Happy Home-iversary!

Yesterday marked the 1-year anniversary of Chris and I closing on our very first house!! This past year has gone by really fast and we have accomplished a lot with our house - making it feel like a home and taking care of "homeowner" problems like our leaky basement and gardening. Although, looking back, there were a few things on our home "to-do" list that just didn't quite make the cut this year - like getting a cheap refrigerator for the basement kitchenette and the basement bathroom in general (which I'll get to later).

For all of you first-time homeowners out there, or soon-to-be first-time homeowners, I wanted to share with you what I have learned over this past year...

1. Homeowner-ship is a money-pit. I had always heard that from people before we bought, but I definitely didn't quite realize the truth behind it until these last 12 months. If it's not decorating your house, it's fixing leaks, or holes, or electric-stuff, or anything really. Basically, you spend way more money than you could ever imagine. Which leads me to my second point....
2. There is always something you need to do. Again, if it's not wanting to paint or decorate a room, it's fixing leaks, or holes, or electric-stuff. (And let's not forget about cleaning!) Chris and I could probably spend every weekend doing "house" things if we wanted, and our list would only get longer!
3. I don't mind my house being a money-pit or always having something that needs to be done. We waited a long time to be homeowners. I waited a long time to decorate my own space, and Chris waited a long time to "fix" things. I would much rather buy paint, or curtains, or spend my time DIYing, than buy new clothes, or shoes, or go shopping. I know I have been to Home Depot A LOT more than I have been to a mall, and you know what, I am A-okay with that. In fact, I love it, because I love my new home.
4. And, because of #1-3, we have definitely become more domestic. Last night Chris and I watched Old School and the character Frank (Will Ferrell) pretty much summed up what we have turned into:

"Well, um, actually a pretty nice little Saturday, we're going to go to Home Depot. Yeah, buy some wallpaper, maybe get some flooring, stuff like that. Maybe Bed, Bath, & Beyond, I don't know, I don't know if we'll have enough time."  Yes. Yes, that is us, 100%. Our Saturdays are filled with trips to Home Depot, or Target, or BB&B.... Sometimes I do miss the day and weekend trips we would take before we bought a house, but I have really enjoyed spending our time making our house a home this  past year. 

Year #2 will be different. Maybe we'll spend less money and time on the house and get to take more trips away from our home, or maybe we'll encounter some catastrophic kitchen issue that sucks us back in - you never know - but either way, I cannot wait!

Lastly, I have really been looking forward to sharing with everyone a "house tour" of all of the work we've accomplished this past year, but at this moment our house is not quite in the right shape to take photos of entire rooms... it honestly looks like we just moved in....

Our upstairs landing, complete with a broken bookshelf, towel, bathroom stuff, piles of photo frames, and yes, our comforter laying on the master bedroom floor.

Our guest bedroom still how we left it last weekend when we painted it: bed in the middle of the room with miscellaneous stuff on it and the step ladder. Oh, but isn't our chevron accent wall cool?! I'll blog about that once the room looks more presentable...

The corner of our living room would look better if we cleaned up the photo frames, boxes, and bike gear littered around it. Plus, our DIY lamp is less than complete...

Bikes, bikes, and more boxes. Believe it or not, those are only 2 of our 4 bikes - and probably only 2 of our gazillion boxes. And, to complete the look, laundry at the dining room table.

The basement project that will never end. While we fixed the basement doors ages ago, Chris has been slowly putting our basement bathroom back together. Which included waterproofing a random hole that we found that had been leaking water into our basement and drywall-ing the space back up. We are now onto one of the final stages in this process TODAY - tiling! Because of our door switcheroo, we have to re-tile the bathroom, and we're re-tiling that space right in front of the backdoor.

So yes, Chris and I are kind of living like slobs at the moment (which should come as a shock to those that know me well. I'm not even really stressed about it, weird, I know). But, we'll I'll get it clean and then I'll take pretty photos of my house for all of you, promise!! Now, off to go help Chris tile. This should be interesting...