BIG SURPRISE

I know things have been kind of quiet on the blog lately, but we have been a little busy. I am now a contributing member of society and getting busier and busier each day. I am still trying to keep my go to the gym then come back and lay on the couch lifestyle, work full time, and look up all the answers to everything I don't know at work when I get home. It's tough! Those things don't all get done so my blog has definitely taken a back seat.
However, another big reason I haven't been posting much is because a lot of our free time has been filled up with a big surprise I have been wanting to tell you about for such a LONG time!

We bought a house!!!!!!!!!!!!!

YAY!!!!!!!!!!! We are real grown ups now!! We actually made the offer on the same weekend I started working. Talk about changes!

Here is a quick run down on what has been going on. A few months ago we started going to open houses just to get a feel of the market. It was too hot to do much else so we thought it was a good alternative. We weren't really planning on buying anytime soon until we met a guy named Mark. Mark was a realtor at an open house. At this point we had looked into a couple of options and thought maybe buying was doable sooner than we thought, but we had kind of talked ourselves out of this. Plus we hadn't met anyone that was too helpful at this point. Mark was here to steer us clear. He spoke our language. We really clicked with him. He was awesome! So we started going to look at houses with him, not just open houses. It was such a fun process! I think we looked at 60 homes (okay maybe that's a bit of an over exaggeration). I feel like we saw just about anything and everything you could imagine. We even started looking during weeknights. I felt like we were getting pretty serious.

Then he called us on a Friday and said two new ones came on the market today and we needed to see them-TONIGHT!! Luckily, we were already planning on seeing some homes with him that had been on the market for a while. We added the two new homes to the list and headed out for another evening of house hunting. We found one that seemed a little different than all the others. One that stood out compared to all the rest. Unfortunately, Mark was planning on doing an open house on that exact house in the morning, and we were wanting to see more homes. Mark said no problem, he was here for us. He told the other realtor he couldn't do the open house and we went and looked at more homes the following day. That night and the following day really solidified it for us-we wanted THAT house!
Were we ready? Was this really happening? Should we go for it?
SO MANY thoughts ran through our head. We ended up deciding to go for it. We put in our offer, and they accepted.Then it was a bit of a waiting game. Everything went pretty smooth (mostly thanks to our amazing realtor, Mark). We closed yesterday!!! We are officially homeowners!

Last night we went down to our OWN home and started cleaning. We plan to move this weekend so I should really be spending this time packing things up! But I just had to share with all of you first! No worries, I will post pictures as we get settled!! Wish us luck on a BUSY weekend!

Here's a little teaser of our new home.

We have a pool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (No we will not be living in the half million dollar home you see in the background)...Nevertheless, who wants to come visit?!?

Bookshelf on a dime

Remember when I said I promised I would post pictures of the bookshelf I was working on when I got it finished? Well that didn't happen. Sorry, it has been done for quite some time so today is the day I will share with you!

As I said before I feel like stencils are super in right now so I thought I would jump on the band wagon. I found one I loved at Hobby Lobby and three gold Sharpies to fill it in. Then I just got after it.



I'm wishing I could have taken the back off, but it just wouldn't work. It got a little tough getting to all of the corners.

It took a while. A long while...But remember, I was just sitting at home waiting. So why not? I even got Matt to help out a little bit. Maybe because this is what our bedroom looked like for three weeks.

It was a little difficult to the bathroom, but it was all in the name of a good craft so I was totally willing to deal with it!

Top half-done!

 Once I finished the top half, I put a lot of the books back in which helped a lot!
Yay!!! Then the bottom half got finished!



And here is the finished product!

 It was such a fun project, and only cost me about $6!! You can't beat that! And it was super fun and very therapeutic! Can't wait to start the next project :)
Have a great weekend friends!

A Wedding and Harvest

As most of you know, this past weekend we took another trip back to Nebraska. Several months ago when we were making all of our travel arrangements we knew we wanted to come home in October. I knew I would be ready to see my family again, and Matt wanted to help with harvest. My trip last month was not originally planned, but I am beginning to like this being home once a month. We will see how often that actually happens. But for now, it is great to catch up with everyone. I think I see more people now than when I lived there or even came home from Kansas City. I told my family it's a win-win. We get to live in a really cool place and see our family quite often!

As soon as we got there Matt was ready to head out to the farm. Look at my little farmer!

Friday, Matt was out farming again and my whole family all ended up in the same place at once. This hardly ever happens so I felt I should document it!

It was a bonus we were back for Homecoming. I have not been to too many of them since I graduated from high school. The cheerleaders danced at halftime.  

They did a great job! Sorry, night pictures don't always look so great on my phone :)

After the game they announced homecoming royalty. Congrats to all the winners!

After the game we came home for wedding cake. My mom has been graciously storing ours for nearly two years. She suggested that since Matt and I were both in town at the same time we should maybe eat it.  

I was so impressed-it was actually still really good. I only had one tiny, tiny piece at our wedding so I do not really remember what it tasted like. I think it might have been better the second time around!

Nolan thought it would be awesome to take a picture through another phone so this is how it turned out...

After our cake we headed up to the Homecoming dance real quick to watch them re-crown the royalty. 

Saturday morning Atlee had a volleyball tournament. It was another bonus I got to watch her play! Did we not pick the perfect weekend to come back?

That night we headed to my friend Skylar's wedding. It was gorgeous and so great to see tons of old friends. Here is the wreath I made for them! Hope they like it :)

After the wedding we met up with some old Southwestern friends. Of course I wish it could have been longer, but it was great to catch up. Hope we get to see them again soon!

Now it is back to the grind of work. Tomorrow our office is closed, but I have filled my agenda with my busiest day yet. Wish me luck!

Balloon Fiesta

First of all, what is going on?? I haven't posted ANYTHING  since last Sunday!! Holy cow, I am deeply sorry! I guess this is what happens when you actually start working.. My apologies to all of you, my friends. I haven't even done a Tasty Tuesday! I may have to temporarily halt new installments of Tasty Tuesday because 1) I don't have time to post new recipes and 2) I don't have time to try new recipes and (okay, that's mostly why) and 3) We mostly eat lettuce wraps now! (KIND OF kidding on that, but we would if we could). 

Also a quick shout out to the most amazing dad ever-he had a big birthday yesterday. Happy birthday to my favorite dad in the whole world!

Let's get to the weekend. Friday after work we took off for Albuquerque for the Balloon Fiesta. A HUGE thank you to my great aunt and uncle James and Vivian for letting us stay at their place. They gave us tons of ideas for cool things to do. Saturday morning we went for breakfast at The Frontier. Matt had eaten there once before and was raving about it all week. I must say, I didn't want to get my hopes up. How good could it REALLY be???



SSSSOOOOOO GOOOOOOODD!!!!! YUM!! We enjoyed breakfast burritos and the best cinnamon roll ever! It was right across the street from the University of New Mexico so after breakfast we headed over to take a walk around campus.

It was one of those perfect fall days. I was feeling all sorts of nostalgic and was reminded of our undergrad days. It was so peaceful walking through campus breathing in the crisp fresh air.

Selfie by the pond! 

Then we were headed for Old Town and found a Farmer's Market so we decided to stop.

This guy was frying chili peppers in the middle of the park.

It was fun seeing all the New Mexico products for sale. Did I mention the weather was PERFECT!?

Then we headed down to Old Town. Holy cuteness!! They had tons of fun shops we meandered through for hours.

I think I could have stayed there for three days and still not seen everything. They had beautiful art galleries and tons of fun touristy shops. We found a couple souvenirs I cannot wait to decorate with!

They also had live music throughout the courtyards. This girl was AMAZING!

Then we headed back to James and Vivian's to relax and hang out for a little while. I spent multiple hours outside just hanging out enjoying the weather.

We watched the Huskers then got to bed early to be ready for the next day. Sunday the alarm went off at 4 am (which was 3 our time)! We headed out the door to get to the balloon festival early. (I can't even say bright and early because the sun was not even up for a couple hours after we got there).

There were so many cars at the mall when we got on the bus. You would think it was Black Friday.

Morning bus selfie! I was FREEZING!!!

We made it to the Balloon Park! (See, still completely dark!)

'

We walked around to check out the booths and some more art galleries while we were waiting for the balloons.

Sadly, it was too windy for the balloons to go up in the air... :( They were hoping to do a static display, but while we waited (again I was still freezing) we went over to the Hot Air Balloon Museum. 

Fast fact: The first balloon flight in the United States occurred on January 9, 1973 by Jean-Pierre Blanchard.

While we were in the museum, the officials decided they could put some of the balloons up. We headed over to walk through and see some of them while they were up in the air.

We saw some cool looking balloons!

I cannot imagine how long it took to fill these up!

After the balloons went down they had some other entertainment for us 

(like this guy driving around),

plus a car show,

and a chainsaw artist competition.

Even though we didn't get to see any of the balloons up in the air, we enjoyed the experience. I guess that gives us a good excuse to go back next year, right? It was still morning so we headed to The Range for breakfast (another recommendation from a friend). Again, wonderful! Then we headed back to Arizona to catch back up and be ready for the week. Hope you all have a great week!