New House: After Pictures

Click here to see the Before Pictures from a previous post.

Photo Dump and Catch Up

Lets do a quick catch up...

Billy and I celebrated our first Christmas as a married couple. (I know that this Christmas tree looks like it's decorated for Halloween but it is actually decorated for Harley Davidson)

After celebrating Christmas at home, we traveled with my parents to Florida to visit my little brother and his fiance. They live just outside of Orlando so that meant a visit to my favorite place on Earth...

I am a HUGE kid when it comes to anything Disney. (I'll do a separate DW post soon)

We also went to the outlets (I love outlet stores) and did a little damage at the Vera Bradley Outlet. 

We saw Corey Smith at the House of Blues at Downtown Disney. 

Our weather here in NC has been CRAZY! We got 8 inches of snow a few weeks ago and missed a lot of school which  cost us three of our Spring Break days (although they voted this week to give them back to us). Thank goodness because my students are wild right now. 

Beau preferred the indoors to the snow. 

I just love this spoiled puppy. 

Five on Friday

Since I am still getting back in the swing of blogging I decided to hook up with Five on Friday. The goal is to blog about five things. So here goes...

1) Today is my last day of summer vacation. Teacher workdays start up on Monday and kids will come back the 26th. I am not looking forward to it. I LOVE my job but this summer flew by. Way to fast. 

2) B and I decided to start following the Weight Watchers plan when we got home from our honeymoon. He is tall and skinny (its not fair) while I a certainly not. B would like to lose approx. 20 lbs while I would like to lose a total of about 30 lbs. We followed the plan to a T this week and made sure we walked every night. We weighed this morning and I had lost 8.6 lbs the first week while B lost 7 lbs. We are both thrilled and very excited. We cooked 6 different nights this past week (normally we would have ate out at least 6 nights) and we didn't have a signal recipe that wasn't yummy. I'll make sure to share some on here soon. 

3) I had to run a few errands today so of course that constituted a quick stop at Kirklands. I may or may not have bought a Halloween themed item. While I am certainly not wishing the summer away (see #1), fall is my absolute favorite time of year. To add to it the weather here has been very fall like the past couple of days and is only supposed to get cooler through the weekend. 

4) Since B and I had a destination wedding we have planned a wedding party for August 24th. We are very excited to have all our family and friends together to celebrate with us. 

5) Tomorrow morning I go back to the dr. for another exam to see if I still have any pre-cancerous cells. The dr. is hoping that the miscarriage and D&C may have gotten rid of them. It would be nice to have them go away without having to do the LEEP procedure. 

The Worst Blogger in the History of Blogging

Yep, thats me! I have been horrible at keeping this blog updated. My last post was the first of January and I never even bothered posting the "After" pics of my new house. (It looks MUCH better than it did in the befores. ) I promise to post those soon. While I have no excuses for being such a bad blogger I have been pretty busy...

On Saturday, August 3, 2013 I married my best friend in a very simple but wonderful beach ceremony. 

 It was the happiest day of my life. I look forward to sharing this new chapter in my life. 

While this summer has been wonderful in so many ways it has also been the saddest and most difficult time of my life to this point. As most of you know from this blog I was married before and we tried for multiple years to have a baby. I have been diagnosed with Endometrosis and been through several procedures to remove blockages in my tubes. I was also put on Clomid to help increase our chances of getting pregnant. My first husband and I were referred to a fertility specialist and after a few visits decided that we wanted to wait a little longer to begin any invasive procedures. We were married for five year and were never able to have a baby. 

In March my dr. found some abnormal cells on my cervix and suggested that I have a procedure done to remove them. I decided to wait on the procedure since it also affects your ability to carry a child to full term. I am not sure why I decided to wait as I never expected to get pregnant after all I have been through. Well on June 2, 2013 I got the biggest surprise of my life. I saw a positive pregnancy test for the first time in my 30 years. It was a complete surprise (I had not been to a fertility dr in almost 4 years) but B and I were overjoyed. I heard the heart beat at 6 weeks and everything seemed to be going fine. I had slight cramping but never any bleeding. At my 10 week appointment we got the worst news possible; there was no longer a heartbeat. On July 12th I had a D&C to remove our sweet baby. My body and my heart are still healing. My dr. has requested that we do not pregnant again until they have taken care of the abnormal cells. They are still suggesting that we do the LEEP procedure to remove the cells. I have another appointment this Friday so we will see how it goes from there. 

New Home: Before Pics

During my hiatus from blogging a lot of things have taken place in my life. One of the biggest things has been me buying a house. Not only did I buy a house completely by myself but I also did a total overhaul on it. Below are a lot of Before and During pictures. 

The house was a foreclosure and I got a steal on it. 

I started the offer process in July and finally got the keys in September. I had the worst Realtor in the world. 

I am so mad that all these pictures are not turned the correct way. They aren't like that on my computer. Does anyone know how I can fix this? 

Above is the back door that comes in off the deck. This house has a huge yard. the deck that is currently on the house will be torn down and a new one will be built come Spring. 

Laundry closet. 

Master bedroom. I love the fact that the house is a split bedroom plan. 

Living room. The previous owner had put in ceramic tiles in the living room and dining room with a  hardwood square at the front door. It was a huge pain to get all that ceramic tile broken up and out of the house. 

Master walk-in closet

Master bathroom. This room was gross!

Kitchen

bedroom 2

Kitchen. 

2nd bathroom

bathroom mirror and light 

3rd bedroom or office

Kitchen again

Let the renovations begin!

new counter-tops waiting to be installed

Carpets have been ripped off. Even though the house was a foreclosure the former owners are the ones that had it built and didn't mess up the house when they left. The house was built in 1998 so it just needed some general upgrades. There were a lot of little holes in the wall where pictures had been hanging so all of that was filled in and sanded. 

All of the work was completed by myself, my family, and my friends. I saved a lot in labor costs but it was a very hard task to get all that completed.

In this picture all the ceramic tile has been taken out and the sub floor has sanded down. There were a couple of soft places in the floor that had to be fixed. 

This house was a huge undertaking but I could not be happier with my decision to buy it. After renting 2 apartments over the past year and half I was more then ready for something permanent I needed to make the decision to move on with my life and start a new chapter and buying this house was a symbol of that.

  I can't wait to share the after pictures with ya'll tomorrow. 

Long Lost Blogger

There is absolutely no excuse for popping in 6 months ago and then being gone again. I promise I am going to try much harder to be a better blogger. Basically I missed all of 2012 as far as blogging is concerned so here is a quick recap of my last year. 

January: celebrated my mom's birthday

February: girl's dinner (we have all been friends since jr. high)

March: completed my first 5k

April: Peeps in tuxedo's from pinterest

 

May: spent come time at the beach with my parents and celebrated Mother's Day

June: graduation and the end of my 6th year of teaching

July: went to Atlanta for a couple of Braves games and Carolina Beach 

August: got a precious puppy, visited my brother in Kentucky, started my 7th year of teaching, and went to New York for the first time with my mom aunts and cousins.

September: Cheered on my Gamecocks in Columbia

October: bought a house and moved in after doing a complete overhaul (post to follow)

November: Celebrated a sweet girls 5th birthday and my own 30th birthday

December: saw Trans Siberian Orchestra in concert, my cousin got married, and my friends had a surprise birthday party for me (my birthday is the last day in November so my party was actually in December)

2012 was a lot better year for me then 2011 but my life is still drastically different then I expected at this point. I am very excited to see what 2013 has in store for me. 

I am not sure why a couple of the pictures are turned the wrong way. I have been away so long that even Blogger looks different.