Friends

Recently I went home to Hanford to visit with some old High School friends.  Even though I have been home several times before, this time was different because one of my friends was coming back for her last time (her parents were moving out of state).  So this was a concerted effort on some of us to gather together to see her one last time in Hanford.  There were 4 of us and for 24 hours I felt like I was back in High School and loved it!  

My three friends that I met up were Lauren Smith, Kristin Davis and Breean Todd.  Of course their names have changed as they've gotten married and started their families, but that is who they will forever be known as to me.  We spent all day Saturday together and it was a blast.  The instant I saw them, and the instant I heard Laurens laugh, I was transported back 10 years!  Wow, 10 years!  That seems forever ago!  Sure, a lot has happened in 10 years, we all went to college, we all got married and all but me started families.  But it really did feel like we picked up right where we left off.  As we were sitting around the room talking, I looked around at my friends and thought that they all looked the same as they did in High School and even had the same mannerisms.  I guess I had this expectation that since it had been a decade we should have evolved and should have looked "older" and acted differently as we've experienced life and interacted with a plethora of people.  Nope, still the same.  

We kept talking about our lives 10 years ago and I even brought some old notes that we wrote to each other.  Boy was that a blast!  We found out that sometimes we had a code name system that, now 10 years later, was hard to break.  We talked about boys.  We loved to write with Jelly pens.  We didn't pay attention in our classes.  We made fun of our teachers a little too much.  Some of us used inappropriate language (kristin!) and we talked about stuff we probably shouldn't have.  It made me think about my high school experience as a whole.  When I came home I perused through some of my old pictures of my friends and decided to share.  There are other friends that made huge impacts on my high school experience, but I chose to stick with the 3 amigos that I got the chance to visit lately.  

singing silly songs, getting up at the crack of dawn, putting tootsie rolls in the showers and saran wrapping the toilet seats.  Wow, girls camp was not nearly as much fun without these girls!

Hello!  Dances were my life!  As we read through our high school notes I noticed how many times we talked about going to the dances and hoping certain boys would go too.

 

We did some awesome trips together.  Going to Oakland to the Temple Pageant.

EFY Baby! 

Choir concerts!  Choir Retreats!  Choir DRAMA!

New York City (seriously how much fun was that!)

Hanging out in the Quad.

"I'ts ok, I'm with the Band!"

Sorry Lauren, I just HAD to post this!

Kristin, I'm so glad you stuck around through all my craziness!  You were such a great friend!

'Nuf said.

This was the last week of school during seminary where we were signing each others yearbooks.  Remember how we would reserve pages?

We've come along way haven't we?  I love you girls!

I really appreciated these girls' friendship during high school.  I might have not showed it enough but I was and am very grateful that I had such good friends.  I'm grateful for technology and how it has enabled me to stay in touch with these friends.  Thanks Lauren, Kristin and Breean!

Our New Home Part II

Here's the Rest of Our New Home!

Guest Bedroom-This room had a wallpaper strip going across the whole room.  We removed the wallpaper, removed one of the moldings and repainted.  We also put in brand new carpet throughout the entire upstairs.  It is so nice to have carpet again!  Boy, have my feet missed it!  My parents were generous and bought us a bed as a house warming gift.  That means we can have friends and family visit and stay in our home!  We are excited to be good hosts!  In the future we will add a nice bedspread with a matching window seat cushion. 

Computer Room-I actually liked the original blue in this room and it was what inspired me to paint three of my rooms blue (I wasn't kidding when I said I really liked the blue color downstairs).  I decided to go with a lighter blue though.  Unbeknownst to us, this room had wallpaper that the previous owners just painted over instead of removing.  It was a beast for our painter to take out but he did a great job!  For now this will be our computer room.  It's nice that we can both be on our computers in the same room instead of being in separate rooms like before.  Don't get me wrong, we do not spend all evening on our computers, but it came in handy when we were both using our searching skills to find the best flight to our family reunion this summer.

Guest Bathroom-This is our last major project.  As you can see it had a lot of wallpaper previously.  Sean and I have slowly worked on removing it.  We will paint it a plain white and accessorize it as a white and black bathroom.  This is the work in progress picture.  Our goal is to have it finished for Peyton's wedding since we will be hosting our whole family.  We have just over two months to accomplish that. :) 

Master Bedroom-First, let me ask you a question.  Would you want a window from your hallway looking into your master bedroom?  No?  Well, apparently the designers of this house thought it was a great idea.  This was Number 1 on our make over list.  In addition, our previous homeowner must have loved wallpaper because this room takes the cake.  We got rid of the wallpaper and the curtains and we LOVE our new paint color.  We want to replace the fan and will be accenting the room in a cranberry red. 

We feel exhausted with all the little upgrades that we have been doing to our house to make it a home.  We have great ideas for where we want our home to go but for now we will have to be patient in waiting for the right furniture and accessories to pop up.  When we see something we really love, then we'll snatch it up.  Until then, our house will be in an unfinished state.

Our New Home!

We have been in our house for about a month now and I figure its time to show you some pictures.

Our house was a fixer upper when we moved in.  We took lots of pictures before we moved in so I will show you the before and after of each room and explain what we did.  We are still not done and look forward to improving our house over the next few months and years.

Living Room-The only difference you may see is that we painted all the walls.  Some day (hopefully soon!) we will add furniture to our front room.  We love the blinds that open up and there is so much light.

Dining Room-Here's our dining room.  I don't have a before picture because it keeps getting downloaded in the wrong direction and I have not figure out how to rotate it.  There's really no difference anyway so you'll just get the after picture. 

Kitchen-As you can see, previously the kitchen had lovely wallpaper.  We chose to forgo that gorgeous decoration and paint it a plain brown.  This brown is darker than the rest of the house.  We love the color!  We also got new appliances which we love!  Sean installed all of them.  The pictures don't show it very well but the old kitchen had the old school fluorescent lighting with the plastic sheets over it.  We removed it all and put in some canned lighting.  It really opens up the kitchen and brightens it up.

Family Room-This room had no light so we had an electrician add a light in the center of the room.  Sean also added a fader button to the light so we can adjust the strength.  He switched out all the light switches to be the more flat button ones.  He's become such a handyman!  We will install a fan/light soon.  It gets hot in Valencia in the summer time so we will definitely have to do it before then!  We also switched out the light in the hallway to a more updated one.

Powder Room-This room was a nice sea foam green before.  We painted it with a nice fresh blue.  I love this blue color!  We are going to have a antique beach theme for this bathroom.  I'm excited for it!

Laundry Room-We painted this room the same blue as the powder room.  We also got new appliances which Sean installed.  It makes life so much easier when you have your own washer and dryer!  Again I don't have before pictures because its being stupid and not rotating them.

Stay tuned for the upstairs pictures . . . .