Wood Anniversary

Hi Everyone!  It's rainy in the DFW area today but the last couple of days we've had some beautiful weather!  Everything is budding and the air smells like freshly cut grass and all things green (aka revenge of the allergies).

These pictures were taken 2 days ago.  

These are flowering Bradford Pear trees which dominate neighborhoods in Texas (landscapers lack imagination).

It's difficult to believe that this snowman was built only a week and a half ago by our neighbor's daughter.

Olaf didn't survive more than a few days, but he put up a good fight.  And yes, those are cherry tomatoes for eyes, and a foil cone for a nose.

Our 5th wedding anniversary is this week and it turns out that it is the "wood" anniversary!  Jordan and I had some grandiose plans to do something fun (dinner in Reunion Tower, weekend get-away somewhere exciting, take a painting class together, etc. etc.) but a few weeks ago we decided we'd better save our money.  I guess you could say adulthood has hit us hard.  We have trips coming up this year that we have to save for, an unresolved tile situation in our kitchen, car maintenance (for both vehicles), 2014 taxes to pay (we have to pay into the gov't this year), my upcoming 30th birthday festivities, and several other expenses.  Annoying, isn't it?  Even though we aren't splurging on something fun for our anniversary, I think it's kind of cool that we both are on the same page financially.  As exhilarating as a weekend get-away would be, at least we are together and we are happy.  Twenty years down the road, I think that happiness is what I'll remember most, not a fancy dinner somewhere.

Having said that, our anniversary has challenged our creativity.  Since the weather has been nice, it's been very pleasant to spend time outside.  As I mentioned, my birthday is coming up in a few weeks and we will probably have people over to the house to hang out around a fire in the backyard.  Since 5 years of marriage is our wood anniversary, I had been surfing around Pinterest for creative wooden anniversary ideas.  We found the idea to make a giant Jenga set!  This seemed perfect because it is of course, wood, but it doubles as an anniversary gift, bday gift, and something fun to have this summer!  

Jordan got to work on the project and finished it just 2 days.  I can already tell we will be playing this game both at home and at the lake.  It's easy to understand and several people can play at once. 

This is Jordan working on the Jenga pieces.  He did a beautiful job!

Bottom Right: This was our inspiration we found online.  I think we will eventually paint our boards, but that will come in time.  We are thinking we might stain them instead of paint them.  

These are close ups of his hard work!

Last week we still had Sophie with us and the dogs continued to entertain us.  Sophie and Abby love each other but canine-emotions were on high alert and sometimes at their breaking point.

Top Left: Sophie and Abby just watching Jordan and I doing activities in the backyard.

Right: Sophie is a snuggler but only when she is tired.  She also seems to enjoy sleeping under the covers, which is totally adorable!

Left: Abby doesn't like sleeping under the covers but she seemed to feel very protective of her humans.  With Sophie a constant snuggle threat, Abby felt the need to sleep on our heads.  It was cute for a moment but that pup is hot!

Bottom: This is typical of the pups.  Sophie is ever the instigator trying to move in on whatever Abby is doing.  Like little kitties, they were playing in the curtains.

Middle: On Sunday, the 3 of us girls (Sophie, me, and Abby) sat by the window waiting for Mom and Dad to arrive.  Mostly slept and Sophie was vigilantly looking for squirrels.  

Sunday afternoon we decided to take a little adventure and walk through some model homes.  The thought process was to research what kind of tile flooring is in style right now, should the need come up in our own tile situation.  We are waiting to hear from our insurance company to see if our bulging tile floor is covered under our insurance.  The cause of the bulging floor is still unknown.  We've ruled out water leaks, and foundation companies keep telling us that we don't have a foundation problem.  The next step is to get an engineer out to the house to do a full investigation of the area (thankfully this is paid for by our ins company).

I really enjoyed walking through the model homes but it was also a bad idea on some levels.  These homes, of course, were fully upgraded and professionally decorated.  They had square footage we can only dream of and so many rooms I lost count of them.  On the average, these homes had five bedrooms, 1 large office, and 1 large media room.  It's definitely enough to make someone question whether or not they should save for retirement.  Very tempting....lol.

Here are a few pictures from the tours of these homes.  I actually tried not to take too many pictures because I knew it would just feed my house-envy.

Top Left: Nice looking office space.

Top Right: Just half a view of a giant bathroom vanity.

Middle Left: A fancy tile floor in one of the master bathrooms.

Bottom Left: I just really liked this flower arrangement and might try to replicate it someday.

Bottom Middle: window tree art

Bottom Left: We actually brought Abby with us and she was a great trooper.  She was very well behaved but I think that's mostly because she was exhausted from playing with Soph all week.

Finally, we ended our weekend by eating dinner in the backyard and having a fire in our new fire pit!  I mentioned in a previous post that our last fire pit collapsed through rusted metal so we got a new one to enjoy during this season.  We rarely eat outside, at home, but couldn't resist the amazing temperatures outside!

This was our little set up in the back yard.  We are using our card table but I actually had tapped the entire surface for painting purposes.  Hey, it was plenty fancy for the backyard.

We fired up the new pit and got a little game of Jenga going.  We randomly ran into a neighbor and invited them to hang out with us for a little bit.  In general, it turned out to be a pleasant Sunday evening!

Left: Jenga has the potential to be a dangerous game.  I couldn't believe the pieces got to this point without falling.  Wow.

And that's all I have for ya'll today!  Happy Spring to everyone and have a lovely weekend!