2012 Was A Good Year

We're finally back from all the travel and holiday activities we've been up to lately. Time to get back to our boring everyday life, back to projects, and back to being productive. But that can at least wait until after the new year!

2012 has been a pretty great year for us. So of course, I must commence with the obligatory yearly highlights post.

January 2012

House hunting and making an offer on our house.

February

Negotiating the final price of our house and getting our first mortgage.

March

Closing on our house, and diving right in with removing kitchen cabinets, breakfast nook railings and scraping about 1,200 square feet of popcorn ceilings.

April

Threw an Easter party for my 30th birthday, spent many hours painting the walls and trim in our house, actually moved into our house, and got in some time to just relax and enjoy our new deck.

May

We built a custom cat door in a back window, did a pantry makeover, completed a ton of little tasks around the house, and started working on building a terraced fire pit area in our backyard.

June

We celebrated 2 years of marriage by finishing our backyard fire pit terrace, I took a girls trip to Chicago, and spruced up our old paint chipped outdoor furniture.

July

I started working on our guest bedroom by buying a bunch of accessories and building a headboard, and we had to reprioritize our home renovations when we found mold in our downstairs bathroom, which lead to an almost complete demolition of the room.

August

August brought us more bathroom progress, including putting in new subfloors, replumbing the shower and replacing the sink and laundry valves. I also started working on my home office, putting in new shelves and curtains, and making a place to store all of my ribbon spools. We also started eating healthier, and meal planning became a part of our lives.

September

We took our first vacation together of the year, to Bald Head Island, I did quite a bit of cooking, and we started re-tiling and moving the electrical in our bathroom.

October

I decorated for Autumn, we went to the Florida Keys (which I've still never properly recapped, oops!), ran my first 5k, and started grouting our floor tile in the bathroom.

November

November was a very busy month, between attending a wedding across the country, planning and hand making the decor for a charity auction and dinner, and Thanksgiving, but we still had time to finish grouting the tile in the bathroom, prime and paint the walls, install beadboard wainscoting and new trim, reinstall the toilet and put up our light fixtures.

December

December was quite busy, with the culmination of all my work for the charity event coming together the first weekend of the month, making a pet hammock for the kitties, painting and installing the bathroom vanity and faucets, driving down to Charlotte to buy a new couch for our family room, setting up our first Christmas tree and making Christmas cards, and then traveling to California for Christmas with my family.

I don't think I've recovered yet from the holiday travel, so I've been planning our next vacation, as is customary immediately upon returning from a trip. Doesn't Jamaica in spring sound nice right about now?

I really enjoyed 2012 though, since it was a great year. But I'm looking forward even more to 2013! Happy New Year!