2-Year House-iversary

We've officially had our new digs for two whole years now! Woohoo! Btw, I'm pretty sure I started a 1-year house-iversary post last year that I never got around to finishing. #bloggeroftheyear

I've always been one of those people that loves houses. Fun fact: When I was little, I wanted to be an architect when I grew up. I would spend hours (literally) drawing up floor plans to my dream houses on paper from a yellow legal pad. I always used this small, clear plastic ruler and a mechanical pencil. They were so detailed and, to this day, I can remember what I imagined the interiors and exteriors of the houses looking like, if they ever came to life. I always loved John Hughes movies, because they had the best houses (Home Alone, Uncle Buck, Sixteen Candles). When we would go visit my grandparents in Texas, they would take us around to all these open houses for these huge mansions. I loved going through them and I still have a lot of the pictures and literature I got from those. So, needless to say, choosing a house was a huge deal to me. I'm also one of those people that wants to live in the woods one day, and on the water the next. However, I've also always imagined myself living in a nice neighborhood, like the one I grew up in, with friendly neighbors and safe streets for my kids to ride their bikes on. When we were searching, I'm pretty sure my "must have" list looked something like this:

• We had to be in the school district we're in (Aurora had already started kindergarten, so even though we knew we may have to switch her schools, we at least wanted to stay within the district.)
• Had to be in a neighborhood with sidewalks
• Had to have trees (Jose despises me for this every time he mows the lawn, I'm sure. Sorry! I like to get all four seasons!)
• Had to have 4 bedrooms
• Had to have a fireplace with a mantle
• Had to have white trim. (This is actually something I was pretty big on, which is funny because we're slowly replacing all the trim in our house anyway. I knew I wanted the trim white and, for some reason, I thought painting it or replacing it would be this huge, expensive, daunting task, but it really hasn't been. Well, according to Jose. ;) )

My poor realtor. Not sure how she put up with me, but I'm so glad she did. (PS, If you're local, Shelly Mobus is your girl. She is so incredibly amazing!) I'm also not sure how my husband put up with me during this process. I'm sure he thought we'd never find a house. Side note: This was very much an "us" process, but Jose would've been okay living anywhere. I was the hard-to-please one, so that's why I keep saying "I wanted this" and "I wanted that.")

Anyways, so the day came for us to look at our house. I was feeling pretty discouraged, as we'd already seen quite a few others. We'd actually only been looking for about a month, I think, but it seemed like forever. I remember looking back through the pictures of the house online, that I'd already looked through 500 times the night before, and I liked it but there was definitely a lot of updating we'd have to do. We had also heavily considered building (which I really wanted to do at first, because everything would've been how we wanted it to begin with), but there was no land available in the areas we liked and it definitely would've been way more expensive. We certainly wouldn't have had four bedrooms. So, naturally, my inability to make decisions got the better of me and I called Jose and told him I didn't want to see the house anymore, because I thought it would just be a waste of our time. I'm sure he was super annoyed with me, as he was basically just like, "Whatever." So I text Shelly and asked her to cancel our showing. Of course there were a few people in the office I was in at the time that I was constantly updating on this process because, well, I was obsessed with finding a house. I happened to update one of my friends on the latest and she was all, "You should still go see it. You might regret it if you don't." Again, Miss Unable To Make a Decision By Myself over here, I was all, "You're right." Called Jose. Called the realtor. Showing was back on. If I remember correctly, she had never actually cancelled our showing. Either not much time had passed before I'd changed my mind, or she knew I was bat-shit crazy and would be calling back. 

I believe our showing was that same night. I remember pulling up just as another couple was leaving. The house was immaculate. Perfect lawn. Perfectly trimmed bushes. Sidewalks. Check. Perfect storybook suburban house. We walked in and were asked right away to either take off our shoes, or put shoe covers on. The inside of the house was immaculate as well. This house had definitely been loved. It had this super out-dated 90's white with red and green wallpaper in the foyer and hall. I loved and hated that wallpaper. I knew we'd have to take it down, like, right away. But, at the same time, it reminded me of the foyer in Home Alone. That may have tugged at my heart strings a bit. We walked through this perfectly kept house. Four bedrooms. Check. Fireplace with a mantle. Check. I remember loving it, but also being blinded by all that we would have to do to make it "ours". Then we went to the backyard. Again, the landscaping was perfect. Beautiful green trees. Check. I think Jose fell in love with this house when he saw the second garage. Total man cave. All I could see was the extra money we'd be paying for this extra garage we didn't need. I remember standing in the middle of the backyard, talking for about 20 minutes before we left. Jose could tell I was still not sold. There was one thing that I remember being in the back of my mind. A friend had told me that I would know when I walked in the door of the house if it was meant to be. "You'll walk in, and you'll just know." Well. That didn't happen for me. So I was pretty sure this wasn't the house. But I can also remember Jose reminding me that it had everything on my "list" and that we would be able to change anything else to make it ours. He was right. It did have everything I wanted. We left, telling our realtor we'd let her know.

The next morning we still hadn't made a final decision when I left for work. I remember talking to Jose from work and him reminding me that it had everything I wanted, and saying something like, "If you don't like it, I just don't get what you're looking for." He was right again. In fact, I didn't even know what I was looking for. I started to think about all the possibilities with the house. I knew there were several other showings scheduled and I remember taking a quick 30 seconds to say one more last-minute prayer that we were about to make the right decision and that, if it wasn't the right decision, God would somehow make things fall through. I called Jose and said, "Okay, let's do it. Let's put in an offer." I'm pretty sure I could feel his sense of relief through the phone. 

The rest of the buying process was actually pretty smooth (Again, if you're local, call Shelly!), and on November 20th, 2015, we got the keys to our very first home! I have grown to love this house so much. I don't know how many times that first year Jose and I would say to each other, as we pulled in the driveway, "I can't believe this is our house." I know, to some people, a house is just a house. But I grew up living in the same house my entire life. And there is something about being in a place for that long that makes it almost a part of you. I knew I wanted that when we got a house and I'm sure that's what made the decision so hard. At this point, Jose and I plan to live here forever, and we are having so much fun making this place ours! Btw, that "stupid" extra garage has come in super handy for storing things, for a place for Jose to work on house projects and, most importantly, for hosting summer get-togethers!

Below is a look at a few of the changes we've made so far. Here's a picture of the exterior of the house from the listing. I will not be posting any afters for, probably, ten more years. We suck at keeping up on our lawn. Maybe once we get the inside complete (Will that ever really happen?), we can put more focus into the yard. I attempted the hanging ferns the first spring we lived here, but turns out you have to water them on a regular basis. :/

The first change we made was removing this shelf from above the front door. I know it might seem so minor, but I want to open up as much of the house as possible, and taking this shelf out helped to make this area so much brighter and bigger.

Before

After

We also had the wallpaper removed and a majority of the house painted a really light gray, which made the house look so much bigger, as well.

Of course, there's Holden's room.

Before

After

Jose added a little shiplap to the area above the mantle. There's so much more we want to do with this room (windows on both sides of the fireplace, different ceiling fan or recessed lighting, hardwoods) and even the mantle itself (painting the brick white and replacing the current mantle with a huge wood beam), but baby steps!

PS I took the after picture late last night, so please excuse the mess!

Before

 After

The dining room is still a work in progress, but we also started another project last night. We Jose tore down the built-ins, and we're having a doorway put in to, hopefully, bring some more light into the family room. We're also going to put barn doors in, so we still have the option of separating the rooms if we ever need to, and then we'll be adding hardwoods. Eventually, we'll put in two windows in the front room, too. The wall that you can't see in this picture was already painted light gray when we moved in, so we'll paint the other walls the same color, once the doorway is finished.

Before

 After

Again, please excuse the mess!

I realize this was an unnecessarily long post about buying a house, but it's because it was that important of  decision to us (me?) us. I'll continue to post pictures of the progress and before and afters of future projects, but everything will be done in baby steps, until we win the lottery. :)

Holden | 6 Months

It's officially Holden's half birthday! I think I say this every time, but man what an adventure this little guy has been (& continues to be). Our time at Riley seems like it was forever ago and some days I feel like Holden is just another regular baby. I'm not sure I've ever made it through one of these little update posts without crying. I will never understand God's grace. In all honesty, I've been so fortunate my entire life to have never had a huge, life-altering downfall (sudden or unexpected loss of a close loved one, etc.). When we were first admitted to Riley, I remember thinking so many times that this was it. It was finally my "turn" to prove to God that I would remain faithful, even if he took my son. I know that just got deep really fast, but I cannot tell you how many times that thought entered my mind. It practically lived there while we were at Riley. I will never understand why God let me keep this baby. I'm so underserving. But so incredibly grateful. Anyways, I don't have anything new to update you on since his last post. He is doing great. No news is good news, right? We are dreading his palate repair surgery next year, but I try not to think about it too much. If there's anything I've learned these past six months, it's to really live in and enjoy these moments. Happy half birthday, Holdy Man! Daddy, Sissy and I love you so very much.

Update: I realized, after taking this pic, that I forgot to include the letter board. So, for the sake of being consistent (something I definitely need to be more of!)...

Dining Room Inspiration

Well, we've been in our house for nearly two years and so far just one room is completely finished--Holden's room. We definitely have big plans for all the other rooms but, with me going part-time, some of the projects will have to wait. That being said, for nearly two years, the first two rooms people see when they walk in our front door--front room to the left, dining room to the right--have been the two grossest rooms. The dining room has sat completely empty, while the front room has been the keeper of all things: Aurora's games and art supplies, all of our bills and files, books, and, well, anything else you can think of. Basically it looks like a tornado swept through those two rooms and carried everything away from the dining room and hurled it into the front room. So those two rooms really cannot wait.

Jose has spent the majority of the past few days working on the dining room. I'll definitely share before and after pictures once it's finished, but for now I thought I'd share some of the inspiration for the room.

I have this great inability to make decisions anyway, but for some reason, the planning for this room has been so hard! The room already had a chair rail and some decorative trim on the lower half of the wall, so one of the options was to switch out the decorative trim with something a bit more simplistic and just repaint it all white (from the maroon that it was before). The top half of the wall was mauve, but Jose painted it gray when we first moved in. Other options were bead board or wainscoting. So I was scouring Pinterest one day, hoping to make a decision between the three when I saw the best thing ever. Brick. I became obsessed. We were totes doing brick. I mean, seriously, how amazing is this:

Right!?!?! I was in love. 

Well, friends. I would love to tell you more about how the brick process is going for us, but unfortunately our dining room story doesn't end with brick, as I'd hoped it would. Turns out, it's just way out of our budget right now. It would've cost between $700-$1000 just to do the brick on one wall, and then we still would've had the other three walls to do. We even looked into faux brick paneling and chalk paint and, while it would be way cheaper, it still would be about $300 for the one wall and, again, we still would've had the other three to do. So the brick will have to wait. 

It took me a little bit to get over the brick, at first, but we are going to go with bead board and I'm super excited about it! Jose already has all the window trim done, as well as the bead board and chair rail. Fortunately, we were able to salvage the chair rail that was already in the room and we'll use that in the new dining room. That saved us about $50. Below are some things I hope to include in our dining room:

A House is Made sign

Threshold dish set

Eliana Black Linear Glass Globe Chandelier

Stella Hanging Pocket

Glacier Peak Standard Bookcase

Wood Box Centerpiece DIY

And these are some of the photos I found that inspired our dining room:

I'm so lucky Jose enjoys doing this type of thing and is willing to do the dirty work to make my ideas come to life. I'm definitely not handy with tools or anything like that like he is. My own Chip Gaines. I actually offered to help him the other night, once I got home from work, to which he responded, "Sure, why don't you take this (piece of bead board) and go cut it on the table saw out in the garage?" I'm pretty sure I did one of those awkward glares that they used to do in The Hills, before cutting to commercial. He just laughed and told me to go away. 

Anyway. Stay tuned for before and afters! Xo

All the Fall Things

Well, Jose worked several weekends in September and October, so we had to squeeze two pumpkin patches and Zoo Boo into one day. Then Halloween came. And POOF! Now it's November. Here's a quick run-through of what our fall (which was basically crammed into two days!) looked like.

Breakfast at Cracker Barrel is the best way to start off any fall day, obvi.

...And Holden wasn't crying. So that had to be documented.

Then we headed to pumpkin patch #1 to get mums, which they were out of, of course. I forgot to take pictures, so you better believe I was snap-happy at pumpkin patch #2. I mean, if there aren't any pictures, did it ever really happen? Did Aurora really stare at these pumpkins?? 

At night we headed to Zoo Boo with Jose's family. I love the zoo! And being there at night was totally cool! Unfortunately, though, most of the animals weren't out. 

In line for the *spooky* train ride...

On the carousel with my men! (Aurora was on the other side with her cousins.)

And then, of course, came Halloween! Being that it's happened two years in a row, I'm going to go ahead and call it a tradition... We walked around with our neighbors, while the kids ran door to door, collecting their candy. I love seeing all these girls do together. While I definitely wish Aurora would stay little forever, I often imagine these two when they're older and in high school together, and me saying things like, "Remember the year you two dressed up as Evie and Mal?" or "I remember watching out the window as you two ran back and forth to see if the other could play, as soon as you saw the garage door go up!" Love their friendship so much! Also, shout out to my parents and Jose's mom for watching Holden and passing out our candy, so we're able to take the kids!

We didn't take Holden out, since it was so cold, but he did get to dress up for Zoo Boo. And here's a pic we took when we first got his costume. Clearly, he was thrilled to be a lion this year.

I hope everyone had a fun filled fall! Now, on to Thanksgiving + Christmas!!!

Life Lately [It's Been Craaaay!]

Life has been pretty crazy lately and so much has happened I don't even know where to begin!

Since I just posted an update on Holden, I'll start with a quick update on my other little. Aurora is seriously the best big sister ever. As I mentioned in my last post, Holden loves her so much and just stares at her in awe when she walks into the room. She'll dance and sing for an hour straight, just to entertain him while we need to make dinner or get stuff done. She finished up with cheerleading a few weeks ago, just in time to start acting classes. This girl just loves to try all the things! I have such a hard time saying no to her trying things out, considering I'm 32 and still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. But I have to say, I think she has met her match with the acting classes. I haven't had the chance to see for myself yet, but I get to hear all about how much fun she has from her and from family members that have helped taxi her back and forth. Unfortunately, karate has taken a bit of a backseat, but I'm hoping with cheerleading ending, we can get back to it and get this girl her black belt! We had her parent/teacher conference last week and she's doing amazing in everything. I think what stood out to me the most is that her teacher went on about how she is just always so happy in class and seems to really enjoy being there. This made my heart so happy to hear, especially since she's definitely taken a hit in the attention department since her little brother came along. I never want her to feel like she's any less important to us. She makes us so proud every single day and I just love the little lady that she's becoming!

In other news, I started a new position at work last week. A part-time position!!!!! Woohoo! Leaving my last position was such a hard decision to make. I had amazing bosses, worked in a suite with an amazing group of people, and it really was a position I could've been content in for a while. However, there has always been a part of me that has hoped that some day things would work out to where I could spend more time with the kiddos. Of course, being the one that handles the finances in our household, it seemed like that day would never come. You can never not use more money, right? I guess, with all that went on with Holden over the summer, it just really put things into perspective for me and I started thinking that if I don't make the move now, I'll likely never do it and I know I'd regret it - in a major way - down the road. I kind of already regret not doing it when Aurora was younger. Aside from the whole mom guilt thing, our schedule was just getting too overwhelming, as well. Now I work three days a week... and... AND! I'm a room mom this year in Aurora's class!!! So I feel like I'm totally making up for some lost time with her. Maybe I was just really inspired when I saw Bad Moms last year, but I'm so freaking excited! I get to go to her classroom for an hour and a half every other week to help out. And, I got to work with another mom to plan her class Halloween party they had last week and it was such a success! Those little second graders touched my heart in such a special way. They were so sweet and thankful for us coming in. One little boy gave me a spiderman sticker and told me Aurora was so lucky to have me as a mom because his mom just makes him apple crisp. <3 <3 <3 I kinda want Aurora to marry him. Kidding, kidding, but such a sweetheart. [Side note: I have literally never made Aurora apple crisp and now feel like such a failure because of it.] I told him apple crisp is awesome and he was pretty lucky to have a mom that makes it for him. [Another side note: I really want some apple crisp right now.] Anyways, last week was everything I hoped it would be. Last week reassured me that we made the right decision for me to go part-time. And Jose. How lucky am I to be married to someone who loves his family so much that he's willing to pick up overtime if we need it, so that I can do this? I feel like I've already accomplished so much in the days I've been off (helping out in Aurora's class, running errands, scheduling appointments we've been behind on, ...ahem, learning how to mow the grass!) Jose may see a return on his investment quicker than he's expecting! Well, maybe not, though. I've never considered him to be a controlling person. At all. Except for the other night when I was mowing. Anyways, I already feel so much of whatever it was that I was needing to feel by going part-time. As for my new position, I work with another amazing group of people. I'm helping to implement a new scheduling program that seems like it could be very useful, once everyone is on board with it. And, ahem, I have a pretty amaze parking situation. :D Needless to say - I'm excited. Excited for more time with the kiddos, excited for more time to do the things that need to get done, excited for this new position, and excited to hopefully, maybe, have a little more time to spend on this little space.

Aside from all that, we had some amazing family pictures taken (first time in a few years!), so I'll be sharing some of those soon. We also started a new sleep routine with Holden that seems to be working well, so I'll be sharing info on that eventually too. I seriously have so many posts started in my little Blogger dashboard, that I'm hoping to finally finish soon! So stay tuned!

And, for whatever reason you come here to read my nonsense, thank you! I'm so awkward, talking in person, so being able to blab on here is a great release for me! (That was a plug for my post on social anxiety that will also - hopefully - be coming soon!) Okay, I'm officially rambling, so I'm out! Xoxo

"Room Mom Chic" 

The fish tail totally didn't make it out of the house.

A little behind the scenes glimpse at our family pictures!