New House Bathroom

After three months of waiting for our floors to arrive and not having a door on the bathroom, they finally came and our bathroom is done!  

This bathroom was by far the worst part of our house when we moved in.  We had it quarantined until my dad could help us rip everything out of it and start from scratch.  Luckily Brady's parents live down the road and have plenty of showers to share with us.  

Once again these are the realtors photos from before we moved in:

This is once we started working on it.

We had lots of awesome helpers!

And now we're done!!!

Kitchen photos will be next.

Christmas Time

I'm feeling extra Christmasy today so here are a few photos of our December

We put up pretty Christmas lights on our new house, found Santa's reindeer at Thanksgiving Pointe, walked around Temple Square and played in the snow.

Welcome Winter!

I don't know what it is about the first snow, but nothing gets me more excited.  So naturally Saturday morning when I awoke to big fat snowflakes coming down I immediately made Brady promise we could go up the canyon with the puppies.  I made some hot chocolate, pulled on my Sorel's, and put the puppies in the car.

New House

Three years ago Brady and I tried buying this cute little house in Lindon, but we were about one day too late on our offer and the people before us got it.  It was a lot more complicated than that, including tearful phone calls from the crazy woman selling the house, but we'll stick with the simpler version.

This year at the end of June the house came back up for sale and we jumped on it!  Those three years were pretty rough on the house, but we could still see the potential.  We put our current home up for sale and made an offer on this one as soon as possible.  By July 4th we were under contract for both houses.  On August 13th we moved in.  This is what it looked like...

I don't think I've ever been so overwhelmed in my life.  I new we had our work cut out for us when we walked through it a month before, but I was obviously looking through rose colored glasses.  These past two months have been the most physically and emotionally exhausting times I can remember, but we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel!  If it wasn't for Brady's motivation and persistence we would probably be living in a hotel by now.  The first couple of days included many trips to the dump, tree trimming, grass watering, fence building, floor installing and waaaaay too much painting.  I'm still sore, but hey, it paid off!

Obviously we're not done with everything, but our Laundry/Stair area are, as well as the family room so here you go...

Sorry for the blurry before pictures, I had to take these from our inspection report because I did a horrible job of taking befores.

Ignore the blanket covering the couch, we had a small dog problem...

 This laundry room would be ok if you had some doors to close it off from the rest of the world, but since it's right out in the open we had to make it a little prettier.  Oh and that yummy kitty litter was scattered all over under the stairs, GROSS.  P.S. aren't indoor plants just the best?  They make my world go round.

Thanks for reading!

THE END

Crystal Cove, California

This is a little delayed, but I am finally getting around to posting about Crystal Cove!  This was probably my favorite part of our road trip, mostly for sentimental reasons. 

Here's a brief history of Crystal Cove:  In the early 1900s a bunch of people started building beach houses out of whatever they could find, mostly wood that drifted to shore after a cargo ship had wrecked out at sea.  The cottages are certainly not perfect, but they have oh so much charm.  My family got in on one of these cottages when I was a baby and we continued to visit until 2000 when the government finally kicked everyone out and boarded up the cottages.  Pretty depressing. 

For years we were terrified that they would all be torn down and replaced with some fancy resort, but in 2004 they began renovating cottages!  In the summer of 2006 the first few were finished and open. My sister and I got to stay in one that first summer.  It was definitely different than before (a lot more people) but still amazing.  Every year it gets harder and harder to reserve these cottages.  They have to be reserved six months in advance and thousands of people try every month so it feels like winning the lottery when you finally get one.  My family stayed again in the summer of 2007 but we haven't been able to reserve one since.  

Because Brady and I couldn't reserve a cottage for our trip we showed up early the morning of and by some miracle they had a cancelation and we got a cottage!  It was so fun showing him this little part of my childhood.  We ate smoked albacore and fresh bread from The Crab Cooker (tradition), walked to the little cave that for some reason we had to see every time we stayed there, played in the tide pools, and of course watched the sunset.  Our cottage had the most AMAZING little sun room that overlooked the ocean with a little twin bed that we squished together so we could hear the ocean while we went to sleep.  

I cannot wait until our beach house is finished and we can stay in it! I also hope one day you can stay there too and feel the amazingness you feel in this little hidden cove.  Oh and don't tell anyone about it or we'll never be able to reserve one!

My old beach house ^