Home.

For as long as my husband and I have been together, we’ve shared a dream of owning a home.  Well, we finally did it!  And it’s terrifying!  But I hear everyone feels that way, so we’re just going with it, making one payment at a time.

With our small (for the Bay Area!) budget, we thought we’d end up with a major fixer-upper but life had other plans in store and we wound up with a house that was remodeled top to bottom about three years ago.  We were still excited for a project, so leave it to us to find plenty of other things to do. 

Here’s a brief list we plan on tackling over the next year:

Make a built-in in our dining room

Add a brick wall to our living room

Make a tufted headboard

Build a dining room table

Add a third bedroom with an ensuite bathroom

Repaint:  I’m thinking Edgecomb gray for all the common spaces and Revere Pewter for the master bedroom!

The husband wants to tackle some more serious projects like insulating the whole house (darn contractors didn’t do that in their major remodel!) and installing a whole house water filter.  Let the DIYing begin!

Smell the roses.

Or peonies - whatever it takes!

I am a big believer in New Year’s resolutions.  I think resolutions focus us.  They help us to be accountable.  Especially because the nature of New Year’s resolutions is that they tend to be public, ideas we share with those around us.

In the past, I’ve set several resolutions each year.  Last year, with our wedding coming up mine were a little self-serving; to take the stairs at work and to wash my face every night.  I was really proud of myself for sticking with those two and only saw a minor drop-off after the big day!

This year I’ve set one, simple, but hard to achieve goal.  To simply smell the roses.  We’ve had one whopper - as my dad would say - of a year!  We’ve both had some big successes at work, I got a new car (after 10 lovely years with my first born), our wedding of course, and finally – to our big surprise – we bought our first home!  Any one of those things in a single year alone would be something to celebrate, but all together!?  Well I think it’s time for a nap in 2014!

Bye bye Neon, hello Volvo!

Safe to say, we are so lucky and so grateful, and this year I just want to sit back and enjoy.  Smell the roses, as they say.  I’m pretty ambitious, a symptom of my generation I guess.  Generally, I think that’s a great quality but it can lend itself to the feeling that nothing is good enough.  Nothing feels better than to see your hard work pay off but you’ve just got to stop and enjoy it, right?  My husband and I have taken to saying to each other, “Life is good,” and it sure is.