One year

Wedded Bliss? Sometimes :-)

I love being married to this man. He is so smart, thoughtful, kind, insightful, gentlemanly, fun! I love that I can trust him completely. I can trust him to make decisions when I can't make them....Though he is an engineer and me a therapist, we really do think similarly at times. When I make mistakes he has grace for me.

There have been the hard parts of this year too: learning to live in that small apartment in Capitol Hill together, figuring out how to reconcile the fact that he was ALWAYS studying somedays, figuring out how to handle this apartment managing job TOGETHER, starting to save for a house, staying in my job at Fairfax so we would have benefits and steady income, ending with my therapist of 4 years.......etc.

Most of the hard parts I can see the good in too. It's not always wedded bliss, but in those days when it doesn't feel like it, at least I have my man by my side. I know he loves me and won't leave me. When it gets really hard, when I am crying, I know he will be there to hold me.

I'd say all in all, this year has been wonderful. Looking forward to many many many more years to come and still learning how to love him more.
I love you Joshua Dean Jones :-)

And for the record, though it is a fun tradition, the wedding cake, 1 year frozen and post freezer burn, doesn't taste as good as your wedding day.

moving in!

I don't have too much time tonight to write but I wanted to post some pictures of our new place. We are so grateful for the handful of friends who helped us on Saturday.

We finished moving in yesterday and are organizing up a storm.

Almost not sure what to do with all the space we have....though I have no doubt we will fill it.

Here are some rooms we have just started to work on.

living room/kitchen
my darling in our new bedroom! Our closet is wonderful and a welcome change from the small one we had to share in our old place.


dining/living room, we ate our first dinner tonight at this table, looking out at the gorgeous Ballard locks!

living room/patio, yes, there is a deck and a wonderful view! Check out those windows!

Yay! I will post more pictures later and we get more put into place.

Tomorrow we have to finish cleaning out the old unit and the old building. Then we will get more work done here.

hold up!

I got a little too excited about painting that accent wall yesterday. My day has been full of packing, taping up boxes, and more packing.

Josh and I took a car load over this afternoon. I'm so glad I don't have to do this by myself.

When we got to the Commodore today we unloaded all the boxes, broke them down and I repacked many of them this evening. I'll take another load over tomorrow.

I am so glad that I had today and have tomorrow off. If I was doing all this after working all day it would be exhausting!

I'm am so ready and eager for Josh to be done with finals tomorrow! He has helped me some in the evenings but some of the computer/maintenance stuff of his I can't pack so it will be good to have some more help.

Okay, time to get my beauty sleep. I've got some more work to do tomorrow. can't wait until this moving process is all over.

accent

My task this week before we move in completely to our new apartment is to repaint this accent wall.

It is hard to tell in the picture but the trim is burgundy and the wall is red. Clashes horribly.

This is our new dining area, yes, we will have an entire area for dining, exciting isn't it! This space is connected to the living room, adjacent to the kitchen on the right and a window on the left.

I've never painted an accent wall before, but there's only one way to start I guess.

I picked up some color samples today and I am going to pick the color tomorrow. I'm leaning towards a light brown with some reddish/burgundy hues.

I am going to start with the primer tomorrow. This is quite a project for me. I'm excited.

We're gonna start with a clean slate in this place, our new unit is an empty canvas; ours to decorate and fill. May our creativity bring life and rest to those who enter.

overwhelmed?

You know I am feeling just a bit overwhelmed when.....

I go to the grocery store for my biweekly trip and willingly buy mostly processed food, hamburger helper, and just some fruits and vegetables. The cashier picked up my small jar of garlic from the conveyer belt and said "is this yours?"

Based on my grocery cart today, I guess I don't seem like the kind of gal that cooks with garlic.

Why am I a feeling overwhelmed you may ask? Well, our move has to be done in just over a week and a half! I work 16 hours tomorrow, Josh will be studying all weekend. We have barely begun to start packing our apartment because we don't have room for the boxes unless they are broken down. We need to start moving stuff ASAP.

I stopped by our new building today only to find that 1) the unit I was supposed to clean today is still full of random doorhandles, screws, and other trash from the contractors and handymen, also 2) the unit we are supposed to move into has a LOT of work to be done to it before the painter comes next week. There are a lot of random holes in the walls and hooks that need to be filled in and I will have no idea until at least Monday if Josh and I will be responsible for finishing preparation for the painter. Boo. There are other minor (ahem, MAJOR) issues too that Josh is trying to get me to forget about for now, but I would like to deal with them sooner than later.

I wasn't able to finish cleaning the unit I was scheduled to get done today (this will be put off until sometime next week I suppose). Our unit needs an accent wall painted (it is bright red!), holes filled in, lights changed out, the built in dressers in the master bedroom closet need to be taken out, dowels need to be put in.....etc. etc. Much of this above list I cannot do and Josh will have to take care of after he is done with his finals Wednesday. I need to figure out how to operate the old, barely functioning drapes in our unit or these need to be taken out and replaced with blinds as well.

And, all of our stuff in our current apartment needs to be moved across town to our new apartment. Locks need to be changed out in our new unit and the maintenance closet before any of our stuff can be moved. Our old apartment needs cleaning after all that is done.

Whew. I bought a bunch of junk food and processed food today at Safeway because 1) I don't think I am going to have time or energy to cook in the next week, 2) neither will Josh and he needs brain food for studying this weekend. If I don't buy it or cook better options for him at home then he just goes and buys it himself 3) I think I personally just needed to give myself some space in this area, nutrition. It's just a week or so. I will probably be tired of this stuff when it runs out.

Self care, right?