Decking the Halls!

This past Sunday we (or should I say I?!) decorated the house for Christmas. (Rob relaxed on the couch and watched football, but occasionally chimed in on a few ornament placements.)  It took me almost the entire day, but I enjoy decorating, so I didn't mind one bit. It feels good to be done though! Christmas is my favorite time of the year, so I like to have the tree up for as long as possible. If it were socially acceptable, I think I'd leave the tree up 'till March ;)

Since we're not in the middle of moving this year (praise the Lord!), I've gotten a head start on some of our Christmas preparation. Yesterday I spent the day making post office runs, buying a few gifts, wrapping said gifts, and getting our 1st batch of Christmas cards out in the mail. It was a productive day indeed! Later this week/weekend I plan to get more shopping done and perhaps a little baking in as well.

We are so excited to be spending our 1st Christmas in the new house. Above is a picture of our living room taken Sunday night, just after all of the decorating was done. I think it turned out pretty good. Now that the house is decorated, cue the Christmas music, and let the holidays begin!

Update + Outdoor House Projects

Yikes! It's been quite awhile since I've last posted. I told myself I wanted to be better about keeping this blog up to date with the latest happenings in the Schmitt household, so what better day to start than today, right?! I've got about 3-4 blog posts in the works and will share them in the coming days.

Since our British Columbia trip we've managed to keep ourselves quite busy...mostly with outdoor house projects, weddings, and a little travel mixed in here and there (ok, a little travel for me; A LOT of travel for Rob). I'll post more about our latest travels in the coming blog posts. In the mean time, today's post is dedicated to house updates...and there are a lot of them! Both leading up to our mid-summer trip to Vancouver, and afterwards, we spent most of our days off outside working on landscaping, getting grass to grow, and monitoring various construction projects. 

In the span of just a few short weeks we completely revamped the landscaping in the front yard, had a sprinkler system installed, re-seeded the lawn, and had a patio built in our backyard. Looking back, I don't know how we made it through those few weeks with our sanity still intact. BUT, we did, and we can finally see how all of our hard work paid off! 

Below are a few photos I took along the way...

Landscaping (in total we planted 27 plants + 32 flowers).

Oh, and I can't forget the rocking chairs...we spent weeks looking for chairs that would compliment our house colors, and ended up getting these wood finished chairs/tables from Lowes.

Stamped concrete patio (1 day after completion). 

Patio w/ furniture.

...and we have GRASS!

All in all it was a productive summer! Since then, we've added a retaining wall around the right side of our patio (because the way our lot is graded, we had a ~2 ft drop off on the right side of the patio; therefore, we knew we had to install a retaining wall to make it safe). In the spring we'll add landscaping in/around the retaining wall and patio to give the backyard more of a garden feel. We also have plans to plant a few trees out back as well. Even though our remaining indoor projects took a backseat this summer, we feel very pleased with our progress on the house thus far. We just passed the 1 year mark on the closing of the house a few days ago...where has the time gone?!