Holidays + House Projects (better late than never)

I'm finally getting around to post about our holidays. I know it's embarrassing and how late I am in doing this but I know I'm going to want to remember this fun time down the road so I better jot it down while it's fresh on my mind.

Holiday break this year was awesome. Andrew was out of school and I had work off from December 19th-January 5th (that's 17 days, I counted.) I've never had such a long break in all of my four years of working. It was a beautiful thing, sleeping in as long as I wanted. Shopping and going to lunch. The best part about it was that we had nowhere to go, and nothing to do. Usually our holidays are jam packed with the usual shopping and visiting hustle and bustle, but this year was different. We completed all our shopping on Black Friday so I had no stress, no rush, and had nothing to worry about except what I would eat each day. I've learned you can't put a price on time with family and friends, and I'm so grateful to have them all so close by.

We spent Christmas Eve with Andrew's family and did our traditional "jammie" opening. My neice and nephew were SO cute in their new jammies and robes. I love them! 

We spent Christmas morning opening presents and headed over to my sister's house in Herriman for our traditional Cinnamon rolls and more presents. It was a lot of fun mixing it up this year, and even more fun seeing my nephew Owen open all is presents. He is the coolest and I can't believe how much I love him. 

We also watched a lot of football and basketball, as well as ALL OF THE HARRY POTTER MOVIES. We are awesome.

Here I am looking supa fly while opening my new booties. Glamorous, I know.

Andrew is a really "creative" present wrapper. Yes that's a blanket he used as wrapping paper.

I hosted our 11th annual friend Christmas party! It was a smaller than normal this year because there was a crazy snow storm that night so a few people weren't able to come. It's always so much fun to see my high school friends and I love them to death! 

Andrew and I posing for our annual Christmas tree picture. Andrew's mom always has the most gorgeous tree, I love it! 

Because of our empty schedule I decided to finally tackle our first big (indoor) house project (putting in our sprinklers & yard will always and forevermore trump any "big" house project!) I've been loving the "rustic country" look and have been anticipating giving our house some character for some time now. While Andrew was taking his last final I went full-blown crazy and bought some primer and painted all the areas in the house where I wanted the wood panels. This included all 3 walls in our breakfast nook as well as our main (huge) wall in our family room! There was no turning back so we dove right in.

Starting with the primer...

Then we just started going crazy with the nail gun & saw...

 We used nickels to get the spacing just right (above)and we used our island as our workbench (which was REALLY responsible, looking back...)

Lots of wood made for lots of nail holes. I puttied and sanded every last one of them. I also put putty on any short boards because I wanted it to look like all the boards were the same size, hence the random white lines you see. 
The best part was when we started to paint and add the finishing trim. Seeing it start to come together was SO much fun. 

Josh and Andrew put their heads together to get the breakfast room done. Literally. 

We also painted our ceiling in the breakfast room to really separate the space. I was stoked with how this turned out. 

Lastly, we changed out the light fixtures in the kitchen and breakfast room to keep the country theme that I like. 

And...voila! We finished! 

This really ended up being a big project, I think we went to Home Depot at least 5 times, but we learned so much and had a lot of fun seeing it all come together. It really was a great Holiday break, by the end of it I felt ready to take on a new year! 

Can't wait to see what new projects and adventures 2015 brings! 

xoxo

steph