now where were we...

oh yeah. somewhere not on the face of this planet. at least that's how it seems, seeing as how i haven't posted since AUGUST. shame on me. let's blame it on having so much fun lately i haven't even had time to stop and rest. which is actually kinda true. want proof in the form of photographs? comin' atcha. let's call this speed blogging.

when we last left off... i had just started work. then austin and i celebrated my first paycheck. i bought him a watch. i wore pleather pants.

lindsy and rj came in town. a lot.

we got new windows in the whole house.

we went to gatlinburg. and to dollywood. i ate cheesecake on a stick.

i decorated for halloween.

i made a new friend at work.

we went to the tennessee whiskey festival. austin proposed. with a bottle of shine. i said yes.

we celebrated dinger's birthday.

we went camping.

we forgot to pack dinner. or normal playing cards.

we made gross eggs for breakfast.

and hiked in the fog.

and i came over with hundreds of bug bites on my feet and ankles and elbows. fun!

we blew things up!

see? we have been busy! stay tuned for birthday shenanigans posts!

365 days in our house!

whoa man. can you believe it's already been a whole year that we've lived in our house? it doesn't feel like it's been that long since we were arguing negotiating with the sellers on the price and then anxiously awaiting all the approval things that have to happen.

lots has happened around the highland project in our first year here. remember what it looked like before we even moved all of our belongings in?

here it is on the outside when we first moved in.

and after 6 months of living here {looks so much better with green on the trees, too!}.

back in august i updated pictures of each room of the house showing our progress so far and i had intended on doing the same for the one year mark, but really not that much has changed since august. but i do need to share a few things we've done here and there.

first, we installed a new storm door on the front of the house. check out the old metal one in the picture above. yuck, right? now look at this beauty.

you can finally see all of my pretty teal door without aluminum blocking the view. and while we were at it we went ahead and installed a peephole {so i can know who's knocking on my door} and switched out the doorbell for a lighted and prettier one.

curb appeal is looking up!

next, we did a little update to our master bathroom. most recently the bathroom looked like this:

and the first thing we set out to do was to install a vent fan and light over the tub.

ta-da!

and as you can see, we painted the room as well {don't worry about those stripes in the picture, they're shadows from the texture of the glass in our light fixture over the sink}. this picture doesn't really show the true color of the paint.

it's much more blue-ish grey, like this:

we also updated all of the accessories in the room which were mostly oil-rubbed bronze, now they're brushed nickel.

quite a while ago we finally painted some chair to have around our kitchen table. oddly enough, they're pretty similar in color to the new wall color in our bathroom, but not on purpose. you can see the chairs around the table here from when austin and i had our little thanksgiving dinner.

and lastly, we got a garage door opener for the second bay in the garage so now austin is able to park inside, too! we got it installed just in time, really, right before it started getting cold enough to have to scrape ice off the car in the mornings.

i think that's about it for changes around the house lately, but we've got big plans for once i'm done with school and working {and getting paid for it-finally!}. i seriously cannot wait to get my diy on in that kitchen!

don't forget you can check out all the new house related posts here and see an entire list of all the projects we've tackled so far and what we've got left do here on the our home page.

also, a very happy, happy birthday to austin. on thursday we celebrated 27 years of austin by going to dinner at urban stack with some of his family.

p.s. don't get the mint chocolate chip milkshake at urban stack unless you like really gross, liquidy milkshakes that taste like leaves.

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.

presents!

as i mentioned in yesterday's post, austin and i brought some goodies back to tennessee with us. and as promised, i'm back today to share those goodies with you. cause i wouldn't want to break any promises.

first, we brought home a ton of plants to plant in our gardens. we also got a bunch of pink daffodil bulbs and some blackberry lily seeds.

i don't know what's in the water back home, but i need to get some of it because apparently it makes hostas grow to be the size of houses. thanks to tucker for modeling as a size reference here. and also for letting you see how ridiculously hot it was outside.

so as baby hostas have popped up here and there, mom and tim dug them up for transport back to our house in tennessee. they're just little guys right now, but hopefully they'll like their new home around our back patio and grow up to be huge.

not so sure if this guy is going to make it or not, since tucker didn't do his job and keep the deer out of the yard... but we'll give him a shot.

we also brought home quite a few purple coneflower plants.

and although it doesn't look like much right now, they'll eventually have purple flowers and hopefully they'll attract more butterflies than bees...

and for the final item from the plant category, we brought home some sedum.

i believe that these little guys will grow up to look like this:

{image from here}

i can't wait to get all my plants in the ground, but we're actually going to get some more hostas and some cannas from some other friends/family first. anyone else have plants they want to donate to our house? i want my gardens to look like pretty jungles!

the other presents we brought home are for prettying up the inside of the house. in case you didn't know, my momma is a genius scientist smarty-pants and a really crafty artistic person. she makes stained glass art of all kinds and she donated some pieces to our house!

we got this pretty blue flower piece for our living room window. {turns out i'm not so great with the camera and i couldn't quite get a good picture of the whole window without it either being way to dark, way too light, or this kind of blah shade of blah.}

but up close to the glass, you can see how pretty the color is and the details. i literally smile every time i walk into the room and see it hanging over our couch.

and as if that wasn't enough, momma gave us two more pieces! we've got this victorian style flower piece hanging in our kitchen:

and this little green flower hanging in our bathroom.

unfortunately, our stupid windows have stupid little bars dividing them into little sections which are really screwing up the glass. for the one in the kitchen i was at least able to hide them a bit with the edges of the piece, but the one in our bathroom didn't work out that way. eventually, though, and hopefully sooner rather than later, we'll be getting all new windows installed without those dumb little bars.

anyway, so those are the goodies we brought home from virginia. a big thank you to momma and timmy for being willing to share these things with us. i feel like it makes it a little easier to be six hours away from home when i can bring little pieces of home back with me and i get a little reminder of home by just looking around.