Weekending: Reflecting on Our 1st House

After 5 years, DG and I have decided to sell our house.  It’s going on the market this week, and I am over the moon excited, but I was hit with a wave of nostaglia.   When we decided to list, I sat down to make a list of all my favorite memories here.  I also looked through my old blog posts (holy bad photography), and laughed at some of our design ideas.  This blog was partly started for me to share the process of making our house a home, and it has been interesting to reflect on how that’s happened.  Here are some of my favorite memories from this house (and some old blog posts) in no particular order.

Weekending: Reflecting on Our 1st House

Nights on our patio

Our initial attraction to the house was the backyard.  We loved the patio and the screened in porch.  We also loved that there was wooded area in our backyard as well.  DG added a firepit to the patio, and then two years ago, built furniture, and topped it off with market lights.  I think that this may be the thing I miss the most about this particular house.

DG’s handiwork

DG was definitely more into interior design than I was.  I really love the updates he did to the house, especially the window seat and the redo of our master bathroom for $250.

Adopting Gizmo

It’s been almost 2 years since we brought Gizmo home.  Gizmo doesn’t love people being in his domain, but he loves us and is inseparable from his brother, Winston.  I had the best time scrolling through photos for this post.  I can’t even with his little face.

Our engagement

After living in our house for about 9 months, DG asked me to marry him when we were taking our Christmas card pictures.  I honestly had no idea that he was going to propose, and it’s still one of my favorite stories to tell.  Read more here.

Learning how to decorate

Full disclosure, I had no idea how to decorate our house.  When I lived on my own in college, I didn’t generally hang things on the wall because I moved every year.  While I lived in this house for 5 years, prior to that I moved every year for 7 years, so I never got settled in anywhere.  I guess I didn’t know what to expect with decorating a house, but I had a lot of fun through trial and error.  I finally have figured out what my design style is and I really enjoy updating our interior with coffee table books, cotton, burlap, and fresh flowers.

Refinishing furniture

We definitely were tight on money at times in this place, so we learned to be creative with what we had.  I began using Annie Sloan Chalk Paint to update our furniture and it quickly because a great stress reliever for me.  Check out this post here.

 Annual Christmas Party

We started having a tacky Christmas sweater party our first Christmas here.  It quickly became a tradition and our friends started marking on their calendars each year.  Last year, we didn’t have a tacky Christmas sweater party, but still had a small gathering, and I’m so glad we did.

Hosting Thanksgiving

Our first married Thanksgiving together, DG and I began hosting Thanksgiving at our house.  It’s usually a small gathering, but I love being in our home around the dining room table DG bought me when we bought this house.

Creating a Christmas tradition after getting married

Before we got married, we spent Christmas with one of our families.  After we got married, we decided to make a tradition for ourselves.  For our first Christmas, we spent our time in Washington, D.C (check out here and herehere).  It was hands down one of my favorite holidays and experiences with DG to date. But since then, we have Christmas Eve together at a restaurant that DG picks. Then we have a lazy Christmas morning. Christmas Day is spent with the dogs. Then, we ride around and look at Christmas lights that night with the dogs.

As we start looking for our next chapter, I am so grateful to have these memories in this house.  Also, thanks for sticking with me through my bad photography and no-idea-what-I-was-doing decorating phases.

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P.S.

 I don’t have a ton to share from this weekend. I just spent it in athleisure clothes painting and washing baseboards. Also, I was mulching flower bed and doing laundry, to name a few things. Those 5 years feel different. I used to not to be this sore after house work when we first moved in. *Oh to be 25 again.* The only time I put on real clothes was to sneak away for a catch up session with my BFF, Andrea, who was in town from LA. 

 

 

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