One Year!

Senior Prom
As 16 year olds, we had no idea where our high school romance would lead us...


Yesterday, Gil and I celebrated one year of marriage!

I can't believe how fast the past year flew by! With all the house stuff going on, we decided to have a low key day together. We have plenty of years ahead of us to go somewhere fun for an anniversary! We went to dinner in RO and then stopped by Astoria Pastry Shop to grab dessert. Gil got the Black Forest Cake and I got a slice of Carrot Cake. I don't even want to think about the calories! We would've eaten the top layer of our wedding cake, but we devoured that while sitting in a traffic jam on the highway on our way back from Grand Rapids after the wedding!

For those of you who were at our wedding, you'll remember that instead of signing a guest book at the reception, we had 5 bottles of wine for you to write messages on.

Last night, we enjoyed our "1st Anniversary Wine" with the cake! Delish!!! Thanks for all of the Happy Anniversary thoughts we received!

And now the best part:

You can't wait to untie that red string, can you??
Here it comes...

Behold the frosting, chocolate, and carrot cake-y goodness.

I wish it was always our anniversary.

Beige or Green?

Gil & I went to pick out new tile for the basement bathroom this morning at Virginia Tile Company, which has a great showroom. We have pretty similar taste so we quickly narrowed our top choices. We like a natural stone look. We left the showroom having chosen a beige tile and we were able to bring home samples. Once I was home and looking through the Casa Dolce Casa tile magazine, I decided that the green looked more bathroom-y.

Casa Dolce Casa

OR

Casa Dolce Casa

Keep in mind, the tile in the basement (currently) looks like this:
American Olean

What do you think...beige or green??

Basement Updates

Our house is now properly plumbed...score! Is "plumbed" the right word? I'm going to go ahead and use it.

As you can tell, our house doesn't look nice yet but at least the piles of sand are gone. As of now, the correct pipes are in the ground and the sand is covering them once again. This week they also put concrete over the sand. The tile and drywall guys came out today to check things out and should begin working by the middle of next week. Originally, they were trying to salvage some of the granite shower and were going to replace it with matching granite. Looks like that's not going to happen, so they are tearing it out and starting from scratch. What does that mean for us? We get to pick out the new materials. Looks like we might be spending our 1st anniversary at the tile store. :)

Don't You Love What We've Done with the Place?

As many of you have heard, we've had some major plumbing problems with the house...mainly the basement. Since we're not able to use the water right now, we've been staying in a hotel the last three nights and were thinking we wouldn't be back in the house until maybe Saturday, but it sounds like we might be able to come back tomorrow!

They began working on the basement on Monday and they've definitely transformed the space. It's not exactly what I was envisioning for the basement, but it has to be done.

Let me refresh your memory...beautiful granite, tiles, you know, a FLOOR.

Before=Lovely


And after, oh the horror...


I've always wanted a trench in my home, haven't you?

Sandcastle anyone?

And the bathroom is another story...
Before=Granite, Wonderful Granite


Hold tight to this image...remember it, savor it, luxuriate in it.
Because all good things come to an end...

I wish, wish, wish these were the before pictures, not the afters!

Moving Day!

I'm sitting in the backyard on our new patio furniture in our perfectly shaded yard. It's so great to have a yard!! We are slowly getting settled in the house. We still don't have a dining room table (should be coming in any day now) and I think we're going to go buy a new couch today. There are still lots of boxes all over, but I will tackle those during my week off. Here are some pictures of our moving day:
Things were dusty from all the work that they did in the house and Gil mopped every floor of the house. Yesterday he went through and steamed all the floors. Wow, I'm glad he felt motivated to do that!

We had some friends over for 4th of July. We hung out in the yard playing lawn games and then went to the fireworks in Clawson. It was a fun day and we successfully had our first overnight guests (even w/o furniture)!! Here's the new patio furniture:

Our friend Clayton (in the middle of the picture) was over for the Fourth and he realized that two of his good friends had moved into the house directly behind ours about three weeks ago. Small world!