Fab Friday

5. Making it through my first week solo at work.  My co-worker left for a new job and my supervisor sent someone over to help while we are looking for a permanent replacement.

Last day lunch party

4. Avery has been incredibly loving this week.  She has been full of kisses and cuddles and it is adorable!

3. Watching Pitch Perfect this week (again).  Still one of the best movies, so funny.

2. Father's Day lunch with my parents.

Our new fence

1. A weekend without major plans!  And no travel plans :)

Wedding Mania

June is the month of weddings and this is the first year (besides our own) that we have participated.  Josh's cousin got married on the 7th and we were both in a wedding on the 14th.  I have a shower on the 21st and another wedding on the 28th!  I love love!

Both of the weddings so far have been super fun, but the wedding we were in last weekend was something else.  We have known Jamie and Chad for many, many moons.  They started dating not soon after we did.  The summary of the weekend was it's about darn time.

The wedding and reception were at a golf course in Northfield.  Even though the weather was horrible, the day was beautiful and full of love.  I am so happy I was able to be a  part of it.

A lot of the attendants were family, so when they finally caught a break in the weather between the ceremony and reception to take some family photos outside, these three gals, myself, Josh, and our friend Andrew found ourselves reminiscing in an RV killing some time.  I can be quite emotional, so I'm sure its no surprise that this moment brought that on for me.  I was struck by how blessed I have been by this group of people.  It is so amazing to meet such kind-hearted, amazing people at such a young age.  I know it is not normal to stay so close with high school friends, but obviously the rest of the world does not have the same friends as me :)

Fab Friday Slacker

This month is not conducive to me sticking to my Fab Friday plans.  Here I am with another week missed and more plans for all day Friday.  So Fab Friday is coming a bit early this week!

5. Seeing how excited Avery gets every time we have people over to visit.  She absolutely loves people, especially when they come to our house.  The pure joy and excitement in her eyes is adorable.

4. Small bits of pampering... like getting your nails done.  Hasn't happened since Christmas, so it felt good!

3. Summer work schedule.  My work is very dependent on other people submitting things to me.  Since most students and faculty members are gone for the summer, my workload has decreased dramatically.  Hooray for short days and sunshine.

2. It is officially wedding season.  I love celebrating love, seeing family and friends, and a good party.  Wedding season is my jam, and this month is packed!  One last weekend, another this weekend, a shower the weekend after, and our last wedding for a while the last weekend in June.

1. Feeling like we have made some progress in our house.  Enjoying having dinner in the dining room or backyard instead of doing projects in them.  I am hoping we can get our camera up and running soon so I can take some real pictures and do some posts.

Fab Friday

Things have been crazy, busy, fun around here over the last few weeks!

On the 16th, I headed to meet some old and new friends for a bachelorette party.  We went to Alexis Bailly vineyard which was really fun.  They have super nice grounds, so if you have better weather than we did, a picnic would be great.  Since we went on a Friday, we got a lot of individual attention.  The owner and workers at this place are fantastic!

Wine!

On Saturday, we had a shower in the morning and then headed downtown to the Hilton.  The downtown Hilton is super fancy and would be great for a staycation.  We then went to The Lowry for a drink and absolutely delicious potstickers before heading to Blush Beauty Room for a little pampering.  We were looking for a cab to get us there, and ended up in an Escalade escort.  Pretty cool!  After getting dressed back at the hotel, we went to Pizza Luce for a late dinner and went out on the town.  We ended up at Pourhouse with a live band, so that was super fun!

Pumpkin facials

Ready for a night on the town!

On Sunday, we had a quick breakfast and then I headed home to help Josh's friend cover our old dining chairs since we were giving him the set to use for his new apartment.  As he was finishing up, Kindie stopped by to pick up our old couch and chair.  We FINALLY have our garage back!

My ear-ringing aftermath of the evening

Since Josh had patched the damaged wood from our antique dresser that weekend while I was gone, we tried our hand at homemade chalk paint that week.  I would say it was a success!  We were even able to find a paint return, so got a whole gallon of the perfect color for $7.  Not bad for a project that cost us less than $50 total!  Next stop is to mount the tv on the wall and do a little styling (new lamps)!

Mid-painting

In the living room

This was also finals week at school.  Work was crazy busy and stressful for everyone, so there may have been a few meltdowns.  Keep on keeping on, as I continue to remind myself.

Taking some time to take a walk through campus and enjoy the landscaping

On Friday, I was kicked out of my parking spot early for commencement, so Josh (who has half day Fridays in the summer, lucky duck!) and I brought Avery to her hair cut appointment and had a happy hour date.  Avery got shaved and we got snacks... fair trade?  We also went to see the new X-Men movie that night.  It was a good start to a long weekend.

All shaved and ready to go for summer

Bright and early on Saturday morning, my parents picked us up and we headed north.  After a few pit-stops at Walmart, we made it up and started the projects.  A dock, boatlift, and 6 or 7 trips to the compost dump later, we had a habitable yard!  Josh was even able to catch a BIG fish!

Avery was very interested in Dad's fish

We came home on Monday, early enough to get some errands done.  Since then, we have been slowly working on getting our house back into livable condition after the month long hiatus from cleaning, laundry, and anything productive caused by our furry visitor.  This week we planted our new lilacs from the lake, planted our new vegetables (to replace the drowned seedlings we had), did a ton of laundry, cleaned up the kitchen, cleaned our bedroom, cleaned the bathrooms, hung curtains in the dining room, got our new rug in the mail, and hung the shelf we got from Carver Junk Company in the bathroom.

Very sleepy puppy

New curtains in the dining room

Garden

This weekend I am hoping to paint the side table I picked up on Craigslist so it will work in our living room.  I am also hoping to paint the dresser we have in the guest bedroom so it will look nice in there and we can store some of our off-season clothes in it.  I discovered the hardware store across the street from work has a rather large paint return section.  I'm thinking that will come in handy!  Also on the docket are planters for our strawberries and herbs.  Hopefully those make it in this weekend so they can start pumping berries for us!

Since June 1st is also this weekend, I am hoping we can get back on track with our "Dave Ramsey" budgeting.  We fell off this month after paying off our new couch and not being able to pull all the cash we needed out for the month.  We ended up paying for a lot of things with leftover funds from other envelopes and with our debit card.  We have been good about not putting anything on our credit card.  If things stay as planned (when do they ever?) we will have it all paid off before the interest kicks in this fall.  The perils of being a new homeowner...

Not a traditional Fab Friday, but there was a lot to update on!

5. Time with family and friends

4. Getting to be a functioning family of 3 again

3. A hard day's work and making progress on "the lake"

2. Having beautiful weather and a fantastic patio in our back yard to enjoy it

1. Feeling like we are starting to make progress on turning our house into our home

Bye, Bye Petey!

Petey is officially at his forever home now.  We are really going to miss that little rascal around here.  We met his new family tonight and, MAN, is it quiet in our house now!

We have been working on some projects and making progress on the decorations in here.   We are headed to the lake this weekend and can't wait to help Gram and Gramps get things ready for the season.  I think Josh is having dreams of fishies already...

Petey the Pitbull

Josh and I have been tossing around the idea of fostering a puppy for a while now.  It started with me looking up puppies for adoption online and realizing that we should do a test run first.  

So happy to have a friend

We found Secondhand Hounds through a college friend and decided to give it a whirl.  We completed the paper work and home visit right after moving in and then sat on it for a while.  We wanted to make sure we were settled and ready to give a pup a good (temporary) home.

While we were on our way to the airport in Tampa, I saw Spud posted.  I showed him to Josh and we were both sold.  He is an approximately 4-5 month old pitbull mix.  He looks just like Petey from the Little Rascalls (so obviously we had to call him Petey).  After getting him home, we learned that he is the sweetest pup.  He is super mellow and laid-back.

His first day with us

Avery is not fond of many dogs, which is one of the reasons we wanted to do this.  She was instantly smitten with him.  After he got more comfortable (and had a bath!) they have been wrestling for about 6-7 hours each day. 

Even though Avery still has moments of jealousy, this has been a great experience for all of us.  Avery is learning to share, both Avery and Petey are learning how to “dog,” and we now know that we are not ready to have two dogs (especially a puppy)!

Terrible picture, but great summary of our lives since having Petey

Fortunately for our ear drums (and sanity) they gradually got sick of wrestling and have been spending more time playing with toys (together and separately), lounging, and cuddling (that only took a car ride together).  I think Avery will be sad to see Petey go to his forever home, which will hopefully be very soon (pending home visit).

Fab Friday

Sorry I missed last week, things have been a bit more hectic than normal around here!

5. Being able to work a few days last week and one this week from the Hamline Minneapolis campus.  Half the commute to work and so much more peaceful!

4. Avery and Petey (more on him later) finally settling down and giving us a moment of quiet at home.

3. Stopping to enjoy the feeling of sunshine on your face after days of rain.

2. Listening to the rain hit the skylight while lounging in bed.

Our new (tiny) hydrangeas!

1. The safety and health of our family.