Happy Birthday!

1 year.

It has been a full year since we moved into our home. Honestly, we are so in love with our house...and just keep falling more and more. Yes, there are leaks in the basement, crazy wiring throughout the house, odd layouts, and more...but the truth is, we love each and every quirk of our house (even if our wallets don't love it as much). Our biggest desire was to have a house of our own. We had made a personal goal to own a home before starting a family and amazingly enough we found out we were having Eden right when we were due to close....although it was extended out another month. We have so many ideas for this house and are still anxious to get started on many of the projects we have in mind. So, in honor of our houses' birthday (he is turning 81 this year!), we thought we would do a list of our 2011 goals. Yes, I realize that most people did these in conjunction with the New Year, but as usual I just can't be a rule follower. Some of these goals may be more personal than house related, but I figured they might as well all go together because I want them to.


House Goals:
- Pull out closet carpet
- Paint trim in hallway, living room, and (hopefully) the master bedroom
- Paint the hallway
- Put up a gallery wall in the hallway
- Frost bathroom window to allow for more light
- Put in new window treatments in the living room and master bedroom
- Organize the basement (updating storage areas)
- Take updated house photos
- Reno the one and only bathroom (fingers crossed that we can do this in '11)
- Rewire the entire house (this one is scary...and expensive...)

Yard Goals:
- New bark dust where needed
- Plant LOTS of tulip bulbs
- Make and start a compost bin
- Do round 2 of a veggie garden
- Add sunshine loving plants to our front porch (everything we put there fries in the sun)
- Make the backyard more "user friendly"

Now we don't just have house and yard goals, we also have some personal and blog goals as well. I feel these tie in nicely to this post since our blog was created to chronicle the good, bad, and ugly of our lives as we looked for and purchased our first home. Our personal goals are important because many of them are geared towards making us better stewards of our money and in turn using money that we have saved to make this house what we envision it to be (and we have a LOT of safety concerns in this house).




Blog Goals:
- We want to GROW! Not necessarily in readership (although we wouldn't mind that), but we just want to expand what we are doing. Basically this is just a challenge to ourselves to push beyond our comfort level which will make us have more fun and exciting things to share on here. Oh and make Josh write something every once in awhile. 
- Name change. This one we are contemplating. We still like our name, but I kind of came up with it in 5 seconds (our last name makes people think of birds and birds have nests...done). We have one particular one in mind, but still aren't confident that its the direction we want to go. Sometimes I like changes, sometimes I don't...not sure which one I am leaning towards at the moment. 
- Make it pretty (my words, not Josh's). I really want to push myself to learn coding a bit more and make the blog more user friendly and useful. It makes me want to pee my pants to do something so scary, but thankfully I have two pairs of pants so I can always change... ;)




Personal Goals:
- Live healthier lives (we are already doing this! Loving the P90 Beachbody system)
- Keep daily cleaning routines
- Learn to TRUST God (we did this in making the big leap to have me stay at home)
- Be social. Josh is social, I am not. We want to have friends over so this is my push to do so.
- Become a crazy coupon lady. Okay, not really, but I have been couponing for a few months now and I am really loving all of the savings. Don't worry, I am not hardcore or anything.
- Do a spending freeze (we are in the midst of one that we started in January and will last through February)
- Become Dave Ramsey. We don't want to be him, but we would love to be like him.
- Organize. Our lives. Our home. 
- Grow Josh's real estate business. 
- Continue going outside of my comfort zone in photography (Mallory). See photo below, I just submitted it to be considered for a website...YIKES...I must be sleep deprived thinking that I even have a chance...

So, there you have it. A big giant post celebrating our house and a whole lot of things that we need to get started on or 2011 will just make me feel like a big giant failure. Let's not have that happen mmmm'kay? 


I do plan on doing a video tour of our house one of these days. The thing is, I REALLY don't want you all to know that my house is messy. No seriously, it is giving me hives thinking of you traipsing around my house looking at all my piles of stuff and thinking, "man, Mallory...you got yourself one dirty house. What kind of woman are you anyway!?" See, that is just not something I want to hear. I like to pretend that I am clean so exposing myself would hurt my imagination immensely. 


Happy Birthday House...we LOVE you! 




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