Blog Book!

This past week I finally  got my Blog Book in the mail! The plan is each year for our anniversary I will get that year's posts printed into a book so its like a picture journal for us and our future kids and grandkids to be able to look back on and see what we did that year. I'm so excited about it! Eventually we'll have bookshelves full of our yearly books! I highly recommend this idea to everyone :)

Seattle Weekend

Last weekend, Jonathan had some extended family who lives in Seattle that were having a missionary homecoming and a baby blessing, so we left on Friday for a little weekend trip. On Saturday we got to experience the Pike's Place Market which is always fun!

We enjoyed the most delicious peach while walking around there. 

And I had a guy do some crazy cool card tricks on me, it was like real magic!

We also got to see the ocean which is always pleasant!

It was a fun day! Then after all the family stuff on Sunday, who else happened to have flown into Seattle that day!?! My MOM! She was there to help her birth- mom who lives there and it was just the most perfect timing that I got to see her for a few hours!

Totally made the ridiculous amount of driving we did (in the back seat of the families suburban I might add...) TOTALLY worth it! :) 

Rock vs. Bark

I love willow trees, I think they are just so whimsical and kind of romantic especially in evenings with the light post underneath it. BUT, as it turns out.... they are VERY high maintenance! Ours is kind of overly large, especially for our house, but I have grown to love it, even though it requires monthly trims so that the leaves aren't touching the ground...

not to mention it leave a ridiculous amount of leaves! For this reason, our tree has ruined our bark experience in our front yard. Our bark becomes overcome by dead leaves so, we switched to.....

Rock! Even though the leaves still fall, I think the rock hides them better and plus rock makes it so that we can rake our the leaves. (by we I mean Jonathan mostly.. hehe) 

Our Office

I don't think I ever posted anything about our office room probably because I have yet to get chairs that I like but here's what we've got so far. There's not before pictures mostly cause it was just a plain room before!

Color Change

So, sometimes I get sick of colors kinda fast. So thats why for the most part the bigger expensive home items I get in neutral colors and then the smaller accent things I can switch out easy to change a look. So last summer I was loving green for my kitchen and then I added teal to that and came up with this:

In the meantime I've kind of grown out of the green and still love the teal and added brown with it for this as my current kitchen:

We'll see how long I like this color scheme! 

Outside Trim

So, I love my house so much, BUT since the first time we looked at it one thing I did not love was the green trim on the outside of the house!

I think it makes it look a little dated and dingy. So once it was warm enough outside and not rainy, my sweet hubby started the process of painting it white!

I think it's looking so much better! There's just some tough places to reach plus the roof was getting HOT so it's on hold for just a bit :) I'll post a final picture once its done!

Accent Wall!

Since buying our house I've been so excited to paint a wall... but we went back and forth between what walls we'd even paint and colors and ended up deciding we liked the openness and cleanness of the all white. Then this week at Lowe's we were getting paint just for our soon to be theatre room, and on a whim we decided to just go for it and paint an accent wall in our family room. So here's a little before & after post for ya! We really like it!
ps- my camera that I got for Easter has not been functioning since June and is still in mystery warranty land and has yet to get back to us, so we're making due with an old camera. Even though my macbook that I got from work makes editing pictures so easy, this is the best it could do with the fuzziness of the camera!

BEFORE:

 AFTER:

Another Camping Weekend

Last weekend we went with our two favorite couples Ryan & Courtney and Jake & Alissa on a camping trip. Ryan's family has some friends with 4wheelers up near a place called Garden Valley so we drove up there, put all of our gear on the 4wheelers and rode until we found a sweet place to make camp! (it was on top of a mountain and a pretty sweet view!) We had so much fun staying up chatting and sharing a tent then eating some major dirt on intense rides the next day. Hopefully we get to do it again before Ryan & Courtney leave us to move to Hawaii for a year! :(

Before we left there was a bridge people jump off into the freezing cold river. We were all so grimy so we jumped right in! It was a great trip!

Sunshine!

I have wanted an Xterra for a long time and occasionally check Craigslist to see if any are for sale in my price range. As I looked the other day I found a beautiful Yellow one listed for $6,000 (I think yellow is my favorite xterra color, so this was exciting!) I contacted the girl selling it and just asked if she'd be willing to drop down to $4,600 (Jonathan has taught me it doesn't hurt to ask!) to my surprise she actually said YES! We went to check it out that day after work, gave her a $200 deposit and told her we'd be back the next day with the rest of the cash! I might add that when we actually visited the car I talked her down an additional $100 so the next day I got my dream car for $4500 and is a total upgrade from my jeep. I named her Sunshine & she makes me very happy! We haven't sold the jeep yet so if anyone is interested let me know :)

1st Anniversary!!!!!

After our camping trip, Jonathan and I continued north from Cascade up to McCall. I'd heard great things about McCall but had yet to actually see it for myself so I was excited! Turns out it is gorgeous up there, the lake is so beautiful and the little town is just so cute! When we got up there it was too early to check in to our hotel so luckily we were starving and went to the Pancake House smelling like campfire and being all grubby from camping.

Turns out the Pancake House has HUGE food! This couple next to us ordered a ginormous cinnamon roll, an omelet and pancakes that took over the large plates they were served on! I guess we weren't quite as starving as them, but we had full tummies after our delicious waffles (mine with strawberries and whipped cream!) and ham and eggs! 

After that we were able to go right across the street to our hotel suite! We got a king size bed and a jacuzzi in our room! It was sweet! 

After relaxing and getting all cleaned up we opened presents! I got Jonathan just some decorations for his gym, including a collage of pictures in a frame and just some of his favorite treats, but Jonathan spoiled me and got me this beautiful diamond necklace!

Then we decided to go explore McCall! 

We walked around downtown a bit, went down to the marina, went out to eat at a delicious Mexican Restaurant and then went out for the best ice cream around at Ice Cream Alley!

The next day after our Continental Breakfast, and checking out we were driving home and stopped at the Cascade Flea Market, It was so fun! 

And as it turns out, they had a very cool store with a whole bunch of bedazzled things (my mom would probably call it a catholic store!) And I decided to spend the rest of my birthday money on a fabulous pair of jeans and a super cute hat! 

It seriously was an amazing weekend and I'm so glad we were able to go out to celebrate one year of marriage! I can not believe it has already been a year, time seriously does fly when your having fun living life with your best friend! It has been an incredible year and I feel like we've accomplished so much together! I love you so much Jonathan and I can not wait for so many more anniversaries together! 

End of year one!