house tour

Well, you've been waiting for it... here's a tour of our house! Don't mind my narration, I'm a bit of a dork :) I wanted to do this for our far-away friends and family to see our new place. The rest of you will just have to come over and see it in person. And isn't it customary to bring over goodies? I like chocolate chip cookies... just sayin'.



i'm baaaaaack!

Wow. I've been hard-core neglecting this blog, so I apologize. But now that my life is finally starting to fall back into place, I want to share a bit about what I've been up to over the last month. It's been a wild ride.

So first off, we're into our new house! We spent our first night there on September 28th. My brother helped Eric move our bed over and drop the trailer full of our stuff in the driveway that night. Then on that Saturday we had some friends and family come and help us move all of our furniture. It was so nice to have all of that help; everything went really smoothly! For the most part, things are put away and organized, although there are still some things that we're figuring out what to do with yet. I don't dare take any pictures yet, because I don't want to document the clutter! So that's my project for the week: to get organized so that I can post some pics. Maybe even a video tour for Shelly & Steph :)

At work I've been crazy busy making plans for our annual County Wide Food Drive. That happened this past Saturday, and I feel like I can finally breathe again. Basically in one day, we go door-to-door in the greater GR area and collect food donations to stock up our pantries! It's usually about 85 tons of food, with the help of over 1,000 volunteers.

So it's an undertaking, that's for sure! Especially this year, I lost a couple of key volunteers who've done a lot of work in the past, and I wasn't able to replace them. So I ended up doing a lot of extra work with that. But Saturday was beautiful and even though we didn't collect nearly as much food as we had hoped to, it was a great experience for those who participated. And, we ended up with a whole load of food that we didn't have when we started.

Youth group is also underway for the year! We've had a couple of small group meetings already, and they've been fun thus far, but it's been tough to get our kids to talk about what really matters to them. This year Eric and I, as well as the other leaders, really want to push our kids to dig deeper into their faith. Most of the high schoolers from our church go to a Christian school, so they've become inundated with "faith" and "religion." By the time they get to youth group God is the last thing they want to talk about, so they don't. We broke into small groups last night in our large group gathering, so we had kids from all different grades, but I swear it was like pulling teeth trying to get them to talk.

Our adult small group that we're a part of has also been struggling with some of this stuff together. Why don't we talk about our faith within the church? It's become such a personal thing, so private, and the Bible clearly states that we need to mutually encourage one another along the faith journey. It's meant to be done together! But we all have this front to put up, this idea that we need to look like we've got it all together, that we can't honestly share together what's on our hearts. So we're working on it. And I'm really excited about it.

Anyway, that's the short version. I know I'm going to talk more about youth group and our small group, because this stuff has been on my heart a lot lately. And, I promise to post house pictures soon. Thanks for reading :)

getting close!

Let me just start by showing you my absolute favorite room in the entire house... the kitchen!

 I am so excited about how this turned out. I was worried about mixing our wood colors, the cabinets being Sorrel and the island being Java. But it looks so rich! The tones are perfect together, and it just adds depth to the kitchen. Still a few odds and ends to take care of, like the trim at the bottom of the island needs to be stained yet. They also put in all of the wrong light fixtures, so those will need to be switched out. They look good in pictures, but in real life they're just not quite right. Not too big of a deal, though.

So this is the living room! We have a super comfy sectional that we bought for the basement of our old house that we plan to put in here. The TV will go in front of the outlets on the right. Then the hallway goes to the three bedrooms and bathrooms. Then you see the front door, obviously, and the stairs down to the basement.

Here's a view from the other side of the room, looking into the kitchen. Our dining table will go in front of the slider and the couch will sit in front of the windows. 

And here's my next favorite space... our master bathroom! What's not to love about it?! (Other than the painters' tape that's still up) :)

And last, and definitely least... our current residence: the cottage. We are so grateful to have our own place to stay, but we're ready to be in our house! It got a little crazy this weekend with all of our extended family around, but we're recovering nicely. Here's to hoping we'll be moving again soon!

house progress

 Front stone is on!

Cupboards and countertops are in!

The top box of tile is the backsplash, and it'll have a stripe of the smaller tile through the middle:

So awesome! And SO excited! Every day we stop by, there's something else that's been finished. We officially changed our address and put up a mailbox. And we've officially sold our Meadowlawn house! Mid-week last week we moved out to my grandparents' cottage on Gun Lake, while all of our stuff went to my parents'. The drive isn't too bad to get into town, but we've had a lot of stuff going on in the evenings, so we won't get home oftentimes until 9:30 at night. Makes me tired to be running around all day and not get back until later. Hopefully we'll slow down a little bit so that we can enjoy the last of the warm weather out at the lake :)

project from h-e-double hockeysticks...

Do you ever have projects at work that just send you over the edge because they're so overwhelming? Let me tell you about what I'm working on... the County Wide Food Drive. It's a great project, really. (In one day, we usually collect over 85 tons of food that we distribute to pantries in the county.) It just has an insane amount of leeeeettle details to remember. And of course, none of it's written down, so you just have to hope you're not missing anything too important!

This year I lost the program director that's been at this for 25 years, so she's not around to help remind me of things that need to happen, and I've also had two of my volunteers that coordinate two big areas of GR step down without replacements. So... all of their responsibilities are on my plate now, and I'm having trouble figuring out which end is up. If I knew what I was supposed to be doing, I'd at least be able to make a to-do list and delegate tasks out to my co-workers. But I really have no clue what I should be working on. Ugh. Thanks for letting me vent, at least...

random!

House progress: Deck is up! Trim inside is painted!

Craftiness progress: I'm spray-painting our deck furniture! My grandpa pulled this set out of the garbage somewhere (this is a pretty normal occurance for him...), and it was originally white but pretty rusted. A fresh coat of green paint and I actually like having it on our deck. I still have another coat to go yet, but I love the color! Total project cost: $8.44 - two cans of Rustoleum spray paint in "Fern."

Family update: Devo visited this past week! Eric was pretty excited to spend time with his brother. Here's a family barefoot pic: Kaitlyn, Eric, & Devo.

Annnnd, I traipsed through a field across from our neighborhood this afternoon (although both poison ivy and mosquito-infested...) just to take a few shots. It's been so nice outside today that I just had to get out! Here're my favorites:



progress

Trim is up, doors are hung, bathroom cabinets installed, and counter-tops in process! We've chosen kitchen cabinets, paint colors, flooring, carpet, and fixtures, so the house is on its way to completion. I swear we drive by it every other day. Now that we've made the decision and are starting to pack up, we just want to BE there!

I can't wait to get in and decorate. A friend introduced me to younghouselove.com, and I'm hooked on all their DIY projects. That and scrolling around Pinterest has me wanting to get my hands dirty in crafting! I wish I was crafty and that I had more time to just mess around with stuff like that. But hopefully once we move in I'll be so inspired that I'll do all kinds of stuff for the house ;) I promise I'll post my projects!

In the meantime, we're collecting boxes and boxes and boxes (thanks work, Moms, Shelly, Katie, & Jas/Brit!) and occasionally filling them with stuff. We realized that we have a lot more "stuff" than we ever thought! So we're trying to throw things away and sort other things for a garage sale, as I'm a bit of a pack rat. Everything seems to have sentimental value to me, which makes things hard to get rid of. I'll take another crack at it tonight, and hopefully keep adding on to that garage sale pile!

Other recent happenings include the Payne Lake Figure 8 barefoot tournament, Devo's visit from CA, Mexican fiesta with the camp girls, church softball, applying for my LLMSW, and designing our landscape.

Upcoming adventures? Getting fingerprinted for my LLMSW, book club, Brad Paisley concert, Eric's triathlon, Hillsong United concert, and Footstock, the National Barefoot Tournament (and I'm trying to convince Eric to take me to Noah's Ark waterpark on the way home!) Gosh, summer is flying!

Anyway, I'll keep you posted :)

hello, byron center!

Not only did we sell our house last week, but we bought one too! And we are SO very excited! We're buying a new construction that's slated to be ready at the end of September. We have to be out of Meadowlawn at the end of August, so we're planning to bum off some family members for a few weeks before we can get into our new house. But the nice thing is that we get to pick out all of the decor! Cabinets, plumbing/lighting fixtures, paint colors, flooring, etc. And we're in a pretty rockin' neighborhood across from a small man-made lake!

We had to stop by today to approve bathroom cabinets that are ready to be installed, so I figured I'd snap a few pics. Check it out!

Outside is a steel gray, and the white areas around the bottom will have brick facing put up. Traditional ranch-style with three beds/two baths upstairs and an unfinished basement. Eric loves the cathedral ceilings, and the three-stall garage! Here's a shot of the progress thus far. I'm standing in the kitchen looking into the living area. The doorway to the left is the mud area/entrance from the garage, and the doorway straight ahead is the hall to the bedrooms.

We're across the street from a small man-made lake, so we plan to make friends with the neighbors that bought this lot! The peninsula sticking out into the water will at some point become a neighborhood park. How fun would that be, especially once we have kids!?

If you couldn't tell from the title of this post, we're in Byron Center (south of 68th Street off of Byron Center Ave). Super close to M-6, which is going to be great for Eric going to work in Hudsonville and really for everything else too!

We had gone through this on Thursday, and after talking with the builder's realtor, we went through a house in Hudsonville that's the same model, but it's just been finished. That way we could see what it's supposed to look like once it's done, with all of the decor. After loving the model, we wrote up an offer that night. We submitted it Friday morning. A couple of counter-offers and 36 hours of negotiating later, we got word (while at Em & Anth's wedding reception; their wedding was beautiful, by the way!) that we got the house! We did a bit of jumping and shouting on the dance floor after that phone call... 

So that's the story! You'll definitely have to come visit after we're all moved in :)

sooooold!

It's one thing to decide to put your house on the market. You clean it up for some showings and open houses. You talk about money and what you can afford and you start browsing through other listings to see what else is out there. That's the easy part. But then you GET AN OFFER! And that's where the rubber meets the road, my friends! You think you have it all planned out, but then you think about actually having that money come out of your pocket... Let's just say it's a crazy feeling.

So you can probably tell by now, but we got an offer last night. After hemming and hawing for a couple of hours, we came up with a counter, and this morning they accepted! So bye bye Meadowlawn!

 

Although I love our house, we're just ready to get out of Kentwood. No more teeny yard at the end of a cul-de-sac, no more stupid crab-apple tree that loses its leaves all summer long, no more tracking all the elements right into the kitchen, no more 44th Street, no more Beltline, no more neighbors with a checkerboard garage door... We're ready to find a place of our own, somewhere we can be when we start a family, somewhere with room to breathe, somewhere we'll be for a long time :)

I just hope we find it fast, because we'll close at the end of August, and the buyers need possession upon closing... We may just end up in my parents' basement for a few weeks! I'm not worried, we'll make it work.

Things I'm looking forward to about a new place: a YARD! a mud room! being closer to family! having/making a nice landscape! a master bath with two sinks! cupboard space! walk in closet?! Ah, the possibilities! Well, I'm off to continue my house search. We'll definitely keep you posted on where we end up!