NEW HOUSE!!!

Ok, ok, so I've been slacking if you look at this thing... but that's just because I've been so busy elsewhere!

On Valentine's Day (Sunday), Dan and I went out looking for houses. We saw about 10 that day. The third house we saw, we loooooved. I mean, we compared all of the other houses to it. We stood in the kitchen and looked at each other and said, "this is it." We went back to look at it again the next day, made an offer, had it accepted and were under contract by Wednesday. We had a settlement date of March 24th. Just 5 weeks to get all the paperwork in order and inspections done and final negotiations complete.

Once we had the keys, it was off to Lowes we went. Luckily, the house was pretty much move in ready, we just needed to get a few rooms painted and clean everything up. Mom and Dad Q came and pitched in with the cleaning and some repairs. New washer and dryer were delivered, new bedroom and dining furniture arrived (all courtesy of my wonderful parents and my fantastic in-laws) it was a busy time! Dan and I spent pretty much every night like this... get home from work, eat dinner, go to the house, paint for a few hours, back to the apartment to sleep and do it all over again the next day. It was all worth come April 10, when we had our official move-in day!

Anyway, enough talk, I'm sure you all just want to see pictures... Here are what before and after's I have...

Living room - 1/2 way

Dan's giant feet knocked over the paint can... a full gallon. this is from about 4ft up the stairs

Other side of the living room

Dining room before - one of the delivery guys thought this was a nice color and couldn't figure out why I would paint over it!

Dining room after - I'd love to have the same delivery guy come and see which he thinks is better!

Dining room with furniture, from the living room... kitchen is behind that.

Little guy 1/2 bath in the dining room. Seriously little, but seriously fantastic to have!

Appliance caddy... pretty much one of my favorite things about the house - sits in the kitchen wall, just off the dining room.

Kitchen cabinet stocked with dishes... I don't have a full pic of the kitchen. Not sure why I didn't just take one now, but it's getting late. Yes, my dishes get stocked like that when I empty the dishwasher. I like it.

Bedroom before - like a marigold color

Dan is very excited about the new wall color...

And so am I! Our bedroom, with walls painted and furniture in place.

Full bathroom upstairs w/sliding shower doors

In the process of removing the sliding doors...

And the doors are off!! It feels so much bigger and cleaner now!

So there you have it. We've been very busy as you can see, and have spent most any and all free time here at our new house, doing things to make it pretty and comfortable and ours! Last weekend was a big gardening weekend... I'll post those pictures as soon as I'm sure the flowers we planted aren't dead. Neither Dan nor I have a very green thumb.

Valentine's Day

So, for the last couple of years, Dan and I have gone away for Valentine's Day. This year, with the possibility of buying a house close on the horizon, we decided to stay home and save some money. We've gone to Cooperstown and the Poconos, places with things to do during the day, but not much to do at night and every year, the NBA all star game is on V-day weekend, so we end up ordering pizza and having some drinks while watching from our hotel room. This year, we made our own pizza, made our own drinks and watched from our couch. The pizza was delicious!!! The slam dunk contest, however, left much to be desired...


We followed that fun night up by house hunting today (stay tuned for more on that later!), and then another delicious meal tonight - my mom's onion potatoes, Rachel Ray's steak (thank you snow day morning TV) and Caesar salad. All tasted amazing while we watch Couples Retreat.

What a great weekend! Who needs a restaurant when you have 2 great cooks like us! Okay, so "great" might be an overstatement... but we think we're pretty good! Happy Valentine's Day!

Guess what....

WE'RE HOUSE HUNTING!!


Ok, so I already looked up if it was possible to get on any of the HGTV shows, and it isn't. So, please offer any and all words of wisdom and advice. Well, it is, but apparently you have to already be buying a house to be featured on it. Weird.

I'll keep you posted! Wish us luck!

(I'm quickly learning how very, very impatient I am, by the way)

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

It's Christmas Time!

All that snow gave me time to get all of our presents wrapped... don't they look beautiful under the tree??

2 feet of SNOW!!!

Saturday morning, I woke up around 8:30. After trying to figure out why I was up so early on the weekend, I realized that it was supposed to SNOW! I jumped out of bed and ran to the window... we already had a couple of inches!! So exciting!!

Pics from Saturday night... our 2nd or 3rd shoveling job of the day.

Ok, so maybe it wasn't that deep... but it was a lot of snow at that point!

Sunday morning, trying to clean off the cars...

Dan's car was like the Where's Waldo of the day. Funny thing is, I had cleaned off part of the trunk the night before... can you see where?

Some of this is from the plows, but that only happened once in the middle of day on Saturday, so... That's mostly fallen snow.

Happy 1st Anniversary to us!!

Dan and I went to Cleveland, Ohio for our 1st anniversary. Our kids are either going to think we are really cool or really lame. We went primarily to go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame... here it is from our hotel window.

We were not allowed to take pictures in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, hence all of the outside pictures. Very disappointing, there is some really awesome stuff in there!

We went to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner... this is same chain is where we celebrated after Dan proposed in Rome. No one said I went to Italy for the cuisine.

Then we met up with Dan's cousin who lived nearby. While we were waiting we enjoyed 32 oz Miller Lites. They were deceiving. And huge.

The next day, we woke up and drove to Canton, Oh. for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Like I said, really cool or really lame.

All of the Hall of Famers have busts of their heads made. OJ was the first one I recognized. I have pictures of about 6, including John Madden who looks remarkably like John Candy. Just figured you didn't a bunch of pictures of peoples' heads.

This was a neat hologram of the Hall of Fame Ring. It was encased below the glass top, but the light made it appear to be sitting out in the open.

They let you design your own Super Bowl ring, which was pretty neat. I'm almost positive it was for little kids, and that Dan and I monopolized it for waaaaaaaaaay too long, but whatever, it was our anniversary. Dan's is first.