our house

  • our house

    kitchen and dining room.

    The kitchen has probably been changed the least since we moved in. It’s old, but perfectly functional. David removed some of the cabinet doors when we bought the house, painted the walls, and we bought the island, but other than that, this is basically how the kitchen looked. It’s a tiny kitchen but has lots of light and there’s a good-sized pantry. I have a whole Kitchen board on Pinterest with ideas for our kitchen remodel, which may or may not happen in a year or so. I don’t think we’ll take out any walls; just update the cabinets and light fixtures, backsplash, and maybe some appliances. It’s fun to dream.…

  • our house

    living room.

    This week is our one-year anniversary of buying a house! Can you believe it? We own a house! Sometimes I still have to pinch myself to believe it’s real. I thought I’d celebrate with a little updated house tour throughout the rest of the week. Let’s start with the inside, shall we? Some of you have asked about how the layout works. When you open our front door, you’re in the living room, I took this photo from our “entryway,” and straight ahead is our tiny hallway with two bedrooms to the right, and the bathroom (that’s a closet door directly ahead). Head into the hallway and turn left and you’re in…

  • adoption,  columbia,  our house

    instagram.

    In general my phone photo quality isn’t great, but here’s some fun moments from the past couple weeks . . . Today’s my brother Danny’s 27th birthday. He recently moved to Florence, SC, so we’re missing him today.  We had a fun library/coffee date right before he left. Star Wars comic books were involved. Watching Frozen and cuddling. He’s growing up so fast. This room is going to get a makeover in the next few months because David and I are moving our master bedroom here to make way for the baby’s room. I’m both happy and terrified to lose our junk room (yes, that stationary bike has got to…

  • our house

    more taming.

     Here’s our progress after the weekend. David cleared that massive pile from the backyard, and I added wheel-barrow-fulls of leaves from the front. The outdoor waste company cleared the entire pile this morning, but I love that before they arrived someone had already come to pull out every piece of metal. Ah life downtown. My parents stopped by Saturday morning and I think they about had a heart attack seeing me doing yard work (for pretty much the first time in my life). I just got tired of the front looking shabby, because we have such a cute little house to show off. I was pleasantly surprised to find that…

  • our house

    taming the backyard.

    We got a pretty incredible deal on our house, and one of the reasons we wanted to buy below our budget is so we could afford to update and improve on our space over time. We decided to pick one big project this year: the backyard. We’re having a six-foot wood fence installed this week and hopefully a few of our nine pine trees removed. David has been working in bits and pieces all year to tame the madness that was our backyard, removing small trees and clearing out lots and lots of overgrowth. But yesterday he got to work for real to clear the way for the fence company,…

  • our house

    the bookshelf project.

    I’m discovering that the older I get the more “minimal” I want our living space. Which is strange because I definitely don’t define myself as a minimalist when I comes to decor (that word conjures visions of sleek, monochrome, zen-like loft apartments with a single bamboo plant), but more and more I feel like clutter in my home — whether its from piles of papers or too many knick knacks or too much furniture — makes my skin itch. David is breathing a sigh of relief at this, because our whole marriage he’s tried to tell me that “less is more” (except when it came to the unframed college posters…

  • dailyphoto,  our house

    01.28.14.

    I know, I know, I’ve dropped the ball on my photo-a-day this week. But I have a good excuse. Our (only) bathroom has been incapacitated since Friday morning. So we’ve been nomads, wandering to and fro throughout Columbia, searching for a place to go potty. David and I joked that we’re real homeowners now. All those dreams about a kitchen remodel or adding a second bathroom? Well, turns out our first major expense renovation is one no one will ever see: all new plumbing under the house. I’m a planner, and I had big plans for this weekend and week. But they were all thrown out the window and I…