Long Awaited for Post - More House Projects!

We have been on a break for a while from House Projects. And I'm ashamed to say that because life got so overwhelming for us, this first section of projects we hired out. Please don't judge us for this!

Remember these wagon wheels? I don't have a good picture of these since painting the house because I tried to always crop them out of every picture I took. They are exterior front porch wagon wheels, and we almost felt better when the neighbor down the street had them on their front porch. But then they redid their front porch and got rid of them. Point being: they're even too ugly for outdoors.

We hired a wonderful man named Homero, and look at the miracle he performed! Yes, it looks normal. I stare at it for hours a day, enjoying the lack of tackiness in the house. (PS, Greg is posing from the couch!)

And this had been ugly for too long.


So Homero fixed that as well, along with all sorts of ceiling and wall problems, and added crown molding.

Before.

After. And Greg requested this column. Looks so fancy!


MY PROJECTS

Before - this is the kitchen, living room, and half bath gold light fixtures.

And this is after. Thank you Wal-Mart's $5 globes. Do you see how ugly the globes used to be in the previous picture?

Before.

After. Please note my Christmas present from my mom - my new quilt! Love it!!!!

And a close-up.

Before.

After. Yes, I painted the mirror and the light fixture.

3 bottles of Rustoleum later and hundreds of dollars saved. I love my projects!

Happy New Year!

Greg got New Year's Eve off, and so we headed 2 hours south to the Little Grand Canyon in Lumpkin, GA. This is one of the 7 Wonders of GA, and Greg took me here 5 years ago when he was wooing me. The weather was amazing - 70+ degrees and we were sweating in short-sleeved shirts.

It is a beautiful canyon, but it is not that old. It is a canyon created from erosion from poor farming in the 1800s. One day a farmer noticed his land was start to erode away, and within a few years it was this. For real.

We hiked around in the bottom of the canyon rather than hiking around the rim.


See - it's all just sand. Erosion.




We're still just as happy 5 years later!









New Year's Eve

Greg started a new tradition this year. Instead of using party favors to bring in the New Year, we used oboe reeds. They are the reeds Greg made with a Dremel tool, and sound even worse than party favors!

We celebrated with Darah and David.

And here Dave and Greg are trying to get my Christmas gift of marshmallow shooters to work. They never got them working. It might have been a bummer night if the "A-Team" hadn't saved us. Great movie!

Christmas in Charleston

This year Greg and I spent Christmas in Charleston. No, we do not have family in Charleston. It was the off year for both of our families where the siblings go to their in-laws, and so we had no obligations and decided to spend the Christmas holiday just the two of us. It was a perfect Christmas, and exactly what we needed.

We loved Charleston. Here's the view of Fort Sumter from Battery Park.

And apparently Charleston is called "the holy city" because it has hundreds of churches. I love all white churches with big white columns.

Greg in front of the replica of The Hunley, one of the earliest submarines used during the Civil War. That's actual size and 4 men could fit in it. Talk about claustrophobia!

This is one of the richest houses in the area. These houses were old (pre-Revolutionary) and surprising huge. I think this one had 24,000 square feet or something like that.

A lot of the houses have privacy doors. See how there's a door facing the street, but it opens up onto the piazza (plaza)? This is very typical Charleston architecture.

Greg visited Charleston when he was a kid, and his dad had all the kids pose in front of this statue and point. This one's for you, Dahls!

When Greg and I started dating we discovered we had one mutual friend - Wendy! Wendy was a missionary in Greg's mission and they actually traveled on a train to a new destination ALONE (scandalous, I know). I know Wendy from the BYU music dept. where she was a horn major and Lea's roommate. We met Wendy and her husband at IHOP on Christmas Day and had a wonderful time reuniting over hashbrowns, pancakes and stuffed french toast.

We went to the Festival of Lights on James Island. This is one of the biggest light shows in the country, and we were not disappointed making this 3-mile loop of over 30,000 lights.




Tokyo Express is where we had our Christmas dinner. It was much better than where we had our Christmas Eve dinner - the Shell gas station. Did you know EVERYTHING closes on Christmas Eve in Charleston?

It was pretty nice weather, and we missed the white Christmas in Atlanta. However, it did start snowing in Charleston on Sunday and we drove in the snow all the way back to Atlanta. Weird.



Christmas Morning at the Radisson

Greg got Marshmallow shooter guns. Unfortunately they don't work. Fail for me!

But I made up for it by giving Greg an iPad. Now he can play "Angry Birds" for hours on a big screen.

And he gave me a laptop that is Lara-sized. I love my little Netbook and use it mainly to journal every night. No more pen and paper!

And Greg got me a Snuggie--just what I always wanted!