Merry Christmas!

From our family to yours...

best wishes for a Merry Christmas filled with family, friends, and laughter!

love,
j & j & b

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

(It's been awhile since I updated, but today it's a double entry to make up for it :))

Today is our first big snowfall of the season, and it made for a wonderful day indoors getting into the Christmas spirit. We wrapped presents, baked cookies, and finished writing papers. (Okay, the first two were me, and that last one was just J, but whatever...) We also got our first pictures of the house in the snow!!

This is what happens when you forget to turn off the flash... Check out the HUGE snowflakes!

Christmas lights in the snow


And, just for fun, a little something that made me laugh today.
(Make sure to turn on the volume on your computer...)

***Update***
That was just the beginning of the snow... I'm not going to go outside, but here's the view from our back door...
That's 7 inches, folks. And, that's on the porch, close to the awning.
Thank goodness it's the weekend. :)

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Only 10 more days till Christmas!

With finals and a training classes wrapping up for the year, it's been pretty busy around here, but we're starting to wind down a bit and getting into the Christmas spirit.

Some sights around our house:

Dining Room

For a house blog, we haven't really done a whole lot of posting house pictures, have we? :)

Here's some for any lingering readers....

Sadly, we have no before pictures of the dining room. (I know. You all are SO disappointed!) Try to envision the yuckiness in your head: like the living room (see post below this one), ugly old dining room table, an oddly placed curio, and cat hair galore. Oh yeah, and more doilies.

After of Dining Room (set for Thanksgiving)
(that ceiling fan is on its way out... we just need to find a fixture we like)

Here's what it normally looks like:

Living Room

Living Room before:
(thank the lord, the doilies are gone!)

this isn't the best picture, but this is the same corner our TV is in...


Almost after:

there's a 42" flat screen there now... Merry Christmas to us! :)


Future plans: end tables :)

Kelly and Mike get married! (finally!!)

Here's a great picture I just got from Kelly's mom of the lovely bride and her bridesmaids. (All but one are sorority sisters!)

A big congrats to Kel and Mike! You had a beautiful day and an amazing wedding! Love you both!

PS- recognize those bridesmaid dresses? ;)

A belated Happy Thanksgiving

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We were lucky enough to get to spend this Thanksgiving in our new home with parts of both of our families, and had a great time. This past weekend was extra-busy, with my good friend Kelly's wedding on Saturday. It was a beautiful wedding, complete with a Mizzou win to add to the excitement. More about all of that soon...

I've been a blogger slacker lately... I got some good house pictures on Thanksgiving, so I'll post those later this week when work slows down a bit. (I have my last training "exam" this week and that's keeping me pretty busy!)

love to all and GO MIZZOU! :)
j&j

Bailey meets a baby!

A few weeks ago, we had the privilege of having two of my very good friends from grad school, Maureen and Colene over for lunch/to see the house/to celebrate birthdays. Of course that meant Maureen's daughter, Miss Maddy, got to come for a visit as well. I think both of us were a little nervous about the Bailey-Maddy combination, and though it took them both a bit to warm up to each other, (I think I said "Bailey, no-no!" a million times to keep him from jumping on the couch with Maddy, and Maureen tried to explain that Bailey's bark was a loud Meow...) they finally got a chance to play.

Bailey did a great job, giving Maddy's hand "kisses" and letting her pet him, and Maddy was very good at being gentle. We all had a great time-- thanks ladies! We'll have to do it again soon!

Happy Halloween!

Having been starved of "real" Halloween for the last few years as apartment dwellers, our first Halloween in our new home was a lot of fun. It's an unwritten rule in our neighborhood that everyone MUST have some sort of light-up decoration in their yard, and display it for all of October, so we joined in with pumpkin lights and the luminarias pictured above.
It was nice to finally have real trick-or-treaters, even though the second ring of our doorbell brought our home's previous owner and her daughter. (Awkward!! Should I ask them if they would like to take the old toilet and vanity left from their bathroom remodel, or the shelf full of paint they left in the basement with them? Maybe not the best idea...)

Bailey was loving every minute, and would wait patiently by the door for the next round of kids in costume.

We even carved pumpkins. Here's J's:

Hope everyone had a wonderful Halloween!! :)

PS- if you'd like to see the world's cutest baby in a chicken costume, click here and scroll down :)

Happy Birthday, J!

Friday was J's birthday, and we celebrated by going to dinner Friday, having the fam over for football and BBQ on Saturday, and going to the Rams game on Sunday. All in all, a great birthday! :)

I won't mention exactly how old J is, but here's a hint if you didn't catch on
from the candles on the pie... :)

I love you, babe! Happy Birthday!! :)

Master Bedroom

Before...
(With the sellers stuff, of course. Did you really think we would have a plaid bedspread and vertical blinds?? Seriously.)

As you look straight in the door

To the left

... And After! Well... kind of...
(Please ignore Bailey's toys on the bed as well as our makeshift nightstands... those are next on the furniture list!)Yes, we know the king size bed is huge, but we love it. Who cares if it eats up a lot of the room?

Additional plans:

• Matching furniture :)

Way to go, Ev!

A big congrats goes out to brother Evan who completed the Minneapolis Twin Cities Marathon last weekend in 4 hours, 40 minutes! Way to go Ev! Wish we could have been there to see you!

first things first...

Before we get into the before and after photos, a little background on the house:

• 3 bedroom, 2 bath
• Ranch-style house, built in the '60s
  
• full basement, garage
• on a cul-de-sac
• fenced backyard (which Bailey loves, by the way)

Here's a basic idea of the floor plan: (I would like to note that the former aspiring architect in this marriage was NOT the one to create this floor plan, so please forgive its inaccuracies and lack of detail.)


We love that we have plenty of room to grow into this house, and have been able to upgrade from mix and match post-college furniture to "adult" furniture and decor. It's amazing how good it feels to have new matching couches and more than enough space to store everything so we can live clutter-free.

And so the madness begins (or continues)...

After months of searching, debating over location, negotiating, reading many legal contracts, and negotiating again, we own a home. It was everything we hoped it would be. :)

Seriously, though, it's been a lot of work to get this place up to a livable standard... There were no major issues with the house, so we're lucky that it didn't require any major projects. (Fingers crossed, knock on wood...) There was, however, plenty of ugly wallpaper, cabinets and fixtures from the 1960s, and more cat hair than we ever wanted to deal with.

Thanks to a few weeks of scrubbing, stripping, sanding, painting, screwing, mowing, and lifting heavy objects (and four amazing parents, plus friends and siblings), we are now in a livable home. Now, all that's left is to unpack and decorate. As we go, we'll post before and after pictures of our home, and you're free to lurk as we do so. :)

*** A HUGE thank you to all four of our amazing parents for all of your help throughout this whole process! ***