Joie de Vivre

Wow it's been a while since I have blogged! Life was a little busy (understatement of the year) there for a while, but we are finally getting back into the swing of what normal life and a normal schedule looks like.

Long story short....we had to do a major push to get our house "done" in 30 days. Ready, set, panic attack! Luckily, I have been blessed with a husband who can do anything as well as amazing family and friends who were willing to help in the midst of the chaos.

The day we found out we had to "complete" our house in 30 days Brian and I decided that we had to be a team...there was no other way to get it done. Though I never want to go through what we went through again, we have lots of fond (*cough, cough, nudge, nudge*) memories of staying up til 3 a.m. drinking Simpler Times (how appropriate) while painting, floor prepping, running speaker wire, etc. By the way, since I'm on the topic of running speaker wire....I have a major aversion towards seeing wires, it drives me nuts! The night we had to run the speaker wire in the living room I was not a happy camper...I was grumpy from the lack of sleep, and knowing that I would be going to bed at 3:00 a.m. or later, again, was not making me any happier. I kept saying that we should just forget it, the wire wasn't cooperating. Who cares if we have to see wires when we put up the surround sound, I just want to go to bed! Brian kept reminding that I hate wires and that I would thank him later...really? Would I? Are you sure about that? After far too long that night, we finally got the wire to cooperate (too confusing to explain the process here)....and yes, I thank him all the time now! Do you know how nice it is to have speakers in the wall with no wires hanging from them? It truly is amazing! Thank you husband for not giving up.

Now back to the real reason I am writing this post. We were running on empty, not really sure how we were gonna make it another day. Late one night I was making us some burritos (for probably the 5th night in a row) and Brian was working on the floor. He had mentioned that he wasn't feeling that great. "Poor guy," I thought...and continued making burritos. About 15 minutes went by and I realized that I hadn't been hearing any noise. "Brian...Brian, are you ok?" No answer. The first thing that flashed into my head was an image of him collapsed on the floor...why wasn't he answering me? I rounded the corner to the living room and this is what I saw...the same image that had flashed into my head seconds earlier....


"BRIAAAAAAAN!!!!!" I yelled as my heart was beating a mile a minute. I ran closer to see what had happened.


"Brian!" He slowly opened his eyes and mumbled, "I fell asleep..."


Talk about a panic attack! The poor guy was just so exhausted that he fell asleep with his face right next to floor glue (gnarly stuff) and his head on a razor blade. So happy we are done with most of this chaos :-)

Oh, and don't worry, I took these photos after I found out he was ok.

Along with the many words we daily use to describe ourselves, Brian and I can now add the word "homeowner" to that repertoire. This photo shows exactly how we reacted the moment we found out that the house was ours :-) Well, not exactly. I was at work and Brian called me, but we would have looked like this had we been together at that moment.


I have to admit, I was terrified to take the plunge. And yes, I had a small emotional breakdown..."I'm too young to own a house, we are never going to be able to travel again, is it the right time, etc." We had been talking about buying a house since before we got married, and we've been looking for at least the past year, so I don't know why it was so hard for me once we finally decided to pull the trigger.

Now that I am past the initial "freakout" and the home is ours for the keeping I am excited to make it our own. There were so many pieces of the puzzle that had to fit together for this house to become ours...it was crazy watching God orchestrate the whole thing. We have felt beyond blessed throughout this whole process and the house is way beyond anything we could have imagined.

I do find it somewhat humorous that the house came into our lives when it did. We are both working full time, I am going to school, and Brian is having another knee surgery in 12 days, perfect. We (and by "we" I mainly mean Brian, not me) have been trying to bust out as much work as possible before his surgery. Picking out flooring and paint colors on a deadline is extremely hard, but I think no matter what it would have been hard, so this just forces me to make a decision that otherwise would have taken months.

Also, last month some time I had decided that I needed to start spending more time with family, hanging out with my friends that are not in Santa Cruz more often, being a better Auntie, that I needed to learn how to take better pictures, needed to learn how to edit photos, needed to pick up sewing again, needed to pick up a new book, needed to try out new recipes and make better meals, and that I needed to work out more consistently...and there are many more things on my to do list that I was planning on doing, oh well. Some of these things I can still do, but most will have to be put on hold...life is entering a different season.

Though we are way too busy for our own good, I think this is all part of the lesson I am learning on contentment and enjoying where God has me, instead of always looking for what is coming.

As I've mentioned before, I have quite the handy man on my hands. Brian loves projects and creating things, and I love the ideas he comes up with! We had been getting pretty tired of not having any sort of entertainment center/console and weren't up to spending $900 on the one that we liked, so Brian decided that he should make one. It was perfect this way because we were able to make it the correct size for our cute little shack. Many thanks to my father-in-law too who stayed after work many times so that he and Brian could work on this project. We LOVE our new entertainment center! Who would have thought that it would be so nice to have a place to put DVDs and photo albums? We have yet to decide what color we should paint it/stain it, so we are letting it hang out in the nude for a while until we decide. Here it is in all of it's glory...

A few months ago Brian and I bought an old window at the flee market. Originally we were going to use it to make a hutch, but due to the size of our cute little beach shack we realized that a hutch would take up too much space, so the window sat in the shed.  That is until we heard the idea of turning an old window into a mirror.