Spare Room Stuff

The week after we moved in my mom came out to spend the weekend and help me paint and decorate. We had 48 hours together and we worked non stop. We ended up getting 3 rooms and the hallway completely finished. It was amazing!

One of the rooms we finished was the spare room. It had the same dirty white walls as the kitchen. There were holes ALL over the room from the previous owners screwing screws in the wall to hang up there pictures (no nails for these people).

Every wall got a fresh coat of mustard/gold paint. We decorated in blacks to create a contrasting but inviting color combination. I LOVE this room. I took all the black decorations from my apartment and re purposed them in this room.

This spare room is perfect for us. It's relaxing and refreshing and ALWAYS ready for guests (hint hint)

Kitchen Stuff

I had spent SO much time thinking about decorating my house. Long before we ever signed the paperwork I had plans. Big plans. So the minute we walked through our front doors I started the decorating. EVERY wall in my house got a fresh coat of paint and some major upgrades.

We started in the kitchen. The walls were a VERY DIRTY white with pink blinds on all the windows and pink counter tops. I love pink but this kitchen made me sad.

We painted one wall chocolate brown and repainted the doors white. The 2 remaining walls we installed a chair rail and painted the upper section cream and the bottom we painted the same chocolate brown. We accented with reds and whites. LOVE this room!

We painted the backsplash in the kitchen and above the counters the same cream color. We plan on redoing the kitchen with granite countertops soon but I couldn't live with pink countertops. I picked up a laminate paint from Home Depot and turned the counters into a tan. It will do for now.

I love my kitchen. It turned out exactly the way I wanted.

Anne Stuff

I think the thing that excited us the most about buying a home is that we would be able to have a dog. We've talked about the kind of puppy we wanted and we had spent a lot of Saturdays at pet stores. We agreed on a Pomeranian. They are adorable puppies and they are tiny dogs. Exactly what we wanted. Before we found out we got out house we had planned a trip to Disneyland. We were scheduled to leave 2 weeks after we moved into our house. We decided we would wait until after Disneyland before we bought a puppy. Unfortunately I am the least patient person in the world. When I have an idea in my mind I want it NOW. The puppy was no exception. A few days before we moved into the house I found an ad on KSL for Pomeranian/Yorkie puppies and sent the link to Jack. He fell in love and told me if they still had them after he got off work we would at least go look at them. I called the lady and we planned to meet at the Walmart parking lot to check them out. She said she had 1 little girl left we could look at.

On the way to see the puppy Jack and I decided to come up with a signal. If we loved the puppy we would scratch the right side of our face. If we didn't we would scratch the left side. That way we would know what the other was thinking without discussing it in front of the previous owners.

Unfortunately as soon as I stepped out of the car and saw this little girl bundled up in her pink blanket, I completely forgot all about the signal and turned to Jack and said we HAVE to have her. She was absolutely perfect. 5 minutes later we were a new family of 3.

We named her Anne. She gets her name from the Arrested Development character Anne (we have an arrangement with friends that all of our pets will have Arrested Development names). We immediately took her to meet her cousin Lucky at Sam and Tiffany's. Everyone loved her. She spent her first night at the apartment with us and we couldn't get enough. Everyone who came to help us move had to play with this little fluff ball. She LOVES people and attention.

I realize she's not the tiny puppy she was when we got her, so I'll give a few stats on her current development. Anne just turned 5 months on July 2nd.

She loves: watermelon, new people, kids, belly rubs, playing fetch, empty toilet paper rolls, car rides, going on runs with Dad and sitting under the lawn furniture just chilling with mom.

She hates: getting her nails clipped, baths, being ignored and grapes.

She's a very happy girl. She never barks and is so much fun to have around. I don't know what we would do without her.

House Stuff

*this post has a lot of dates and random information no one will care about--

it's mostly for journaling purposes.

At the end of November 2010 Jack and I started looking at houses online. At this point it was more just lusting after homes than really considering making the purchase. After finding a few we really liked we met with a Realtor and looked at a home in Lehi. It was a foreclosure in a newer area and just walking through the house got us both excited. We were ready for our own home. After our first Realtor stopped returning our phone calls we met someone who was as gung ho about finding our home as we were (we heart you Realtor Phil). We may or may not have picked him because his name was Phil.... and he was a Realtor... just like Modern Family. We just lucked out that he was a fabulous Realtor too.

For the next few months we looked at homes EVERY WEEKEND. And usually throughout the week too. I got online first thing every morning and looked at all the new listings. We spent hours after work driving around looking at all the houses we liked online. Phil got us in to look at any home we were even remotely interested in. We put in a few offers and were always outbid. We really wanted to stay in Orem but were willing to move to most of the nearby cities if we could get into something we liked. I was more willing to travel then Jack was. To be honest I reached a point (probably one week after we started looking) where I would have moved into an outhouse if it could be my own. I was NOT patient.

The last week of January we went to look at a home in Orem that looked perfect. It was a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom house tucked into an adorable culdesac. We were in love. It had an unfinished basement with plenty of room to grow and they were asking 140,000 for it. We took Jack's brother and his wife with us to look at it and we all loved it. On January 24th we put in an offer at 135,000 but we all knew there was no way we would get this house. It was a short sale home and we knew those took months and had to go through MANY people before you would even know if your offer was accepted. The sellers accepted our offer within a couple of days and we had hope. We waited and kept looking. We found a few more homes we liked and put in more offers.

At the end of February we looked at a house in North Orem not far from our dream home. It needed a lot of work but the price was significantly lower than our loan amount so we were interested. We put in an offer and then started playing the back and forth game with the bank. On February 25th the bank came back and told us there were multiple offer in on the home and if we were still interested we would need to up our bid and resend them all out paperwork. And we only had 2 hours to do it. Realtor Phil worked like crazy putting all the paperwork together and sending it over to us. Jack was at work so I signed everything and as soon as he got home with the car we sped back to his work so we could fax everything back to our Realtor. We were 30 minutes away from the deadline.

While Jack was faxing all of our paperwork I got a call from our Realtor. I answered and quickly assured him we had just faxed everything over to him so he should be waiting for it. He started making light conversation about how our day was going (this was weird because for the past 2 hours we had had many stressed conversations). He asked me if our weekend would be better if we knew we were moving into our house. I laughed and said yes, assuming he was implying that we wanted to know if we got the current house we were looking. He said good and told me he had just heard from the Realtor on our "dream home" and the bank accepted our offer. There was only one condition. We had to move in in 1 month. I think I told him to shut up a few times and squealed when Jack got back in the car. We had a house!!!

We drove past our "home" on the way back to our apartment and took stalkish pictures. It was the best news we had had in years and we were beyond excited! We called our families and posted it on facebook. It was hard to believe in 1 month we would be moving in to our OWN home. It was perfect. The next month was stressful. Dealing with Lenders, Realtors, Title Companies-- It did not run smoothly. But on March 25th the papers were signed, the boxes were packed and we moved into our home. And we've loved every second of it.

Christmas Stuff

I feel like I've abandoned my blog. In all honesty I still think about it.... and we never officialy "broke up" so technically I suppose I can come back to it whenever I want. It's like a needy girlfriend. It lets me ignore it and treat it horribly but it's still there when I need her. =) My one reader will be happy I started blogging again. (shout out to you Kristin) I started to forget what I had done this year so I figured I better get back to journaling our journeys.

So lets go back to the main events that have happened since I took my break. Christmas 2010!

We heart Christmas at the Ady household. Jack informed me the other day that Echo Lake and Christmas are the best parts of the year and it was our job to over do them as much as possible. We're not cool though so overdoing Christmas just means we make gingerbread houses and eat food alone. yay!

Christmas Letter

Dear Family & Friends,

This year has been an incredibly new, fresh and exciting year. For someone out there, I bet.

We started this year as we do every year; with January. The first month had some good news that came with it; Jack got to quit his terrible, terrible job at Teleperformance USA (a French company, by the way.) My computer is underlining that business name with the red squiggly that means a word is spelled wrong, but to me it looks like the awful glow of hell fire. That place is kind of a nightmare.

Jack moved to SecurityMetrics, a very nice company (started by a Canadian) where he actually doesn't wish he would get fired every day. Seriously, it is a great job which we are very grateful for, and we've actually got a few friends in town thanks to it.

Dayna continued her difficult labor of interacting with small children across the street. Technically, her title is a “title one teachers aid,” but I think it should be called “spending time with people with similar interests.” Go team Jacob!

In April we decided to take a vacation down in heave-- I mean, San Diego. San Diego is the end of the road. Literally. I was baffled the whole time there why we don't all try to cram ourselves in there. It was so pretty and fun that we were sad it was only a two day trip. Still, we petted dolphins, chased giant seagulls as they stole a bag of Sour Patch Kids from inside Dayna's purse, and ate fresh Swordfish tacos in gorgeous Coronado Island.

On our drive home, we detoured in less-luxurious Nowhere, California. That's where our tire exploded at 80 mph in the windiest place on the planet, and then it took over three hours for the masterminds at Walmart to change a tire in a deserted store on a Sunday.

Summer brought some variety for Dayna. She was lucky enough to get a nice minimum wage job that involved daily drama and attempted stabbings. This was very helpful in letting Dayna know that when she said “I hate six year olds” what she was really saying to her teacher’s aid job was “I love you.”

Later in the summer we took the long drive north to beautiful Echo Lake, Montana, where my Ady Grandparents graciously let us visit each year. I felt like this year, the trip really showed us that money truly doesn't buy happiness. Just kidding, of course it does. Money buys a wave runner, and so far that's as happy as any human has ever been without having to repent later. Wave runners are seriously awesome, although they unfortunately get approximately 35 feet to the gallon. We love money!

Since then we've basically just been working. We're both super excited to see what we get for Christmas, because when Jesus said “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” we take that literally, and spend all of our money on material stuff so that we don't risk becoming rich sinners.

We've really had a good year. We're grateful for everyone who helped make that happen, and also grateful for those too far away to do any real damage. Seriously though, if you're reading this it means that you're someone special in our lives. Either that or your reading someone else's emails, and all the way to the end, in which case you could use the pick-me-up, so we love you too.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Halloween Decor Stuff

This year Jack's work was having a costume contest- Jack did a ton of research and came up with this ingenious idea for Wilson from the show Home Improvement. He made the entire thing all by himself. It was hilarious. He didn't win but we saved the fence-- he may continue wearing this every year.

This year Jack really wanted to decorate our house for Halloween. We love Halloween at our house but I was so busy that I kept putting off the decorating. Jack offered to take care of everything so one night after work we found ourselves at the local party stores. They had such fun stuff! We came away spending more than we should have for Halloween but here is the end result. Totally worth it in my books!

*Kim offered to model for us- I'm thinking Americas Next Top Model winner!