The Fabulous Life of Stefanie

You may not have noticed, but I am not a professional blogger. No one is paying me or giving me things, and the only people that read this consistently are probably a handful of friends and my husband, but I still feel this huge obligation to post and get weird guilt when a  lot of time passes between posts. I guess it is because I so love to come back to this spot and look back on this life of mine and I feel like I am going to forget something if I don't write about it, much like my beloved Dear Diary of my teen years and my absurdly melodramatic travel journal from Europe. Also, I just like to write; I like to come here and put words to my feelings and experiences and put up sweet pictures of my little one for the few people that read this to look at.  This paragraph has nothing to do with anything I am going to write about, but is also kind of an apology for not taking time to write, to my future self reading over these posts and my friends who always read and make me fee...

I wish I could say that I was ending the year on a bang, but really I am ending it on my sick bed (er, at my desk at work being sick). For the second time this pregnancy I have bronchitis, which is just as fun as it sounds. Luckily, I seem to be slowly getting better and not progressing towards pneumonia like had happened in September. It has definitely been the pits feeling crummy over the holidays and I feel sad that I haven't been able to play with Maddie and her new Christmas toys as much as she wants me to, but here is hoping I will be on the mend soon. 2014 was a pretty huge year for our family and I just wanted to do a little end of the year recap to say goodbye to a wonderful year and hello to another exciting one! The Big News This year we became homeowners! This was a goal that had been HUGE for us and while the process was anything but awesome, the day that we closed and opened the door to OUR home was amazing and (almost) worth all the chaos leading up to it. Then, ...

This past weekend we hosted a little "open house" to show off our new home and have an excuse to get our friends over and stuff them with food. The open house idea was awesome because people stopped in when they could and didn't feel obligated to be there at a certain time or stick around if they had other stuff to do; it also meant people were in and out all day and night, which was kind of great.  We have so many wonderful friends and getting to spend a little time with everyone and show them our home was so great. I am starting to realize that we have a lot of littles in our circle too because there was a constant flow of them too! Maddie had a blast showing her friends her room and doing "art crafts" with them. People brought over so much delicious food, lovely presents and sweet gifts for Maddie and we could not be more thankful! Our home feels so warmed and I already can't wait to host another get-together! Here are a few pictures from...

Whelp, now that we did that whole buying a house thing, we finally get to settle in and get back to our regularly scheduled programs...you know, the mundane, regular ol' life we have.  Ha! Not that I would ever want to describe life like that, but y'all know this life we are living is anything but boring! Last weekend Matty did not have class for the first time in months, so he was the best and took Maddie to gymnastics class while I got a little manicure/pedicure and some quiet, alone time with a Starbucks. Then we all went to our friend's birthday party who happens to also be the mama of Maddie's very best friend. We had a blast swimming in the pool, watching the girls play and getting down and dirty with an ice cream cake. On the way home Maddie passed right out, leaving us time to run some errands and pick up my packet for the tri on Sunday.  Speaking of the tri....here is how that went: We were up bright and early to get to South...

Hooray! After months that felt like years and more money than I can even wrap my head around, we are officially home owners! We closed on Thursday morning and had the last of our things out of our old apartment Friday morning (on our way to Newport Jazz Fest because, obviously we like to keep things interesting way too busy). Although it is all a little overwhelming, it is also incredibly amazing to have reached this goal that we have been working on for so long and to focus on the next chapter of our lives...and painting; I cannot wait to paint! We moved into a pretty nicely renovated condo, but there are a lot of little things that we need to do and we have started a book of the bigger things that we want to do over time. It is so fun to know that we can do whatever we want to our home and make it perfect for us. I will definitely be taking some photos for a little tour around the new place and document everything that we do. I see a lot of Home Depot time in my future, especially...

On the crazy train! After what was surely the craziest (and most expensive) roller coaster ride of our lives, we are finally closing on our new house! We are scheduled to close at 9am on Thursday and then the movers come at noon! I cannot believe that we only have two nights sleeping in our current house left! It is crazy to think back on how much has changed since we moved in; there wasn't even a Maddie yet, well, at least not outside of my belly, and now she is ripping up and down the very same stairs that we first brought her up from the hospital. Look at that tiny little Maddie! We are all very excited to move; it is a better neighborhood, a nicer space and it is OURS, which is pretty fantastic. There is definitely going to be an impact to our budget and we will have a lot less play money for a while, but for the first time ever I am not panicking. First, it is temporary, as all money matters are and second, it is because we are putting our money into something so awe...

After what seems to me like the most stressful few weeks EVER, we finally got word today that our mortgage is approved and our July fifteenth closing date is on, which is awesome considering I had just emailed our landlord to let him know that we were moving out. Of course, anything can happen, but at this point it seems safer than it has been to accept that we did it! We are going to be homeowners! It is so super exciting and I cannot stop putting things on Pinterest and looking at the Container Store website because I want to do ALL THE THINGS to our new home! But first, we really need to get a jump on that packing thing, which is a lot harder when there is a toddler around who wants to take everything out of the boxes and run away with the packing tape every time you need it. Obviously there will be lots to come about our new home and all the things we do to it, but here are some pics off the real estate site that I wanted to share of OUR NEW HOME! Kitchen with a DISHWASHER...