Our House is becoming a Home

About 14 months ago, Curtis bought this house.  It had so much potential! The ceilings were so high, and the walls were blank.  Literally. The walls, doors, ceilings, baseboards, everything was completely white! This was great, though.  We would buy some paint, put it on the walls, and it will all be easy, right?  Well a year after we got the house, it was still white.  We had an ugly green pleather (gross, right?) couch that was probably as old as we were. It was the most uncomfortable eye sore out there.  Finally, Curtis asked if I wanted to paint this morning..Of course! We bought a new couch and had 2 weeks until it came, so lets get all the painting done before then.  Well, we started to tape....and we taped, and taped, and taped. Our original plan was to tape Friday night, and paint on Saturday. We taped into Saturday, and just had to start painting so we could finish over the weekend.  We ended up finishing all the painting Sunday night pretty late.  I think we spend over 24 hours over one weekend for this project! Thank goodness we got it done Sunday, or it would probably still be unfinished. 

We used frogtape to tape the house, I highly recommend it! It works pretty well. We used some kind of Behr paint from Home Depot in Brown Tepee. Curtis next big project was mounting the TV on the wall.  I have to admit, he did a pretty good job with everything! Our house feels so much warmer, and just in time too! For our living room to feel homey, it only took some paint and a weekend, a TV mounting kit from Monoprice, a new black leather sectional (good luck every trying to find one of those!) from Macy's, a  coffee table and end table from RC Willy's, a  bookshelf from target, a TV stand from IKEA, a console table made by Curtis's sister, and a cute accent rug from Homegoods.  I was definitely homegoods happy that day!  We are still looking to add some curtains and some art. Still so much to do, but here is what we've done so far. Enjoy!

 

 

Our 3 choices. We chose the right

So white!

All the reachable areas are taped...

Getting Taped

Still taping.

This was our first wall with color on it

Very Sexy. haha

Entry

 

Tan, green, family guy, and my Orchids before the flowers fell off.

Starting to see what it's going to look like

Still not sure how we painted those high corners.

New and comfy living room. =)

We want to get a Canvas similar to a picture like this for the living room.  SLC, where we first met!

Not sure why I took a sideways picture

No matter how many times I pick up the dog toys, they're always all over.

Before: Doorknob

After: Doorknob

Random shot of our bedroom.

On a side note, we celebrated Mom's birthday on October 3rd

 

 

 

 

 

 

Honeymoon

Husband & Wife =)

We have been so busy since we got married and I don't even know where to start.  The Saturday after our wedding was a nice and LONG day in Salt Lake.  Neither of us has ever taken a full day and just explored the city (Not to mention our flight was at 11 so we had all day tokill).  We started out the day at Bayleaf for some breakfast/lunch.  (We also took a million pictures! Well, only ~750..ha) Next, was a trip to citycreek, since I've never been there.  We got some candy at the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory (Mmm), played at the Planetarium, played some pool, and the coolest thing was the horse and carriage ride (our horse had a cute hat on). I found out how allergic I was to horses, but it was still a fun and romantic way to end our first full day as man and wife.  After such a long day, we were exhausted, but had to wait at the airport for a few hours for our flight.  We were so early, but thank goodness for free wifi and a tablet with netflix on it!  We also had lots of movies saved on it so we were never bored.  Eventually, we got to our first stop, Atlanta and came across the world's longest escalator.  Seriously, it was huge!  

Me and our cute horse

Forever long Escalator

Another  long flight later, we reached our almost-final destination of Jamaica!  You could feel that hot and humid air just looking at it.  We went through all the fun customs stuff (NOT) and were greeted by people from our resort and escorted to their "waiting room."  It was nothing like the rest of the airport!  They had finger foods, any drink you wanted...literally, and you could have even taken a shower!  We were only there for about 10 minutes and our van was ready to take us to Sandals-Whitehouse, aka a week of paradise.  We have so many pictures at this place it would be nearly impossible to post all of them, but I'll be sure to post some fun ones.

Our room.

Biggest bed I've ever slept on!  I would've thought I had the whole bed to myself. haha

One of the nights was Dinner on the beach, and there was a guy with a machete and a lot of coconuts.  Of course I had to try a fresh coconut! I'm sure it would've tasted much better if it were cold.

Coconut drink

 It was the perfect weather at night! Warm and humid..with tons of bugs! I think I counted a total of 35 on one night. I think Curtis might have gotten one?  Bugs couldn't ruin our trip though!

So we took pictures instead

 The weather was finally good enough one day to try some kayaking.  We both heard the guy tell us he was going to look for a conch shell for us...We come back to this huge, beautiful shell!  I'm ready to walk off with it when he says, "I'll have to charge.  $40."  Okay then.  We took some pictures and went on our merry way.  This random peacock was sitting on the window sill of the french bakery. I'd want to look in there too if I were him.

Peacock wants some goodies

No idea?

 Getting ready for dinner and Curtis looks so happy? haha I guess that's the face of a hungry husband with his wife taking pictures of everything.

Red lipstick and chopsticks

 We went to the Caberet just about every night where they had the "Newlywed game," a cool Jamaican showcase of dance and drums, a talent show, and a few other fun activities.  One night when we walked in, one of the staff was moving the chairs around looking for something.  It turns out this guy wanted to watch some entertainment as well! There was another crab that snuck in another night we were there.  They're so big!

HUGE crab! Ugly things

Yummy Cake

One night we get a knock on the door, and bam!  A cake!  I think it was chocolate...but it was so good! I think I ate most of it...but that's okay!.

 Nights were really cool here.  There was always something going on!  They had these cool outdoor lounges with firepits right next to the beach.  I got a cool picture of the moon shining through the clouds and the lights hitting the beach chairs.

Cool

Sunset on the beach

There were a bunch of different restaurants to choose from.  Guiseppies was the Italian restaurant with yummy pizza's for lunch at pastas for dinner.  For some reason the waiter that took our picture held up the camera as high as he could and there we go. 

The guy that took this picture wasn't tall or anything...haha

I'm Yours.

Stole this idea from pinterest.

We took a day to go to the Dolphin Cove in Lucea. It was a lot of fun! I've never seen a dolphin in person before.  They are very entertaining! We watched them do a lot of tricks before we went into the water to pet them.  They also gave us kisses on the cheeks!  They are very smart, and very motivated by little fishies!  While at the dolphin cove, we also got to pet a stingray.

 Some last pictures from our last day in paradise...well I guess it wasn't really a "day" since we left at 10:30 AM...which is why we started it at about 5AM.  We woke up before the sun did, and hung out on the beach and waited for it to rise.  We went swimming at around 6:30, and I would've thought we were the only ones in the resort.  It was a fun way to spend our last few hours in paradise.

Sand Dollar Curtis found on the beach

The pool outside our back door.

I found sea shells on the sea shore.

Still waiting 

Sunrise Kisses

The main pool @ 6:30 AM 

Curtis found me a starfish!

 So for all of this trip the water was a little murky and choppy (Thanks to the tropical storm), so that made water sports nearly impossible.  We were told that you can find starfish in a certain area right off the beach.  Curtis took this as a challenge.  He tried looking for starfish on one of our earlier days, but he couldn't see anything.  On our last day, the weather was so perfect! Calm, clear waters.  Perfect for finding a starfish, right?  And he was so right!  He found quite a few starfish.  This red-ish orange-ish starfish was the biggest one he found.  

This guy was the smallest one we got to see and the darkest.  We had to make sure to take quick pictures and put them back in the water so we didn't kill them.  They just felt like a rock as long as you just held the outside of their bodies.  Curtis touched the bottom of one and it's hiding suction cups stuck to him.  Luckily it was him, because I probably would've freaked out!

Cabana and the beach

Last game of Chess before our long trip home.