together {7 years}

Yesterday Steven & I celebrated our seventh anniversary. And while I've been completely present for all 2,555 days, it is honestly hard to believe it's been that long. But then when I think about all the things we've done, places we've lived, milestones we've celebrated... it all comes together. What an awesome seven years it has been.

We've lived in five places together (almost six, yay house! boo moving). We've graduated college, found our first and second jobs, bought a house, and somehow gained three annoying sweet cats. We've celebrated many birthdays, holidays and life events with each other and many awesome friends.

When I think about how strong our relationship is, I always go back to how it all started. Literally two weeks after we officially started dating we left school to go back home for the summer. We spent the whole summer actually getting to know each other and learning how to communicate with one another. If we hadn't have done that, we might still be sitting on my twin bed, pretending to study for finals while watching infomercials and eating giant bowls of cheerios...

Communication is maybe the single most important part of a relationship and ours is built on it. To be honest, on a rare occasion when we have a disagreement, sometimes it works better for us to go into separate rooms and text each other. It gives us both time to think and not blurt out things we don't mean. Whatever works, right?

He would truly do anything for me, as I would for him. We've gotten good at the give and take a relationship needs. And I couldn't imagine anyone else putting up with my controlling-craziness as gracefully as Steven does. ;)

At the end of the day, I'm proud to call Steven my best friend. And soon I'll get to call him my husband and best friend - what a magnificent combination.

I love you Steven. You're quite necessary to my delight.

xoxo, christa

our new house: the before tour

{the front, lacking a little curb appeal with the dead bushes...}

Finally. They have been edited... I've got a ton of pictures for you today! Probably too many, so grab a cup of coffee and settle in.

Here is our first house. Soon to be home! During our first visit as official homeowners {Saturday, April 13} I went through and snapped some quick pictures - nothing professional here, folks!

{better picture of the front bed. pretty ugly.}

{the garage, open door leads into the laundry room}

{behind the double doors on the R is the furnace and hot water heater}

{L: blur alert! the laundry room. door on the right leads to the garage.}

{R: looking back into the laundry room from the hallway}

{L: the tiny hallway. laundry straight ahead, master to the right}

{R: turning left from the picture above, you'll see the entryway}

{standing in the entry, here is the living room}

{kitchen to the left, built-ins and fireplace, hallway to other bedrooms}

{one of my favorite things about this house... the built-ins are so dreamy.}

{steven's gallon of water to the left, my coffee to the right. ;) }

{the kitchen!}
{let me point out the one, tiny blue light hanging in there...}

{view of the kitchen from the dining area}

{view of the dining area from the kitchen}

{tied with little blue light for worst thing about the kitchen is the layer of stuff on the floor}

{looking back into the living room from the dining area}

{hallway leading to second bath and other bedrooms}

{hall/second bath. it's pretty spacious.}

{more angles of the bath.}

{the medicine cabinet isn't sunk into the wall... and there isn't a toilet paper holder or towel bar}

{looking back into the hallway}

{living room L, bathroom R, the girly purple bedroom will now be our guest room}

{check out that ceiling fan!}

{it's a smaller room, but it will serve it's purpose.}

{L: looking from the purple room, bath to L, door on R leads to the 4th bedroom}

{R: the 'big blue room'}

{big blue room. you can see the 'red roof house' out the window}

{the door swings closed and there is a fun string to change the fan speed...}

{the 'little blue room' will become the office}

{the 'little blue room' is little - but it will work perfectly for what we need.}

{looking into the living room from the hall}

{L: looking into the master from the hallway}

{R: master has nice tall ceilings and gets nice, but not direct, light}

{the other side of the master. door on L goes into bath, door on R goes into the hall}

{looking into the master bath}

{door on far L is the water closet, door in the middle is one of two closets!}

{again, no towel bars or toilet paper holder in here.}

{L: water closet and one of the His & Hers closets}

{R: the other closet and the shower, door on R goes back into the bedroom}

{the nice big vanity with two sinks! and weirdly placed outlets}

{and more medicine cabinets that are just screwed onto the wall, not sunken in}

{and the backyard. we have a little covered area with a ceiling fan}

{back of the house. window on L is in the kitchen. bay window is the dining area. door and window inside the covered area is the living room, window on R is the master bath.}

{another view. we hope to fence in the yard sooner than later.}

{the yard slopes up in the back, but we have quite a bit of flat space. and the slope actually gives us more privacy from the neighbors behind us. the building on the R of this picture is a service center for a telephone/internet company. the service people get their supplies from the building, so it doesn't see too much traffic. we plan to plant trees to help hide it a bit.}

So the inside is pretty much brown box after brown box, followed up by a couple bright blue boxes and one purple one. I mentioned this in a previous post, but this house was a forclosure. There are some things that were ignored, some of those "what were they thinking?" moments, but still an opportunity to make our new house a home.

It's been two and half weeks since we closed. {has it really only been that long?!} A lot of progress has been made already and I'm excited to share it with you. I'll share some more pictures soon.

Have to give my parents a huge shout-out here... they just spent a week making some of our dreams a reality and I can't even being to imagine how long it would have taken us without their help. We could never express our gratitude enough!

So obviously the lack of posting has to do with the fact we've been spending all our time either at work, at the new house, working on wedding planning, or in bed - very little time for anything extra. :)

xoxo, christa

homeowners.

{about to become a homeowner}

I woke up Friday morning mostly excited and slightly nervous. But who isn't a tad nervous when they're about to do something new? I managed to make my way through the work day, though I'm not sure much work actually got done... I remember searching the Lowe's website for mulch, shovels and wheelbarrows. :) I left the office at three to meet up with Steven for our closing.

{right after we got the key!}

The closing was interesting. We obviously didn't really know what to expect, but it seemed far too easy. Sign this tall stack of papers, and we'll give you a house! Our mortgage banker, realtor, closing broker and a notary were all present. The notary was representing the sellers, or the bank in our case. Our awesome mortgage banker went through all the paperwork, we signed our names approximately  one million times each, the notary signed his parts, the realtor and closing broker each had one thing for us to sign, and then we walked out with a giant folder of papers and a single key.

We got in the car and looked at each other. "Well, that's it. We're homeowners." "Yeah. It's weird."

And then we promptly went to Lowe's and spent the remaining few dollars we had in our bank accounts buying gardening stuff, door hardware, toilet seats, paint... so many homeownery things.  

Side note: have you seen the wall of toilet seats at the hardware store?! It's a seat with a hole in it and a lid... how many options does there need to be?!

{I drank this giant organic cider in record time}

Then we celebrated with our other married / engaged friends, both couples are also in the middle of the first-time-home-buying process. Steven and I were talking about how lucky we are to have such awesome friends who are in the same stage of life as we are. We obviously love all our friends, but having a few who really understand what's going on in each others lives is so important.

But back to the story of our first weekend of home-ownership...

{one of my first projects}

Saturday morning we got up bright and early and took our cars full of cleaning supplies, gardening equipment, painting equipment and other miscellaneous stuff over to the house. Steven's first project was to dig out the front garden bed. The previous owners had so much extra dirt and mulch in the bed it was at least six inches too high and inviting bugs and termites into the house. We also pulled out four or five dead bushes. The weather is supposed to be nice again this weekend, so hopefully we can finish preparing the bed so we can plant some things the following weekend!

I'll keep you guessing as to what the turquoise paint is for. I have a whole round of "before" pictures that I'm sorting through and editing. I promise I'll share soon. :)

{Sunday morning large coffee}

We got up early again on Sunday for round two. I ran out to get coffee and breakfast while Steven was getting ready. We were a little slower, but still made some progress. We have a good list of things to do this coming weekend. Hopefully we can get them all checked off!

I'll try to post a little photo tour and the before pictures soon!

xoxo, christa