Happy Tuesday!

Yesterday marked my 1 year anniversary and one of my favorite holidays, Halloween. We have this whole week off in honor of our one year anniversary! Friday we had dinner with Donnamae and David at the Brickhouse. That is their thing, every Friday they try and go. Its fun. We got the same waitress 2 weeks in a row which isn't suprising because its a small place. Donna and David were telling her we had ice cream cake back at their house so David and Chris took her a piece! I thought that was really sweet of them.

Saturday was a typical day. College Football and grocery shopping. Oh! We finally ordered our garage door opener. So far since we purchased this home in January we've added backyard landscaping, a fence, and now an automatic garage door opener, which was totally on sale so we got a nicer one than originally expected. I'm hoping to get photos printed and hung on the walls this week. It is supposed to snow so I think home improvement is a nice way to spend it.

Anyway Chris finally made his guiness stew again this past Sunday. OMG to die for yum! That and his Guiness Chocolate Cake but he hasn't made anymore recently. Sigh

Donnamae and David came over for the Broncos game and stew. We lost sadly, very sadly. But we they are trying to rebuid the team and I heard 3 years is what they expect it to take. I married into a family that are Broncos fans and it rubbed off on me!

Chris also made his breakfast potatoes on Sunday. I really have to start working out again its getting to that season that is all about food!

I finally finished the halloween decoration. I hung up an orange lighted spider web and bats in the front window and put a singing skeleton on the front porch, he sings "Bad to the Bone"

We also attempted to carve pumpkins. Chris picked an advanced level carving though and it collapsed on him.. : ( I picked the easiest one in the book a cat silhouette. LOL

From 2011

We were not home for trick or treaters but we definitely got some as our candy bowl was empty when we got home..

But let me back track. We tried to do a little of Halloween and a little of our Anniversary. We've talked about it and if we are home next year we may go out for our Anniversary the weekend before as Halloween is Wednesday, we shall see. So after Carving the pumpkins we did Zombie movies, than we cut into the top tier of our wedding cake and let me tell you, it may seem a silly tradition but the cake does freeze well. If it didn't I don't think they'd have this tradition. The trick is to get it in a freezer as soon as you can and to defrost it still wrapped up in the plastic wrap and all. Because our cake was iced with Buttercream it did start to crack after we thawed it but considering its moved between 2 freezers and been frozen for a year I think it came out pretty good.

From 2011

On our wedding day we barely got a bite of cake things went so quick so this is the first time we got to sit down and enjoy it. Our original cake was 3 tiered and had baileys chocolate cake for the bottom and top tier and so I was happy to get to taste that as I'm a chocolate fan. The cake was still delish after a year but I never realized how sweet the icing is! Oh well. We still have most of it down stairs. I don't think it will last too much longer. ; )

Anyway we went to The Melting Pot for our Anniversary. We've been talking about going for years and we finally made it. They wished us a happy anniversary. We did their Big Night Out which just changed to the All American (I think that was what it is called). It had a beer cheese fondue which was yummy to start, we then got salads, then the main course, lobster tail, chicken, pork, sirloin, shrimp and veggies.. yum! We went with the Chocolate S'mores Fondue for desert. Yum! It was 2 1/2 hours of indulgence. But for a special occasion like this it was so worth it. We have a fondue set too so we are going to use what we learned to start enjoying fondue at home. ^_^

For our anniversary I am getting a kindle but it isn't released until the end of Nov. So I'm just going to wait for it. Chris is getting a few video games he wants. Mainly the collectors edition of Uncharted 3 because it comes with a belt buckle! Haha. I love my husband.

From 2011

Hope everyone else had a wonderful and safe Halloween!

Cold and Rainy Monday

Good Morning Folks!

We are just two weeks away from Halloween/my 1 year Anniversary now!

Yesterday we spent the day with my parents at the Botanical Garden in Denver. It was a lovely day, not too hot not too cold and the sun was out. I took a bunch of photos and I spent about an hour going through them this morning. I added my favorites to my 2011 album. I've been seriously thinking of how I can fund my hobby of photography. I love it so dearly but its expensive! I need a Macro Lense. I had so many chances to take great close up shots there but my lenses just aren't good enough for the kind of vision I had. I realized that if I keep taking the pictures I love maybe I can try and sell the ones I am most proud of. I'm still a long way from feeling confident enough to try but I'm going to keep learning and someday soon I hope to let all of you know when I open my store online!

Aside from the people and animals in my life there are only 3 things I really love, first photography, second books/reading, and third baking. If I could magically combined all three into a job I'd be the happiest girl in the world. ^_^ Maybe when I'm older Chris and I can go all out and open a coffee shop. We can display photography from local artists and have a reading area where people can swap books, and of course I could make yummy treats to go with our coffees. Its a dream I'm willing to dream for. I'll add it to my "if we win the lottery" list.

Anyway here is the album again for 2011!

2011

October? Already?

My First year of marriage has flown by. In mere weeks we will be celebrating our 1 year Anniversary at the Melting Pot. I am so excited! This year has mainly been about spending time with family and friends and working on our house. Even though we bought a brand new home there is SO much to do!! Home Depot has become a home away from home this year.

We built Achilles a kennel using some of the extra space in our 3 Car garage. Which we then had to reinforce as he bore a hole in the wire. >_<

We had some drama getting our fence. We were ripped off and the guy has disappeared! He is wanted by the police here in Colorado. I hope they get him! Live and learn I guess. Chris, my Dad, and my Father-in-Law all came together and built our Fence this past July. It turned out better than had the company we hired done the work. Our neighbor had them and they've had to replace several posts already themselves.

Friends and Family are expanding. Our friends Woody and Shannon are having their first baby in December! I'm so excited for them! My cousin Emily is have her 4th child a baby boy anytime now.

Halloween is right around the corner. We've started decorating the house and we plan on getting pumpkins next weekend.

The fall weather has finally arrived! Its been a really hot year so far and this weekend it dropped into the 50s!

A friend of mine from High School has moved to Colorado Springs. Its nice having more friends so close. Her husband finally is here from Germany. They were living there for the past 4 years. Her husband is in the airforce. We got to visit her and her kids a few weeks ago. Now we have to make plans to meet her hubby! I'm looking forward to it.

Anyway lots to do!

Here is a photo update on my year..

2011

I keep thinking..

.. That I will blog more and keep failing miserably. Ah well.. its a nice quiet day here at work so I decided to take a stab at it. I keep feeling like Im about to get sick. I've felt like this the past few days. Achilles heard my alarm go off and when I didn't immediately get up this morning he came over and started licking my hand.

I have become addicted to Twitter over the past two days again. It comes in waves.

I am so happy today is almost over having issues focusing now on really anything. The house is good, life is good, winter is still fighting for some sort of wintery weather. Really just wanted to stop in and say hi..

oh yes and share some photos for 2011..


Achilles is getting so big now!


My lovely kitchen.. although we got the microwave installed so it would be over the stove.. and that would be my lovely husband Chris over there..


Our new couch! Suuuper comfy


The living/sitting room area now has furniture! Bwahahahahaha


Mmmm Calzone.. I know it doesn't look exactly like a calzone but its delish..
italian sausage, brocoli, ricota cheese and provolone.. its actually a Weight Watchers recipe.. but so yummy.. ^_^

Aaaaaannyway I can't think of anything else to share.. nearly done with work and then I can go home and curl up and watch movies.. yay!

Life or something like it..

I've learned a lot about buying a house over the last month, first never say you are closing until you are in the office signing paperwork! Our close got rescheduled 3 times in one week. We finally closed at 2pm on January 21st. We officially moved in Januarty 22nd.

I am loving having my own house. It is way more than enough room for Chris and I. I feel like we can start a family here. We have our fur babies Higgins and Achilles living with us, and we have all kinds of plans in store for the next few years.

The second thing that I've learned is that you can't pick your neighbors. The morning of the 22nd. We loaded up my jeep and then I headed to the house to start unloading while Chris and Randy loaded up Randy's car. We had actually dropped off everything from the storage unit the night before and Chris and left his card there over night in our garage. So it is about 8:30 in the morning on a Saturday and this older woman who happens to be our neighbor comes over and introduces herself, cannot for the life of me remember her name.. anyway she asked me if we were going to build a fence and I quote said "If you do you know you have to pay for that part of the fence right?" pointing to the side of her fence that runs next our yard. I just tried to stay civil and polite and said we hadn't decided yet on fence. When she left I proceeded to text Chris and let him know.

I could not believe the audacity of some people. Let me make this clear it is not written ANYWHERE that if you build a fence and your neighbor has a fence that you HAVE to pay them anything. Her fence was up before we signed the paper work purchasing the house. It went up the day after we signed our contract saying we wanted to buy the property. We have no legal requirement to pay her anything and since she came over like that and immediately said we do we have no intention on paying her a dime. Had she come over after she saw us putting up a fence and discussed it with us maybe we'd help re-imburse her something but not now.

Chris promises to take care of her when we do have our fence built, we have every intention to build a fence because we have a 90lb dog that we currently shuffle to Chris's mom's house and then back so we don't have to worry about him destroying our house out of boredom.

In happier news my lovely, wonderful, amazing parents bought us a sectional for our house. It is what they call a birthday/adoption day gift. It was way more than I expected. When we saw them for my birthday they said they would buy us a piece of furniture. I expected an end table or coffee table, maaaybe a sectional or some chairs for our dining table (a table they are lending to us for the time being). We are so happy and blessed and lucky. This gift allows us to have enough seating in our house not to make it feel like we live there. It should arrive tomorrow so we have to vaccum the living room and move the green couches up to said living room, then vaccum the family room and make sure its prepped for the sectional. I think Chris is going to put up the only set of permanent blinds we've bought so far.

Even as big and empty as our house seems to me at times it still already feels like home.

Oh on the plus side it has a 5 star energy rating based on the 2006 requirements. We also plan on recycling as much as we can. We just got a few more of the reusable bags to take with us when we go shopping. I think we have 4 now. I figure we'll get a few more each time. Go Green! Haha -_^

So many changes and it is only January!

So once upon a time Chris and I had a deadline in our head saying we'd have money saved up by Feb for a down payment for an FHA loan and so we'd start looking in January for a house. We were going to the store a few weeks ago before the Bronco's game to help his Mom and Step-dad do some grocery shopping and we drove past a new housing development that we've been interested in but has always been just out of our price range.. until that day.. they were now listed as "Starting in the 170's" so we stopped by the model home - no one was there. It was Sunday and the Bronco's were playing so we headed home and unloaded the groceries and watched sadly as they lost..

The next day was of course Monday and that is Chris and I went to see if anyone was there. The office was still empty. Chris took the number though and called the guy. We went back an hour later and we got to see a few of the homes they had finished. We walked out of there having decided on getting one of these homes. We found out about a USDA Rural Development loan that Weld County is covered under which allows us to get the home without a down payment and no mortgage insurance like what is required for an FHA that ups your mortgage by like 100 bucks a month for so many years.. We crunched the numbers and went back a few days later and signed a contract. We officially close on Jan 14th, exactly 1 month after we first signed the contract. I'm really really excited.

Mead, Colorado is a small town. There is no way getting around that fact but I like it! They have good school system and its a really friendly community. Chris, his uncle Randy and I all had lunch at one of the 2 restaurants they have. Yes that is right folks there is only 2 places to eat in this town! It is a farming community. They do not even have a grocery store. The Brick House BBQ has good food and the waitress was really nice. She welcomed us to the neighborhood and chastised Randy since he only lives about 2 miles away and has never been there before.

We are going to own a house! That is what I can't get past.. I am really giddy when ever I think about it. We had to buy a refrigerator and washer/dryer and we got a new bed..king sized... all thanks to the king sized bed we got to use on our honeymoon.. lol.. but on the plus this means we have a spare bed for the guest room! We have a 3 bedroom house now so we have plenty of room to start a family. Chris and I call this our starter home.. we agreed our next one will be our dream home.

I need to start getting ready for the day.. My birthday is on Tuesday.. I can't believe I'm going to be 28.. I am starting to feel old.. in honor of said birthday and since we didn't get to see them on Christmas we are going out to lunch today with my Aunt Paula, my parents, and my cousin Emily and her family.

It is also snowing so we need to get gas in my Jeep and stuff before we go.

Hope everyone had a safe and happy New Year!! I am feeling really good about 2011 so far! My mom pointed out that my birthday falls on 1-11-11 this year. I hope that means good luck!