Happy Halloween!

From Miss Lilly...

Fall Home Tour

I realized a few weeks ago that I never did a "home tour" since we moved in back in February. We have officially settled in but it's always a work in progress. In August I was getting really antsy to finish decorating the house and since then we have finished up a lot. So here's our house... all decorated for Fall.

Welcome to our home!

Jim, our scarecrow, will greet you on the way up... 

Walk up the porch and enjoy our mums and pumpkins... 

We have chairs on the porch (only because my mom bought them super cheap) but no one really sits there... they are "space fillers"

As you enter the front you'll find the staircase to the left, dining on your right, and living room straight ahead. 

We'll go ahead into the living room, since that's where the guests like to gather.

We love Blake's recliner and the sofas are pretty comfy too. Blake's TV is prominently hung above the fireplace (better than the deer...) and we like the "homey" feel. At the condo we were kind of contemporary but that's really not us. We wanted carpet and we want our living room to be like a home. We want it to be comfortable for all those who visit.

We love our fireplace ... you flip the switch and the fire starts up! Notice my craftiness with the initial pumpkin on the hearth.

 From the living room we'll take a peek into the dining room. Some would say it's a waste of space (because we've only eaten in there once) but I do look forward to hosting dinners (especially when kids arrive) during the holidays. 

Yes -- I do have candy corn as a centerpiece!

We will then go into the kitchen. I LOVE my kitchen. And especially the island. It is pretty much the most amazing thing.

Don't mind the dog crates... they just haven't been moved back into the garage since it's cooled off outside.  And then there's the most fantastic part of the kitchen... the pantry. I heart it. It looks a little unorganized  (yea... just a little) but it really is organized. 

Off the kitchen leading to the backyard we have our screened in porch. It's pretty awesome too. And then a look at our yard where we finally have mostly grass. (When we moved in it was dirt with grass seed.)

Back inside and off the kitchen heading towards the garage we have our laundry room and half bath. Nothing exciting but the location of these two are wonderful.

 On the other side of the living room is our bedroom. Please excuse the fact that we don't have a real comforter ... it's simply too hot to sweat to death while sleeping. 

The master bath is just off the bed room ... there's a tub behind the door and the "man's library" is behind the second door.

Going upstairs we can look down on the living room (awesome!) and then there's the hall leading to the "kids'" rooms.

At the top of the stairs is the attic on your left... we will probably finish it one day for another bedroom. This is one of the room's on my list for Fall organization. Give me a free weekend and we're tackling this.

Going down the hall you'll find my craft room on the right... 

And then go to the end of the hall and the Man Cave/Future Playroom is on your right above the garage. This is the room where you'll almost always find us.

Notice where the deer ended up...

Across the hall you'll find the "Kids'" Bathroom.

And all the way across the hall you'll find the guest bedrooms. We've named the blue room "Paisley's Room" and the multicolored room "Lilly's Room." They haven't figured out how to sleep in there yet...

With that we conclude our tour. Hope you enjoyed it. We welcome all to come hang with us and our puppies! They will love you to death! (Except Lilly -- she takes awhile to warm up to you.)

One Year Anniversary "Gift"

Our anniversary day was pretty low-key. We watched our Pirates get trampled by UNC on Saturday then Sunday was spent at church then football watching in the Man Cave. We thawed out and ate our top cake layer then had (early) dinner at Outback. We chose Outback for 2 reasons: 1. We had a coupon and 2. Hawaii is considered to be on the Australian continent so we were "returning" to our honeymoon location.

For our anniversary "gift" to each other we decided to spend the weekend in New York City. I absolutely LOVE NYC. I could not live there but I do love to visit and live the fast-paced life for a little while. We booked flights, hotels, a show, and excursions and were ready. We left right after work on Thursday for a flight from Raleigh to NYC. We arrived kind of late but the city lights were beautiful. We slept in and got up for a 2 hour Circle Line cruise around the tip of Manhattan. I've never done this before and it was awesome!

When we finished the cruise we went to Central Park, had a hot dog, and watched a random game of softball. These are the kinds of things that are so much cooler in big cities! We walked down Fifth Avenue to see all the fancy stores (and the Apple Store with a dedication to Steve Jobs -- touching), acted like kids in FAO Schwartz, felt real out of place next to Tiffany's, and rode the metro for kicks. We then went up to Top of the Rock which was awesome. (I've also never done this one, we always went up the Empire State Bldg.)

That evening we saw Cirque du Soleil's Zarkana at Radio City Music Hall. Radio City is amazing anyways but Cirque was so cool. (Blake LOVED it. Wants to go see another. That's the real achievement.) We hiked it back to the hotel then decided we were too tired to get up and try to be on the Today show... we slept in. Saturday we had breakfast in Times Square, subwayed down to the Financial District and saw Ground Zero. The 9/11 Memorial tickets are sold out until November so we couldn't see much but it was important to visit what we could. It was a very different experience this time than it was 2 years ago -- not as moving because you couldn't actually see the footprints of the buildings. We also saw the protesters by Wall Street (I'm sorry... I don't have the patience for that.) And then we headed to Chinatown. We walked through Chinatown and ended up having lunch in Little Italy (awesome!). And then spent about 2 hours roaming Chinatown shops and making drug "Coach" bag deals. Blake got into the haggling with those Chinese ladies -- fun stuff! We came back uptown, rested, and headed to Times Square for dinner. 

There's nothing like Times Square at night (pic is from the daytime). We had dinner at TGI Friday's overlooking the craziness below and I got a Junior's carrot cake cheese cake for dessert/breakfast.) We came home Sunday morning so we could get the puppies and get settled before Monday was upon us. We thoroughly enjoyed our little vacation and look forward to getting away again soon.

Year Old Cake

Yummm! It was actually still really good!

One Year Ago...

All week I've been saying, "This time last year I was ...." and remembering how calm yet incredibly hectic the days before our wedding was. In some ways it's hard to believe it's already been a year yet in other ways it feels like we've been married for at least three.

In the past year we've fallen in LOVE with Hawaii. We survived our first married holidays. We spent one month looking for a house then bought our first house on Valentine's Day. We vacationed with my parents for a week at the beach. We moved into our new house.I graduated with my Master's Degree. I quit my very first teaching job, packed everything up, moved it and started at a new school closer to home. We took a road trip across the state. We hosted an Irish counselor for the entire month of July. We've painted and decorated our new home. You think we've been busy? Life is finally starting to slow down for us. We really are enjoying just working and coming home to hang with the dogs. We are doing whatever we want to do for the first time in our lives and it's so nice. It's nice to have "us" time and we aren't planning on introducing any other variables into our equation of life for a few more years. [How's that for the math teacher in me?!]

Is it bad that I already look back at our wedding pictures and think "Gosh we looked so young!"? I feel like in the past year we both have really grown up. We've always been way more mature than others our age but this whole marriage thing has really helped us "grow up." The first year of marriage hasn't been all cupcakes and unicorns... marriage is hard work and that's something we're still learning. Having a mom who gets couples divorced for a living I have learned quite a bit about marriage from her. Marriage requires great and total commitment from both parties. It is very different from dating or even living together... A friend of ours posted on Facebook recently that people who lived together before marriage were more likely to split up than people who didn't live together. One thing I've learned this year: I don't think it matters either way. It's about the couple's commitment to each other, communication, and trust. If you don't carve out time just to be with each other the relationship (like any relationship) will deteriorate. I'm not saying you spend every waking moment together (because I would seriously go crazy) and it is incredibly important to still have your "girl time" but dates are a good thing. That's what I've learned this year. I'm excited to see what I learn in the next.