2 Years Later – By M

2 years ago (just a few days back) marks when we moved from Oklahoma down to southeast Texas.  It’s funny how time has flown so much and how much can change in such a relatively short amount of time.

It’s been such a blessing to be a part of Wesley church over these past two years.  I can’t lie that there are things that we miss –being far from basically any family (especially immediate), and experience the seasons with the weather (down here it’s basically hot, not so hot, and really hot!)– but we have also loved being at our new church and new home.

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Here’s sort of a Trip down memory lane since our move (PS… Some have links to previous blog posts):

– when we first arrived, we found out on a very first day at church about the Wesley Pumpkin Patch.  It was crazy overwhelming and made for a very long day, but after two complete Pumpkin seasons and heading into our third it’s been a blast and a great part of our ministry here.  It’s also been a fun opportunity for me to make it onto our local news stations every year.  In fact, one of my most memorable moments was being interviewed by Fox news my 3rd day on the job.  I had fun with that.

– That same day we left for IKEA in Houston and bought some new furniture!  It was my first trip and now I’m hooked.

– Staci went to her first Spurs game at the AT&T Center!

– We celebrated our 2nd anniversary up in Dallas!

– We spent our 3rd Christmas together in our third house, so we had to figure out how to decorate all over again.

– Went on my first Ski Trip!

– We began searching the housing market for when our apartment lease was up.

– My brother got married in Memphis and we got to road trip it up there together which was pretty fun!

– We jumped out of a plane!!!

– We found where we wanted to build our new home and began the process!  Before we new it we were moving in!

– Built my first porch on mission trip!

– Read all the Harry Potter Books and saw all the movies… umm… maybe 3 times….

– Found lots of new good music for all seasons!

– Moved to a new house!

– Got Pregnant!  And shared our story!  And found out he was a boy!

– Celebrated another holiday as a family… the first one in our new home!

– Celebrated our 3rd anniversary together in San Antonio!

– Had countless youth activities including: Christmas Parties, Halloween Parties, Mission Trips, Summer Camps, Retreats, A trip to Sacramento, CA, Beach Trips, Pool Parties, and tons more!

– Our Baby Boy was born!

And here we are starting our 3rd Pumpkin Patch season!  We can’t believe that it’s all flown by so fast (even though sometimes it feels like it’s been a really long, long journey)!  We have been so blessed in so many ways over these past 2 years and we are very thankful!  We look forward to the coming years with our sweet son and our new family unit!

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What have you been up to these past 2 years?
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– M

A Year Ago-ish Today – By M

I feel like I can’t say this phrase enough, and I know I’ll just say it more and more as time goes on, but “time flies!”  It’s hard to believe that it has already been over a year that we began the process of building our house!  About a week ago, last year, we signed all the paper work and got everything all picked out, and our house started the preliminary stages of being built.

This was all we had… Smiles and an empty lot!

Over the summer (which was, by far, the craziest summer of my life) we saw our house go up and have been so blessed to be in our first and brand new home!

And here we are a year later…

We have now been in our new house for nearly 8 months!  And I remember when it felt like we would never be moved in!

God has blessed us so much!   And we couldn’t be more thankful!  We have been given an awesome and beautiful new house! And a little one on the way!  I don’t think we’ve posted anything with his new bedroom that we have been working on, so I’ll go ahead and post a little teaser pic (I know Staci will want to do a full post sometime later on).

And now we’re only a little over 2 months out from our son’s due date!  ….so speaking of crazy summers…. 🙂

That’s more or less what’s new with us… What has been going on with you over this past year?  I know a lot of you are having babies too!  I think Staci and I counted up about 14, or so, couples of our friends who are expecting or have just had their first baby this year!  So Crazy!  So what’s going on in your neck of the woods?

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– M

Best of 2011 – By M

Ok… I know that this is, like, 3 weeks too late, but I figured, Hey why not?!

Besides, there were a whole lot of awesome things to highlight in the year of 2011.  So, here goes!

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Favorite Once-in-a-life-time Event:  Skydiving with my wife

This is something that has been on my to-do list since I was in middle school, but I never thought I would have the opportunity to actually go do it.  The craziest part for me was watching Staci fall out of the plane with her instructor right before me and knowing that this was “Go time!”  Check out THIS post that we wrote about it afterward.  And here are a couple of pictures from it.

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Favorite Youth Trip:  California for the Youth 2011 Conference

Although Staci and I had plenty of incredible experiences with our students this year, I think our trip to Cali takes the cake.  The conference was great, the kids were fun, and the sites were awesome!  Can’t beat it for 2011.

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Favorite New Toy: iPad 2

Yeah, it’s pretty awesome!  But I waste too much time on it… but I am getting better!

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Favorite Movie (and Book Series): Harry Potter 7.2 (Harry Potter Series)

I know this is a completely nerdy pick, but you have to admit, the way that the HP story culminates into HP 7.2 is absolutely incredible.  And it makes it even better if you’ve read the books.  I don’t care what anyone says… if you can’t see the story of true love and self-sacrifice through this epic story then you’re crazy!

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Favorite New (or New-to-me) Album(s): Gungor – Beautiful Things, NEEDTOBREATHE – The Reckoning, Owl City – All Things Bright and Beautiful

This is a toughy because we got tons of great music this year, but these are definitely ones that find their way onto my iPod more often than not!  And if you want to see more great music from 2011 check out THIS post.  We also had our best Christmas music of 2011 HERE.

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Favorite Accomplishment: Building a covered porch for a woman in need for our HS Mission trip, U.M. Army

I’ve dabbled in renovations and remodeling with my in-laws, but never have I built something from the ground up.  I blogged more about the whole week of work on THIS post, check it out.

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Favorite New-to-me TV Show: Parenthood

Ok, I have to preface this one by saying, I find a hard time recommending this show because of certain content in this show.  However, I love that this show is themed around family and how important it is to have family in your life no matter how dysfunctional.  I have to admit that this show has put a lump in my throat many-a-time.

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Favorite Concert: David Crowder*Band (House of Blues Houston, TX)

DC*B has been my favorite band since high school.  David Crowder has had a huge impact on me as a musician and worship leader.  I love their music and their concerts are loads of fun.  I’m heart-broken that they’re breaking up and that this was their last tour together, but it is awesome for them to go out on their own terms and make it solid!

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Favorite Event: Catalyst Dallas

Catalyst is an incredible Christian leadership conference that began in Atlanta.  They now have a small version they do on the West Coast in California as well as in the mid-west in Dallas.  Great speakers, musicians, entertainment, and more!  Someday I hope to make it out to the Atlanta conference!  You can check out a post we wrote about it HERE.

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Favorite Purchase: Buying a house

‘Nough said…  There is nothing like having your own home, and it’s even more special to pick out what you like, and watch the building phase from the ground up!  It’s been an awesome journey for Staci and me to be in our new home.

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Favorite Overall Moment: Finding Out We’re Pregnant!

Many of you have read through our pregnancy story and know that this has been a long and difficult journey for the two of us.  So seeing the positive on the pregnancy test was such an incredible thing!  And it’s been fun getting all prepared for the little one to arrive this summer.

Then…

Now…

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Those are my tops for the year of 2011!  I’m sure there are plenty more things I could go on about, but I’ll keep things short there.

What are some of your faves from 2011?

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–M

Building Our House – Part 4

If you’ve missed Parts 1-3, you can find the links here:  Part 1; Part 2; Part 3.

Over the past couple of weeks, there haven’t been drastic changes (like us going from having a slab to having walls and a roof in 5 days!) but there have still been exciting additions.  It’s still just so crazy how fast this is all going!

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5/26/11

Two Thursdays ago, we went to visit the house, and saw that we now have windows!

The front one isn’t really what we were picturing–it seems squashed.  So when we went to pay another part of our deposit the next day, we asked about it.  We’d actually never met our builder (at least I think that’s what he is…he is the one that owns the company who is building our house), and he was in the office on Friday.  His name is Tom, and he is very nice!  It makes us even happier to be building through them.

Anyway, he asked how everything was going and if there was anything at all he could help us with.  So we (very hesitantly–we didn’t want to be “those people”) told him that the window wasn’t really what we were wanting.  And he said it was absolutely no problem at all.  They’d get it fixed (at no cost) and not to worry at all–they want us to be 100% satisfied and excited about building with them.

I can’t tell you how much this impressed us.  He even went out and looked at a few houses with windows like what we were imagining and took pictures to send to our foreman.  They really do go above and beyond to make sure their customers are enjoying the whole building process.  We are SO glad that we get to deal with such a great team to build our house!

Now…back to the house.

We are going to love these big windows in our living and dining rooms!  It seemed so much more “real” with the windows in.

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5/28/11

My cousin, Paul, and his wife, Liz, came to visit last weekend.  We had SUCH a great time with them!  It was super relaxing, and just what we needed.  We took them out to our house on Saturday.  They’d also shingled most of the roof!

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6/1/11

Michael and I were at the Texas Annual Conference (the annual conference for this area of United Methodist Churches) from Sunday to Wednesday of this past week, and when we got back, we went to check on our house and write some Bible verses on the boards.

They’d put our cedar beams up in the front!  We can’t wait for them to finish the front porch–I know we’re going to love it.

Sheetrock filled our living room, and they’d also installed our guest bath tub.

I think I’d mentioned in our last house update that we wanted to write Bible verses on the “walls” before they were sheetrocked.  My dad was the first one to give us the idea, and then Michael’s parents suggested it, and other friends had similar ideas.  We thought it was a great idea!

In order to keep things somewhat short in this post, I’ll wait to share the verses we used.  We’d looked them up and printed them out earlier in the day, and we just went around with Sharpies and wrote on the wood.

I absolutely LOVED this.  It just felt like we were claiming God’s promises and His truth for our household and for our lives.

We also signed and dated over the front door.

“But as for me and my house we will serve the LORD.”  Joshua 24:15

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6/4/11

On Saturday, we went back to see if anything had been done, and they’ve delivered our bricks!

Woo-hoo!  Now things will pick up again.  I can’t wait to see it all put together.  Ours will be the first house in any of their divisions to use this particular brick.  I hope we like it!

They’ve also delivered our tub and done a lot of the plumbing.  They’ve also started putting in the pesticide things in the walls.  I don’t know all of the technology, but I know that there are going to be all of these little tubes (the black things) in the walls for pest control.  Once a year, someone will come out and connect to the outside of the house and use these tubes to spray inside the walls for bugs.  Pretty neat, huh?

They’ve also cleaned everything up, so we have a feeling they’re getting ready to lay the sheetrock soon.  It’s been so much fun to see this whole process unfold.

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–Staci

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Building Our House – Part 3

It’s crazy to think about all that has happened in the past two weeks!  We went from having form boards to….well, you’ll see.

5/10/11

While we were at Catalyst, we got a call saying that they were about to pour our concrete.  We’d been out there on Tuesday (almost two weeks ago) and it looked like this:

5/14/11

When we got back from Catalyst, we went to see our house and it looked like this:

We had a slab!  We also had a “SOLD” sign in our yard!

5/16/11

When we went back on Monday evening, they had the walls all marked out, and the lumber had been delivered.

It was so much fun to walk through and picture where everything was going to be.  Michael “pictured” a little too much.

So these were the boards to build our house that we saw on Monday…

5/18/11

…And THIS was our house on Wednesday:

AAAHHH!  We couldn’t believe it!  We though that they might have the walls up, but we weren’t expecting all of this at all!

To say we were excited is a huge understatement.  Here’s the back of our house:

I took this from far away so you could see how long our backyard is.

All of the extra supporting boards were still up, so we walked through the walls to get from one room to another.

So that was Wednesday…

5/21/11

On Saturday (yesterday), we drove up to find this:

YAY!  It’s ready to have the shingles and bricks put on before too long!  We’re really excited about our front porch–I think it’s going to be one of our favorite parts of our house.  The little pieces of wood are going to be replaced with cedar beams, and the back will have brick and slurry.

When we walked in, we saw that they had removed all of the extra boards.  This is on the back side of our living room.  We’re SO excited about the big windows!  The door leads to our back porch.

Here you can see our breakfast nook and through the walls to our bedroom.

On the other side of the living room are two bedrooms and our office (which could be a 4th bedroom).  The middle room and office are shown here:

The back/side of our house:

I found this little weed flower while I was taking pictures, and decided to get creative.

Our house will be finished before we know it!

They should be doing the electrical and plumbing this next week.  We’ll keep you updated!

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We want to write some Bible verses on some of the boards before the sheetrock goes up.  Do you have any suggestions?

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–Staci

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Building Our House – Part 2

It’s still so crazy to think that we’re building a house!

Last week, Michael and I signed the contract to start building.  There were about a million things to read and sign, and we looked over every inch of the house-plan to make sure it was all like we wanted it.  I think I’m probably the first person to ask our realtor if I could take pictures of everything.  But you all know me…

Signing off on the floorplan:

Reading and signing the contract:

Can you tell we’re excited?!

While we were waiting on our realtor to check on something, I decided to take a few pictures of the show room to show you all some of what we had to choose from.  All of the selections–and especially all of the selections in the “non-upgrade” bracket–are some of the things we have been most impressed with during this whole process.  They have SO much to choose from in the standard price.  And a lot of the upgrades are so minimal that it really isn’t much of an added cost.

These are all of the tile options that were included in the standard price (you can see some of the other options behind me in the above picture):

These are the bricks (a lot are in the standard price, and then there are upgrades too).  We picked an upgraded brick and it was only $200 more for the whole house:

The ones on the hanging rack on the wall are all of the different stain options in our price range.  Then they have 2 walls with all of the cabinet options, including upgrades:

Anyway, we’ve been really happy with all of the selections.  Our builder does an excellent job of making sure everything–even the standard selections–is quality.

When we were finished signing the contract, we went out to take a picture with our lot and our contract.  This is it!  We’re really building a house!

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Yesterday was our day off, and we decided to go and see how everything was coming along.  We were both trying so hard not to get our hopes up that we barely even talked about what we hoped they’d have done.  I think we were bracing ourselves for nothing to be started.

While we were in Tyler last weekend (I had a Forge reunion, which was INCREDIBLE), we passed this house on the way to and from our meeting place.  We really liked the way the beams still made somewhat of an arch, and we took it to James and Jared to see if we could do something similar with our front.  It’ll be a lot more narrow, but they said that we can!

We also signed off of the final final drawing of the house-plan.  YAY!  We asked Jared what the best-scenerio would be for the end of June (when my parents and Em come to visit), and he shocked us by saying the following:

The form boards are down now…

Next week we should be pouring concrete…

Then the walls go up…

Then then the outside…

And in 4 weeks we should be close to sheetrocking the inside!

So by the time my family comes, we’ll probably be at the tiling stage!

We couldn’t believe it!!  It’s all going to happen so fast.  And we were scared that nothing would be done this week…  When we drove by our lot, this is what we saw:

Form boards and plumbing!!!

Our property line:

From the back of our lot looking out:

Now that they have the property lines out, we were able to see how big our backyard is going to be.  It’s HUGE!  We’re so excited that it’s going to be as big as it is.  I was standing at one line, and Michael was at the other.  Keep in mind that it’ll all be cleaned up before we move in…

While we were taking pictures, our neighbor came over and introduced himself.  He and his wife and their kids live in the house right behind Michael.  Eventually we’ll have someone between us, but right now it’s an unclaimed lot.  It was SO good to meet our first neighbor.  We’re anxious to get to know their family.  He said that they love the neighborhood and their house, and just everything about our builder/team/neighborhood.  We went over and saw his backyard, and it looks even bigger when it has green grass and a fence.  We’re so pleased with the lot we chose!

We snapped one last picture of the plumbing, since it’ll be all covered up the next time we come out:

We’ve decided to try to go out to see the progress at least twice a week.  Our neighbor said he used to come out every day, and he’d still see huge changes!  I think we’re as excited about this whole building process as we are about actually moving in–well, maybe not AS excited, but still.

Thanks for reading along, and we’ll be sure to keep you updated!

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–Staci

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Building Our House part 1

Another thing we’ve been busy with is planning to build a house!

We found a great developer a few months ago, and we started meeting with one of their Realtors to talk about us building one of their houses.  We narrowed it down to the plan we liked, and then a few weeks ago we met with them again to talk about some changes we’d like to see.  We went ahead and met with our lender to get pre-approved to build/buy, and then waited to hear back from them.

Our Realtor called Michael on Tuesday and said they were ready for us to come look at the plan on Thursday.  So yesterday we met with them again and not only did we get to see the new drawings, but we also got to PICK OUR LOT!  We had no clue we’d get to do that already!

We wanted one of the lots that backed up to a really great tree line so that we’d never have anyone behind us, and we’d be able to look out and see all of the trees.  So we drove around and found our favorite, and our Realtor highlighted it–it’s ours!

I don’t have the official new drawings, but here are the original designs and a ghetto-fied version I created with the changes.

Here’s the front of the house.

We’re going to replace the columns in the front with cedar columns and change the siding on the porch to what they call slurry.  It’s basically brick with mortar on top of it, with some bricks showing through.  Here’s a picture of a house with something similar to what we’d want (just in a different area).

Here’s the original floor plan.

And the one with our changes.  We’re going to enclose (and add to) the covered patio to make it an office.  We’re also going to add a closet so we can re-sell it as an office/4th bedroom.  We’ll then add the patio onto the back of the family room.  We’re going to change the windows, and then take out the wall at the breakfast area.  We’re also going to take off the top cabinets in part of the kitchen and turn it into a bar to open up that area into the family room.  We’ll take those top shelves and put them where the breakfast area wall was so we don’t lose our cabinet space, and we’ll have an extra little bar/serving area.  Sorry for the poor quality…but this can at least help you picture it better.

We were/are SO excited!  This will be our first house to own, and we get to pick everything out ourselves.  Both of us went through the process of building houses like this with our families when we were growing up, and now we’re getting to do this together!

Since today was our day off, we told them yesterday that we’d come back to pick out our brick and vinyl (siding) today.  After lunch, we decided to drive around some neighborhoods and look at brick, vinyl, mortar, etc. to see what we like.  Our tastes were all over the place.  We knew for sure that we liked the more distressed brick look, but we went from more red-ish to brown-ish to who knows what.  We snapped pictures of some that we liked and took them to one of the ladies at the office.

She ended up driving around with us to try to find out the addresses so we could see what bricks they used, and then we went back and pulled out tons of brick ideas.  We ended up picking a more neutral-like color with some black and red-ish accents.  Then we picked our vinyl, roof, garage door and mortar style.  Here’s what we ended up with for the outside basics:

Since that’s all we really needed to decide today, she said we could either go and come back later for the rest, or we could just get it all picked out today.  We chose the latter.

It was so much fun picking everything out and grouping it all together to see what works best.  We’re really happy with our selections!  We chose the cabinets, counter-tops, tile, carpet, paint, bathtubs, sink fixtures, appliance colors, doors, and probably some other stuff that I’m forgetting.  We basically picked everything except the types of windows and the backsplash.  Here are our indoor basics:

It took us about 3 hours including driving around to see bricks, doors, and door/cedar colors.  It’s crazy to think that we just picked out everything for our new house!

What’s next:

On Monday or Tuesday we’ll meet back up with them to see the updated drawing and make any changes we have.  Then they’ll draw up the contract and we’ll hopefully sign it the next week.  They’ll start work at the beginning of May and we’ll be ready to move in September 1.  Our lease is up the middle of September, so this will be perfect timing to get all moved out/in.

I know it’ll be here before we know it!  We’re so excited, and we just wanted to share all about this with you all.  We’ll keep you posted on the progress.  We can’t wait!

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–Staci

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Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree – By Us

Yes, you read right!  This post is not just by Michael or just by Staci.  We’re combining our awesome mind powers to bring you this special holiday post of our night of Christmas Decorating.  So, here’s how things are gonna go.  Michael’s typing will be in Italics, and Staci’s will be in Regular font.  Here we go!  (ps… if you couldn’t tell, Michael wrote this first paragraph, but it’s not in Italics)

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We actually put up our tree a week before Thanksgiving.  I know, I know…that’s super early.  But it was the only time we’d be able to put it up before we went to San Antonio for Thanksgiving, and we wanted our tree to be the first we put up.  I made Chili Stew (I’ll probably post a recipe sometime.  It’s really yummy!) and we put in “A Charlie Brown Christmas” to watch while we ate. When it was finished, we put on some Christmas music and pulled out the decorations.

“Charlie Brown Christmas” is my favorite Christmas movie.  And chili stew is good!  And Christmas trees are awesome!  And Christmas music is fun!  And my wife is my favorite!!! … So I guess you could say it was a night of AWESOMENESS!!!!!

We bought this little tree our first Christmas right before we got married.  So even though we’ve only been married a little less than two years, this will be our third Christmas together.

Our first ornament of the year is one our friend Kaitlyn made for us before we got married:

Since we got married 5 days before Christmas, we decorated in red, silver, black and white.  We used lots of ornaments and things that we still get to use in our Christmas decorating.  So it’s like a double bonus–decorating for Christmas and thinking about our wedding!

Our wedding was awesome too!
Before the lights and the star:

It was my turn to put the star on this year!

We have a star because we were looking for a tree topper (angel or star) and all the angels were way creepy looking!  So we decided to go with this star!  I like it… it doesn’t stare at my soul.

ANYWAY…

Here’s the finished product:

We made those stockings last year.  We searched EVERYWHERE for stockings that we liked and couldn’t find any.  We finally found these at Hobby Lobby, but they both had huge bows on them (like mine).  So I took the bow off of Michael’s, and added a snowman.  I love them now!

Isn’t my wife so creative and cute?!    …. By the way that’s a pretty good-lookin’ tree if I say so myself!

I’d delete that, but he said I can’t change what he wrote…And speaking of my husband, Santa came to help!

And I have no clue what he’s doing here…

What do you mean you don’t know what I was doing?  I was protecting us from the scary ornament stealing elves!!!

We had lots of normal ornaments plus ones that we’ve been given or have bought over the past few years.  Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve loved looking at all of the ornaments; I love being able to think about where each of them came from.

We bought this one at church a few weeks ago.  It’s from Bethlehem (a company called Bethlehem Art), and it’s made from a real olive tree!

My friend, Jamie, gave us these at work last year.  It’s a pickle!  You’re supposed to hide it and then the kid (or person) who finds it gets an extra gift.  I think we’ll start using it for real after we have kids and they get older.  But for now, it’s a fun ornament.

This is from our vacation to San Antonio last summer:

And this is from our Disney Vacation last year:

My Meme gave me this one.  I can’t remember if she made them or if they’re Granny’s or who’s…but I like it!

I could go on and on about every ornament, but I won’t…

whew… that was a close one!  🙂

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We also put other decorations around the living room.  This is under the tree:

On the bar (but now it has another Christmas plate on it too):

My Meme painted these a long time ago.  They’ve always been at her house, and I’ve loved them since I was a little bitty girl.  Well, last year Michael and I were helping Meme and Pawpaw decorate for Christmas and she gave these to me!  I was SO excited!  Now they’re beside our tree:

In the shelves under the TV:

My dad bought me the little Nativity Scene before we got married.  It’s made out of clay, and it folds up into a present!

On either side of the TV:

I’m so thankful that Michael is such a great husband and helps me with all of this!  It was so much fun being able to decorate everything together.

Christmas is my very favorite time of year.

Me too!

I just love the weather (it was 30 degrees this morning, by the way!  Woo-hoo!!  It was about time it stopped being in the 80s!), time with family and friends, decorating, music, and everything about it.  And I can’t forget the true reason for Christmas: Jesus.  Could there be a better holiday?!

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–Staci AND Michael

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Q for you:  Have you put up your tree yet?  Do you have any special Christmas tree decorating traditions?  What is your favorite ornament?

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A Tour: LR and BR

Now that all of our boxes are emptied and we have (almost) all of our decorations on the walls, I decided that it’s time to start giving a tour of our new little apartment.  But before I do, let me say that we’re loving our new place!  It’s my first apartment ever, and it’s a ton better than I was expecting.  We can never hear our neighbors, the second floor on the end is perfect because we don’t have anyone above us, and we get a “semi-private stairwell”, and I love having the work-out facility and things.

And now, without further ado, I present our Living Room and Master Bedroom.

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Living Room:

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From the dining room facing the main part of the LR:

Those are our new couches, by the way.  We bought them before we left Ada, and we’re really happy with them!

The entry-way/door:

From the door, facing in (we LOVE the bay windows!):

And some of my favorite details:

All of our books!  I absolutely love reading, and I don’t think I could ever switch to an electronic book (I’ve tried)–I just LOVE having actual books.  I also like our Bride and Groom Mickey and Minnie.  My parents brought them back to us from Disneyland the summer before we got married.

Our pictures/drawing above our couch.  I am SUCH a picture person (I just transferred 800+ from my camera to the computer today) and I love having pictures all over the house.  The drawing in the center was a gift from one of my friends from work (at my old job).  He asked for a picture of us, and a few weeks later THIS was waiting on my desk.

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This is in the hall-way between the living room and our guest bathroom:

I love the fact that I can look at each of these crosses and remember who gave it to us and/or when/where we got it.  Some were wedding gifts, the one at the top was from my co-workers as a going-away gift, the wooden one is from an olive tree in Bethlehem (we bought it at church), some are from friends over the years, some from Pine Cove families, and some are from when I was in high school or college.

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Master Bedroom:

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The view from the door:

From the bed/shelf unit towards the door:

My Paw-Paw made me the shelf to go on top of my dorm desk, and it’s one of my favorite things about the room.  I painted it and a dresser a few years ago.  The chest/dresser is one of the things we bought at IKEA.  It fits all of Michael’s stuff perfectly, and I still have a drawer left over for my “junk drawer” (since we got rid of our extra desk).

This is the view from the bathroom area looking towards the window:

The other wall has my dresser (the one that matches the shelf), the door to the bathroom, and the door to the closet.  For some reason I didn’t get a picture.  This is the closest thing I have:

Some of my favorite things:

Some of our family-friends gave this to us as a wedding gift.  It was SUCH a unique gift, and it fits perfectly in our room:

I painted the picture on the left.  It has a Bible verse that means a lot to us painted on it.  The picture in the middle was a random poster from camp.  The right-hand frame is very special to me because it’s from my director’s wife and my assistant director from when I was in The Forge leadership training program.

This is the first time that we’ve hung my bridal portrait.  We took forever to get it framed, and then we never got around to hanging it in our other house.  The roses are my bouquet from our wedding, and Michael’s boutonniere is in the bottom of the vase.

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And that’s a little view of our new home.  I’ll post more as we finish those rooms.

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–Staci

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What are some of your favorite little things in your house?

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Fall Decorations

I know this post is REALLY late, but I took these pictures a while back and never had a chance to post them.  And seeing as we’re going to take down all of these decorations tonight so we can be ready to put up Christmas decorations later on…  But I guess it’s better late than never!

We put some pumpkins and gourds from The Pumpkin Patch on our front porch.  The one on the far left is some sort of weird pumpkin breed.  The one that’s turning green is a mix between a pumpkin and a gourd (we didn’t know that at first), the blueish one is called a fairytale pumpkin, and the gourds in the basket are called winged gourds (there are pumpkins in there too).  Aren’t you glad I know so much about pumpkins now?!

This basket of gourds and pumpkins is under the bar:

These are on the bar (above the pumpkin/gourd basket):

The only other place I decorated (inside the house) was the entertainment center area.  This vase is beside it:

On top (with our Animal Kingdom Lodge giraffes, which I LOVE):

The other side of the top:

And I added just a few leaves in one of the entertainment center shelves.  (Sorry for the blown-out/fuzzy picture.)

All of the decorations (well, besides the pumpkins) came from Hobby Lobby, by the way.  I LOVE that place!!

And lastly, this is our back porch with more pumpkins from the Pumpkin Patch:

This is the first year I’ve decorated for fall, and I’m so glad I did!  I hope to decorate even more next year.  It’s so crazy to think that we’ll be putting up our tree and Christmas decorations soon.  Fall has just flown by.

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–Staci

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Q for You:  Did/do you decorate for Fall?  Any fun ideas?

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