The Hiatus is Over!

 

So… I have been neglecting this blog, I know.  Aaron and I have been so busy with building a house, buying the house, and then making the house our own!  I love being a home-owner.  I love all the potential it brings!  We have decorated it almost completely, however I know that decorating a house actually takes a lifetime because there are always things to add or change.  With a new house comes new life lessons and adventures. The first week we moved in, we (temporarily) messed up the garbage disposal.  We also bought a few tools like a manual mitre saw set and a power drill.  Aaron is so cute when it comes to power tools or tools in general.  I love that boy to death, but handy-man stuff just makes him nervous.  I’m completely the opposite.  I’ll scour the internet for a “how-to” or “DIY” for everything.  If there is a chance that I think I can do it, I’m gonna find a way to do it!  I recently made a DVD player/cable box nook for our fireplace, so we can set the TV on top. 

Yesterday, I found another lesson learned.  If it is going to freeze outside, disconnect and drain your sprinklers.  I went to turn my sprinklers on yesterday because it was kinda nice out to water the grass and found the sprinkler busted in about 5 spots because the water expanded when it froze a couple of weeks ago.  Oops…  Speaking of sprinklers, another hardship of home-ownership is lawn maintenance…   Watering the grass is expensive L  But I am enjoying my back patio.  It is about 60 degrees outside right now, and am sitting on the patio listening to my windchime and watching the puppies play in the yard.  Cohen has figured out that it is fun to hang out in the yard.  Anytime it is nice and sunny and the back door curtains are open, he is permanently planted on the rug whining until we let him out.  He loves exploring the yard and laying in the grass.  Emmy just loves to sun bathe like a cat. She is currently lying in the sun under my feet.  While traveling to the Lowes to get some more sprinklers, I picked up a couple of seed starter kits.  Two years ago, I tried having a “garden” and it turned out okay, so this year I want to have another try since I have an actual yard!  I started about a ton of herbs!  This year, I’ve used more herbs than I usually do and tried some new ones too in my cooking.  I started some thyme, fennel, rosemary, chives, and basil.  I can’t wait for spring to be here so I can start planting some flowers!   I also can’t wait to GRILL!!!!  Nothing is better than grilling out with friends and family, using your own home grown ingredients, and watching your doggies play in the yard!  I can imagine so many summers hanging out back here!  I’m so excited! 

So needless to say, we are growing into our new home, making it our own, and entertaining friends and family!   You know I love entertaining, and know that this includes making good food!  My kitchen now has a double oven and an amazing range!  I can boil water so fast now J.  Two weeks into our new home, we had some friends over for some German sausage dogs.  The house was nowhere near decorated and the best part was that I didn’t care.  Anytime I can share such amazing food with anyone, which makes me the happiest.  I have learned something about myself that I’m pretty sure is genetic.  I cannot leave the kitchen sometimes when I have people over.  It isn’t that I feel safer in the kitchen, or anything crazy like that, but it is almost what I have grown up on, so I feel like I’m “conditioned” to be in the kitchen.  At Heckman family gatherings, the joke was always “Grandma is always in the kitchen.  You can’t get her to leave if you tried.”  The more I notice, it wasn’t just my Grandma, because at family gatherings at my Aunt Linda’s house, it is much the same, the females are always hanging out in the kitchen!  It makes me laugh that all those wonderful women take after their mother, and now here I am, taking after them!  At the housewarming party, I tried my best to get out of that kitchen and was mostly successful, but there were times that I found myself hanging out in there!  It is a hard habit to break!  I suppose of all the bad habits, this one isn’t bad at all and it makes me feel like a part of my Grandma lives on. 

Enough talk about the house, now we need to get on to the good stuff! The food!  I’ll make a couple posts later today with some foods that Aaron and I recently cooked!  Thank you again to everyone who came to our housewarming party and contributed to helping fill our house with love!