Oh my goodness...so much to catch up on!! I have pictures from my nephew's birthday party to post, but I know everyone has been hounding me for an update about the move and the house and everything. So I will do that FIRST, then put the party pictures up here in the next few days!

So we closed on our house July 20th. It went by really quickly, and our wonderful realtor (Randall Livengood with Coldwell Bankers, if anyone needs a realtor he is THE BEST!!) gave us an Olive Garden gift card at the end of it all so we had Sara meet us up there and we celebrated us being homeowners!

With the recent change in my job, as you all know, I had time to be around for the move and the unpacking and the painting and EVERYTHING. It was actually really great, I wanted to be here for all of that. SO!! Wednesday we closed, and we got the house early Saturday morning. We came by for a day of painting. Sara, Karyn and Gerald, Daniel, Travis, and Abbey all came to help out. My sister brought the kids by for a few minutes to see the house, it was so sweet that they drove 30 minutes just for that. =)

Here are the before pictures...





Here are the pictures of everyone working (thanks for the lovely picture of my big ol' behind, Sara!!)...









And here is the finished product! Looks great everyone!!!!





We have to touch up the trim, ceiling, and entries to the hallways at some point, but we're not in any real rush.

We're excited to settle in and slowly but surely bring our touches and updates to this house! For example, we had these awful and out-dated brass doorknobs.



And we found some really inexpensive silver door handles that make ALL the difference in the world!



We have some light fixtures to replace the brass ones in the entryway and in the dining room, but we haven't gotten those hung, yet. Hopefully this weekend that we will get to that...I'm DYING to show you guys the pictures (even though I know they won't do these fixtures justice) because they are just GORGEOUS!!!

We are wanting to frame one of our large wedding pictures we ordered to hang above the fireplace, so for now that area is bare. As are the walls in general, haha. We have tons of pictures, just have to figure out where to put them.

Our new furniture came yesterday, and we are already MADLY in love with each piece!!






We're using our old rugs for awhile because new rugs are expensive, and they are an expense we aren't taking on until we can get the best deal ever. =) So, Dewey loves our big rug. Lays on it ALL the time and imbeds his fur in the tight fibers. Vacuuming doesn't pull up a single clump. We have to get on our hands and knees and use his cat brush to pull up the fur from every square inch of the rug. It takes about 5-10 minutes total, which is a LONG time to be yanking up cat fur from a rug. My shoulder was SORE last night after doing it.

These are the before pictures:




And here's what it looked like about 10 minutes later...



Here's what I got out of there...and mind you, I have a size 10 and a half foot:



Dewey's such a mess, haha. He's adjusting better than I expected to the house. You can tell he doesn't really LOVE it, yet. He will be doing fine, then he'll hear a strange noise and he's hiding under a bed for an hour. Poor little guy. He IS loving all of the windows and the fact that he can see things from the ground level: birds, squirrels, cars, people walking their dogs, kids playing in the park across the street. He's fascinated. He's funny, if you catch him looking out the window, he runs away. What a spaz...He likes exploring all the corners of each room, though. I've been posting pictures of him via my phone on Facebook, I don't really have any on the camera to upload. I'll work on that. ;)

That's about it for right now. I have a ton of things to do, I've been a slug today and haven't unpacked a single box! I need to get a move on so I can show Andrew I did something today while he was at work, haha!

Thanks for being patient with me while we got set up enough to do a blog post. And a GIGANTIC thank you to the following people: Karyn and Gerald Poplin, Travis Wood and his niece Abbey, Sara Kehoe, and Daniel Lamb. This house is painted because of you six wonderful people, and we love you DEARLY!!!!

OH!!! Before I go, the housewarming party will be a Pampered Chef party as well, courtesy of my friend MJ Martin. We have it set for Saturday, August 20th at 1:30pm. I will be sending out invitations in the next week, but I wanted to mention it now so you can save the date on your calendars! Andrew will have SOMETHING grilled or smoked to eat, and MJ is doing a strawberry amaretto pastry cooking demo at the party...yum!! There will be cold beverages as well. So come hungry, come ready to celebrate us having our first house, and come ready to see some AWESOME Pampered Chef products! I know several of you have told me you looooooove P.C., haha!

Love you all!!! Will do the other blog post before the weekend ends, promise! =)