Weekend Catch-up

This weekend we hosted our first cookout at our home with our local friends. We will get to host all of our out of town family next month for a birthday party, but we wanted to celebrate our new move with our friends. It was exciting, fun, yet so exhausting. We also had a college friend of Ryan's here for the weekend. We spent Saturday cooking and prepping the house. We spent Sunday showing our company around downtown Detroit. I am now spending my Sunday evening with a blanket on the couch, a late night bowl of mac-and-cheese, and a toddler snuggled up against because she just needed mama snuggles to get to bed tonight.

I have spent most of the past few weeks just trying to get us settled and use to the house. Now it's time to start actual projects which has me very excited. My dear husband who literally never questions anything I do hopped in the car tonight to go pick-up a leather oversized chair and ottoman that I bought from someone. My rockstar <3 Mind you it was pouring rain while he was attempting to load and unload it. The area of the house it's going in is the fireplace room, as I call it. That's our project for the end of the month. My most recent project is our front living room which is mainly a sitting room. It's a work in progress, but I'm loving the look of it so far! Due to my bed calling my name, here's a sneak peek. Details later!

Taylor

A Light Green Thumb

One of first things I wanted to do when we moved in was add curb appeal. I will openly admit that I knew NOTHING about gardening. I bought a hanging plant last year when we first moved to MI and it died after two days. I may or may not have forgotten to water it. I definitely don't have a green thumb (quite yet), I told Ryan I prefer to refer to mine as light green...very light green.

I knew between unpacking and settling in the house that it would be impossible to gut the whole yard and start from a blank canvas, plus Ryan had blank stares at me when I jokingly mentioned that. I also didn't want to embark too much on putting plants in the ground because A) like I said above I knew nothing about gardening and B) I didn't want the embarrassment of digging up my yard all weekend for the plants to just die. I decided that planting in pots this year would be the way to go. If I can keep it alive in a pot then (maybe) I can keep it alive in the ground, we'll see about that.

After a few trips to Home Depot and lots of awkward googling on my phone in the Garden Center, I won't say I'm an expert, but I'm pretty impressed with myself. I even embarked on some herbs that have stayed alive!

 Side note: Easy labels for your plants - paint stirrers from Home Depot (or any paint supplier really). Paint them and write the name of the plant on them, stick it your pot, and you've got yourself an easy (and free) label!

I had to put him to work a little bit.

Stay tuned for some backyard action!

Taylor 

Stop and Smell the Roses (or just color...)

Today as we were rearranging furniture Clari needed some sort of distraction. Not that her help isn't wonderful (at times), but lets be real furniture plus a toddler just isn't a good idea. I remembered that I still had MALA Drawing Paper Roll from IKEA in a box somewhere and that it had Clari's name written all over it. Granted it took me 15 minutes of digging through boxes in our "office" AKA the room that gets every box or item that doesn't have a home yet. The entire time I was looking Clari is at the top of the basement stairs yelling "Hello! Mommy!" 

I almost gave up looking, but then remembered that the 15 minutes of searching would be at least 30+ minutes of smiles and happiness. 

It did give us 30 minutes of her coloring while we moved furniture around the for what seemed like the billionth time. But it ended up giving us even more. After dinner, clean-up, bath time, and evening call to her Nene and Papa, I found all 3 of us surrounded around the paper roll coloring and laughing. It was probably the first time since we moved in (unfortunately) that we were relaxing and not talking about the house, but enjoying our sweet little one and each other. From Ryan trying to show off his drawing skills from years ago, tracing each other's hands, reading through all 64 crayons and talking about our favorites to Clari deciding that sitting on Ryan's shoulder while coloring was the only way to go, it was pure happiness. It quickly reminded me that sometimes you have to stop and smell the roses or in the case of our family, stop and just color. 

Taylor

New Home

It has been 3 weeks since our house officially became ours and 2 weeks since we actually moved. As the moving boxes slowly get emptied and broken down it finally feels like a home. The stress is overwhelming when it comes to unpacking, settling, decorating, house projects, etc...

But really it's one of the best feelings ever. Now you can find the Capps on Connecticut. 

Stay tuned for what's next!

Taylor