning the floors in both houses.

Today we went on a trip to Lowe's to look at washers, dryers, mirrors, paint, spackle, and storage bins. I want a smokey purple master bedroom but Matt thinks the hue I like looks like make-up. Not sure why, but ok. Might have to go with a nice blue-ish/green. The only other part of the house I want to repaint for sure is the entryway. Other than that, all the other rooms are colors we like.

So tomorrow, I'm sure we will be packing up more boxes, going through all the piles of junk to either donate or sell, fill in all the nail holes, and look at more paint colors. Getting there....a little at a time.

Homeowner

I can officially say it now. I am a homeowner!!

We are so excited to finally have sealed the deal on our new house. It really came close to not happening on September 30 like our original contract said, but after a lot of paper-pushing, our loan officer made it happen.

Now we only have to wait 29 more days to move into the place. That means 4 weekends of packing and de-junking the current place. Some people have a harder time getting rid of 20 years of childhood memories (and by some people, I mean Matt). We went through several boxes of old cards, gadgets, odds, and ends a week or two ago and I managed to throw away several bags of useful items. Among the most imporant items included a bag of 10 year old jawbreakers mixed in with some dead batteries. I even found an old sock with a bar of soap tucked inside. Nice.

Now that we have a move in date, we made our rental company very aware that we would be leaving in 30 days. They are sad to see us go as the lady assisting us at the rental office kept commenting on how awesome my platinum hair was. Just call me Lady Gaga. Everyone else does.

Hope you are all off to the start of a fabulous weekend.

Doctor's Visit

Today, I truly felt like a European.

September 1st marked the beginning of our medical benefits through Matt's job at ENLC. Today, I went to the doctor to exercise my right to use my Anthem card at my yearly physical. Now when I say yearly, I really mean this is my first exam in 4-5 years. Which also means I truly became a woman today if you know what I'm sayin.

Anyway...the European part is the fact that I walked in and out of a medical office without paying a dime! I love $0 copays. Now I'm not even going to start on a rant about universal health care, but I'll just say that I am all for going to the doctor when it's free. With our plan, I wouldn't even hesitate to make an appointment if I had a medical concern. I think a lot of people just skip going to the doctor all together because they just don't wanna pay for it, which can lead to more serious medical problems if you let it go undiagnosed. So America....I am just putting it out there. Wouldn't you like to go to the doctor for free? Even if it means more paying a little bit more taxes?

All in all, I liked my new doctor. Her name is Dr. Patricia Grice and she works at Family Medicine of Huber Heights. She was a very pleasant lady. The office was very clean and new looking. The front desk was a small staff, but they were friendly enough. Wait time was only 5 minutes which was excellent. The only part I didn't like was what the scale read when I stepped up. But that won't stop me from going back next year for my yearly checkup. :-) I'll give this experience an A.

Hello, Chicago!

CHICAGO TRIP WITH THE GIRLS!!!

This past weekend, I went to Chicago with five of my college girlfriends. (Amanda, Ashely, Jenni, Laake, and Lauren) We had such a good time together!! Jenni rented a car and I met up with her in Columbus where she flew in from LA. We then traveled up to Cleveland, picked up Ashely and Lauren and spent the night at Lauren's house. The next morning, we traveled west to pick up Amanda who drove down down to Indiana from Michigan. Then we made the rest of the trip to Laake's apartment in Sycamore, about an hour west of Chicago. We had fun playing lots of cards and enjoying delicious desserts on Friday night. On Saturday morning, we made our trip into the city and explored all day. We went to Navy Pier, Millennium Park, and Michigan Ave. I think we took so many pictures that we didn't have time to do much else. :-) We had lunch at a cafe on the pier and dinner at Giordanos (best. pizza. ever!) Saturday night, we stayed at the Hyatt Regency downtown next to Navy Pier. (Priceline all the way. Getting a $250 room for $85? That's right!) Sunday we had to get up early to drop everyone back off along the way. All in all, it was an amazing weekend with some fabulous friends. Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the weekend.

Labor Day

Happy Labor Day! And Happy Birthday Holly!!



To celebrate the holiday, we made a trip to German Village in Columbus. It's a quaint little "German" town situated right downtown amidst the skyscrapers. It has lots of little shops, boutiques, eateries and pastry shops along with a park complete with ponds and an outdoor amphitheater. Its a fun day trip, especially on a beautiful day like today. After getting a caramel McFrappe, we made the hour drive back home to good ole Dayton, Ohio so we could spend the rest of the day relaxing, as one should on Labor Day.

(Below is a pic of the Book Loft, a 32 room book store with every book you could think of)



To rewind a bit, we got to have dinner with Matt's college roommate, John and his wife Julie on Sunday night. We don't get to see them often because they live in North Carolina so it was good to catch up again.

Speaking of catching up...a big Chitown girls get-together is in the works for this coming weekend. Ahh, it will be SO good to see all my girls from Cedarville again as we tour the streets of Chicago. It's bound to be a fun time with an amazing group of ladies.

And that's it for today, folks. Have a wonderful week!

New Furniture for a New House

Have you ever heard the story of the time my parents cleaned and moved everything into our apartment while Matt and I were on our honeymoon? Well they did. Anna was there too (my exchange sister from Spain who was also a bridesmaid in our wedding) I almost had a heart attack when we walked into the apartment after returning from our cruise. Who in the world had brought all this furniture in and cleaned up the place??

My parents are pretty amazing. That is probably the biggest, nicest surprise anyone has ever given me. And out of the generosity of their hearts, they gave us their 25 year old couch and rocking chair. Our other home furnishings include an old kitchen table and chairs from a couple at church, a coffee table set from a garage sale, a nice tv stand from Target (wedding gift from Anna) a dresser and vanity from my old room at home, and a (new) box springs and mattress. Throw in a small end table and lamp bought with our wedding gift cards from Target and that pretty much summarizes our current furniture selection. Hardly glamorous, but highly functional for a couple of newlyweds with little savings in the bank.




That picture is just a little taste of all our beautiful furniture. How do you like that floral print couch from the 80's?? Or how bout that round brown chair from my college dorm room?

Getting a new house means getting a new set of furniture to go in it. How do you like this kitchen table we picked out from Value City Furniture?



And our bedroom furniture is coming from IKEA from the beautiful Hemnes line.


And I would love to get a scroll style wrought iron bed frame.





And of course we are going to need a few pieces for the sunroom, as it is one of the main reasons we loved our new house to begin with! Thinking about this Karlstad love seat from IKEA....

Along with a nice modern glass table with black wrought iron chairs.




Just giving you a little taste of what I like. Still have 2 months to pick everything out. (And hopefully find some amazing sales!) So....what is your furniture style?