Bathroom renovation

Last weekend Chris agreed to paint my bathroom after losing a bet. He then got a great idea in his head that since he was repainting my bathroom, that for my Valentine's Day gift, he would also buy me a new vanity and mirror. Ahh- how sweet. I love having a handy boyfriend! I would much rather have that than roses and chocolates. So, we checked out Home Depot and Lowes. We found a beautiful vanity for fairly inexpensive. And what turned into just replacing the vanity and repainting, has now turned into a full remodel of the bathroom. :) I am happy as a clam because I have wanted to update my bathroom for years and it is finally happening. Here are the stages of our remodel.

After the old vanity and mirror had been ripped out...
Chris refilling the toilet paper holder hole...
Taking down the old light...
Primer on ready to paint....

More photos to follow!

2009 in real estate was a good year!

In Utah, things have been slow in real estate for about 2.5 years. Prices have steadily decreased unfortunately, however Buyers are now buying. Buyers buy the bottom 20% which is driving prices even further down but sales are up. For that, we are grateful. We are so excited the government extended their tax credits until June 2010. Because of this, Chris and I have helped 15 people buy a first home and we have helped numerous people upgrade to a bigger home. We finished last year up super strong. We received a few awards from our office for the last quarter in 2009 which was a nice thing after having a very rough few years in real estate. Here are some photos.

Mister Bojangles has magic tricks up his sleeve

Chris got some new shoes for Christmas. They are nice casual shoes to wear outside of work. Last week, he placed his new shoes side by side on top of a trunk in our guest bedroom. The next day, one of the shoes went missing. Da da daaaaaaaaaa. So we looked around the bed to see if it fell off the trunk-no. We look everywhere in the guest bedroom-wasn't there either. We then searched all our bedrooms and the entire house-nope. We looked under couches, chairs, we looked in the dirty laundry. We really searched every place it could be including the back yard. Sometimes socks end up out there mysteriously. Bo has a way of sneaking them out thru the doggie door. We scoured the entire yard. No shoe anywhere. It wasn't until we searched everywhere high and low that we come to the conclusion that the missing shoe must have been taken by Bojangles back behind our fence. He has a favorite place he runs to that goes back beyond our fence line. Neither of us can get back there. Chris was getting sad about his shoe so one morning, I decided to try and get back behind there. I realize I can't make it because of these prickly rose bush thorns that hurt when I try to squeeze by them. After our last ditch effort to locate this shoe in our home's black hole, Chris gets angry. His shoe has been missing for several days now. He gets his other shoe, scolds Bojangles so he knows what he is in trouble for and leaves for work. I look at Bo and just ask him nicely to please bring back the shoe.

After returning home from work that evening, what do we see in the middle of the living room floor............ the shoe!!!! A little dirtier from the last time we saw it but it is back in the house. We praised our little Houdini that night. And we keep our shoes in the closet from now on!!!
The shoes....
Where the kidnapping took place...
The alley behind our neighbors yard with prickly bushes halfway down....

Christmas break

Oh how I am so sad for the break to be over. Back to the daily grind of work and not a lot of play. Over the holiday Chris and I had some needed r and r time. We got to go shopping. We got to snowshoe and spend time at a cabin. We ice skated. Chris and I watched movies and hung out with friends. It was wonderful. My mom and I actually got along most of the time too which is an accomplishment in itself. Here are some photos of our last 2 weeks.