Settling in.

We are all moved in!  Mostly.  There are still a few unpacked boxes floating around and random items that need to find homes, but for the most part our new place is starting to look like a home!  So please pardon some of the mess, but here is a photo tour of our new home!

This is the view when you walk in the front door.  You can see right out the slider onto our deck and our huge backyard. 

This is the living room from near the slider.  The slider is on the right and the front door is to the left. (The cushions behind the couch are for our deck chairs, and yes I was watching Friends.)

Here is our living room art wall along with our new foosball table (The hubs' early Christmas present from his parents).

This is the hallway that was on the left edge of that last picture.  It leads to our bathroom (on the left), bedroom (at the end) and back door (on the right).

This is our bathroom, it looks very yellow-orange in this picture.  It's not always like that.

We have a washer and dryer in our bathroom! (the dryer is behind the door).  So much nicer than the community laundry room in the basement of our last apartment building! (Notice Hubs "decorated" the washer).

This is our bedroom, a little cluttered, but notice that it is an actual room, with a door and everything!  A big step up from our tiny studio apartment!  (And yes that is our inflate-a-bed, we will get a real bed eventually)

This is the view of the living room when exiting that back hallway.

And here is the kitchen as seen from the living room.  The kitchen makes our dining table look small.  Or maybe our small table makes the kitchen look big, that may be the right answer.

This is the view standing on the other side of the kitchen, in the doorway of the "craft room".

And this is the second bedroom that we are lovingly referring to as the craft room.  This is where my sewing machine and all of my knitting, art, and scrap booking supplies live.  It is also where the keyboard is set up for the hubs to practice music for school.  This is the room where you can really tell that we are still unpacking.  There are a few boxes straggling in here.

All in all we are pretty settled in!  Just in time because Hubs starts school on Monday.  We are very excited about our new space and excited about Hubs' new job.  I'm still on the job hunt, which might be one of my least favorite things ever.  But hopefully soon I will find just the perfect thing and figure out where I am meant to be! 

Thanks for touring with me!

With love.

Since we've been gone...

So it has been a while.  A long while.  Maybe someday I will become a blogger who actually blogs.  I thought I would write a quick update of what we have been up to in the last few months for anyone who was curious.  So here is a synopsis of what has happened in our lives since my last post.

-We spent an AMAZING week in California visiting with the hubs' sister and her family.
-Hubs GRADUATED!!!! (so proud!)
-I quit my job.
-We moved out of the big city and back into small-town America. (We live on a dirt road and
  everything)
-We began our "72 day weekend" as the hubs has been referring to it (our summer of being un-
  employed)
-Hubs had a birthday!
-I was able to be a part of my cousins BEAUTIFUL wedding ceremony.
-After a VERY stressful couple of weeks Hubs got his dream job!!!! (He will be a middle school/high
  school choir director starting this fall!)
-We were able to go on vacation with both of our families at the same time.  We spent a fabulous 2
  weeks traveling the East Coast camping and spending time with far away family.
- California came to us in the form of Hubs' sister and her family. We got to celebrate my nephew's
  baptism and first birthday!  So WONDERFUL to see them!!

Now we are packing and getting ready to move one more time.  Mixed into all that there was plenty of sewing and crocheting, time spent with family, lazy summer mornings, little cousins baseball games and graduation parties, watermelon and sunshine.

We move on Wednesday so maybe there will be another update soon, there might even be pictures (although I promise nothing).

With love.

fail.

So, in case you didn't notice, there has been blog failing like crazy over here.  I'm not sure if that means life is too boring to blog about or that it is too exciting to make the time to blog.  Maybe a little of both.  :-)

I keep telling myself I am going to get better at taking pictures of our life and I seem to fail a little bit at being successful.  I will work on it.  I thought I would take a minute to share a few pictures that did happen.

We had lots of visitors at the end of January and the beginning of February to celebrate my birthday!  It was so great to see everyone and be able to spend some time together!

Lukas is student teaching and it is going really well, he is almost finished with his first placement.  It is going by so fast!  Only 74 more days until he is completely finished!  Crazy!!  There has been a lot of crafting going on here in our apartment, I think we (or at least I) have been hibernating the end of the winter away.

(I still can't seem to get these pictures to do what I want on here... oh well!)

I'm running away to enjoy the spring weather that has come in time for my weekend!  Maybe I'll be back with happy spring pictures later!

With love.

cold.

So life has been rather unexciting around here for the most part.  It snowed. And got cold.  I don't like the cold.  It makes me not want to leave the house; to curl up in a cozy little ball in my big fuzzy white blanket and stay put all day long.  Walking to work in the cold is miserable.  Work has slowed down so the days go very slowly and it is dark when I come home leaving me wondering where the day disappeared to.  Lukas' classes are going well and he only has a few weeks left before student teaching.  There are so many exciting things coming up.  I can't wait for springtime and sunshine and all of the great life things to come.

So this is a short post but I just wanted to check in and say hi.

With love.

A year in review.

Happy 2012!  Sorry we are a little delayed in our well wishes.  We were blessed with the opportunity to travel home for a three day weekend and visit with our families for the New Year and it was fabulous!  There was lots of celebrating, family time and time spent with good friends.  I love opportunities to step away from the big city, and all of our obligations, and just spend time enjoying life.

I wanted to take a minute and remember a few big blessings we have experienced in the last year.

~2011 was our first full calendar year as a married couple!

~Lukas finished up almost all of his undergraduate classes (just a couple of pre-professional classes and student teaching left and then graduation!)

~Erin was promoted at work (yay for being full time with benefits!)

~Erin was also able to spend 11 wonderful days in Europe with her aunt and her cousin.  Traveling from Paris to Elbeuf (a little town in France) to Brussels.  AMAZINGNESS!

~We smushed one car (goodbye trusty Taurus) and got a beautiful AWD-cdplayer-heatedseat-sunroof-green-subaru upgrade.

~We gained a very handsome little nephew! Uncle Lukas and Aunt Erin can't wait to meet you in person little man!  Hopefully sometime soon!

~We were both blessed with good health, amazing family and friends (both new and old), and we are very excited to see what the new year holds!

With Love.

Christmas.

So it has been awhile.  I thought I would drop by to share a few pictures of our Christmas celebrations!  We seem to have managed to take a lot of random pictures.  There are a few of us decorating the tree and then some from Christmas eve and Christmas morning.  We need to get better at taking pictures... and at posting pictures.  Anyway, we had a fabulous holiday! Although we missed are families a whole lot!  Much love to you all!

I can't ever seem to get the pictures to end up where I want them to on here... oh well.  Thanks for sharing our Christmas!! Hopefully all of yours' were just as wonderful!

With love.

Thanksgiving and best buy.

This year we were unable to go home and see family for Thanksgiving because of my work schedule.  But we were very blessed to be invited to join some friends for the holiday.

Our Thanksgiving contribution.

It was wonderful not to have to cook an entire meal! I did make an oreo cheesecake that somehow got a little slouchy, some peanut butter fudge that was delicious, and some yummy broccoli salad crunch.  Some of you may laugh at my desire to avoid cooking an entire meal, but I have two fantastic reasons for avoiding it.
A- I am not an gourmet chef.
B- You see that picture ----> ? That is almost all of the counter space in my current kitchen. There is another small section of counter on the other side of the sink, but after you put the drying rack there it hardly counts.  (We also brought the raspberry dessert wine you see on the right there, it was pretty good and came in a fun skinny bottle (don't worry, I almost always choose wine by the look of the bottle)).

We had a wonderful evening watching football, playing video games, and planning black friday shopping.  It was nice to spend the day with some other couples who were also far from home and family.

Hubby and I decided to venture out for the Black Friday madness at midnight.

Winter gear for Black Friday.

L has been wanting a new gaming system since before our wedding (a year and a half) so I told him that if he checked the ads and found a great deal we could maybe get one for him for Christmas.  Of course Best Buy had X-box 360s on sale ($100 off!).  So we loaded up all of our winter gear with the intention of joining all the other crazies waiting in line for the midnight opening. Then, a few minutes after noon, Hubby got on the Best Buy website and found the same X-box deal and had to order it immediately for fear of missing out.  I was slightly disappointed in this development because I had never been Black Friday shopping.  So we made the executive decision to head to the store anyway for some smaller deals.

 

Part of our Best Buy haul.                                Creepy Black Friday line picture.

Black Friday T.P.

So we waited in line at Best Buy for almost an hour before we finally got in the store around 12:30 am.  We were able to get some good deals on some TV seasons and movies, and we also got a great sale on a new point and shoot camera (Merry Christmas! to: me from: hubs).

After Best Buy we headed over to Target where our best haul was a 12 pack of toilet paper.  Yay for toilet paper at 1:30 am on Black Friday!  (and no it wasn't on sale, we just really really needed it).  :-)

So that about wraps up our holiday adventures!  Thanks for sharing with us!  I hope all of your holidays were wonderful!

With Love.