Sad times at Ikea

Last time I went to Ikea I fell in love with this duvet cover:

I had this other bedding I was going to use in our guest room (the green room) and come to find out it was Full instead of Queen (oops!). Perfect opportunity to buy this bedding I love! Well I drove all the way to Ikea to find out that they are out of it and won't have it for 15 weeks! That's almost 4 months! I left Ikea with a few other things I needed, love that place, and came home to do some research on where I could get this comforter. I had hoped the Ikea in Minnesota, Michigan, Massachusetts, Oregon or Washington would have it and I could get a friend to buy it and mail it to me. Turns out that every Ikea does not have this item in stock. Next stop - Ebay. I found it! Paid for it and everything. Then I got an email from the person saying they didn't have it and they were sorry they didn't take their post down. They sent me my money back. It's a sad day for me and Ikea. Now I have to wait 4 months to have the guest room I am envisioning. And I am not a patient person.. :)

After the duvet cover fiasco, I decided to get the kitchen spic & span. I even took before and after pictures to show you. However, I currently cannot find the cord or reader to get the pictures off of my camera. Oh well. It looks good and feels good to have a whole room [mostly] clean around here!! And here I would like to say thanks again to Scott H who saved all of my pictures on my camera!! They all deleted themselves for some reason and he got them back for me :) It is much appreciated.

Hope you had a good Monday!

Settling in

We are moved in! There are a few odds and ends left at the apartment but we will get those soon. Paying movers, though expensive, was definitely the way to go. Money well spent! It took the movers 4 hours. We are still unpacking and settling in but I did get to cook yesterday and was able to semi-easily find clothes this morning! Yesterday I made another batch of granola bars (this one had coconut, white chocolate and sliced almonds - yum!). For dinner I made white chicken chili with cheesy cornbread muffins. Finally feeling a little bit back to normal :)

We had to have the Comcast guy out yesterday because we couldn't get our internet to work. I signed up about a month ago to take advantage of a great deal they had going on but didn't get to test the internet until we had the computer over here on Thursday. Didn't work of course. It turns out that it was turned on but that it only went to one outlet in our house. We have at least 6 cable outlets in our house and apparently only one of them is hooked up. It was the outlet in our den.. not the office like we needed. So Matt and I spent a few hours last night relocating that cable. Luckily we did not sign up for cable television as well or we would have to do some serious work on those wires to get the tv into our den. However, according to the Comcast guy yesterday, whoever turned us on in the first place had given us cable and the guy yesterday turned it off! Oh well. At least we now have internet :) even if it is with my enemy Comcast..

Matt's family came over the first night and brought us dinner and wine. It was much appreciated because we were famished and weren't going to try to cook and too busy to stop to get dinner!

Today I have to get some shopping done as well as continuing to unpack and clean. Let's hope the rain stays away. Yesterday was so beautiful but today is not looking like a repeat. Hope you enjoyed the weather yesterday!

New beginnings and old memories

Two years ago tomorrow, April 16, 2007, you may not remember what happened, but I'll never forget. I was at work, Bluelinx, just working away the morning. I checked CNN online like I do almost every day. Top news story was the shooting at Virginia Tech. I think at this point only the first two people had been killed and the massacre had not begun. It saddened me but I didn't think too much on it after I had closed it. After all, I only knew one person that went to VT, so what are the odds? Come to find out that night that my good friend, Ryan Clark, was one of those first two.

Ryan and I met our freshmen year in high school, we were both baritone players in the band. We grew so close over those four years. I used to drive him all over town and to so many band functions. I even started referring to my car as "our car." Ryan was absolutely hilarious. I'll never forget his laugh or his good heart. Every summer Ryan volunteered at "Camp Free to be me" which is a camp for handicapped/mentally challenged children. I have so many happy memories of Ryan and a blog post doesn't feel like it does my memories any justice but I thought you all should know what an amazing person he was and how my life was changed two years ago by losing him. I didn't see him as much after high school as I would have liked but I always knew he was there and would always have that smile for me. You can read more about Ryan here.

Here is a picture from high school of our friends in the band room. Ryan is front and center:

So tomorrow is a day to remember Ryan and a day for new beginnings as Matt and I move into our new home. Say a little prayer tomorrow for all of the families of the Virginia Tech victims.

Just when you think you're starting to settle in..

Life gets more interesting as it goes on. Things are changing around here. For the better? Probably. I've never been great with change but since I know that about myself I try to look for the positive in everything. Stay tuned throughout the summer to hear about all the excitement! (No I'm not pregnant.. that seems to be the first thing people ask you when you are married and say things like this, haha).

One big change coming this week: Moving Day! Moving day is officially Thursday.. officially 3 days away. I can't believe it - we have had the house for 2+ months, I thought this day would never come. The more time I spend in our house, the more I can't wait to live there. It is so darn cute. Pictures will come as we get settled I promise. Better yet, you can come see it for yourself when we have a housewarming party :) I am aiming for sometime in June but I may stretch it out and have it on my birthday in July just for fun. Matt and I have been boxing up everything we can at the apartment and trucking it over. Including taking the paintings off of the walls in the apartment. That makes it look so empty! We are moving everything that is not furniture and the movers will be handling the furniture (praise the Lord!).

My mom and sister came up last week to check out the house and help us out. It was fun finally getting to show it off to my family! We got a lot done. The house is now move-in ready. There is more to be done of course but we are on a break until we move in. Also, in case you need a basement/water update, Matt has had 4 companies come to the house to give us quotes and it looks like we will be going with Trotter who comes recommended, is the cheapest, and who Matt felt like knew their stuff the best.

Easter was spent with Matt singing in all 3 services at church. I attended the 9:45 and then went for coffee with Andy and Crystal before we all headed to lunch at the Spaghetti Warehouse. Afterwards Matt and I worked on the house of course. Except we actually came home early and I went running and Matt went kayaking! It was such a beautiful day. So here is a story for you: I went running around 5:30 and Matt was headed out shortly after to kayak. He was supposed to call me to come pick him up either from the take out point that I knew or the one I didn't know how to get to. Well 6:45 rolls around and I am watching the Masters and starting to get worried. I repeatedly call Matt's phone only to be sent to voicemail each time. I head over to the take out point I know of and he is nowhere in site. I called Andy to find out how to get to the other place. On my way, I finally reach Matt who had of course dropped his phone in the water and just now gotten it working (7:30). Because I am a worrier, this was all terrible for me and of course I started crying when he answered the phone. He could not call me from someone else's phone because he didn't know my phone number. So what have we done since then? Recited my phone number over and over again. I do not want this to happen again!

I have also been looking over our "budget." Like I think I mentioned before, we are doing well with what we have budgeted but everything else comes out to more than I thought we would spend (let's just say Home Depot should be very glad we are a loyal customer). Trying not to freak out.. it'll settle down just like everything else, right??

The next week will be spent unpacking, canceling apartment utilities, trying to feel settled for the first time in 2+ months, etc etc!!

1 payment down, 359 to go

Happy Friday! We've all made it through another week. It has been a pretty productive one for Matt and I. And I did take pictures! I'll get to those in a minute.

A few exciting things happened this week. The first being that we paid our first mortgage payment! And to top that off, we paid our last rent payment (hopefully ever..)! Not fun that we had to pay both in one month overlapping but it is very much worth it. We are also currently doubling up on bills but that will end in less than a month. And the other exciting thing from this week is that Emili and I registered for our marathon!! We are officially running the Marine Marathon in Washington, DC in October. Emili sent me an article today from the website that listed famous people that have run the marathon and I'm proud to say we'll be running along where greats like Oprah and Al Gore have run before us. (Sense the sarcasm? Although I do love Oprah.)

I feel like lately all we have been doing is spending money but that is what I expected with the house. The good news though is that we have been sticking to our monthly budget, exclusive of house expenses. It feels great to know that! So one day it will go back to normal. About that water in the basement.. Matt had a guy come today and look at it and they quoted us $20k to do all kinds of things to the house. ha. Definitely not going with that guy and definitely figuring out something different to do. I think we are going to install french drains ourselves. I don't necessarily mind the extra work and extra money that will need to be spent for the basement, I am just sad that Matt won't have his music room right away like we had hoped.

In other exciting news, Andy and Crystal (Matt's brother and his fiancee), are moving back to Atlanta tomorrow! We are so excited to have them back down here with us. I am excited to get back into wedding mode and help Crystal with whatever she needs.

Ok time for some pictures. I took these to show you the painting, curtains and blinds. Just pretend like the rest of the mess in all the pictures isn't there because it won't be by the time we move in in 2 weeks.

Remember this picture? I posted it a few posts ago. No more primed walls!:

This is the view from the kitchen into the living room. Notice blinds on all the windows, as well as curtains on the french doors. Those are super cute curtains but you can't really see them in this picture. (also, if you see brush strokes on the blue wall on the top that is only because that part is still wet in this picture, it will dry correctly)
This picture shows more of the kitchen color as well as where we put the new piece of furniture (in the back there, with the green bag on it)
This shocking picture is our guest room. It's hard to capture this green with my camera correctly. You just have to trust me that it looks good and that I have a plan in here!

This is the master bedroom color along with the roman shade there. We are also hanging curtains on the french doors you can see to the right. You may also wonder about those sinks.. had to move them out of the bathroom to paint so this is their temporary home.
And finally, this is also the master bedroom. This is the inset part of the wall that we painted the darker color from the living room. I love the contrast! This wall faces the wall with the roman shade from the previous picture.

I will post more pictures after the move and after we are settled so that you will believe me that it will all look awesome :)

Hope you have a great weekend, we have a pretty good one lined up!!