2012 wrap up.

whoa man. can you believe today is the last day of 2012? and to think, we were all told we'd never make it past the 21st. just like past years, here's a recap of the year in my life/blog.

apparently the month of january was less than eventful. but the year did start off with champagne, so... no compaints.

in february we bought a house. kind of a big deal.

read all about our house projects here and check out our checklist here.

we also celebrated austin's birthday in february.

march was somewhat uneventful too. work on the house, go to school, work on the house.

we got lots of work done on the outside of our house in april when momma and my timmy came to see us!

and miss juliet turned seven!

school's out for summer in may. which, of course, meant more work on the house.

june is always a good month. this year kasey came to visit.

i blogged everyday through wedding week 2012 leading up to our second wedding anniversary.

austin and i took a little trip back home in july to visit the family.

dad and robin came out to tennessee to see our new house in august.

and lindsy and katie surprised me by coming in town for the adpi beta beta house opening. bri came, too!

september was a fun month, too. austin and i took a trip to gatlinburg!

you guys know my favorite month of the year is october. always. austin took me camping and i wore lots of camo.

and he made me a cake!

we did the usual thanksgiving thing in november.

and obviously december was full of christmas, family, and friends.

so that's that. 2012 in summary. i'd say it was a pretty good year. but i have to say i've got a lot to look forward to in 2013. big things. like graduation. and a job.

p.s. here you can see my year-end posts from 2010 and 2011.

nothing interesting.

i've got nothing interesting to write currently. except maybe that, as you could probably guess from my lack of posting, i am back in school for the semester. back to the same old same old: study, stress, test, and repeat. except we've started clinical rotations this semester. one day a week i'm at a nursing home/rehab facility in the pt department.

anyway. so i wanted to quickly give an update on how my goal setting and accomplishing went for the month of january. so here we go.

personal.
-get off my butt and start running again! i'm going to aim for at least two runs per week.
well, i started off great. and even ran more than two times per week. but then, i stopped. so i'm going to say i half accomplished this. just because i don't really want to write that i failed.

-keep up with creating our family yearbook, month by month.
done. but mainly because we didn't do anything in january to photograph. so, sure.

-make one {and only one!} crafty thing, perhaps something i find on pinterest?
yeah notsomuch. i attempted one crafty thing, but it didn't turn out. as in, started step one and instantly scrapped the whole idea. meh. but to be fair, there's some crazy things happening around our house right now, so it's probably better that i didn't try to make something for the house {hopefully more on this craziness later}.

home.
-put laundry away as soon as it's folded. it's really not that hard. i just hate doing it.
heck yeah i did. and i even got austin to do the same.

-stick to our newly created budget. eek.
a little pass. a little fail. we did really well with our weekly grocery budget, only went a little over on our "out to eat" budget, but keeping up with the entire budget was a little screwy, so i can't say we got it all right. again, some craziness happening.

-try at least two new recipes for dinner.
i already shared that we made {and i couldn't stop eating} baklava earlier this month. but that's not really "dinner." at least it shouldn't be. but we also made some broccoli and ricotta cannelloni. so i'm going to count that as two. i'm thinking we made something else new, but i honestly can't remember what it was. so just take my word for it.

so there you have it. nothing interesting, but information about my goals. if i get real inspired today or tomorrow i will come up with some february goals. no guarantees, though. so don't hold your breath.

momma would be so proud.

even though we were totally exhausted after returning home from our cabin weekend and then grocery shopping, it was unavoidable that our grass had. to. be. mowed. austin planned on doing it last weekend, but didn't get around to it and we really just couldn't wait any longer.

but instead of austin doing it, i had him show me how to use our new lawn mower and i did it all by myself! ok. mostly by myself. austin did the first outline around the whole yard and then took over a little bit of the front yard once an angry hornet was on the loose.

but doesn't it look wonderful?

i only planned on doing the front yard {it's way smaller} but i was on a roll and did the back yard, too!

and yes, my hands are blistered and sore today. but i managed to not chop off a limb, although i did get a battle scar. and it was intense. there was blood.

in case you have poor vision and can't see my wound, i pointed it out for you here.

pretty intense, i know.

hoarding.

austin thinks i'm a hoarder. sometimes, i watch hoarding: buried alive on TLC and that's some crazy stuff. but i'm no hoarder. i only keep things that are useful, or could be useful, or someone might find useful someday...

like this chair.

that i got fo' free.

and it's a perfectly good chair. and the fact that i have little to no use for it at this time doesn't mean it won't come in handy someday. and i found it on the side of the road with a big "free" sign posted on it when juliet and i went on our walk the other day.

free? heck yes, please.

and although i wanted to, i couldn't haul it home while julie and i were walking. something about her lack of opposable thumbs renders juliet useless. so i was forced to wait until austin came home to retrieve my chair.

after grabbing a quick dinner at chili's with austin and sarah {who was in town for a wedding}, we drove down to the spot where the chair was anxiously awaiting my arrival.

but austin didn't stop! he just drove past the chair claiming we had no need for a lone chair and other illogical arguments. jerk!

but thanks to a 10 minute debate in the driveway settled finally by a carwide vote {myself, sarah and juliet: pro-chair. austin: anti-chair} we headed back up the street to pick up my new friend.

and, i mean, it's a good chair. and we might will need it someday.

and, as usual, when juliet hears the "ding" of the camera turn on, she comes running to be photographed. so let's pretend she just wanted you to see her compared to the chair, for size reference, of course.

but this in no way makes me a hoarder. see, if i was a hoarder, i would have taken the other items that were sitting on the side of the road for free, too. like the child sized bed frame or the big piece of plywood. but i didn't.

although it looked like quality plywood.

harvest time.

this weekend we were able to get a few veggies from the garden!

here's how the garden is looking these days.

its kind of out of control, right? oh well.

but look, we've got tomatoes {which austin is anxiously awaiting them to turn}

cucumbers, big and small.

and corn and beans!

but check out the green beans and the first cucumber we harvested this weekend!

they were very delicious. our carrots and beets are beginning to poke their shoulders up out of the ground and the broccoli plants are getting pretty big. our strawberries all taste terrible {i'm told it's the wrong kind of dirt for berries} and our onions seem to be getting close to popping up, too. and we've still got potatoes growing on the porch, hopefully they will be more successful than the potatoes that were in the garden and all fell down...

and just because i haven't shared yet, i recycled some vegetable crates {that taylor gets food for his pigs in} and turned them into a little flower planter/display. it's not beautiful, but i  guess it's not bad, either... but the point is that the little wildflowers are starting to come up so hopefully soon they'll add some nice color to the front porch!

and that's our garden update!

new digs.

today, austin and i bought a new comforter set for our bed!

although we really liked the look of our old one {which we haven't even had for a year yet}...

... austin couldn't stand the texture of it. it's made of sorta silky material that had the annoying habit of grabbing your skin. that may not make a whole lot of sense, but it was not a good feeling.

so we finally found a new one!

i think the light color of it is a nice change, yes? it's got a pretty little floral pattern on it, which i thought austin would not like, but he's fine with it! yay!

and pillows. lots and lots of pillows. eleven to be exact. austin, of course, just loves pillows. what guy doesn't love a zillion pillows to have to move every night before he can crawl into bed?

whatevs. it's pretty.i think i shall sleep well tonight.

lately.

ok. so you may be wondering {but probably aren't} why i haven't been posting much lately. and although austin and i have been up to lots here in the past few days, it turns out i take too many pictures. at least according to blogger. apparently, you only have so much photo space on their server and i have exceeded that, mostly because both of my cameras are so awesome {at least i think so} and make the picture size so large. so now, in order to upload pictures, i have to do a little bit of editing and resize the pictures to be fewer pixels. so now, with smaller pictures in tow, i share with you what we've been doing lately.

we did some copper-sitting one weekend when his people were both out of town. and copper took the opportunity to find his inner yogi and meditate a bit.

namaste, copper, namaste.

dinger has been soaking up all the fresh air he can get while the windows are open. and even attempting {and succeeding a few times} to sneak out the door when we come in and out.

one night, austin wanted to head to the driving range and hit a few golf balls and invited me to come with him. i, of course, instantly wanted to put on an entirely plaid outfit and one of those funny hats and be all fancy at the driving range.

but i didn't realized what kind of driving range we were going to...

but it's fine, they have a range and restaurant.

and interesting targets to aim for.

austin is actually pretty good at golf. me? not so much. and i was too annoyed by the millions of mosquitoes biting the heck out of me to try to learn. so i took pictures instead.

we ended up only staying for about 20 minutes and austin didn't even hit all the balls, because the mosquitoes were getting way too bad. and austin was getting way too angry.

also, i got a lovely new hanging basket of begonias for the front porch. lovely, yes?

and of course, we've all done our fair share of lounging and relaxing.

and jules does her share of being so stinking cute.

our garden is growing well and we've been working on a few other things around the house, so i'll have a few more posts coming soon. i know you'll all be waiting anxiously.

a table: finally finished!

it's friday again. and aren't you lucky? i've finally finished something!

finally, i finished painting our patio table to match the little side tables austin painted green last weekend. and boy, was it a lot of work. by far the hardest thing i've ever done. first, i had to deconstruct the whole table.

then i began to paint. my arm has never been so sore.

the hardest part, was reconstruction. it's always easy to take things apart, but ten times harder to put them back together, right? now, i could have made things a lot easier on myself by waiting for austin's help over the weekend, but no. i wanted to do this on my own. and besides, the neighbors saw me working on it, so i couldn't let them see the table beat me. but alas, after about two hours of cursing at the pieces patiently working step by step, the table finally came back together!

so here she is, in all her green glory, combined with our new patio chairs we got last weekend at home depot and the umbrella we grabbed at target {which conveniently match perfectly}.

i like the green table with the brown on the chairs. i didn't want a whole matchy-matchy set.

i even replaced the bolts with much better ones {ones that don't have to be removed twist by twist with a stupid pair of pliers. grrrr.}.

so there it is. we have a beautifully painted table, chairs, umbrella and side tables to enjoy many cookouts around this summer.

anyone want to come over?