Our New Home- Kitchen & Backyard

Arguably our favorite room in the entire house is the kitchen/breakfast area. I'm obsessed with the walls of windows and all the natural light it brings in. I never have to turn on lights in any of the rooms all day because of it! I love eating meals at the table we built together and looking out the windows at all the green scenery that surrounds us. Since we live on the golf course, there are no houses behind us which is amazing and feels like we are secluded in a way. I'm really loving how green everything already is here. 

 

I love the white kitchen and how open it is.
 I love the chandelier we picked out to go above the table and love that Andrew redid the electrical wiring (by watching youtube! haha) to make it so the light fixture could be centered over the table and with the windows and not centered with the whole room. (The people before us took their chandelier and also had theirs centered with the whole dining area so their table had to be moved way over to the left and then it was kind of blocking the back door which looked pretty silly to me) Andrew also added the dimmer switch which makes it look a million times better than before when it was so bright.
I love the little lights that are installed underneath the cupboards to use when it gets dark.
I love the backsplash.
I love the farmhouse style sink.
I love how it feels so much like home already.
 Really, I just love everything about this whole space.
(except the older white oven and microwave--can't wait to change that to stainless steel to match the other appliances!)

^Love the little sign my mom got me!^

When we were driving across country, we stopped to eat at Qdoba and she was telling me how strong I was and how impressed she was that I was able to do the drive in the truck by myself without Andrew. I reminded her of the quote that some other guy had shared at my little brother's basketball banquet a few weeks earlier because his wife had just passed away due to cancer. It really couldn't be more true. It would have made the cross country trip so much more bearable with Andrew with me, but he had to work in Chicago that week to provide for us, so I just had to do what I had to do and be strong because that was my only choice!  Thanks momma.

still need to cover the screws in the table...

 

 

Another favorite is our deck & backyard. Holy cow, it's unreal! The multilevel deck, landscaping, and golf course is awesome. It's the perfect backyard for parties! Bry loves to lay out and enjoy the sunshine. This is how he spends a lot of his days.

 

 

so happy here!!

 

And no, we still haven't done this section of raking and weeding yet.....sigh.

When we moved out of our last house, we were in such a hurry and didn't have any time or room in our truck to grab our BBQ :( so we left it for the people moving in and now we still need to buy another barbeque and some patio furniture.
 Never-ending to-do lists around here these days! 

Moving into our Charlotte house!

We've been busy, busy, busy over here! Thankfully we've had several visitors to help us get all settled into our new home out here.  

 

First, my mom and Jared drove in our car with Bryant on the long haul out while I was driving the Uhaul truck. It worked out that it was Jared's Spring Break so he was able to come and help us which we were so so thankful for! It sure was nice to have him do all the heavy lifting with Andrew instead of me! It took us two full 12 hour days of driving and the majority of it was in pouring rain which wasn't fun at all. We got into Charlotte Thursday night and closed on our house Friday. Right after we closed, we all got right to work. My mom and I were cleaning the house while the boys were unloading the truck. Jordan & Kaci live only 2 hours away in Raleigh, so they also came down to help out. Saturday the boys went golfing while us girls went shopping for home décor. This house is a lot bigger than our other house was so we definitely have a lot of furnishing to do. We found some cute things and then met up with the boys to look go look at furniture. We desperately needed a sectional for our great room. We found one we loved, but of course, they wouldn't have it in stock until May! So annoying.  We literally went to so many furniture stores and barely any stores had furniture you could take home that day. Kaci & Jordan left on Sunday and I asked them to go to a furniture store in Raleigh to see if there were any light gray couches at the store that you can take it home right then. Luckily for us, they had the exact couch we wanted from the other store! So Andrew and I rented another Uhaul truck and went and picked it up the next day. Hooray for having a place to sit and hooray for not having to cover up a big hole with a blanket like our last couch ;)
Sadly, I didn't take any pictures while they were here. 

takin a break with bry guy

The next weekend, Andrew's mom & grandma came out to visit! They lucked out a little bit because a lot of the house was already put together. We did have them help us with the backyard though! Andrew and I have never really enjoyed gardening....and now our backyard has so much landscaping; trees, bushes, plants, etc. that we are going to have to actually do work out there! In our last house, our HOA did all of our yard maintenance so this was quite a shock! It's really such a beautiful backyard though so I prefer it this way. We finally bought a lawnmower and all other tools we needed this last weekend so our grass is looking great now. The owners before us left the front yard in great shape with hardly any weeds, but the back had lots of weeds and raking that needed to be done. 15 trash bags of weeds/leaves later, we only had 1 little section of it done. The section looks great but we'll have to dedicated many more Saturdays to yard work!!

 

section raked and weeded!

.....and this section isn't! Definitely needs some work still.

 

We spent Easter enjoying conference and eating a yummy meal with his mom and grandma before they had to leave back to DC. It was a short visit from them but loved having them here!  

Before we moved, we had sold my car so that we only had to drive out one of the cars, which meant Andrew & I needed a 2nd car again. My school and his work are only 3 miles away from eachother, but our schedules are completely different that we wouldn't be able to commute together each day. Every night last week we were at different car dealerships trying to find a car we liked. We looked at lots of different cars but ended up buying a new Mazda 3. We have been so happy with our other Mazda SUVs so we ended up sticking with Mazda. We wanted either black, white, or dark blue but they only had a light blue color car so first we bought a color we didn't like as much but luckily went back the next day for and switched it out for a much nicer dark blue color.

 

Andrew's dad came out this past weekend too. He helped Andrew build benches that I wanted to go on both sides of the fireplace. They aren't quite done but have so far turned out so beautiful! Just like I had envisioned it to look in my head! I'm so glad I married a handyman that can do these projects for me which saves us money by doing it ourselves and are also much more meaningful to me coming from him! And I always end up liking them more than from a store because I can pick out exactly how I want it :) just reason 1,098,948 why I love this man.

 

We've loved it out here so far! The weather has been beautiful-- perfect warm weather without the humidity yet. I was out in the sun for 2 hours doing yardwork, and my back was fried! It was obvious I hadn't seen the sun for awhile.
 

Life out here is also very different. I'm not trying to be mean or judgmental at all, it's just a fact, but there are literally SO MANY fat people here....and they all still wear really tight clothes!!! My mom was telling me that NC is like the 3rd highest state for overweight people in the US. Must be all the fried food because there is a Bojangles fried chicken place on like every corner out here! There are also a million restaurants here! It's crazy, they have most all the places I've heard of and then a million other places that I haven't. People must just love food here so I guess I'll fit right in with that aspect!

 

So there you have it! Life's been busy and doesn't look like it will stop anytime soon. Andrew's company already assigned him to a client in Philadelphia that he will have to travel to. We are also getting ready to leave for our anniversary year 4 trip to Europe next week!! So excited!

Missing these babes still though :( and I'm positive Bryant is too.