Life lately, and such.

Soooo. Hey guys.



I know, I know. I've been a terrible blogger. I don't blog for months, and then I come back and write a huge psycho rant, and then I drop off again. And I miss you! I do, I really do. I've just been SO busy, and SO stressed. But I'm also SO excited, and I want to share everything with you! Here are the things that have been going on with me since I last blogged (many of which I'll go into in more detail later).

I got a new job, y'all!   

Finally. This was a long time coming, and though I'm still serving part-time, it's SUCH a breath of fresh air. I'll definitely go into more details on this later, but long story short, a co-worker and friend of mine opened a high-end coffee shop/cafe, and I'm baking for him. I get to spend all day doing what I love, and when I go home at night (actually, when I go home mid-afternoon - EEEEK!!), it feels as though I haven't worked at all. At worst, it just feels like I'm helping out a friend, and at best, I just get to spend all day doing my hobby. And it allows me to have my evenings open to do whatever I want, which will help a lot when I move, which leads me to...

We're buying a house!!

I cannot even begin to tell you how over the moon excited I am (we are) about this. Our loan hasn't been approved yet, so I'm not going to go into MAJOR details about the house so as not to jinx myself, but save something really weird happening, we are officially under contract and we're well on the way to owning what is pretty much the closest thing to my dream house that we could possibly get at the present time. I've spent pretty much every minute of the past couple months that hasn't been consumed with freaking out (about moving/my new job/money/etc etc etc...) decorating this place in my mind, looking at furniture and textiles online and thinking about paint colors. I'm so ready to jump into home ownership, and am totally okay with spending every free moment for the next year painting and drilling and sanding and installing. I have NO experience with home renovation, but I'm crazy pumped to learn how to DIY. And then when I need a break, I can relax on our WRAP-AROUND PORCH with a nice cold drink. EEK! Okay, obviously more on that later.

We're having a baby!!!

Haha. Just kidding.

But seriously guys, moving is the worst.

I'm sure you're aware. But I feel like everyone's always all, "We never realized HOW MUCH STUFF we have until we go to move!!" Not us. With us, it's more like "We never realized how much GARBAGE we've acquired over the years!" Now that our packing process is well under-way (we're moving Thursday-since we're being kicked out of our apartment, we have to move into Jeff's mom's house for about a month, and then as long as everything goes as planned, our closing date for the new house is June 28th), we're discovering how LITTLE stuff we have. At least stuff worth keeping. When we moved into this apartment (almost FOUR YEARS AGO...yikes.), I had NO decorating sense at all, whatsoever. Not that I really have any idea what I'm doing now, but at least now I kind of know what I like and what I don't like. And then even over time as I developed more of an understanding of what my style is, I didn't really incorporate it into the apartment, because I was so over this place that I just didn't feel like putting any effort into it. By spring of 2012, we had fully decided to buy a house, so I basically stopped buying ANYTHING decorative, because I figured it'd just be easier to wait until we had moved. Less to pack, and what not. Which, yeah...there's less to pack, but there's also a LOT more to buy now. Between major furniture we need to buy, and area rugs (the whole house has hardwood floors-even upstairs), and window treatments, and paint, there's not much room left in our already TOTALLY blown up budget for random decor. It's pretty safe to say at this point that the house will look a little sparse for a while...but I'm okay with that. It'll be a work in progress, and so worth it. But anyway, back to packing...you would not BELIEVE the amount of garbage we've thrown out. About 15 tons of clothes-gone (at first I wanted to donate all of my old clothes, but quickly discovered that I stain and ruin pretty much all of my clothes...plus, our walk-in closet has been damp and leaky for the past couple years and caused water damage to a LOT of stuff that I never unpacked from our last move). ALL of our DVDs and VHS tapes-gone (we NEVER watch DVDs...any movies that we want to watch, we download or stream online) most decorative stuff from the apartment (what little I had)-gone (except for some stuff that I figure I can maybe re-finish and salvage later on). Our couch-gone (we don't have anywhere to put it, and it's pretty much ruined beyond the point where we could sell it on craigslist...though we are keeping the matching loveseat for our office, and I plan on reupholstering it later). A bunch of cheap, damaged furniture (book shelves, etc), gone. In a way, it feels good to purge all of this garbage and kind of start fresh, but from a financial standpoint, it's pretty overwhelming. It HAS made me VERY aware of how important it is to stay organized and take care of your stuff, which will make me a lot more conscious of that stuff at the new house.



Umm...I think that's about it. But starting a new career, getting our finances in order, buying a house, and moving twice in just over a month is a lot to process. So now fingers crossed that everything goes through, and expect a lot of home design posts from me in the near future because I'm excited like a puppy and that's all I want to talk about.