2015 Resolutions

I would have to say I had a pretty successful 2014. I think I stuck to and accomplished all of my goals except one. We bought a house, I completely gave up pop, I started and kept up with this blog, and I really tried to eat out less. I did not however really workout/exercise.

2015 New Year Resolutions 

1. Exercise! holy cow am I out of shape! Its actually quite embarrassing, I'm starting the new year out with a 24 days challenge which is oddly easy for me. I have the opposite problem of most people, I have no problem eating healthy but I can't seem to get in the habit of working out. This is a super cliche goal but whatever, it needs to happen. 

2. GET MARRIED, I'm not sure if this is really a goal because I have to be asked first but I REALLY want this to happen in 2015. I'm not someone who needs a year+ to plan a wedding I just want to me married already!

3. Save and buy a new car.... If you know me you know I drive a POS Nissan and it NEEDS to go. I'm just to cheap to add a car payment to my monthly bills. I should probably get over it and be rid of my little black beater of a car. 

4. Write one blog post a week. If I want to call myself a lifestyle blogger I should at least be doing one post a week. I did good with my 35 posts this last year but I feel like I can do at least one a week. 

5. Start to learn a new language, this might be the least realistic of them all but, HEY, everybody has to have one of those goals. I should probably buy Rosetta Stone or something to get started. 

This is a good list for the year and I hope I can be as successful this year with my Resolutions as I was last year. 

Christmas Time

We had such a great Christmas this year. Michael is such a great helper and made sure I got two trees like I wanted, and all the Christmas lights hung up outside.

I forgot to take pictures of the house until I started to put everything away but I managed to get a few at the last minute.

My all Disney tree was so cute this year, I'm getting more and more Disney ornaments. The tree topper was hanging almost upside and I never fixed it...oppsies.

My cute mantle with fuzzy stockings for me Michael and my kitties (and my not centered TV, but hey we are still moving in and it needs to be hungup)

 

^ My already falling over front room tree. 

 

We Went to my aunts on Christmas Eve and then headed to Michael's sisters house.

On Christmas morning we packed up all the presents and went to my Moms for breakfast and Christmas morning.

Later that we went to Michael's Parents house to finish off the Holiday. 

^Michael and Jalen trying on the Kids Christmas presents.

It was a Perfect holiday and we were beyond spoiled. I can't wait for next year! 

Photo Shoot

This was my 5th Christmas with Michael and every year I want to send out a Christmas Card. I always end up running out of time and/or never finding a good picture to use. This year I was determined to send one out so I scheduled a short photo session. Michael surprisingly went along with the whole thing and was a total trooper while taking pictures. Don't get me wrong he was acting like a goof ball in a lot of the pictures but that's Michael for you.

We got back some great pictures

^^^^See what I mean by goofball, only the girl is suppose to pop their foot haha 

Between posting a few pics on Facebook and me asking for peoples addresses, we got a lot of "are those engagement pictures?" & "are you sending me a wedding invitation" not yet guys...but we will see what 2015 has to bring!

Thanksgiving 2014

I hosted my very first holiday! We have barely been in our house for a month and I decided to host Thanksgiving this year. Michaels Parents were just getting back from  vacation in Arizona and we always have to juggle between my family and his so it just made sense for us to host it.

Me and my mom went shopping for all the food the week before and I surprisingly wasn't stressed. Dinner turned out to be really easy (with a lot of help from my mom), it was more or less getting our house put together. We still definitely have a lot to do on the house but it was perfect to have everyone over and show it off.

I hope hosting thanksgiving becomes a yearly tradition at my house!

Happy Hosts

I pulled the guts out, bried it, cooked it and basted it! Very proud of my first turkey!

 

 Jim cutting the turkey before dinner

 Three tables to fit my 14 guests!

 

 

 

It was a perfect turkey day, we were missing a few sisters but hopefully next year we will have everyone here!

Buying a house

Hey guys... WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!


That's the short story, here is the long one...

We looked at a house in Buckley right as we were starting the pre-approval process and I fell in love with the first one I found. It was not perfect by any means but it looked like a great first home with all the needs I wanted, dining room, three bedrooms plus bonus room, big yard, and in a good neighborhood. Michael Said I was getting too excited to fast and he didn't want to jump on the first house we saw because there were some things wrong with it. It will need a new roof in the next few years, he thought the furnace needed to be replaced, and it is Propane which is pretty spendy. But I loved it and couldn't stop thinking about it.

A couple weeks went by and we had seen nothing we liked go up for sale, everything seemed to be too small, too close to the neighbors, or to expensive for what the house was. It was super discouraging. We keep looking at houses that were higher and higher in price because the price point we set ourselves was just to low for our standards in Bonney Lake. Getting to high in price was starting to scare me and the houses in our price range were nothing great.

I keep thinking about that first house and knew it hadn't sold yet. The price dropped $10,000 and that showed us it was a motivated seller. We decided to put an offer in that day and were sadly disappointed when we found out there was already a buyer who put in an offer. Our real estate agent said he could prepare a back up offer in case the buyer backed out and I said okay but knew we lost the house. A few hours later our real estate agent called and said the buyer had cold feet and backed out before signing the papers! What! this was so exciting, I told him to go ahead with the offer we talked about previously. I called Michael beyond excited to tell him the good news! Michael was stuck in Alabama so it took quite awhile for us both to get the offer signed and sent but I finally did at 8:30pm, The real estate agent said the other back up offer never came in however the original buyer hadn't official backed out yet, the seller hadn't received the rescission letter. I was immediately discouraged and knew this whole thing was to good to be true. I went to bed no longer excited and didn't expect much the next day. At about 11am our real estate agent text me and let me know he hadn't heard anything yet. But then an hour later he called me and said they accepted our offer and didn't counter!!! I was so excited. We got the house $15,000 under original asking and didn't have to pay closing costs!

The inspection went great, there was just alot of little things that Michael said he wanted to fix, not the seller. We countered $7,000 less then the original offer knowing the seller would counter. They didn't counter, they really were a motivated seller!

After the inspection we signed our loan docs and waited (me not so patiently) for the appraisal and underwriting to be done so we could close.

Closing date was set for October 29th, it was perfect. That left us two days to get out of our townhouse, its not a very far move at all and I have been packing all month ensuring we are ready to go. It really didn't cross my mind that we could close after the estimated date. I gave notice to our townhouse and we have to be out by the end of October. It is going to be a stressful few days but so exciting at the same time! I can't believe we did it, we (I) have been working so hard these past few months with both jobs and this goal in mind and it was finally here!

We have been in the house for a little over two weeks now and I LOVE my new home! Michael has been great about letting me decorate, Im sure my taste is a little modern for him but he doesn't seem to mind!

I can't wait to share more about the transformation/decorations in my house!  

Summer Fun

Its been pretty rare for me this summer to make time for having fun. Two jobs was finally getting to me and I needed to take sometime off. We went to Michael's cousins wedding last weekend in Spokane and it was the little get away I needed.

I don't think I'm the best road trip passenger, I ended up watching Ugly Betty on Netflix on the Ipad the last half of the drive. 

We stayed at the Doubletree all on the same floor as Michael's family which was really fun.

The next morning was really great because one of my best friends lives in Spokane so I was able to sneek away for a few hours and have Breakfast with Cass. She drive me around the cutest area in Spokane trying to convince me to move there. I think we are going to the stick to the west side but it was still really fun to think about living life in the same city again!

I spent the rest of the afternoon with this little stud...

 ^^could he get any cuter?!^^

We went to the wedding later that night and had a great time. It was such a nice day and a beautiful wedding. 

There was a pool at the wedding venue and Jalen decided it would be a good idea to jump in...Me and Jessica followed. I still don't know if that was a good or bad idea, but oh well, it was fun!