1921 North 900 West #4B (Lehi, UT 84043)

I've had a few people ask for more pictures of our new house, but I have to be honest - we are taking the "new home" thing pretty slow. Other than our new furniture we haven't done a single decorating thing. In fact, we still have more than half our stuff in boxes. So instead of pictures of our new place, I decided to post pictures of our apartment before we moved. We took pictures like this of our house in Logan and we LOVE them. It's so fun to look back on where you used to live, and it brings up so many memories. I took these pictures before Christmas because I wanted to remember what everything looked like, and we knew that as soon as Christmas was over the packing would begin. Even looking back now makes me get all misty. We loved this apartment. It was the place that Lydia first called home, and we have so many wonderful memories here. So without further ado: 

 

The name of our apartment building was Stonebrook Apartments. It was right off of the 2100 North exit of I-15 in Lehi, and when I say right off, I mean right off. We could look out our kitchen window and watch the cars whizzing by on the freeway. It was pretty noisy, but it didn't bother us much. We lived in the top left apartment on the North side of the complex.

 All of the parking spots were assigned, but we felt lucky to have these two on the end. The deal was that everyone got one covered parking space and one uncovered parking space. Our "covered" space still allowed the snow in because it was on the end, but it was worth is because our second space was so close. (And not around the back side of the building.)

 

 

Front Door: 

The apartments weren't labeled super clearly, and so we went to the store and bought our own little numbers. It made it nice for people who came to visit us (especially all of the Red Ladder Design clients who were trying to find our home.)

The entrance:

As you walk in, you see the coat closet. Then directly to the left it opens up into the family/front room. (p.s. we love our little "P" that we use for hanging our keys. Love it.)

Front Room: 

(This is our Logan shelf that we love.)

 

The front room was the perfect size for us. We spent lots of time out there chatting with friends, watching Netflix, or just relaxing on the couch. There are so many things that I love like the little plant in the corner, the turquoise end table, our blog books, our Logan shelf, our blue frames above the TV. I want to memorize what it was like to live there.

 

Kitchen:

The kitchen was directly beside the front room. Originally the computer was in the back bedroom, but when we were making preparations for Lydia's arrival we moved it out into the corner of the kitchen. We then asked ourselves why we hadn't done that before!? I was constantly bringing the computer out and setting it on the table so that I could be with David as I worked on wedding announcements.

 

 

The kitchen was pretty small, but more more than adequate for our needs.

 

Funny story about our fridge. When we moved in, the left side of the top shelf was raised up about 3 inches. We were constantly cursing this ridiculous fridge because there was only one half of a shelf that would fit anything even relatively tall. However, we just accepted it as a fact of life and dealt with the awkward spaces. Fast forward about a year and a half. We were eating dinner with some friends/neighbors when we got a glance into their fridge. We were grumpily telling them about how their fridge was a million times better than ours, when we realized that it was the same fridge. We immediately came home and moved the shelf. We laughed at ourselves over that one. A year and a half, a good three-fourths of the time we lived there, griping over the darn fridge when it was fixed in two minutes worth of effort. Yikes.

 

The Hallway:

 

There was a storage closet to the left as you walk down the hall, but for some reason I didn't take any pictures of it. (Probably because it was a disaster.) To the right was the water heater/furnace room. At the end of the hall there were four doors: a linen closet to the left, then Lydia's bedroom, then our bedroom, then the bathroom on the right.  

Bathroom: 

(I hesitate to include the last picture because of the bath toys and towels that are on the floor - but in the interest of being honest and admitting that my house is rarely completely clean I decided to include it.)

"Master" Bedroom: 

Lydia's Room: 

Lydia was so kind as to share her space with my sewing table, our bookshelves, and all of our Red Ladder supplies. It wasn't anything fancy, but there were lots and lots of long nights spent loving on her in that room. The chair is a bright orange chair that we inherited from David's great grandparents, and I spent many nights sleeping in that chair holding my precious baby girl. I took these pictures before we set up her crib around 6 months because I wanted to remember the way her room looked when we brought her home from the hospital. I wish I would have taken some more picture with the crib in there as well, but I just love her little baby bassinet.

 

We moved into this apartment December 2010 and moved out February 2013. Just over two years. It was a fabulous place for us to live. I am grateful for the friends that we made while living here. I am grateful that we had such a wonderful place to bring our sweet, innocent little baby home to. I am grateful that we chose this place to live to be close to Westlake High School where I was working, because it led us to find our beautiful home in Thanksgiving Meadows.

 

I realize this was a picture-overloaded post, and I don't really have a great way to close. So I guess this is goodbye to our little two-bedroom at Stonebrook. We are moving on to bigger and better things, but we won't ever forget you!

A little Valentines Package

My sweet Grandma Knowles sent Lydia a little package in the mail for Valentines Day. We didn't get it  until a couple of weeks after the fact due to all of our moving and such - but my parents brought the little package down when they came visiting and Lydia was in heaven! She absolutely loved her little treats. It was so kind of my grandma (and grandpa, of course) to remember Lydia and even though Lydia couldn't eat the candy - she loved bringing it around the house with her and playing with it. In fact, she loved it so much that I decided that I needed to get her into a little Valentines Day outfit so I could take pictures and send them to my grandma. Honestly, this is at least three days after she first started playing with her little treats and she loved it just as much as the first time she got them. 

(It is a little sucker, a little bag of sweethearts, and a little valentine card.) 

Notice that she keeps all three things in one hand. This is one of her funny little quirks that she has started to do. She will load up all of the things that she wants to bring around with her into one hand and keep them there. (At one point she was even able to get two small balloons into just one of her hands.) If she has a little bit of trouble getting them to stay, she will sit down and work at it until she has successfully got hold of all the items. 

I wanted to get a picture of the three little items that came in her little valentine package, so snuck them away from Lydia and laid them out on the ground all pretty like. After battling Lydia long enough to get my picture, she crawled around me in order to get to her prizes.

I had to laugh when I realized that my pictures captured her process of the whole "everything in one hand" thing she's got going on.

"One little thing in my hand..."

"Two little things in my hand..." 

"Gotta sit up so I can finish this up..."

"Three little things in my hand!"

Thank you to my Grandma Knowles who is so thoughtful and who brought so much joy to Lydia by sending her a Valentines gift. She really, really, really loved it. This was her favorite thing to carry around for a full week, at least. Unfortunately, the trio ended when I found Lydia with the sucker in her mouth. (All of the carrying it around has loosened the plastic and she was able to get it off somehow.) It was so funny, but obviously I didn't let her keep it. She still carries the little sweethearts around though. I think that she loves how colorful they are, that they make noises when she shakes them, and that the package crinkles when she picks it up. She is such a darling girl!

Friday

I don't really have five things to talk about today. But Lydia is down for her nap and I am in the blogging mood. I'm not sure what this post is going to be about - but I'm sure it will be something good.

David and I just finished putting together our third blog book. We can't wait for it to be finished! As we went through everything it was so fun to look back at last year. I loved it. I can't believe how small Lydia was. So, so, tiny. We had a code to get 15% off our printed book and it had to be used by the 28th of February. So we spent several nights sitting and writing the dedication (To Lydia), deciding what pictures we would put on the front and back, loving so many pictures that we ended up adding them to the back of the book (even though they were already in the book), deciding what to write on the back cover, etc... Good times.

The back says "2012: Slept less, smiled more."

There was also a sale on Blinds.com that ended on February 28th. We don't have any blinds in our whole house - which means that we have basically no privacy (especially after it gets dark). Luckily, we do most of our living on the back of our house, so shutting a few doors makes it so that people in the front can't see us. We also have pinned up several sheets over the windows in the back, but we are SO excited to get blinds. Problem is, we aren't 100% sure what we want. I think that we can safely say that we don't want the little metal venetian blinds. In all honesty, we would love to have plantation shutters throughout the whole house. Unfortunately, those are pretty pricy! We also like the 2" wood blinds, but maybe just for the bedrooms? So the question is, do we do the shutters on the mail floor, and the wood blinds in the bedrooms? Or do we just do the blinds everywhere? I think that we are probably leaning towards the nice wood blinds for practicality purposes, but unfortunately we missed out on the blinds.com sale. We decided that we would rather think about it and shop around for a while instead of jumping into something. Any recommendations out there? Would it be better to just have a professional from Home Depot come and install them, or better to pay less by ordering online and them install them ourselves. I would love to know any opinions. All I know is that we need to get some blinds up a-sap. (Going on two weeks of living in our home, and we are really just starting to think about this. Yeesh.)

A while ago I posted about buying several shirts at Target. What I didn't mention is that they were basically all the same shirt, just in a different color. Or that I already had three of these same shirts. Or that later I went and bough two more. What can I say? I just love them. They are like the perfect mommy shirt: can be casual, can be dressed up, perfect for nursing, super comfortable. Originally I bought a white one and a navy one. Then I bought a purple one. Then they went on clearance for $5 so I went and bought an extra white one, and extra blue one, a black one, and a mint one. THEN they were further reduced to $3 so I went and bought two patterned ones. I realize this sounds a bit extreme, but honestly - they are my go to shirt. I love them - and for that cheap, why not have a variety (and some backup).  I was hanging them up in my new closet when I decided that I was going to go back and buy another one in every color, just to keep at the back of my closet so that I could pull them out in a few years, or if one ever got ruined (remember, only $3!). Unfortunately, when looking for them at Target I realized that they were gone! I don't know where things go after they are on clearance, but I was SO sad! I wish I would have just bought more the last time that I picked some up. Oh well. I came home and looked online at Target, but it was a no-go there as well. However, while I was searching through the Target clearance section, I found a pair of grey boots just like my brown boots for half price. I mentioned it to David and because he is so wonderful he immediately told me that I needed to buy them. He even told me to buy some black ones as well, but they were all out in my size. I'm so lucky to have such a wonderful and supportive husband. The grey boots are softening the blow of the loss of ever being able to buy another of my favorite shirts.

As I'm thinking about that last paragraph, I realize that it makes me sound kind of lame. I'll be the first to admit that I don't have the greatest fashion sense and I'm not above buying lots of different colors in the same style if I find out that I like it and that it works for me. Hence, the same jeans (1-stonewashed, 2-medium blue, 1-dark blue). The same trench coats (red, blue, black, tan). The same go-to mommy shirts (blue, purple, white, black, etc...) And now the same boots (brown, grey). Please don't judge.

 I feel even happier that tomorrow is Saturday and that he only has to work for a couple of hours in the morning! The rest of the day is going to be dedicated to the following items:
   -Looking for an entertainment center. This got kind of pushed to the back of the list when we were buying furniture for our new house because we weren't sure exactly what we wanted and so we wanted to wait until we could see how everything else worked together. We now have a really good idea of what we are looking for and we are so excited! (Right now we are using our RC Willey coffee table as a TV stand.)
   -Making some yummy pizza sandwiches, (ala Our Best Bites).
   -Hanging curtains in my laundry room and maybe picture frames with a fun quote.
   -Finding a new show to watch on Netflix. If you have any suggestions, please let us know. We are dying for something fun, clean, and good to watch. We just finished Doctor Who, but the wait until White Collar or Psych come out seems like forever. (We just finished our trial run of Better off Ted, it was a no go for us. We loved No Ordinary Family, Doctor Who, and even Lie to Me. Please help!)
   -Probably watching a basketball game or something.
   -Playing with Lydia.
   -Doing some more research on blinds.
   -Maybe going for a walk around our little block if it warms up enough. It feels pretty good out there today! It would be fun to walk around, maybe meet a few of our neighbors.

Well, I don't know if this post ended up being "something good" or if it even made any sense, however - I feel happy just for the writing. Happy Friday everyone!