A Visit

My grandfather came for lunch today. It was the first time he and his wife, Miss Anne had ever seen our house. My mom called me on Thursday to warn me that he was planning to stop by on his way home from visiting one of Miss Anne’s sons in the upstate. Now, I love my grandfather but I was terrified and immediately thrown into a tizzy. He is very no nonsense, has a way he thinks things should be and is very vocal about his opinions. Ever since I was a little girl I have known “Papa means business.” So you can imagine my despair as I looked around my little house at all the things out of place, things with no place, things not working, and things to make things work that were strung all over the place! Since then I have spent hours cleaning, organizing and just plain stressing out all for the end result of not that much difference! And you know what? He didn’t even care! He said it looked great and he thought we were doing a fine job of fixing everything and that pretty soon we would have it how we wanted. All that worrying over the boxes still unpacked in the office (and everything else) was for nothing! He totally understood. I guess the point I am trying to make with this story is that I’m glad my respect for my grandfather makes me set higher standards for myself and I’m glad his love for me helps him understand when I haven’t quite gotten there. It was really good for me to see that acceptance from someone I think so much of because I worry all the time about the state my house is in. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t let anyone in until it was absolutely perfect! Luckily I have Cory to realize that the people who love us will understand we are in the middle of a very long process and appreciate where we are now without thinking about how far we still have to go! The fact that is story applies to life as well as to houses is purely coincidental. :)

Papa and me at my wedding reception. Yes, I do wish I had inherited his dark skin tone but alas, no.

Our House

I have finally done it! I have made a collage to put on my blog. Hopefully they are not too small for you to see and you can click to make them bigger if they are. So here we go: Moving day and our new home!

We had such good friends and family come to help us unload everything from the U-Haul. Even my five year old nephew was willing to lend a hand and may have even unloaded more than me. ha! Well, I guess someone had to be there to document things.

These are our bedrooms. "Kat's room" is at the top right. We just got all that furniture put in today and I am so excited that we have a "real" spare bedroom now! The boy's room (bottom middle) is in kind of a sad state at the moment. When we go and get the bedroom suit for our room from my aunt next month, they will get the furniture that is currently in our room. I haven't been able to do much decorating upstairs yet, but it will be happening soon I hope.

The two left pictures are of our guest bathroom (aka the only bathroom with a working shower)up until this morning. We had to have a floor lamp because we hadn't gotten a light to put in there yet and a 3 dollar blanket from walmart served at the door (which we had gotten but just not cut and put up yet). But now we have a nice DOOR, light and new shower curtain! The only things left are the window treatment and a new sink!

Our kitchen is on the verge of being finished! We just have a few more cabinet doors to hang, a little decorating and putting on door knobs! So exciting!

These are pictures of our downstairs hall bath and den! They are looking so much better, although still not too much going on in the decorations department. I am learning that when it comes to home renovation, it is all about baby steps and patience. It is kind of nice to see a lot of baby steps in a row though!

We are having our first official get together tomorrow night for Cory's 23rd birthday. I am excited but also nervous because even though the house looks a lot better, it is still not exactly in show off condition. The fact that I am running on very low energy levels because of my oral surgery yesterday and am not supposed to bend over hinders my efforts quite a bit. I can get a good 10 minutes of work done before my body says "Not so fast missy" and I have to sit down for 30. Lucky my wonderful mother came over this morning to help get things straightened up a bit so I am not quite so worried as I was, but still. I hate feeling so helpless! But don't worry, I'm not overdoing it. I have had the fear of dry socket instilled very deeply into my brain and in no way want to be dealing with such terrible pain! Hopefully I can get in a good bit of rest today and be ready to go tomorrow (or everyone will be kind enough to over look the mess!).

Our First Valenties as Mr. and Mrs.!

So today I had oral surgery to remove a wisdom tooth and so I am pretty much out of commission for the next few days. What better time to start catching up on my blogging??

We finally were about to move into the house although were are still collecting our things from what feels like the four corners of the world. I think now were are basically done but I am almost to afraid to ever go and search through the storage unit for the rest of my things(except my silverware which is hopefully in there somewhere!).

So without further ado, a snapshot of our very first Valentines day as a married couple!

I stole the idea for a Candy Gram from my dear friend Naomi. It was so fun to make this for Cory!

The beautiful flowers Cory got me in an water purifier pitcher. At this point most of my things other than my clothes were still not here so even though I got two beautiful vases at the wedding, my flowers had to be displayed this.

Our dinner with plastic cutlery and paper plates because we didn't have the kitchen unpacked at this point. It was still yummy though!

Yes, this record player is glowing because it is so awesome. We listened to Alabama while eating our dinner. There may have also been some dancing. :)

My favorite part! We dipped strawberries and bananas in melted chocolate. Double yummy.