HIGHLIGHTS OF 2016

Just like everyone else, I can't believe 2016 is almost over. I would be lying if I said I was sad to see it go though. I am ready for a new year and praying for a healthy and happy 2017! I thought it would be fun to share some highlights from 2016 with you all!

We bought a house in January! I shared a home tour here and our moving weekend here.

Nashville experienced a "big" snow storm and we lounged around the whole weekend. It was perfect and I'll always remember that weekend with my sweet husband!

We celebrated Matthew's 24th birthday..together, with friends, and with family!

We hosted a lot in 2016! We are so thankful for our home and to be able to open up it up to our friends and family all throughout the year. So many special memories!! We hosted, a dinner party in April, Cinco de Mayo in May, Our first annual Summer Soiree in June, Red, White, and Blue BBQ in July, second annual Friendsgiving in November, and my mom's birthday in December!

I went on a girls trip with my best friends to Hilton Head, SC!

 We celebrated one whole year of marriage in our favorite place, Cookeville! 

I shared our anniversary pictures here!

Worked on SO many house projects and got so much marked off our house project list! We bought new furniture, painted our front door, painted our kitchen, painted our dining room, painted our living room, we painted our entryway and hallways (my dad did it!), painted our guest bathroom, and built a farmhouse table!!!!

 Announced we were adopting a puppy!!

WE BROUGHT OUR GIRL HOME! Hands down, one of the best weekend of 2016 for the both of us! And she has had us wrapped around her little paw every since!!!!

and now I want to go cry because she's not this small anymore

Celebrated Thanksgiving with our families and then spent the week after Thanksgiving on our anniversary trip, a cruise to Mexico!

Decorated for our first Christmas in our home!

Celebrated our second married Christmas with our families and Reagan's first Christmas!.

Goodbye 2016, 2017 please be good to us!!!!

2015 recap, part one and part two

2014 recap

2013 recap, part one and part two

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HIGHLIGHTS OF 2016

TOUR OF OUR NEW HOME

I'm so excited to share this post with y'all today! We knew the house was a little outdated in some some rooms and that if we bought this house we would have some work to do, but honestly that's exactly what we wanted. We wanted something that we could do some work on but not something that was going to make us the next Chip and Joanna Gaines. So with that being said, here is our house! We are so excited to begin working on our house and take it room by room.

The entryway

It's a two story entryway and Matthew's first words when he saw the entryway was "this is the perfect place for a 12ft tall Christmas tree." I was one proud wife! ;)

 Study and dining room

Around the stairs is the study. Some people use it as a formal living room, but we don't want to have a formal living room. So we decided to make it Matthew's office. 

Dining Room

Connected to the dining room and kitchen is the dining room. That wallpaper will be coming down within the next two weeks ;) I am in love with the wainscoting. So pretty!

Up next is the kitchen!

Again, this wall paper is coming down very soon! The kitchen and dining room are where we are going to do quite a bit of work. We are so excited to redo the kitchen!

Living Room

We plan on taking that half wall down so the entrance into the living room isn't so small.

So excited we have a fireplace, and I am loving those 3 big windows!! So much natural light pouring in.

Not pictured downstairs:
Around the corner from the kitchen is a small storage closet, half bath and a entrance to the garage.


Upstairs:

There are 3 guest bedrooms that all look just like this. We are so excited to have family and friends be able to stay with us now!! One guest bedroom will be my office and I will finally be able to put my new desk somewhere!!

Guest bathroom

Master bedroom

Master Bathroom
Double vanity, actual vanity, and water closet...I was SOLD.

Through the door on the left is our walk in closet! Woo hoo for having a bigger closet!













Not picture upstairs:
Linen closet and laundry room

Our backyard

It's a decent size yard and it's fenced in! The sellers left their trampoline lol.

And that's our house! We are so excited and so grateful for the opportunity to have a home of our own! We keep telling each other we can't believe we have a house, but we do! We feel like it was just yesterday he was picking me up for our first date and here we are almost 6 years later, married and just bought our first house! So incredibly blessed to be doing life with Matthew.

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TOUR OF OUR NEW HOME

WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!

Surprise! If you are following me on any social media account then I'm sure you saw my post on Friday afternoon if not, then we bought a house! YAAAYYY! I'm so excited that I can finally talk about what has been happening for the past month or so. 

Let me start from the beginning. Around October we started thinking about what we wanted to do once our lease was up (it's not up until the beginning of February, we were just really planning ahead lol.) We threw around the idea of buying land somewhere and building. My uncle is a contractor and has always said he would build us a house one day. We looked at different plots of land and different options, but it isn't the time for us to build right now. We want to live somewhere for awhile to make sure that's where we want to build. So once that was out we started looking online at houses. Nothing serious, just browsing. Occasionally we would drive around and look at some of the ones we found online. We knew we couldn't really do anything because of our lease at our apartment, but still just liked looking. We found this one house on Zillow early November and just fell in love with it. We drove by it many times, but we weren't serious about buying a house at the time and KNEW it wouldn't still be on the market when we were ready. I checked Zillow every single day to see if it was still on there. I called it "our house" and told Matthew it would still be for sale when we were serious about buying a house, I just knew it.

Fast forward to the Monday after Thanksgiving and we came home to a note taped to our door from our apartment letting us know that our lease was up in 6 months (as if we didn't know lol.) They listed the month to month leasing prices and we were FLOORED. If we chose to stay in our apartment and lease on a month to month bases until we found something then our rent would have almost doubled. Matthew and I both agreed that we would live in a cardboard box before we paid that for a 1 bedroom apartment. That same night we started looking on Zillow and other websites for houses. We had originally planned on using a realtor from church, but things happened so quickly. Tuesday morning Matthew called about the house we both LOVED (the one I kept calling "our house")since it was still showing up as for sale on Zillow. The realtor listing it told us it was under contract but if anything changed she would let us know. I'll be honest and say that I was completely bummed. I told Matthew I hope the contract comes off of it and it becomes available again to which he replied "Shel that hardly ever happens". So back to searching we went. We met with a realtor Tuesday night and he showed us a house. It was nice, but it just wasn't for us. That realtor became our realtor and we are so thankful for him! He lined up 2 more houses to show us the next day (Wednesday afternoon.) Well Wednesday afternoon right before we got off the listing agent on "our house" called and said the contract fell through and it was back on the market. Matthew asked our realtor if we could look at that one after the other two and he got it all worked out. So we looked at the first one and it was really small and didn't have much of a yard. The second one was REALLY nice and had been completely updated. It was a lot smaller than what we were wanting but it was just gorgeous on the inside. Our realtor told us there were multiple bids on it and if we put an offer in then we would be entering a bidding war and that the prices on those always shoot up quickly. So we went and looked at the last house ("our house"), as soon as we walked through the front door I knew we would be making an offer soon. Both of our reactions were the same and we kept giving each other the look. We drove out of the neighborhood and Matthew said "Well I think we just found our first house" and I cried. We went home and talked it over and prayed about it for a few hours and just felt like we really needed to put an offer in asap. So Matthew called our realtor and told him we wanted to make an offer. The sellers had until Thursday night to accept and they did. I'm pretty sure neither of us slept that Wednesday night, and we hardly ate anything all day Thursday waiting on them to accept or not. They accepted and we celebrated with ice cream from Dairy Queen.

So "our house" actually became OUR HOUSE! It all happened SO fast...like in four days fast but looking back now and we can see so clearly how it was all apart of God's plan for us. This house was on the market for 70 DAYS (only because it had a contract on it previously for a few weeks and then it was dropped) and right now that is unheard of. Especially in the area we bought it in. It is definitely a sellers market right now and houses are going so quickly after being listed. We still can't believe it, and we are so incredibly grateful!

2016 is starting out pretty great. We have a lot of work to do, but we are so thankful for the opportunity to make this house our home!

Here are a few more pictures from the past few months that I haven't been able to share until now :)

Celebrating that they accepted our offer at Dairy Queen!

First picture in OUR house. This was the night we had our home inspection.

Our realtor and home inspector checking out our fireplace.

And here is our closing gift from our realtor! The cutest basket and picture of our home. Love it all!

Come back tomorrow for pictures of the inside! 

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WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!

JOHNSON CITY

This past weekend we made a trip to Johnson City to visit my BIL and SIL. They start PT school and clinicals this week so we knew this past weekend was the best weekend to go before they get busy with studying! It's about a 4 hour drive, so we headed out as quick as we could Friday afternoon.

We got there pretty late Friday night so we talked for a little bit and then crashed for the night. Matthew's parents got there Friday afternoon and stayed in a nearby hotel, we decided to crash at their apartment for the weekend.

We made a stop at Chick-fil-A for breakfast Saturday morning and then got a tour of their campus. They both go to East Tennessee State University (ETSU) and goodness, what  beautiful campus it is, surrounded by mountains. SO pretty! Here are some pictures from our tour. It's still Christmas break so there weren't many people on campus.

Saturday night we went to a cute restaurant called The Firehouse Restaurant. It was so good and the cutest little place, with great service.

After we went to dinner we went to the movies. They have this awesome $3 theater, and we saw Spectre, the new James Bond movie. It was pretty good, definitely a lot of fighting scenes lol.

Sunday we went to church with them and had lunch at one of our favorites, Cookout. We always enjoy seeing where our family and friends worship at, and enjoyed meeting new people. 

After lunch we packed up and got ready for the trip back. Before we could leave though the boys had to play a game of hockey...

boys will be boys ;) 

On the way home we made a stop at Puppy Zone in Knoxville and a big furniture warehouse before heading on home. There weren't many puppies this time and the ones they did have were all asleep lol.

Most of the drive home it was raining or spitting snow flurries and when we were about an hour from home the sun finally decided to come out. Giving us a beautiful winter sunset!

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JOHNSON CITY