What it means to be a Homeowner!

I'm sorry I have fell behind in my blogging duties, this post has been a LONG time coming! Lets start off with a definition.....Homeownership: The act of being enslaved to your house every free night and weekend in order to appease your inner desire to be surrounded by perfection.....

 First off, I do not consider myself a home OWNER. I don't own my house yet, so when people say, "how does it feel to be a home owner"....I say "I don't know, ask me in 20ish years!"....But most people use the term homeowner to describe someone who has purchased and is currently paying off a mortgage. So, yeah, that's us.

When we bought our house about 9 months ago we knew it was going to be a lot of work. Andrew wanted to build/remodel a house (he's the fix-it/make it your own type)....and I wanted to have a move in ready home. So I guess this home was a good compromise. We did most of the major changes before we moved in. A few walls came down, new paint EVERYWHERE, new carpet downstairs, a few minor landscaping changes, etc. And I told myself I would be HAPPY with that for a while. And we were. And time flew by. Before we knew it, it was spring. And it was time to get to work on all our spring projects. We had 2 major projects we wanted to complete. 1. Our BSU Bonus Room and 2. Landscaping.

The Bonus Room. This room was a perk to buying this house. We originally planned on buying a 3/2, but we ended up getting lucky with this house, it's a 3/2.5 + Bonus! So I didn't really have any plans for the bonus room. Andrew was quick to call dibs, and request that it be a BSU "Man Cave." We are BIG Boise State fans, so I didn't have a problem with it. But we debated about the paint for a LONG time, as in almost a year. We knew we wanted BSU Blue and Orange, but we didn't know what design we wanted. We decided to do some strips. 

Luckily, I have paint in my blood, my Grandpa Bassett and Dad are excellent painters! So, they came and helped me paint. They have decades of experience, so I told them what I wanted and they helped me.

I'm really happy with the final result. We're hoping to add more furniture and a TV next year sometime, but for now, I'm happy with the paint. :)

When we purchased our home the backyard was trashed. It was covered in weeds, holes and trash. We knew this would be a BIG project. But we didn't realize HOW BIG. Let's just say there is lots of blood sweat and tears in our landscaping. But it was worth it. 

Over the winter we just left the backyard alone, but in February Andrew rototilled, and it was beautiful!! Sure, It was only dirt, but it was evenly leveled and graded dirt. No holes, trash or sticks.

After this was done, we tackled the sprinkler system. I didn't take any pictures of that project because, well, it was the worst part of the landscaping, and I hope to never think of sprinklers again. We were working with SOME sprinklers the previous homeowner had installed and installing new ones. Lots of troubleshooting and angry words. But finally, we were ready for sod. Here is our lovely installation team enjoying their work:

And after they were done, it looked like this:

Hallelujah!! It's beautiful wonderful grass!! After a few weeks of this, we ended up finally finishing the gardens. We moved the garden boxes to the side of the patio, added rock and some trees and now we have this:

The new location of our raised garden beds 

 We still haven't planted anything, but I'm hoping to get a few plants in this year. 

And we added a garden at the back of the house:

We even re-did the garden in the front....don't mind the small lawn growing on the left hand side of the garden. I learned that bird seed will grow if it falls into your garden :)

So. After almost a YEAR of not being proud of our landscaping we can finally say, "Look what we've done!!!" We are happy, we love it!

We are glad to be done, at least for a while, because we have a BUSY summer coming up. In the next 6 weeks we will be celebrating Amielia's 1st Birthday, Beth's 3rd Birthday, our 6th Wedding Anniversary, My 25th Birthday, and Andrew's 25th Birthday. In. That. Order. And within 6 weeks of eachother!! Summer brings LOTS of Birthdays and my little niece June will be adding hers to the mix because Jana is due in just a few short weeks. We are so excited for what this summer will bring. I hope you guys are getting your projects done too and enjoying the sunshine!!

Until Next Time, Happy Blogging!