Mother's Day 2015

Yesterday was Mother's Day! Our day was filled with lots of love and laughs. We started the day off bright and early with 8 a.m. church (we may or may not have been 30 minutes late....) with Andy's parents. After church, Andy, David and I went over to their house to open gifts and make breakfast together. We cooked up some pancakes, waffles, sausage and fruit salad. It was a really great meal! However, we didn't have much time to savor our food because we were hurrying to make it to a 12:15 movie. We  quickly piled into my car and headed over to the theater for the matinee movie. The movie was not my favorite ( I don't care much for Will Farrell movies), but all of us being together was nice. After that Andy's mom and I went to a mother-daughter Pure Barre class while the guys took naps and got started on dinner. Once we got home from our workout, we wrapped the night up with some salad and spaghetti on the back patio. All in all, it was such an enjoyable day!

The best part of Mother's Day was seeing how excited Andy's mom got when she opened her presents. For almost a year she had been asking for photos from our weddings. We finally delivered on that request!!

See below for the cutest photos of her opening her gifts!

Time flies - An update on life in KCMO!

Since I have moved to Kansas City time seems to fly by even faster than usual. I can't believe January 8th marks our ten month anniversary and ten months in KCMO. I have grown to love Kansas City! A few of my favorite things about living in this new city would have to be:

1. The amazing weather! Actually having a few fall months was a new and fun thing for Andy and I. We enjoyed burning wood and sitting by the fire! 

2.) Our lovely home that the Lord has provided! We have truly loved having a space that we can call our own. After so many years of doing projects on our family members' home it is nice to finally get to work on our own. We have enjoyed remodeling the bathroom, living room floors and painting the entire house. We hope we can continue to do more renovations down the road. 

3.) Exploring new bike routes! During the summer, Andy and I had more time to bike and we really had a blast exploring new bike routes. We even went on a group ride once! We are looking forward to biking again come the spring.

4.) Making new friends! It has been such a blessing to have made new friends rather quickly. I have enjoyed meeting Andy's school friends and getting to know them. I have also made some new friends at work. It's nice not to feel so alone in a new city.

5.) My fantastic new job! I really love my new job. I have been so much busier than I was at my other job and working hard has been so fulfilling. I am learning more and more about retail, flowers and marketing. The way I got this job is such a God thing. He paved the way and I am thankful!

There are so many more things that I love that I quickly want to mention.... less traffic, working directly across the street from Starbucks, my office, our huge backyard, the farmer's market, gardening and leaves....lot's of them!


I am going to try and do a better job of blogging the next year. Stay tuned!

Bye bye bye Honda, hello MDX!

The last time I had a brand-new car I was 15 years old and didn't even have a driver's license. I remember I had to wait three months until I could drive my Honda Civic. It sat in my driveway for what felt it like forever before I could legally drive it. What I will remember most about my Honda is the cool, digital dashboard, the way one piece of my hair would always swirl up an blow straight out the sunroof, and of course the loud engine that sounded like a plane taking off when I would accelerate!

Flash forward to nine years later and I am at the Acura dealership falling in love with a 2008 MDX. It took an entire weekend to find this beauty, but when I did it was love at first site. Well to be honest it was more love at first site for Andy and I needed a little convincing on the color of the car before I knew it was the one! Nevertheless, it is totally awesome and is equipped with handsfree bluetooth so that I can chat with both hands on the wheel while I drive.

DIY chair makeover

There are three rules you need to abide by when doing a do-it-yourself  project…

The first rule is that you need to have all the necessary tools, secondly you need to have enough time, and the thirdly you need to have enough motivation to get the job done! Too many times before I have learned this the hard way, but on this particular DIY project I managed to get it right!

Remodeling the chair was inexpensive and only took a few hours! Here is what you'll need:

-Sandpaper
-A paintbrush
-Tinted wood stain of your color choice

I would recommend letting each coat dry before applying a new one. I would also suggest taking A lot of time to properly send your chair. This should help the wood stain absorbed to its fullest.


Good luck and happy DIY-ing!

Living Room Makeover

Anybody who knows Andy and I pretty well knows that we LOVE doing projects together. Whether it's mowing a lawn, selling a bike, fixing a broken dishwasher, remodeling a bathroom, you name it we have fun doing it because we are working on it together.

One cool thing about the remodeling of our living room was that it is one of the first times we were working on a project that was actually for US and for OUR HOUSE! 

We have wanted to redo the living room floor ever since we laid eyes on it. It was something that not only we wanted to do, but really needed to do. We were never able to use the front door to our house without tracking in mud and leaves. Now that we have wood floors we can wear our shoes in the house, walk through the front door and we never have to jump on our guests to take their shoes off before entering anymore!

Project Facts:

Total Days: 3 (we got lazy....after all it was Spring break/honeymoon)

Total Cost: $350 + $15 for Pappa Johns (it is tradition to order a PJ pizza when we do a project)

Tasks: Andy did the floors and I did the painting and snack-making.

Before.

Before.

Adding wall paint.

What was under the carpet.

Just getting started. 

Andy, doing all the hard stuff. 

1/4 of the way through!

Almost done.

Final Product!!!