Yard Work

Guess what?  We finished our garden boxes!  And by "we" I mean Dan finished our garden boxes (thanks, Dan!).  I helped him carry them into the yard though.  Unfortunately I didn't take a picture.  I can't wait to get some vegetables growing in them!

I also planted some flowers!  Surprisingly they are still alive.  I put them in pots because our soil is kind of horrible.  I thought they'd have a better chance at surviving in a pot.  So far so good.

My pansies

They add some color to our front porch.

Last week I potted pansies and this week I did some tulips (which are not picture).  I'm now thinking I want to put up a garden box in the window.  As you can tell, I love house projects!

Parade of Homes

In my last post I said I would blog about the Parade of Homes.  The Parade is my most favorite event in St. George!  I have been looking forward to it ever since last year's Parade.  This year I was even lucky enough to work at the Parade!  I worked as a host for Ivory Homes (same people who built our house), meaning I stood at the door and marked off people's tickets.  I had fun and enjoyed talking to lots of people and answering their questions (which most of the time I didn't even know the answer).  I was surprised to meet people from across the country who had come just to see the Parade.  I wish I took more pictures of the Ivory Home, because their decor was one of my favorites.  Unfortunately the only picture I snapped was of the bathroom because I liked the wallpaper and I'm considering a rectangle sink for our basement bathroom...

Loved the wallpaper!  What do you think... rectangle sink?

I took a few more pictures but they are mostly for Dan and I to get some ideas on what to do in our basement and backyard.  Here are a couple of fun things we saw though (neither of which we will be doing in our home)....

A 50s diner in a house?!  Odd, but picture worthy.  I personally wouldn't want it.

My dream fire pit!

Dan and I are planning on putting a fire pit in our backyard but I'm afraid it won't be nearly this awesome.  If we had the space though, this is what I'd want.  We are excited to have a fire pit though, s'more party at our house! :)

We loved the Parade this year.  We saw 25 of the 28 homes and got lots of great ideas for our home!  Can't wait til next year.

Weekend Projects

It seems lately our weekends consist of a trip to Home Depot.  When I was younger I used to hate going to Home Depot!  Just ask my Dad, I thought it was the worst store ever.  But now that we are buying things for our own house, it's much more fun.

Our most recent project has been building garden boxes.  It's not quite time to plant, but we figured we'd get a head start and build them.  So far we have built one and have the wood to build two more.

Before shot.

After!

The garden boxes were our project 2 weeks ago.  This past week on Friday it almost hit 70 degrees here.  It felt so good and I was so ready to be outside!  So our Saturday project was working on our back deck to make it a little more hang out friendly.

I have been eyeing these outdoor chairs at Home Depot since last year.  Now that we have the outdoor space for them I told Dan it was time to get them!  I love the bright colors.  I am already envisioning myself reading on the back deck in my new chair.

My new chair!

Dan in his chair.

We also got a grill for our back deck and we're so excited to use it!  It's something we've been wanting for a while, we were just waiting for the right deal to come along.  I told Dan it was his Valentines present (and then proceeded to buy him other presents, because that's just how I am).

We were so ready for warmer weather and what happens this week?  Rain!  Looks like I won't be reading in my chair too soon.  Oh well, still enjoying the rain, something we don't see very often here!

House Tour

A friend of mine asked me to put up pictures of our house now that it is all decorated.  So the other day after I cleaned I snapped a few to share.  Sorry no pictures of the kitchen yet (I hadn't quite gotten to the dishes that day) and no pictures of the master bedroom because we are still waiting for the headboard we ordered a month ago to arrive.  I also didn't take pictures of the study because it's really not all that exciting :).

Dining area.  Thanks to my Dad (and Dan) for hanging up the curtains and for suggesting we get a big clock.  I wasn't sure what to put on that wall, but my Dad solved the problem!  

Entryway.  Not much to say about it.  Just added a few little decorations.   

View of the living room.  I know the wall looks blank but we are still trying to decide what to hang up.  I was thinking a nice big picture of the St. George temple and Dan was thinking a nice big picture of us (one of those canvas pictures).  Thoughts?

Closer view of the bookshelf with a lot of my fall/halloween decorations.  I love this bookshelf!  Thank you Ikea.  

View of the living room from the dining room, featuring the green lamp my mom got me as our house warming gift.  Thanks mom!  She and I found it at T.J. Maxx.  By the way, if you have never been to the St. George T.J. Maxx, you need to check it out!  I never liked T.J. Maxx until I moved here... now I love it!  

Guest bedroom.  Come and visit! :) 

 Guest bathroom.  

Hall/stairs.  I took this picture to show how awesome Dan is.  I asked him to hang our established sign above the stairs and he did!  Everyone always asks me how we got it up there, and I tell them it's great to have a tall husband (and a ladder, of course).

working together

Today our grass got it's first haircut!

Here is Dan hard at work:

We decided to get a push lawn mower to be eco-friendly :) oh and our yard is not very big!  We did joke about getting a riding lawn mower just because it would be funny!

This is pretty much our life lately.  Go to work during the week and spend time working and cleaning our house on Saturdays.  I feel we have been to Home Depot more in the past month than I have ever been in my whole life!  It's actually been a lot of fun working on our house together.

I really don't have any other updates except that tonight I went to the Relief Society Broadcast and really enjoyed it.  I loved President Uchtdorf's talk.  He had so many great things to say!  My mom also sang in the choir and I saw her two times on the big screen!  It was a lot of fun seeing a familiar face up there :).  Great job singing, Mom!  You sounded beautiful!

Moving In

I can't believe it's been over 2 weeks since I last blogged!  This moving thing has really kept me busy.  I guess we also just barely got internet in our house yesterday too.  Anyway, we are still alive and we are just loving our new house!  We are almost all the way unpacked.  It has been a lot of fun decorating our new home and just living in it.  We love our neighborhood and so far the ward has been really friendly and welcoming too.

We were lucky enough to have my parents down here the weekend we moved.  They helped us so much!  My mom helped me unpack and clean while my Dad put up our blinds, put knobs on all of the cabinets, and many other various tasks I had for him (it's nice having a very handy Dad!)  We definitely kept them busy while they were here, but we also had some fun too.  The men went golfing while my mom and I went shopping (which by the way, we found the cutest lamp for our living room!).  It was fun to have a shopping buddy!  We also went to the Little Mermaid at Tuacahn with them.  It was awesome!  I was really impressed with the special effects.  They did all of these cool water things to make it feel like the show was really underwater.  We had such a great time with my parents and are so grateful for their help!

Once we're all unpacked I'll be sure to put up pictures of the house.  I need to get unpacked because I really want to decorate for Fall!  I know my decorations are somewhere :)

House!!!

I posted pictures of our house on facebook, but some of my readers aren't on facebook, so I wanted to post them here too (some of these pics I didn't even post on f-book, actually).  We are seriously just SO happy with how our house turned out.  It is exactly what we wanted.  I honestly can't say enough good things about Ivory Homes.  We had such a great building experience (I've heard building a home can be a horrible experience, but it was great for us)!  I don't know about Ivory in Northern Utah, but we have loved working with them down here.

I call it "our" house, but technically we close on Tuesday.  Then it will really be ours.  We are so excited to move!  I think I'm most excited to no longer share walls and to have a garage.  I am really done carrying 10 bags of groceries up 20 stairs each week!

Now for the pics...

Master Bath... can't wait to try out the garden tub!

Other side of the master bath with the little toilet room.

Master bedroom.

The great room & stairs leading to our unfinished basement.

Kitchen!  Probably my most favorite room :) fridge will be there Friday.

Kitchen/Dining area.

Entry way.

Guest bath.

Guest bedroom.

Can't believe 3 months ago this used to be an empty dirt lot!

Side of the house & fence.

Backyard.  Our yard is the nice flat part :)

I will post pictures once we're all moved in and it's all decorated too.  I just ordered a new bedspread I'm excited about.  It's going to be such a busy but great week!

Life is Good!

Everyone has been asking how my new job is going and it's good!  So far I am really liking it.  Last week I helped out in the special ed. classroom b/c the kindergartners had not started yet.  I had a lot of fun working with this one 3rd grade girl.  She is really cute and we have become good friends.  I will still get to see her every day because I am always her lunch buddy.  On Friday we even had a princess party with the 2 girls that were there.  We watched "Tangled", made necklaces, and colored Disney Princesses.  The whole time I was thinking "I actually get paid for this???"

Today I spent my time in the kindergarten with the kids I will be helping from now on.  I help one little boy in a wheelchair get around the classroom and the rest of my time is spent as an aid helping out the whole class.  The day went well and I'm excited to get to know the kindergartners better.

I am loving working just part time!  The hours are really fabulous.  It's so nice to be able to come home and relax (and sometimes clean & run errands).  It is exactly what I wanted.  I can't wait til we move and I can walk to work!

As for our house, it is going to be done this week!  We checked it out yesterday and the inside is basically finished.  They are now working on the landscaping.  We do our final walk through on Friday to make sure everything is how we want it.  We are getting so excited!  I think our plan is to move Labor Day weekend.

I know I already posted about it, but we had a great anniversary!  The restaurant we went to was awesome.  We loved it.  It's a steakhouse but they also have fondue.  Dan got steak and I got shrimp and scallops.  We cooked them on these 700 degree rocks at our table.  It's neat because every bite is warm and you can cook your food to the doneness that you want.  We also tried the chocolate fondue and loved it!  I think next time I just want to go for the fondue :).

Dan cooking his steak.

Yummy fondue!!!

We've been super busy lately, actually.  Just this past weekend we had some good friends stay with us and we all went to Zions together.  It was an awesome trip!  I will have to post pictures soon.  Other than that we are just focusing on working and moving.

3rd week of August

A few people have been asking me how our house is coming along... so... here is the latest picture:

It looks like it's made of concrete!  But... I guess that's what they put on it before the stucco.  I heard today they were putting the tile in, which I would really like to see.  Most of the home building process has gone along smoothly, except for the tile!  We've had to choose tile 3 times now.  For some reason every tile we choose gets discontinued by the manufacturer.  It's not Ivory's fault, but we did tell them to find a new tile place.  Although the tile has worked to our advantage, our realtor has felt bad about the little tile fiasco so he upgraded our tile to better tile for free (and by better that means bigger... 14x14 instead of 12x12 or something).

As of now the house is scheduled to be finished the 3rd week of August.  Which also happens to be the week of our anniversary.  Sounds like a great anniversary gift to me!  :)

In other news, I applied for a job and interviewed last week.  It's at the school right down the street from our new house.  I'm hoping to get it so I can just walk to work!  The interview went well, but I'm still waiting to hear from the principal.  I would basically be the reading specialist for the school.  I would work 3 hours a day with the lowest readers in the school (mostly grades k-3).  Sounds perfect to me :).  I would follow a reading program they have, but still have the flexibility to do some of my own lesson planning.  Let's hope it works out!

the latest

here's how things are coming along....

We just took this photo a few days ago.  We had a meeting because we have reached the half way point and Ivory wanted to make sure things were exactly how we wanted.  Things are on schedule to be done end of August.  Hooray!  

p.s... sorry all the house posts!  i will be posting other things shortly...

It looks like a house!

Ok here is another blog post about our house!  I just can't believe how fast it is being built.  Every time we visit it always seems like they have made so much progress!  It is really an exciting process to watch.  Here is the picture we took this evening, it is starting to look like a real house!

Front!

Back! 

You may have already seen the pics on facebook, we usually take them on Dan's phone and then he uploads them right away.  But some people don't have facebook, so here are the latest pictures!

Now that it is all framed it's fun to see exactly how big it will be.  It seems much bigger than when they just had lines spray painted on the dirt!  Our backyard seems huge now too.  Our realtor told us he thinks it is the biggest yard in the whole community.  Of course some of the yards are extremely small... so relatively speaking it's large.  Today Dan worked out the fence they will be putting in too.  So once that is all in, then we'll really be able to tell the size of our yard.

I am getting so excited for our house to be done!  And then you all can come visit :)

Making progress

We just got back to St. George tonight.  I was in Northern Utah for about 10 days.  When we got back the first thing I wanted to do was see the progress of our house!  Last I saw it, it was a bunch of dirt.  They had dug out parts of it, but not much was there.  Today I was surprised to see this:

Front corner

Back view

I feel like they are really moving fast!  It is so exciting!  These pictures are of what will be the basement.  I have a feeling the next few months you may get sick of seeing all of the house pictures I post.  But I really want to document the process.  Looks like we are on schedule to finish in August :).  Can't wait!

Guess What?

We started our house!  Ok actually we just took the large deposit check over last night so that they can start building (it's always kinda scary writing large checks like that).  Now they are going to spray paint exactly where our house will sit on the lot and get our approval and then they can start building for real!  I feel like we have been waiting forever.  I am so ready to move into that non-existent house already!  Anyway, real building should take place starting next week.  You had better believe I am going to take lots of pictures of the progress. 

And you know what else?  Dan and I have been using those new tennis rackets like crazy!  We played 3 time last week and once this week.  We'll probably go again tonight.  It is so much fun!  I think it's the first sport I can actually win every once in a while.  Maybe that's why i like it :).  Dan is too good at every other sport.  Luckily with this sport we are both beginners so it's almost equal (he's still a little better).   

Lastly, my parents are visiting this weekend.  Yay! :)

Just a bunch of random

So... i want to blog but i really don't have much to say.  Here are a few random things going on in our life:

For those wondering, my ear is doing a lot better.  However, i think the infection has spread to my eye.  Gross, i know.  But my eye is all red/puffy... I no longer feel pain in my ear though, which is a very good thing.  It's still a little plugged up though.

While I was sick I didn't get much done.  However, i decided to start writing the story down of how Dan & i met.  I've never really kept a journal but i wanted to make sure i recorded our story so i could share it with our kids one day.   Plus i didn't want to forget the details (which i'm sure i've already forgotten some).  So last week i laid on the couch and typed up the story.  I have just gotten to our engagement and it's already 20 pages long!  It's been fun to remember though :). 

I loved conference this past weekend.  It was just what i needed to hear.  i tried to go into it this year with some gospel/life questions.  it's amazing how much more you get out of it when you are really seeking an answer to a specific question.  I did find answers to some of the questions that have been on my mind lately, so that was exciting. 

We have picked everything for our future house and have our final meeting tomorrow to get it all ready to be built.  Just today we picked out granite for the bathrooms.  We are pretty excited to finish all of the details tomorrow and then start building next month!  I seriously cannot wait.  I wish we could move there today! 

In between conference sessions on Saturday we checked out the Tuacahn Saturday Market.  It was fun but we decided there were way too many jewelry booths.  We were hoping for some produce but i think it's a little too early in the year for local produce. 

I never blogged about when my sister, Jannifer and her husband, Danny came to visit.  Probably because i forgot to take pictures!  Anyway, they came 2 weeks ago and we had lots of fun!  Even though it rained (hey, it was snowing in northern utah).  We went to the dinosaur museum and geocaching.  It was lots of fun, thanks for the visit Janni & Danny!

We are looking forward to more visitors this month... my brother & sister in law and their 4 cute boys are coming next week for spring break.  I've been looking up lots of fun things for kids to do in the area.  They will be the first to try out the swimming pool here (which just opened April 1).  We are excited to see them!  After they visit, Dan's parents are headed our way.  We sure love visitors.  When we first moved here I was worried we would never see family, but I think we see family more now than we did before!  That's the fabulous thing about living in a popular vacation destination town :) 

Parade of Homes

This past weekend Dan and I went to the St. George Parade of Homes and had such an awesome time!!!  First off, thank you to my sister in law Becky & her parents for getting us tickets.  I was a little unsure if Dan would have fun walking through houses, but we both loved it!  In fact, Dan told me he wants to attend next year :).  Yay!  There were 26 houses on the list and we made it to 15 of them.  Hopefully next year we will get to see all of them.  The houses ranged in price from $150,000 to $4.5 million.  We loved seeing the million dollar homes b/c how often do you get to go in one of those???  It was also fun to see some of the cheaper homes and get ideas on how we want to decorate our home.  It really helped because after parade of homes we have completely changed the color scheme for the home we are building.  Anyway I took lots of pictures of the things I loved... here are a few.... even though it's all way cooler in person:

Cute window seat.  We are going to have one of these in our home, so I wanted to get a picture of how to make it look cute!

Wall of windows & awesome fireplace in 3 million dollar home.

Pool @ 3 million dollar home.

I just love the subway tiles in the shower.  We are considering using them in our future home.

I just thought the white sectional was pretty cute.

Amazing kitchen in 4 million dollar home.

Pretty cool back splash.  It looks woven, but they are all little tiles!

Really cool sinks.

I thought this back splash would be cute in a kids bathroom.

Shower in the 4 million home.  This only shows half of it.  It had beautiful glass and about 20 shower heads.  You enter on one side and exit on a different side.  Best shower I have ever seen!

 Ok that's all.  The homes were all beautiful and had really unique features and details.  It was also fun because in each garage there are vendors and Dan bought me a Scentsy.  I have to say, I am pretty impressed!  The kind we got smells so good and fills our whole apartment. 

We are already excited to go next year and we have even discussed going to the Parade of Homes in Utah County in June!  That's how much we loved it :).