The Simple Things in Life

I had this African Violet plant for forever and it was just greenery, no flowers. I remember I bought it at a church sale from this little old lady that told me how to take care of it. It was in a little plastic container up until a few months ago, when I re-potted it and put it in my "plant window" of our new house. It took off. It makes me happy. :)

Welcome Home

Gordon finally hung up his (this is questionable) birthday present this weekend....I love how it looks here! I blurred out our last name in the photo as I posted this elsewhere.


Also, you can get a glimpse of our entryway...I hope to take more pics of the house soon, since we are getting close to having all our furniture, etc...

Careen and John's Wedding

Here's a couple quick pictures from Careen and John's wedding on August 11th. I was honored to be a bridesmaid at this beautiful event. I met Careen (and actually, all the girls in these pictures) in church in a small group for single girls ~ now a bunch of us girls are married and some even having babies....God really brought us all together in His perfect timing!

Careen was a stunning bride! The wedding was in northern Wisconsin....I have to say, small town weddings are the best :) I may be slightly biased though!

Landscaping Before, During & After

We bit the bullet a couple weeks ago and decided to sign the contract for our landscaping work....Our front yard was ok, but our backyard was FULL of huge, scary weeds and I'm sure ticks, bugs and other creepy crawly things. The builder of our home did not sod our backyard or do any other landscaping except for sod in the front and side yards.

I wish I had some better "before" pictures of our backyard...the weeds just took off in early summer and it was treacherous out there! The photos I have are from when we had our home inspection and first moved in.

Upon thinking about this post, I realize I haven't even taken any inside photos of our home! I will have to get working on that as we've received most of our furniture now and things are finally coming together.

Back to landscaping...

Before:













During:


After all the weeds cleared out and backyard leveled out somewhat...this was heaven to our eyes!




The lawn edging going in....rock will be next.



Truck parked in our backyard!



Next day was the sprinkler system installation. Glororious, glorious automatic sprinklers.





After:




We have a backyard!!



Our new paver patio. We have our patio table & chairs and grill on it already. We just need to built some steps down from the patio door in our dining room, and we will be set!



In the right corner, I will be planting some flowers here. Not sure if I will do this year or wait until next.



Our front yard with one lonely tree (i.e. stick). It is much greener today as it has been raining non-stop for about 30 hours. We (as well as our water bill) are loving the rain!!

Eventually, we will be planting bushes and plants in the rock, as well as in the flower bed. I'd love to have a vegetable garden next spring with corn and carrots and the like. We're also hoping to get some evergreen trees and other trees from up north to plant in our backyard. It's pretty plain right now, but we've made a lot of progress in only a few months, so we're pleased with the results so far!

Thanks for looking :)

I thought I'd never get here!

I forgot my login information to this blog...it kept saying I do not have a blog....that could be true for as much as I post.

Thanks to anyone who may be checking this! ;) Someday I will get it going ... maybe ....

Getting my hair done!

Exciting news....I know...but it's literally been (gasp) months, since I got my hair done.

Haircut and color is in my works! I'm headed out in a few minutes to visit my friend, Hollie, who is a fantabulous hair stylist at The Hair District in St Louis Park. I highly recommend her!

I'm planning to get several inches cut off and hopefully something done with the color to make it vibrant and pretty again. It's sooo dull and blah...

No garage sales for me this morning! I've been packing and doing bills! :P

Minnehaha Falls

Dh and I went to Minnehaha Falls today after stopping at a church sale (!!!). Weather was beautiful, and the place was deserted...so we had it all to ourselves! The last time I was there was several years ago, and dh had never been. It's a classic Minneapolis landmark, and it was good to step out of our 'comfort zone' of the suburbs to check out something new!

I also started experimenting with Photoshop to put a border around this picture. I love the look - just adds so much to it, and once I figured out how to do it, I realized it is super fast and simple to do. What do you think??

Had a pretty good day at the church sale too - it was just good to be back out saling!! Picked up three FLAX shirts for $1 each, a pair of plus size women's Levi's for $1, a new Twins t-shirt for me for 50 cents, a Charles Woodson football jersey for $1 and a bottle of Clinique body wash for 25 cents. Yeah!! Got a good shopping fix out of the deal, and dh didn't even complain. :)

More Minnehaha Photos...

I think these would look better in the summer-time...but there's something to be said about the "awakening" of the forest in spring....

My first goodie package from a fellow blogger!

I admit that I've been checking the mail every day for the package I received today!! I only check the mail every few days because it only is filled with junk mail and bills. But, this week has been different! :)

I won this little contest on Shara's blog the other day...and I was so thrilled. This is my first blog goodie package I have ever received, and boy, was it ever SWEET!!!



Isn't this so cute? Love the little handmade card. I was actually just telling my dh the other day how I should be using my free time to do crafts with pink ribbons and bows. He laughed at me -- you do crafts??! I'm so blown away by the blogs I read...that I wish I was crafty and creative. Maybe one day...it seems like there is always something else to do. I know, priorities...

Anyway - I digress.




Some of the outside of the package... awww!!

And when I opened it....and took the pink ribbon off....I found this!!



I love this container. It will definitely find a new home in our new kitchen!! :)

I could hardly contain my excitement when opening the package... I kept yelling for dh to come see what I got, but he chose not to. What a dork!

This is the first item I saw when I opened the container...I won't be offended ;)



And what came next, but....



WOWWWW!!!! This photo does not show how much candy is actually in here! It was STUFFED! I had told Shara I had a bit of a sweet tooth (uh, understatement.) and did she deliver!! All kinds of goodies like sweethearts, bubble gum, pixie sticks (when my dh finally showed up, he gasped and said I LOVE THOSE!!!! He made a comment about snorting them, but I won't mention that here), Mike & Ikes, Sprees and much more! My dh made me promise to share with him, which I reluctantly will ~ just kidding!! There is MORE than enough to share!!

THANK YOU Shara!!! You are such a sweetie!!!

Happy Easter everyone.

What I woke up to

Oh, the cats SO did this.

I know why -- they are mad I called them fat.

Um...okay....were they digging in the plant or did they tip it over and somehow manage to put it right side up!

Very suspicious...

Our cats are FAT!!

Just got back from taking our cats to the vet to get their shots and check out the boarding facilities for when we move at the end of the month. After combing about 1/2 pound of hair off Buddy (seriously.), he weighed in at a whopping 21 pounds!! Ellie was next, not as much hair came off her, but she still weighed in at 16.03 pounds!! YIKES!! I feel really bad! They have always been overweight...I tried the diet food, measuring out an amount, etc...and they never lost weight. Hopefully our new big house will inspire them to run around more, and I am going to try a different kind of "diet" food. Poor kitties.

Wedding weekend

Thought I'd post a few photos from the wedding we attended this past weekend in Chicago. Not a surprise, there was plenty of drama involved...maybe I will post on that later... :)

I loved taking these pictures, and in case you were wondering, they are supposed to be at an angle and off-centered! :)

Gorgeous pipe organ...



The church was in downtown Evanston, which is a very nice Chicago suburb. It's home to Northwestern University, so it was all new and yuppiesh.

The stained glass windows were amazing...



Probably my favorite photo from the day...the ring bearer on the way to the church.

Cutest kitty picture ever!

Ok, so maybe I'm biased....here's our two lovies, Buddy and Ellie, sharing a moment...

Finally an update!

Wow.

I kind of lost my way from the blogging world. Oops.

I have been around...just out of it lately. I can't seem to quite get it together. I really think it's all the stress of selling our house and looking for a new one.

That said....

We bought a house!!




It's brand new construction, but a spec home so it was already built. We love it. Gordon fell in love right away, but it took me a few times for me to be certain. Its in Otsego, about 15 miles north of where we live now. It's a two story with a large unfinished basement. Current finished area is 2300 square feet -- what we were hoping to get in total finished AND unfinished area!! We NEVER thought we would buy new construction, but after looking at 30-40 homes, this made the most sense financially, location wise and design wise!! The builder is DR Horton Homes, who apparently is the largest builder in the country...which I'm not sure is a good or bad thing.

After some drama with the offer and our realtor (grrr...don't get me started!), we signed the final paperwork for the offer on Saturday, so it's official!! We are homeowners! We close on April 30!

It has four bedrooms on the second floor...guest bedroom and master bathroom on the second floor, with a 1/2 bath "powder room" on the main level. Family room, informal dining room, formal living and dining room and kitchen make up most of the 1st floor. The basement is huge and a lot of possibilities...hopefully we will be able to finish it and create a media/TV/"man room" as well as an ebay room (or bedroom) with large storage room/closet...there is also rough-in for the 4th bathroom.

The backyard view is a farm, complete with red barn. They have donkeys/mules, so we hope they don't smell too bad!! The backyard is the farmers land and lowland/wetland area, so unless the farmer sells out, we won't have any immediate backyard neighbors, which will be nice. It's a decent yard, not huge but not tiny either...which will be good for our novice landscaping skills!


French doors into the master suite. I love the huge windows. Ahhh, welcome home. :)

I will try to post some more pictures soon, for some reason all my photos are sideways...and that is just not working for me!! I got a new MAC computer and I dont know how to do anything anymore.... It is just different and I need to get used to it.

Toby Mac CD Release

Ok, I have literally been waiting years for this CD to come out!

Dh and I stopped at Target after work (just before heading to the car repair shop to pay our $660 bill, ow.) to get the CD. There were TWO left! We snatched one up immediately.

We've been able to hear previews of most of the songs before the CD even came out, so there haven't been any total shocks, but it's AWESOME!! I haven't yet listened to it in its entirety, but so far I love "One World" and "Lose My Soul".

For those that don't know, Toby Mac is a Christian artist who used to be in the band DC Talk ("Jesus Freaks")! He now is on his own (been for quite awhile) and has a really unique hip-hop/rock sound. As I mentioned before, the music really speaks to me. I would highly recommend checking it out!

SELL THIS HOUSE!

Well, our listing is FINALLY up!


Well, after some mini-drama (at least in my own head), our house is on the market. It's not 100% perfect, as our unit number is missing on the listing (might make it a bit difficult to find, since there are 6 units in our building) and we need to get better pictures on there. Can you spot the no-no item in the kitchen photo? I'm mortified!! We really don't use that particiular item much/at all but after our house guest, we felt compelled to! (I bet you are wondering what I am talking about!!

We have an open house scheduled for this Sunday. The weather is supposed to be absolute crap, so we'll see what happens.

Wish us luck.

Day 1 of the Hunt

Well, we survived our first day of the house hunt! Our realtor called it a "success", but I was disappointed and discouraged. The houses in our price range and in the area that we'd like to be at are just not what we were hoping for.

These were our top two houses that we looked at...

1) Loretto House #1 This house is really above our budget but we wanted to take a look at it because it is pretty close to where we work. The top two floors of the house were awesome. I loved the layout, except everything was PURPLE!!! Ohmigoodness...I like purple, in fact, it's my favorite color...but not everywhere! It was very modern-ly decorated, but I can look past that. However, the basement was less to be desired - tile floors, weird set up. It felt like school floors and hubby couldn't see it as his "entertainment" room. It really was overpriced and wasn't a $300k house. This was my fave house that we saw though.

2) Loretto House #2 This was hubby's favorite house, but I didn't like the layout. It's a bi-level split and it's not my favorite style of house... Much rather prefer a two story or multi-level or even a rambler. Although when I was younger, I always liked the split level because we had a boring one floor rambler. Anyway, this house had an AMAZING garage...it would be 4 cars if a couple of the walls were taken out...or the back could be made into a really great 3 or 4 season porch. But, the living room had a strange wall divider thing and the master bedroom was right off the LR with a door??! Weird, weird, weird.

We're going to try a different area the next time we go out...I hope we have better luck!

Our house is supposedly going on the market on Monday. We're also planning our first open house next Sunday. I'm excited to see if there will be any initial response!

House Hunters

Hubby and I are going house hunting today!!! We're so excited - this is the first time we're going out with our realtor. We have 8 houses that we are going to look at today. If there's anything promising, I'll post a link here. We're looking just west of where we live now...for the Cities folks reading this, the houses we'll be touring are in Loretto, Greenfield and Rockford. Those are kind of obscure cities...I am hoping for a small-town feel, although I don't know how my husband really feels about that. High-speed internet is a must so it can't be too far in the boonies!! :) We're going to go a different day to the St Michael/Rogers area.

I wasn't sure how many houses to tour...I think our realtor might have said 4 or 5 is good to go to in one day because otherwise they start looking the same and we will start getting confused. Oops. We'll see what happens. We took the day off from work so I guess I just wanted to be as productive as possible. I'm excited to have a day off with my honey!! I think this is the first day that we have took off "for fun" in quite some time (since our honeymoon??) that we're not going somewhere or travelling far, etc.

Well, it's 5:54 am and there's so much to be done. Our realtor is going to be taking pictures of the house today for our MLS listing, so the place needs to look good....and I seriously don't know how I'm going to do it by the time he gets here. So, naturally speaking, I though it would be a great time to post a blog. ;) Oh well. Our house guest is (ahem) finally leaving today, so we'll be able to get back to normal around here. It's been a challenge, and I know God wanted us to be hospitable, but am I going to be glad when it is just us again! Oh, I wish I could post our experience here, but I'm nervous about people seeing this who we would rather not. I guess that's the fun of a public blog, eh? It's not that I've had to cook meals (I made two the entire two weeks) or really "entertain" much, but we miss being able to walk around in our underwear and fart whenever we want. KIDDING! Or...am I?

Untitled

Well, It's unthawing a little bit here (proof: it's a whopping 1 degree here now at 8:53pm), but we got a nice layer of an inch or so of snow on top of the frozen ground this morning and throughout the day. It was really pretty, but it sure made a mess on the roads. Luckilly, I have a breeze of a commute...only a few miles...so I really can't complain. I did go out for lunch and almost got in a wreck slash went in the ditch. That was a lot of fun, let me tell you! I don't think I'd have as many problems with being afraid of driving in the winter if there weren't so d$@# many cars around! It's so busy here, all the time, and I often miss the days where you could drive down the road for miles and not see anyone. Everyone here drives like a maniac. I trust myself, it's others I don't trust. Small towns do have their perks. It's not so scary just driving into the ditch or doing a 360 when there's no cars anywhere.

Anyway, the next couple of weeks are going to be interesting for dh and I. I'm hesitant to post much on this blog, not that many people read it, but...you never know. I would feel bad venting about things that I really have no place to judge or criticize. In the end, it will make dh and I appreciate the time we have alone together, how we love the things about each other, and how we are so fortunate to be so similar in how we respect other people, their things, etc.

During this time, I'm forced to use dh's Mac computer, and I'm slowly getting the hang of it. A new computer is in my near future...probably after we move, I will get rid of the PC and migrate over to the "other side". :)

Tomorrow, I am going to see "Because I Said So" with my sister-in-law. It hasn't gotten very good reviews, but it looked cute on the previews and I like the actresses in it. So, we'll see. Have you seen it?

Well, that's it for now...thanks for reading this!

Going to TOBY MAC!!!!

YES!

We ordered tickets this morning to see Toby Mac in Rockford, Illinois on Sunday, March 25. Yes, I live in Minnesota and am going to Illinois to see a concert. But, I'm not totally lame. We'll be in Chicago for a wedding that weekend, so will just take a little side detour up the expressway to Rockford. It's about an hour and a half away, per Google. I am so psyched because Toby Mac isn't doing a regular concert here in MN, although he is playing at the big Christian festival in Minnesota later this summer. But, the timing was perfect, so why not! My hubby says it is part 2 of my Valentine's Day gift...part 1 is a new MAC computer, but the time for that is not yet. :)

Anyway, we saw Toby Mac a couple of summers ago, and it was the most amazing concert I had ever been to. His music speaks to me and the show was so full of energy. It was incredible!!!

Now just to figure out where to on vacation before the wedding, how to get around on our vacation and then in Chicago, where to stay in Chicago, get to booking airfare, and determine just how to get home from Rockford, IL. Holy logistics. Anyone a travel agent?

Let's try this again.

Baby, it's cold outside!

Woke up this morning to about 15 below here in the Twin Cities. That was balmy compared to my parents house, which the photo is from. (There's not too many tractors here in the Cities.)

They actually bottomed out their digital thermometer which "only" went to 22 below.

Only in Minnesota!

Behind on blogging...

Well, I am new to this whole blogging thing, but I think I'm behind.

Actually, I feel I'm always running behind. Always something that I *should* be doing. I don't think I've ever been happy with my day's productivity. There's always more to do, should have did this or that...didn't clean this thing....didn't do that errand...didn't call this friend...didn't do this task...didn't organize that thing...

I'm not working out/exercising now, but I should be, LORD, I should be...so actually, every day is a failure to me because I know I need to be at the gym, and I'm not. My eating patterns and activity level have both gotten pretty bad, to the point of embarrassing, and so bad I don't even know where to start to stop the spiral down.

Wow, this is a depressing post. I think I will start again....

Finally...a real blog!

Ok, after a couple of months having a blog over at myspace, I figured it was time to upgrade to a "real" blog site. I hope to either start fresh or forward over my previous postings.

I had a hard time deciding what to call this blog, so I decided to use my ebay name - FunFindsForYou. I figure that I'll be posting my rummage sale buys this next spring and summer....so that will kind of fit....and hopefully we will "find" a house soon and I'm sure I'll have lots to say about that as well.

For those who found me, welcome!