The progression of the home renovation project

I never thought I'd be grown up enough to own one house... much less two.

Mr. Right and I currently own two houses - we had a "his" and "hers" before we got married, then combined into "ours" and after letting his old roommates rent "his" after we got married, we're now ready to have just one. ONE.

But before we can sell the house, we needed to give it a small facelift. He bought it as a foreclosure and did some major upgrading to it about two years ago. But after phase one, his plan was to start phase two... and then he fell in love with me. So phase two got put on hold.

So now we're on week three of the house facelift, which has included some major landscaping, repairing a fence, grinding a stump, painting two bathrooms, completely refinishing the kitchen cabinets, refinishing two sets of bathroom cabinets and some built-in shelves, painting trim, door ways, and touching up paint. Oh, and cleaning, installing new lighting and bathroom mirrors, getting the carpets cleaned and stretched, replacing outlet covers...

The list is never-ending.

And here is how it has gone so far.

Day 1: This is going to be a breeze. I bet I finish painting these two bathrooms before lunch - they're small, how hard can they be? I'm going to be just like one of those girls on HGTV. Maybe I could start a design blog like this couple. Or this girl.

Day 1... 10 hours later: Oh my gosh, what have I gotten myself into? After 10 hours of hard labor, all I have to show for it is one painted bathroom and a half-finished one? Seriously?! Thankfully I got to work indoors, whereas my husband spent those 10 hours doing major landscaping tear-out, then came inside to install new bathroom lighting.

Day 3: My friend was so sweet to come help me paint the kitchen cabinets. See, this work stuff isn't so bad! I bet it only takes two coats.

Day 5: I'm smart - I downloaded a book on tape to listen to while I paint those cabinets. By the time I finish Water for Elephants, I bet those cabinets look amazing! But... not sure two coats will be enough.

Day 7: Still working on those cabinets... and everything I own (including my clothes, my purse, my phone, my hair, my car, my dog) has white paint on it. And after the third coat... it still needs more.

Day 8: I have the best mother ever... she worked a whole day helping me with those kitchen cabinets. And yet we're still not done... uh oh. Who knew it would take one coat of primer and THREE coats of paint?!

Day 11: My husband spends a whole day getting rid of junk left behind at the house, going to the dump, and doing various manly things around the house that involve copious amounts of sweat. For the record, he looks really cute in a tool belt.

Day 13: Well, I just finished that 14-hour audio book... and yet the cabinets are still there. I may not see a swimming pool until July at this rate. Mr. Right grinds a stump and tills some dirt... more manly things that I'm thankful he knows how to do, because I don't. Anxiety has started to build as I enter my third weekend of painting.

Day 15: Kitchen cabinets are done! Now on to the 25 other projects on our list. Thankfully, my mom came back to prime bathroom cabinets, and my mother-in-law spent the whole day cleaning for us. My father-in-law helps us take down window screens so we can wash windows. My husband builds a fence. Oh, and the air conditioning goes out (just a minor break, praise Jesus), but $250 later, we're back in business. After everyone leaves, I have a minor nervous breakdown about the 24 other projects still on my list. Somebody pass me some chocolate, or a Mexican wedding cookie (my current obsession).

Day 16 (Today): I can completely cross off one bathroom and one bedroom off my list. And the kitchen. And the living room. And I'm about to cross off bathroom #2. Things are progressing... maybe we will finish this after all. I download another audio book.

Tomorrow marks Day 17 of our extreme home makeover. For the first time since the morning of Day 1, I think I can see an end in sight. My hope is to be done next weekend. And after we sell, I can all but guarantee you that I will not (1) paint anything at my house this summer, (2) start a home renovation blog, (3) take my leisurely weekends for granted.

One more week.

Sand between our toes

This has been a crazy, intense 2011. In addition to settling in with my new husband and getting our house and our lives (and our bank accounts) intermingled and organized, I threw 10 very large special events in just 11 weeks, all while being sick and feverish and very, very tired. So you can imagine that our little vacation to the beach hit at exactly the right time.

We did a lot of resting last week - we jetted over to Rosemary Beach, Florida with Mr. Right's side of the family for a wonderfully relaxing family getaway. We stayed in a gorgeous beach house and did nothing but read novels and build sand castles and take two-and-a-half-hour naps and eat, and eat, and eat. It was glorious.

I spent one of my favorite mornings sipping coffee with Mr. Right and his grandmother on this porch, listening to her weave tales about her long life. We just soaked up her wisdom and enjoyed some good advice and sweet stories from this godly matriarch, who has a habit of saying "I'll just tell Jesus..." when you need prayer. I want to be like her when I grow up.

Rosemary Beach is filled with gorgeous beach house-mansions, and this one was our absolute favorite. It faced the water and can be yours for an easy-peasy $12,000 a week. Not exactly in the budget for this minister's wife, but we did steal a few pictures on that movie-worthy front porch. Strangely enough, this makes me want to start wearing more teal and mustard... I love that combination.

Maybe it was the humidity, or all the saltwater, but I fell more googly-eyed for my husband on this trip than ever before. It was a total treat to get him all to myself for a whole week, without work or responsibilities or a schedule to keep. We rode bikes and swam and even had a date night that involved crab cakes and a walk on the beach. The sound of those waves is just intoxicating.

And, he built me the most tremendous sand castle a girl could ever ask for.

This was our home for the week, complete with wrap-around porches and a gourmet kitchen. I could really move here without blinking. Do I smell a church plant on the coast?

I fell in love with this thing (I can't remember what they're called), and asked Mr. Right to promise me that someday, at some point in our marriage, we can have one of these in our back yard. Lucky for me he's handy, so I'm confident that he could build it, and I'm pretty sure I could hot-glue some ivy to it if we don't manage to grow any. Can you imagine the candlelit dinners we could have under that thing? Sigh.

But now it's back to reality... and like always, we managed to start another huge project - this time it's getting a house ready to go on the market. I'm up to my eye balls in paint right now... you can tell what color our kitchen cabinets are by the tell-tale paint that I can't seem to wash off my hands, arms, legs... even my hair. But man, is it turning out cute!

Twins, separated at birth

Mr. Right and I watched the most amazing movie last night - Life is Beautiful. It was the ideal movie for me - set in Italy, shot in Italian - reminding me of my two trips around Italy back in 2007 and 2009. I think it's about time to go back.

But I loved the movie even more because the child star looks EXACTLY like my husband. Like, in a scary way. See for yourself.

My cute husband:

The actor:

My husband:

The actor:

My husband:

The actor:

My husband:

Maybe I'm biased, but I think my hubby is cuter!

Doing my happy dance

Today I'm spending the day in bed, not because I'm sick, but because I worked a 14-hour day yesterday putting on our annual black tie gala for work. It was incredibly stressful but I'm so very pleased at how it turned out. One of the benefits to being the one in charge is that I try to slip in little things that will make my husband and I happy that nobody else would ever notice. Last night I had the DJ play the first and last songs we danced to at our wedding. So, while everybody else enjoyed a regular dance, Mr. Right and I traveled back to our favorite night at Bass Hall and reminisced about the glorious time we both had. It was special.

In other news... I'm feeling better! I finally saw a specialist last Monday and got on new medicine that seems to have done the trick. I'm going to stay on for a good long while, but I'll be switching to a low-dose version that should be much more tolerable... I can even get in the sun! Since I am wonderfully close to a little beach vacation, this was especially good news.

After a few weeks of feeling especially blue, it was so nice to have a week where I felt good. My energy is quickly returning, and I have a long list of things I want to do with my husband now that I'm able to be out and about again. Here's the short list:

1. Go on a bike ride together

2. Take a picnic date to Trinity Trails in Fort Worth to watch the sun set

3. Ride the train to Dallas for dinner

4. Start RUNNING again!

5. Refinish the dresser we're turning into a buffet for our dining room

6. Go on spontaneous Sonic runs after dinner... or other unplanned random weeknight date excursions

It seems like such a simple list, but these are all things we wanted to do but got cancelled over the last four months. I am simply ecstatic about the possibilities now.

Over the past four months my husband has shown me what a gem he is. On one of my very lowest days, this is what I found in our bathroom, a note he had left in a very loud way:

It was difficult to catch on camera, but it was a C.S. Lewis quote that made me melt all over my bathroom floor. I still can't bring myself to clean this large love letter off my mirror, even though I know eventually I'll have to. In the meantime I will just relish in this sweet gesture and be thankful that God has blessed me with such an encouraging man.