2011 Resolutions- House Edition

This has been an amazingly eventful year for us. As newlyweds, we have experienced so many great, exciting, and overwhelming new things!

First and foremost, Thomas graduated from Medical School this year. I am so proud of all that he's accomplished- there is no way that I could endure the years of studying, lack of sleep (and money) that he had in order to make it this far! It's a blessing that he was able to go through college and medical school- and an added blessing that it's over!

Then the new obstacle began- residency. Residency is tough- for the interns and their family. Now that Thomas and I have relocated for his job, it's tough to do things together and to meet people in a new city. As I work from home, I find that I spend an extreme amount of time with only the cats for company. I'm not complaining- not even close. People apologize for the fact that I am a doctor's wife- and as a result kind of have to go it alone since he's so busy. No apologies necessary- I knew what I was getting myself into- and I'm glad that I did. Thomas is my life and I would follow him anywhere.

Now we're to the part where we bought our home. What an excruciating experience that was. With all the foreclosures in the area (and everywhere for that matter) it was a buyer's market. Why rent when we could call a place our own for the next four years? There was no way that we could buy in California and we were happy to jump at the chance to buy our first home in Phoenix- where the houses were cheap and plentiful. Happy, that is, until we started the process. I don't want to go into it too much because the experience is something that I would rather forget. It was difficult to say the very least and was a true test of our marriage!

So here we are, in our house for over 6 months. We have already come so far in making this house our home and adding what we need to make it ours. With all the new paint, carpet, countertops, furniture, etc you would think we would almost be done. Not so!

Here is my list of 2011 home resolutions:
1. Finish fixing the pool. I'll post about that whole debacle later to explain further. In short, we need to do some work on it which requires mucho dinero so we'll be saving for a bit to tackle that next year.

2. Paint the bathrooms, laundry room. I've got the paint swatches up.... now I've just got to decide on a color.

3. Re-carpet the living room. Most of that raggedy, stained carpet is covered by either furniture or an area rug so it's fine for now. But when we have kiddies in the house crawling around we'd rather it be on a cleaner surface.

4. Clean the grout or re-grout altogether. Our grout is black.... and it isn't supposed to be. That needs fixin.

5. Get new blinds. All of the blinds in every room are either broken (they won't stay up unless you tie the strings to a weighty object) or they are falling apart (chipped panels, broken strings, etc). I would really love to get new, energy efficient, and easy to open blinds for each room.

6. Finish the garage. It needs a new work bench, some storage, and some outlets added. It's kind of ridiculous that our garage only has one outlet at the moment- and it isn't even close to the work bench.

I'm sure that there are many many more projects that need doing around here and more will come up along the way. But this is just some of the bigger things I'd like to tackle- sooner rather than later- that I'd like to accomplish within the next year.

Wish us luck!!!