A Year in Review: 2013

Today is the last day of the year, so what better day than today to reflect on the past year? I will break down my reflections by month. Ready, go.

January: Not much of significance, except that I remember the first day of 2013...we went to see how the house was coming along.  It was a holiday, it was snowing and temperatures were in the single digits, so we thought for sure no one would be working. Wrong.  There they were, working away. That was neat.

February: We closed on our new house! I finally felt like an adult, and have felt even more so since then. We are just at a different place in our life now, simply because we have the responsibility of owning a home.

March: We moved in to our new home, and I turned 25.  25! The age my mom was when she had me.  Scary. For my birthday Ben & I had dinner, and the next weekend I went out with girls from work because Ben was traveling. (Shocker).  That was one of the best birthdays, we had SO much fun. Paid dearly the next day. =P  The end of March was also our first large family gathering. We had 12 people over for Easter weekend.  It was an absolute blast, I'll never forget how we drank margaritas BEFORE dinner and then forgot half the food. Ahh good times good times.  =)

April: Mom, Dad & I traveled to Alabama (a state I had never been to) to watch the IndyCar race.  Much fun was had, even if Mom took a snooze. During the race.  Haha.  We really did make a bunch of great memories.

May: May was a BIG month, as usual.  Dad & I started off the month by running a half marathon. It was absolutely the hardest thing I have ever done, but definitely something I can be proud of forever. I traveled with my parents some in May, going to Ohio and West Virginia to see family, which is always fun.  The biggest part of May was when Ben's driver got the pole for the Indy 500.  Major life accomplishment, and something Ben can always be proud of! Of course, the end of the month was the actual Indy 500. I went with my Mom, Dad & sister, and we had a great time, despite the fact that it was actually chilly and a little rainy.

June: The highlight of June had to be traveling with Dad to Texas for the IndyCar race there.  We flew out on a Saturday morning, meeting up at the Dallas airport. We went to the racetrack right away and spent the day there, which ended in a 4th place finish for ECR at the race.  It was a really fun day, one that I will remember forever. Of course it was awesome to spend time with Dad, and we've decided to make it a yearly tradition.  We flew home Sunday morning. It was a quick but awesome trip!

July: I threw a bridal shower for my dear friend Amanda. It was such a challenge because the shower itself was in Louisville but I did all the food and planning in Indy, but I loved every minute of it.  I've thrown a ton of showers in my life, and sometimes I wish I could make a business out of throwing showers and wedding planning (maybe I should just be a wedding planner?) because I love it and I've done it so much. Amanda's shower was a smashing success.

August: I decided to go part-time at work, for a couple different reasons.  It was definitely the right thing to do.  I also traveled to Columbus, Oh to see some newly-engaged friends and watch yet another IndyCar race.  Again, great memories. :)

September: I spent most of September enjoying my extra 20 hours/week that I wasn't working.  Did a lot of crafting and cooking!

October: I quit my job completely.  We traveled to Disney World with my parents to see my sister for a week.  What an AWESOME trip that was.  I'll have to chronicle it on a Throwback Thursday.  We had a blast, and it was fantastic to see my sissy! We also got to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters for the first time.  That was fun!

November: We traveled to the Bahamas, St. Thomas, and St. Maarten on the Freedom of the Seas.  Again, an amazing and memory-filled trip that I will have to blog about soon! November was also Thanksgiving. We traveled to Cincinnati to be with Ben's family.  It was a fun time, but I was a bit sad to not be with my parents at all during the weekend. They were up in Cleveland with my Grandma though, so it was good for all.

December: We got a puppy! (Blog coming soon!) We also celebrated our first Christmas in our new house.  We had a fantastic time.  My parents and in-laws came for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  Then, last weekend, we had 23 people over! Our largest gathering yet, and it was a smashing success!


Overall, I have to say that 2013 was a really good year.  It amazes me how many firsts we had, even though we are headed into our 3rd year of marriage. We traveled so much and got to see so many things.  We got to experience the joys of entertaining in our new house, and and we were blessed to spend time with the people that mean the most to us.  2014 has a lot to live up to, but I can't wait to see what comes our way! Peace out 2013!

Updating the Dining Table

Almost 7 weeks ago, I quit my job and it was SO liberating. That's not what this post is about though, I'll save that for another time.  This post is about the first thing I decided to do with my newly acquired free time!

Our dining room table was a wonderful hand-me-down from a dear family friend.  I was so grateful for this thing, and I still am.  It went with me into my first apartment in college, my 2 off campus houses, and my first post-college apartment.  Then it went with me into our first apartment as married people, then our second, and then into our brand new home, where it remains today.  

Needless to say, this table has some memories!  

Some of the memories/highlights that stick out in my mind about this table are:

~Eating "family dinners" around it with my amazing roommates on Deer Park.  We would invite all the S.O.'s over, cook something easy-like tacos or spaghetti-and sit around it while we ate, talked, and mostly laughed. Those were some fun times. 

~Again on Deer Park-we used this table for various drinking games on our Thursday Theme Nights..those were AMAZING nights, and some of my favorite memories of college.

~When I lived at River Oak after college with one of my best buddies and her then-toddler, we had some more "family dinners" and I remember that AB had her own little table in the corner, because she was just a little too short to sit at the table.  While I was sanding, I found some stamps, (in various animal/princess shapes), on the base. I think I can guess where those came from. :)

~After we were married, the table became the one place (in our apartments) where almost everyone could sit for a meal.  (Unless of course there were more than 4 people).  I remember having our parents and various friends over for dinner, and we always ate at the table.  These were the days when I learned to love cooking and entertaining.  

~Since moving into our house, we have had the table in 2 spots. Sometimes with all the leaves, sometimes without, but it's awesome to have options!  Either way, I am still enjoying putting a meal on it. In the last 10 months, we have had lots of people over for dinner, lots of breakfasts with our families, and Mom & I carved pumpkins here this year.

While all those memories were being made, the table took some abuse.  Plus, it no longer matched the decor.  We looked at other tables at Ikea, and almost bought one, but alas, it didn't fit in the car. Nor did it quite fit our particular budget that day.  It doesn't matter though, the point is we didn't buy it, and now I know why!

I'm not sure where the idea to update it came from.  Probably Pinterest.  I'd been talking about updating a lot of the pieces in our house, because hardly any of them match each other, much less the walls and decor.  The table seemed like a good place to start. There really wasn't much to lose. (Plus it's one of the few things in our house made of real wood that would sand down the right way.) I looked up some tutorials, bought a hand sander and some stain, and got to work!

My first step was sanding down the entire thing, all the way down to the grain. I didn't want any stain or lacquer left, because I needed the new stain to take and stick.  I started on a sunny Sunday, and by the end of the day, this is what I had: 

I sanded one leaf, and left the other for the next day.

I spent the next 3 (maybe 4) days sanding the other leaf, the rest of the top, the base, and the legs.  The best thing for this was the discovery that the entire thing comes apart..the legs & top come off the base, and the top can be pulled apart.  It would have sucked way more if they didn't.  All in all, the sanding wasn't bad.  There was a small issue with the fact that the base is wavy/curvy...but I managed, and only got super frustrated once, right at the end.  I'd been working for several hours, and the sander was driving me nuts.  I couldn't look at it anymore, so I made Ben finish the last little bit. :)

Here are all the pieces sanded down. (See those rings in the base? Those were a pain!)

After sanding, it was time for the fun part! I put on 2 coats of stain-which took roughly 2 days, (I used Rustoleum in Ebony), and 3 coats of polyurethane on top of that. (Which took another day). All I did was follow the directions on the cans as far as time between coats, painting with the grain, etc. I used a rag with the stain, to wipe of excess and even it out a little bit.  The picture below is after 2 coats of stain, before the polyurethane. Also, let me just say I froze during this process. It was in the 20's outside, which means the garage was in the 40s.  I wore 2 shirts, 2 pairs of pants, gloves and a hat.  It worked though, I just turned on some Christmas music and went to town! =D

You can kind of tell in the picture, but I am one MESSY painter. (Mom-I know you are shocked).  Luckily I knew this already, so I had a drop cloth that took up the entire area I was working in.  

The can said to let it cure for 7 days.  I finished up on Thursday before we left for vacation on Saturday, so I left everything where it was while we were gone.  We did put the top back on the base, and the leaves on some boxes so the bottom of all the pieces would dry.  When we returned from our vacation, we moved the table back into the house! This had to be done slowly, but we did it, and this is the final product!

I am really happy with the way it turned out.  I still don't know what to do about the chairs (I have no desire to try to sand them, way too intricate), but I'll figure it out soon. I wasn't sure if I could handle something so crafty, but I think it went great! Even Ben said he thought it was out of my reach, but he likes it too!  

I am super inspired to try some other pieces now, but I think I'll wait until spring. :)

Throwback Thursday: Building our first home

I've decided to make Throwback Thursdays a regular thing on my blog.  I think it will keep me writing, and I can blog about things that have been going on the last 2 years.

Today's Throwback Thursday is about building our new house! We have lived here for 9 months now and absolutely love it.  But let's start at the beginning.

Around September of last year we started thinking about our next move.  We were living in an apartment, which was nice enough, but we knew it wasn't a permanent thing, and we knew that at some point we would live in a house.  We started looking around on Zillow, and did a few driving trips through the areas we were interested in, but nothing seriously caught our interest.  We didn't even really know what our budget was, we just had rough estimates based on what our chief financial advisor Dave Ramsey said we could afford. (We love Dave Ramsey and use his methods for all of our financials.  I'll blog about it one of these days). We really wanted to live in Zionsville, where I worked, and while the existing homes were beautiful, they were way out of our potential price range. One Sunday we did a "tour of homes".  I put that in quotes because I would not have called it that, basically it was a map of all the area model homes and builders.  We drove around to each one though, and I think that is when we started thinking about building a home.  Many of the builders we looked at seemed great, but we could tell quality wasn't there with all of them. (If you jump on the floor upstairs and the whole house moves--scratch that builder off the list).  We also noticed that most of the builders in neighborhoods had the same styles/floorplans. We went to a lot of places, and by the end they all ran together and I think we left feeling a little deflated about the choices, but liking the idea that there were choices.

We kept thinking about building for a few weeks, discussing it, pros and cons, etc., and then Ben remembered a builder that we had seen but not looked at.  I didn't even really remember this place, but I drove over on my lunch break one day, (it was 6 minutes from my job...huge plus!), and liked what I saw.  Later that week we went there, saw the model, saw the options, saw the land, and really really liked what we saw.  Then, Ben lost his job.  His race team cut most of their people, (I guess they couldn't afford the off season).  I thought all hope was lost on building a house, but we continued to stay in touch with the sales person, (who was awesome and I want to be her...), and when Ben got hired onto a new race team about 3 weeks later, for significantly more money than he was making before, we decided to go for it.

There were 2 floor plans that we really really liked, and we had kind of a hard time choosing. We definitely liked 1 more than the other though.  In the end, the deciding factor was the lot that we wanted.  According to the developer, there was only one floor plan that would fit on the lot,  and it was our second choice.  We knew this lot would be worth it though, so in early November last year we put down earnest money and signed a purchase agreement! That was a scary/really exciting day!

 This is one of my favorite pictures ever.

Our lot! 

It's so funny to look back on these pictures now, there are way more houses around these days!

On November 30, 2012, they broke ground on our new home.  I drove to the house on my lunch break nearly every day of the build, and I'm really glad I did that.  Sometimes things wouldn't happen for a few days or a week, and that got stressful, but when things did happen, it was super exciting!

 We had a bit of a pond for a while.

Then the basement walls went up!

I was standing at the end of the "driveway" when I took this picture.

We went to Florida for Christmas and while we were gone, they started putting up walls! This was amazing because there was a huge snowstorm, but those guys, they did not care!

Walls!

We went to the house on New Year's Day, assuming it was a holiday, it was snowing and about 20 degrees, surely there wouldn't be anyone working. We were wrong.

We watched them put up our bedroom walls in about 15 minutes. That was cool!

The day they put the roof on was a great day, it started looking like a house!

I have to say, I have a ton of respect for the men who worked on our house.  It didn't matter that there was a foot of snow on the ground, single digit wind chills, they were there and working all the time.  We were concerned about building in the winter, but our fears were unfounded, they finished right on time.  On February 28, 2013, we closed on our brand new home! (If you are keeping track that's less than 3 months. Amazing.)  We didn't have a yard when we closed, which was frustrating, but..it was still winter after all, and we lived.  Here's a few more pictures from the process.  

Windows and garage doors!

Then the siding went on!

This was a day or 2 before closed..

Ahh, the keys! What a great feeling!

Moving day was March 2nd, 2013. (2 days before my birthday!) My parents and sister, and Ben's parents all came to help out.  It was a great day other than the fact that it was FREEZING! (Are you seeing a trend here?) Morgan and I went to supervise the delivery of the refrigerator and the painters while everyone else loaded the truck.  Oh...and after the truck was completely loaded it wouldn't start..that was awesome..

Here's my dear sister, waiting for the refrigerator to be delivered.

Trying to figure out why the truck won't start...

We ended up calling a truck maintenance/towing company, and waited around for them for about an hour, praying we wouldn't have to unload it again..

About the time the tow truck was pulling up, my mother-in-law went to try the truck 1 more time, and surprise! It fired right up.  The rest of the move went off without a hitch. :)

We got a yard eventually, bad news is they just tore it up again! More on that later.  I'll end it with this picture of our finished house!

Ben's Birthday

Tuesday was Ben's birthday. We had a very quiet day, and while he was at work I cleaned the house and baked some yummies.  When he got home, this is what I had.

How's that for a birthday spread?

I made pumpkin spice cookies, (from a pre-made mix, for some reason I really struggle with from-scratch cookies), and a no-bake cheesecake, which he requested. (Again from a mix...I have never had success with cheesecake either....those are my 2 baking weaknesses...cookies and cheesecake. Sad. Maybe I just need more practice).  We went to Roselli's Pizza for dinner, which is a place we've been with friends one other time. It was yummy and we had lots of leftovers to take home.  That was pretty much it for the actual day.

This past weekend we had a cookout with his parents and a few friends.  It was a nice evening, Ben grilled hamburgers, hot dogs, and better cheddars (my new favorite grill item). If you don't know what they are, basically it's a sausage with cheese in it.  Extremely tasty, but not a very healthy choice, so we don't eat them very often. SO much sodium. Yikes.  Anyways, we had ice cream cake at the birthday boy's request, and the ladies who came over helped me make cheesy bacon potato bites (from this blog), mini carmel apples, (based on this recipe), and chips and salsa.  It was a very successful evening, and I think we all had fun.  Ben's parents spent the night with us, and the next morning I tried a quiche for the very first time. It was surprisingly successful.  I used this recipe from Savory Sweet Eats and it was awesome, although time consuming.  The night before I shredded the cheese, which took the longest, because I only have a small hand grater, not a box grater (I should put that on my Christmas list!). I had a block of cheddar and a block of swiss.  It took forever.  Luckily I didn't use all the already-cooked bacon from the potato bites the night before, so I was able to throw that in the morning of.  I also bought pre-cooked diced ham, and pre-cooked sausage crumbles from Jimmy Dean. (I was nervous about it, but the sausage was really good).  Thank goodness I had the pre-cooked meat, because in addition to mixing up the egg mixture, I had to brown my crust before putting in the filling.  I had never used a pre-made pie crust, but I think pre-made is a misnomer.  It's pre-mixed and ready for the oven. Not pre-made.  Anyways, I struggled to get the egg mixture in on top of the cheese and meat, it kept spilling out the sides.  However, when it was finally done cooking and ready to eat, it looked beautiful and tasted awesome too!

All in all I would say that Ben's birthday was a success!

The past...2 years?

It has been a LONG time since I have logged onto blogger and wrote something.  My life is a bit different than it was the last time I posted, which was in October of 2011/January 2012. I just read over what I wrote back then, and I can't believe those posts were nearly 2 years ago. As much as I want to think things are WAY different now, they really aren't that different. Is that sad? Or is that good? I'm not sure..
Things that are different in November 2013 than they were in October 2011:

December 2011: We had been married 2 months, and lived in a little apartment in Louisville. Our lives were getting ready to change big time.
VS:
November 2013: We have been married for 2 years and 3 months. But who's counting? =P We live in a suburb north of Indianapolis, in a house that we built. (!) We adore our house. Soon I will do an entire post about that. =) Our life is fairly consistent, no huge changes on the horizon. We'll see how long that lasts.

December 2011: I had an awesome job with Stretch n Grow of Kentucky.
VS:
November 2013: I have no job. Essentially by choice. It's a long and complicated situation. (Again, another post for another day). I am currently a full-time wife, and I actually really love it. I have to say it is a million and a half times better than what I was doing...

December 2011: I was running some. A few races here and there.
VS:
November 2013: I am still running some, and in May of this year I ran a half marathon. Absolutely my biggest personal accomplishment since graduating from college.  You guessed it, another post for another day.

There are a lot of things that are still the same as they were back then.  For example, I am still madly in love with my husband.  He makes me laugh every day, even if I don't want to laugh. He is there for me in my times of crisis, holding my hand and walking me through whatever my issue of the day is.  He is so smart, and keeps our life organized and flowing, especially financially.  Not just because he is the only money-maker currently, but because he is in charge of the budget, and he does a great job. Sometimes I don't like what he has to say, but he absolutely understands what is going on with every penny we have, and I appreciate that.  Oh, and today is his 26th birthday. 26! Who woulda thought we would be here, married, in Indy, at 26. Wow.

Okay world, hear me now. I WILL blog. I WANT to blog. My goal is to blog 1-3 times per week. There. A realistic, specific goal to reach for.  Ready, go!

Listening to: Defying Gravity, Glee Cast Version