Pool and a Tailgate

So now we are almost all caught up! This weekend (whoops, this is now two weekends ago) [now three weekends ago, but I just wanted to prove I did have this written-just forgot to publish it!] ended up being busier than expected. We woke up Saturday morning with nothing planned. We went out for a walk and Matt saw some guys playing basketball. He went and played for a while, and when he got back he felt he needed a dip in the pool.





 We do not have a pool heater, and it was the middle of November. I will probably not get in until May. I stayed on the side to work on some blogs and shopped for curtains.



Later that morning, his friend, Graham had texted him telling him they were tailgating for the ASU game. We have been trying to go all season, and it has never worked out. They were playing Notre Dame so it was supposed to be a huge game. 

We decided to take the light rail. Apparently so did everyone else...

Turned out it was pretty smart. Once we got there I saw parking for $40! I wouldn't have even paid that much for my ticket into the game!! We met Matt's friends and were able to hangout with them for a little while before they headed into the game.

We parted ways after the tailgate, they went to the game and we left. We saw the blimp on our walk back!

We went and turned in our keys to our apartment. No turning back now! 

By this point, we had walked well over 5 miles and were super tired. We headed back home and our downtown was having a little event of some sort. It had a really catchy name, but I can't tell you what it is anymore. We walked around (AGAIN with the walking!) for a while to check everything out.

 Following the festival we thought we needed a fire. We bought a desk off Craigslist a few months ago. It was HUGE, heavy and obnoxious. It was really a pain to move. We decided we were so done with that desk. Matt thought we should re-sell it. I said I am never moving that thing again so if anyone bought it there was no way I was going to help them haul it out. So we made a new use of it-firewood. Matt chopped it all up and we are now ceremoniously burning it away on the weekends. It was a great way to end our busy day-s'mores and a fire in our backyard.

I will attempt to get you all caught up again so be looking this week for some new posts!

Homeowners

Do you all love the way I blog? You get nothing for two weeks, and then BAM! I hit you with post after post. It's my life. That is just how things work. 

Last weekend (this is like two weekends ago now) was filled with home projects. And by home projects I mostly mean cleaning. I can officially say our house is CLEANED!!!! Well it probably needs to be dusted again, but for the most part it is clean. Not everything is quite put away, but the rooms have been cleaned. *Confession* We forgot to turn on our gas so that meant we had no hot water for about 5 days. I was getting tired of taking cold showers so Saturday morning we went down to my grandma and grandpa's to use theirs. Matt saw there were going to be garage sales down there so we went to go check it out. I have never been to such an organized community sale before. Check this out!

They pinned each house on the map. There were also descriptions along with the main items sold at each address. Talk about organized! 

Matt also got a ladder from his favorite new shopping place, Craigslist. We were finally able to change the battery in our chirping smoke detector and have a light in our hallway! It's the little things!

After completing all our home stuff in the morning, we felt it was necessary fora little break. Over the past two years, they have built two Mormon temples in the Phoenix valley. We missed our chance to see the one in Gilbert. Once they are dedicated non-Mormons are not allowed in. They just finished this one in North Phoenix. 

I was expecting to get a tour with 20-30 other people. As we were driving over there Matt said we had to park at another lot and get bussed to the temple. Well us and 2,000 others. It was crazy!!!Our tour group didn't really last. We just followed the lineI think we went on the busiest day to date. We got there in the middle of the afternoon and 21,000 people had already been there! Just. That. Day...They did an amazing job organizing everyone. We were able to go just about everywhere in the temple. It was kind of like going through a museum. They didn't allow pictures to be taken inside which was too bad because it is BEAUTIFUL!! If you ever get the chance to tour one, I totally recommend it. 

I can't even remember what we did that Sunday. It must have been a pretty chill day before we got back to the grind of the week.

Have you been keeping up with my mega blogging all week? Here are the links to my other posts from this week:

Click HERE to read about our moving weekend.

And HERE for our quickly put together Halloween Decor.

Halloween Decor

This year was our first Halloween with trick-or-treaters. I was SSOOOO EXCITED!!! I wanted to try to put together a few fall decorations. Here is what I came up with.

I saw a post with some adorable lanterns filled with pumpkins I have been wanting to put together for a really long time!

I found the lamps at IKEA and the fillers at Hobby Lobby.

I plan to change these out seasonally. So simple!

I also threw our pumpkins on the table with a few leftover leaves.

I went to go buy pumpkins to put outside, but as I was looking I saw some fake ones for about the same price. I figured I can maybe use them for a few years. If nothing else, I can keep them out longer this fall than real pumpkins. They totally work for Thanksgiving too! I threw them on a pedestal and called it good. I had to have something so people knew to stop at our place on Friday!

Friday, I made sure I scheduled my appointments to get home early enough to not miss a single trick-or-treater. (I was about two hours early!) As soon as I got home, I opened our front door and got the candy ready!

I also made some festive food for Matt and I to enjoy while we were passing out candy.

I made this simple taco chili found HERE, 

and yummy scarecrow treats, found HERE! 

It was a great first Halloween. I was so happy it landed on a Friday! Hope you all enjoyed your Halloween (I know you have all probably moved on to preparing for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but it is nice to reminisce on the October fun, right?) Talk to you all again soon! :)

Moving weekend

WoW!!! Where has the time gone???? I looked down one day and we were closing on a house. The next time I looked down we have been living here for 2+ weeks!! To say we have been busier than normal is an understatement. So we need to backtrack a little to get you all caught up!

We closed on our house on a Thursday a couple weeks ago. That is a story in and of itself... My car had a recall on it, and I was attending a work conference Thursday and Friday. I had decided a few weeks ago I would get my car fixed on that Thursday since I wouldn't need it all day. My grandparents have a convertible down here so I thought that would work just perfect. The plan was to drop my car off at the dealership before 7:30, Matt would take me down to my grandparents and I could get the convertible and be at the conference by 8. That was the plan...In the meantime Matt decided we needed to close on the house at 7:30 am. I had already said I couldn't be there to close so I had signed everything ahead of time. But this put us in a bit of a time crunch. We got to the dealership around 7:15 and were out of there before 7:30. We got to my grandparents around 7:40, still good for me but Matt was already late. He barely slowed down for me to get out of the car before he raced off to go close. And here is where the problems started. I get into their house, go out to the car, turn the key,and nothing.....NOTHING......No lights, no odometer reading, nothing!! So I call Matt and he comes back to help me jump the car. We worked on that and after about 10 minutes it still wouldn't start. I could absolutely not be late to this conference so I said he would have to take me. Of course this conference was taking place near our apartment which we were not anywhere close to at this time. Matt had been texting our realtor to say he would be late. By this point he gave him a call to give him the low down. Mark the Magnificent swooped in to save the day. His fix to our problem-drive to the title company so Matt can sign the papers and he would drive me to my conference. He is not your average realtor. So we get to the title company and thank goodness it was almost Halloween because they had a bucket of chocolate sitting out-talk about right place at the right time. I was in desperate need! Mark our realtor turned chauffeur was ready and we took off right away to attempt to get me to my conference on time. As we were sitting through rush hour I was tired, upset, embarassed-so many emotions were going through my mind. Then Mark the realtor, turned chauffeur also became my therapist and motivational speaker and was able to calm me down. Not only that-he had gotten me a water and offered to pick me up that evening. What a great guy! And he got me to the conference on time! This was all before 8 am-we were eating problems for breakfast!!

Now, back to the house. That evening, we got right to work. We headed down with a load of stuff. Since it was October I grabbed a couple fall decorations to begin. Here was our first decoration in our house!

This load of things pretty much filled up our apartment. It was barely noticeable in the house.

Our first meal in our first home-CHINESE!!!

Even Matt was excited! Thanks to our bay windows we didn't have to eat on the floor.

We got a Rug Doctor to start our cleaning.

We stayed down at the house pretty late that night. Friday after work we stayed at the apartment boxing more things up. Matt stole the shoes I was wearing and these were the only ones I could find. Great moving shoes, huh? 

Here is the shoe stealer himself taking a few things off the wall.

We had quite the mess!!

Saturday morning we went out for breakfast. Matt's uncle had told us about this place. It was very close to our apartment so we figured we better try it before we moved further away. We ordered another mondo cinnamon roll because we were STILL raving about the one we had in Albuquerque a few weeks back. And just in case there wasn't enough butter on this one, they gave us a side of butter to go with it. Why not, right?

Then we grabbed our U-Haul and started loading. The two of us loaded everything in about 2 1/2 hours. We were beyond tired at this point, and we were just kind of getting started. Then we drove down to the house to start unloading. It was HOT!!!! Like almost 100° hot. And we also have HEAVY furniture. Like really heavy!

We added some things to our pile of stuff.

When I took this picture I felt like we almost had one room complete...Now, it doesn't look that close...It was getting there I guess!

Matt got to work on cleaning the pool. Priorities...

And I got to work on the closet. I saw this idea on Pinterest, and it was a great tip! I didn't have to take all my clothes off the hangers and put them back up again.

Matt chose to not use my tip.

That night we also made our first trip to The Home Depot. Since we had a home we felt it was appropriate.

Sunday morning we woke up tired and sore. I felt like I had done 500 squats, and that probably wasn't too far off! My mom had planned to come down several months ago. It just so happened to be the same weekend we bought our house. Actually back when she bought her plane ticket we hadn't even started looking at houses yet! We went and picked her up and took her to Joe's Farm Grill for lunch. Then we headed back to show her our new house. Matt and I were both ready for a nap but she got right to work. 

We couldn't let her work along, so Matt the monkey climbed up to our cut outs to dust. To say these were dusty is the understatement of the century! I'm pretty sure no one had dusted up there since they painted it.

I think he was enjoying cleaning for the first time ever. Look at our mess!!!

I couldn't stand on my legs any longer so we took a little break. Matt decided to take a dip in the pool.

We got MUCH more done with my mom here. THANKS MOM!!!! I'm pretty sure we would have just laid around and STILL have a mess today. There are still a few things laying out, but we are on the right track. Monday my mom went to work with me. It was nice to have someone with me all day! 

We started hanging things on the wall this past week. It is really starting to feel like a home! Check out my next post for our quickly put together fall decorations.