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 :)