The Hunt: Part Two

The house hunt continues! Our roomie joined us for a day of scouting and, unfortunately, it ended up being a bit of a disappointing day. No luck with finding "the one" today, but we did get to tour a Spanish-style bungalow near uptown Whittier. The house was very unique and featured a rustic brick pathway leading up to the front, textured stucco interior walls and an AWESOME vintage industrial style light fixture with Edison light bulbs in the newly remodeled kitchen.

Staying true to the Spanish-style of the interior, the kitchen cabinets featured hand-painted floral motif knobs that were TO DIE FOR. Each pair of cupboards had a different knob style and color scheme that just added to the uniqueness of the room.

My favorite part about this house was that I could truly see our big square dining room table in the formal dining room, overlooking the living room with a stuccoed-in brick fireplace and mantle. It was truly a cozy home that, albeit a bit small, but perfect for our little family. :)

With love,

Kayla

Village Venture

Claremont hosts an amazing arts and crafts fair every year, the Village Venture. The hubs' family runs an adorable shop making succulent gardens in the outdoor patio of an old vintage shop right in the middle of downtown. The streets were shut down for the all-day event and we had so much fun perusing the different streets filled with booths.

On the walk over, we found this cute bench and decided to take a break for a family photo! Quite frankly, it's embarrassing the number of tries it took to get this ONE cute photo of all three of us. :)

Petals n Wings was all decked out and festive for Halloween. They had the cutest pumpkin gardens, and my wonderful mother-in-law saw fit to give me a mini-pumpkin for my desk at work!

Wandering the streets led us to some adorable metal working and hand-made jewelry booths. I absolutely love browsing hand-made shops, you never know what sort of treasures you may find! Brad helped me pick out a beautiful, simple initial necklace that I'm sure will be a staple in my wardrobe right along with my bar necklace he had engraved with our wedding anniversary. :)

With love,
Kayla

The Perfect Saturday

Yesterday was amazing. The last few weeks with Brad traveling have been trying, to say the least. We miss him terribly while he's away, that's for sure, but yesterday he was home, and we were all together and it was perfect. I love long walks on the beach for two reasons: 1) you get to walk with your toes in the sand and the ocean lapping at your heels, there's really nothing more relaxing than that, and 2) walking hand-in-hand with my hubs and Lady running and sniffing everything she possibly can and chasing her ball, but never going too far away because she couldn't possibly want to miss anything, is the greatest example of love I could ever imagine. The comfort and happiness we have together is unlike anything. I love our little family and being together, laughing and walking is the best kind of "perfect". :)

But then, because we can't be TOO relaxed, we met up with some friends to go see The Shining at Sunnyside Cemetery in Longbeach. Now, I'm not a big horror movie kinda girl, but it sounded like fun and I'm up to try anything once! We brought blankets, pillows, wine, snacks and, of course, Lady! She did so great at her first outdoor movie and she honestly made the movie a little more bearable for me! Anytime I was getting nervous and the suspense was killing me, I'd just scoop her up and hug her real close and she'd snuggle in and we'd sit like that together, hoping for the best.

With love,
Kayla

Five Years...

Five years ago this boy asked me to be his girlfriend and today I am his wife. He's amazing, funny, loving, incredibly gracious and I am blessed beyond measure to call him mine. And because I'm feeling nostalgic, I can't help but look through these old photos and reminisce about how late night phone calls, long distance trials, moving to another state and planning a life together all started because this boy asked a girl to go to breakfast on a Sunday morning.

With love,

Kayla

The Hunt: Part One

Let the hunt begin! The hubs and I have been in the "dreaming" phase of owning a home for a few years now and we're about to move to the part where it may finally become a reality! We turned in all of our paperwork and got our formal pre-approval letter today! I have been scouring the internet for our "someday home", perusing Pinterest for home decor ideas and just in general pining for this day to get here as quickly as possible for as long as I can remember. Now for the fun part...house shopping!

We have several open houses picked out for this weekend and we can't wait to see what's out there!

With love,

Kayla

National Dog Day 2015

It's National Dog Day! So naturally, my roomie insisted on taking a photo of Lady and I. I actually think these may be some of my favorite photos of us, so thank goodness she made me get in the picture! :)

With love,
Kayla

Grandma's Piano

Because a backyard makeover just isn't exciting enough...WE GOT A PIANO!! My mother-in-law had made a comment some time ago about wanting to get rid of the piano in their living room. The piano belonged to Brad's Grandmother on his father's side. I, of course, encouraged the idea of handing it off to us! We finally rented a Uhaul and got it into the house. I absolutely love that several of the pieces that make our house a home come from our families.

A piano tuner came and now it's good as new! We got some simple decor to top it off for now and included images from places we've visited. I'm tossing around some ideas about refinishing it, but for now I couldn't be happier with how great it feels to be playing again!

With love,
Kayla