The Rouse House

The Post School Years

2011-11-07T18:03:00.001-05:00

Its been a little while. Ok so it has been exactly 1 year and 4 months since my last post. A lot has happened since then. I had intentions of posting, but there were other priorities. And to go ahead and answer that burning question. . . .no the kitchen is STILL not quite finished, but it is close. Just a few more finishing touches and we can call the biggest don't-ever-do-it-yourself-again project "finished"! But in the meantime, here is an update of what has been going on in the past year with us.

School kept us very busy. This entire bookshelf is filled with

my nursing textbooks, notebooks and flash cards!

I spent countless hours studying. Sometimes I put in 10 hour study days

(sorry again Brian for neglecting you!). Fortunately I was in good company.

This is my sweet friend and study buddy Kelli.

My parents renewed their vows in celebration of their

30th wedding anniversary in November 2010.

This is our graduating nursing class at Athens Tech.

We eventually graduated on June 9, 2010 (my birthday!).
I got my associates degree in nursing and Brian got his
associates degree as a network specialist!

Brian's mom and step-dad came into town for the week. It was great to be

surrounded by our family for this momentous occasion!

I took my NCLEX on July 1st and found out I passed on July 3rd! I started orientation as a nurse at Athens Regional on July 25th. And after 12 weeks of orientation (and one week of vacation) on November 1st I worked my first shift on my own! And that pretty much sums up the last year and 4 months!

Vacation pics from Panama City Beach in September!

So now that school is over, and I am adjusting to my new job and my new hours, the projects are starting to flow again. We have been a little burnt out on the kitchen so we started with some other smaller projects that we have been itching to get to-like everything on the outside of the house! So soon I will be posting the "after" pics of all of our new projects. We are excited to be finally getting some of these done. And we are VERY excited just to be done with school and able to spend more time together and be less stressed.

We just celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary on 10/26 and are looking forward to our 10th year together as husband and wife. It is exciting to be going into our 10th year and sort of starting a new chapter in our lives-"The Post School Years"! Here are some pics from our little getaway to Helen to celebrate our anniversary!

Cabinet doors. . . . .

2010-07-07T10:11:00.003-04:00

This is a word that has made me cringe for the past 18 months. Since I took the doors down on 12/26/08, they have been a nightmare! I will sum up our thought process on "the plan" for the cabinet doors.

Initially our doors were real wood, but they were very thin and had an outdated design. We really liked the cabinet doors that had a beadboard look, so we decided to cover our old doors with 1/4 inch beadboard, then 1/4 inch trim. We cut these little door 'covers' and glued the trim on the beadboard for our 19 doors.

Once we had all of the 'covers' made, I put one on one of the existing doors and it was a little thicker than I thought it would be. I really didn't like it at all. So we decided to just get rid of the old doors all together and use just the new part we made. But they were a little too thin, so we decided to add a piece of 1/4 inch mdf to make them 3/4 inch, which was the perfect width. So we had to cut 19 pieces of mdf and glue them onto the pieces we had made.

We are not good at cutting straight lines so we had to do a LOT of sanding to make the 3 pieces level!

But when I tried to paint the edges, you could still see the 3 separate pieces no matter how much I sanded. So I had to cover each side of each door with 3/4 inch iron-on melamine.

Then we had to paint the doors.

So you can see how this entire process has taken so long. Not to mention that we are both working and in school full time. But the good news is that all of the doors are done and ready to be hung! Hopefully I will soon be able to take the long awaited "after" picture!!!!

Neverending Projects

2010-07-02T10:08:00.000-04:00

As most homeowners would probably agree, when you own your home, there is ALWAYS something to be done! Whether it is a little project or a huge one, when it flies on your radar, you just start itching to get it done and it’s all you can think about! When it comes to house projects, I tend to underestimate the amount of time/energy/money that the project is going to take. So instead of a couple of weeks and a couple hundred bucks, it turns out to be several months and a thousand bucks or more! The case of my kitchen is a prime example. It has been on my radar since the day we moved in! I did some temporary fix ups to make it tolerable (I couldn’t wake up to that rosy wallpaper everyday without losing my mind!).

(before we moved in)

We painted it green.

(This was the only picture I could find with that color

on the wall! We were set up for Thanksgiving)

But I knew that one day, I wanted to really get in there and fix it up the way I wanted to. So I planned that day for December 26, 2008. I was off from Christmas Eve until New Year’s Day, and the hustle of Christmas was over, so there was no better time to tackle this monster! And I really thought that if I worked from the time I woke up till the time I went to sleep, that I could pretty much finish it in a week! Big mistake! Total underestimation! Here are the before pictures.

12/26/08

We had already painted it and added a chair molding

when we painted our living room and dining room.

Cabinet doors and backsplash off. The backsplash was laminate that matched the ugly countertops that were off white with pink and blue stripes.

Cabinets primed and painted.

We painted the backsplash and we some

beadboard to the ends of the cabinets.

If remodeling the kitchen only included the base of the cabinets, the backsplash and countertops, this project would have been much simpler. That part really didnt take me long at all. It was the doors that have about killed us over the past year and a half. The doors have been such a disaster. . . . well, I will just talk about them later!

Seniority

2010-06-22T18:42:00.000-04:00

Ok I am officially done with my junior year of nursing school which means I am a SENIOR!!!! I feel like all I have been doing since September 2009 is studying, going to clinicals, going to school, and working on care plans! Everyone said that nursing school is hard, but seriously nobody can prepare you for this!!!! Now that school is out, I kinda feel a little lost. Like I should be studying something. But its been over a week now and I am starting to adjust. Now I can get back to the important stuff-like house projects!!!! But seriously this summer I am looking forward to spending lots of time with my wonderful husband, giving Bella some much needed attention, starting my summer externship at Athens Regional and taking some time for myself to focus on my health and fitness! This is going to be an AWESOME summer!!!!!

And I won't have to look at these for 6 months!!!

I get to spend a lot more time looking at this. . . .

and playing with this. . .

and this. . .

That is why I am going to have a great summer!!!!

Snow day

2010-03-11T18:47:00.006-05:00

This is unique for Georgia. It has actually snowed 3 times this year so far! Usually if we get snow at all, it comes in mid to late March and it tends to be pretty wimpy. But this year we have had 2 pretty good snows, and one little wimpy one. These pictures are from 2/12/10 (I'm a little behind posting!)

Snow seems to have a way of making everything prettier.

Bella loved playing in the snow!

We didn't have a chance to make a snowman but we did stop

for a few minutes just to enjoy it. It was beautiful!

Georgia Aquarium

2010-03-11T18:09:00.010-05:00

We finally had a day off together so we decided to use some free tickets to go to the Georgia Aquarium. We had heard how great it was but just hadn't had the time or money to visit! And by the way, if you don't have free tickets, it will set you back around $30 a person just to get in (plus parking).

The whale sharks are HUGE!!!!!

This is an eel garden but they look like little snakes! It was weird.

They have an awesome exhibit where you can pet some stingrays and

small sharks! The stingrays felt very slimy!

We had a great time!

New Years Resolutions

2010-01-13T21:37:00.006-05:00

Like gazillions of other people, I am guilty of making new years resolutions that are a bust by around January 3rd or 4th! So this year, I am going to make some really practical resolutions. Of course we are almost half way through January so New Years Resolutions might not be the best term. Let's just call them goals for 2010.

1. To not fail out of nursing school

2. To see Brian at least once a week

3. To get through this year without being hospitalized due to stress/nervous breakdown

OK, so I'm shooting a little low here, but I am trying to be practical. Sure there are other things I would love to happen this year, but if I can at least accomplish these three things, I think 2010 will be a success!

Things have been a little busy since my last post, um. . . . almost 5 months ago. I would love to try to post 2 or 3 times a month. We can add that to my list of 'desires' for 2010. If I call them goals, that means I will have to try to achieve them, and I just can't put that kind of pressure on myself right now!

So here are my other desires for 2010:

*blog 2-3 times a month (since I don't have time for scrapbooking right now, I would like to have some way of documenting this time in our lives, busy as it may be!)

*develop a healthier lifestyle

*start running again

*finish learning one WHOLE song on the piano

*do more nice little things for Brian (since he's always doing nice things for me)

*stay on top of my school work so there is no last minute cramming

*be a better time manager-balance time for work, school, Brian and family

*finish the kitchen remodel

*take more pictures

OK I think that's enough. I am exhausted just thinking about it! Happy New Year!!!

Our Home

2009-08-29T09:59:00.012-04:00

Brian and I started out in a little apartment. It was fun for a year or so, but eventually apartment life became really annoying (loud neighbors, late night police sirens, etc). So even though we really enjoyed the no maintenance lifestyle, we were ready to buy a home. We really didn’t shop around very much. In fact, I don’t think we physically looked at any other homes than the one we bought. We were young and first time home buyers so we made some of the classic mistakes (not shopping around, not using a real estate agent, rushing into things). We purchased our home in April 2004.

Our first night in our new home!

Once the excitement of owning our own home faded, we found ourselves in slightly over our heads. Financially we were ok, but the workload of home maintenance plus 1000 things on our project-to-do list left us feeling a little overwhelmed! If we could go back, we probably would have done things a little differently. But fortunately this story has a happy ending! With each project that we have completed our house has felt more and more like home. We finally have our heads above water and our house has become pretty cozy! Now we can look back at our major house project fiascos and laugh! Here are some before pictures of the house.

We weren't very good at picking out paint colors at first. This was our "peach" living room. We were going for a neutral tan color.

This is the kitchen before. It had lovely rosey walpaper!

So we wanted to paint it a nice sagey green color. It came out mint green!

We wanted a rich chocolate brown for our bedroom. It came out the color of poop!

This is the bathroom before. It had hearts and flowers wallpaper!

Our Story

2009-07-23T18:33:00.023-04:00

So I guess I will start from the beginning. Here is the abridged version of our story!

Brian and I met when we were both working for Aerosoles, a shoe store, but at different malls. Our first date was December 8, 2000 and the rest was history!

This was us Christmas 2000. We had only been dating for a couple of weeks.
I think this is actually the first picture we took together!

October 13, 2001 we got engaged on a hayride at my grandfathers house.

October 26, 2002 we got married!!!!! WOO HOO!!!

Our first place was a little one bedroom apartment.

In April 2004 we bought our first house.

We planned on living here for about 3-5 years and then finding something a little bigger, nicer, etc. But as time passed and we began to put hours and sweat and tears into our little house, we began to truly see the value in it. Now it is still a long way from being "done" but we absolutely love it!

That about wraps it up for the story of us. Of course I left out several details like getting a new puppy, Brian having major back surgery, in-laws living with us for a couple of years, my parents moving down the street, going back to school, and several nervous breakdowns in between! But other than that, it has been a fairly quiet 5 years in our little home!

From Blogstalker to Blogtalker

2009-07-23T11:54:00.000-04:00

I love checking out other people's blogs (and stealing their design ideas) so I decided to start my own! I have basically no clue what I am doing, but I think I will figure it out. I don't expect many people to read it (if any at all!), but that is ok! It will just be my little creative outlet. So here goes!!!!

This is me (Karen) and my husband Brian!

(This picture is a few years old. I will post some newer ones soon!)

This is our dog Bella!

We have a cat too, but I dont have any pictures of her right now.

We live in an 1800 square foot ranch home in a growing town about 45 minutes outside of Atlanta, GA! We bought our first home in April of 2004 and have been fixin’ it up ever since! We have definitely had a love/hate relationship with our little fixer upper, but in the end, love always prevails! There were times I was ready to pack my bags, but Brian always had faith in our little rancher! Now I’m in love with our home and the more love we put into it the more it loves us back! I will be posting some pictures of our completed and ongoing projects! I do have a tendency of starting one project before the previous one is completed. But hopefully the blog will keep me motivated to finish my projects! I might also occasionally blog about other random happenings in my life! So I guess this blog will just be a little bit of everything!

FYI-Im not that good at the DIY stuff. Sometimes my projects look a little janky! Sometimes my decorating ideas dont quite turn out like I expected. And as far as blog posting goes, I'm not that funny or eloquent. I don't promise to have the most inspiring or interesting ideas you have ever seen, and I don't know how often I will even be able to post! But I am looking forward to growing and improving as a blogger, decorator, housewife, etc! So your (kind) advice is always appreciated!

Thanks for visiting! :)