490/365

Thankful, honored and privileged to take engagement shots for Sara Margaret and Will this week. It was a fun, quick little photo shoot due to heat, mosquitoes and an energetic puppy! I've never done a "session" with animals (just children, which is a close tie) but I learned that you don't have much time to snap once you finally get them situated. :)

So happy for my sweet cousin and Will, and can't wait to be a part of their day in November. Lots of great celebrations to come leading up to their wedding day and today was a great start in the fun!

So, to Sara Margaret and Will... Cheers!

Little Ruger

This is my favorite series of pictures to come... watch them try to get the dogs to cooperate...

Still not cooperating!

Still... not... cooperating!

End result. They licked our little crafty prop!

So, we opted to take the picture with Hank. :)

GORGEOUS Rock (s)

Love these two... Congratulations!

Just a few months away... and you'll be
Mr. and Mrs!

 So very thankful for my sweet cousin, Sara Margaret!

489/365

For those of you who've been curious what this house business is all about, I am posting some pictures of the pre-destruction phase of my new little abode. :)

First, let me say that the Lord has been so kind to work out all of the details of this house. I haven't been anxious to buy a place of my own and have loved living at home, and actually will continue to do so for the next little while. But the Lord just provided the right place at the right price (thanks to Jon Vosburgh for finding this for me!) and has worked all of the details out from start to now... and I know He will continue to do so as we complete the process.
SO, with that said, thank you to all of the friends and family who have helped me in this demolition (kind-of) project. Who knew with one little change there would be so many changes to follow... once you start, you just can't stop! It's been exciting!

Obviously, the front porch... with very large, overgrown shrubs. :) This is one of the
first things to go when spring hits. I hate to wait that long, but the boss (dad)
says there is a time to pull and a time to plant. :)

Living room/dining room:
 The door on the left far side goes into the kitchen. It will be moving
more towards the center of the room to create a natural separation between the two "rooms"
and to give a little more wall space in the "dining" room.

Den/small eating area/awesome room:
Gotta check out the GORGEOUS tile... Ronnie and Jon spent many hours peeling this stuff up (well, they bent
a really big metal tool taking it up... along with the original lenoleum underneath). Then we
had a big party and a few friends came and helped pull up the sub-floor. (some kind of party!!!)

Den:
Thanks to Josh for ALL of the help! He's been so sweet to let us borrow his truck to haul all of the
tile, cabinets we've destructed, carpet, sub-floor, etc... AWAY! Thanks, Josh! Right now
we have a nice insert in the fireplace, but we're going to be replacing this with gas logs for ease. Very
excited about that!!

 

Kitchen:
This is my cute little kitchen.
We will be doing some sort of fun something to the cabinets, replacing countertops, replacing the
gas range ... minor changes here until the demolition down the road. Hardwoods will
be installed here. . . can't wait to see them installed!

Kitchen:
This is the other side of my kitchen. As you can see, there is very little wall space for cabinets therefore
there is VERY little storage for kitchen items, so we will be doing al litte work here. The door  will be moving about 4 feet to the right, and the window will be sheetrocked in (along with the whole kitchen/den area) to allow for more cabinet space in the future. This is all in
preparation for the next phase of the remodeling process (which will not be an immediate change... give me a couple of years) :)

 

Master Bath: :)
This is by FAR my favorite room in the house! (haha... kidding!) I am learning to appreciate tile of shapes, sizes and colors, and the blue is starting to grow on me. (just wait till you see the yellow towards the end of this post....) This bathroom will eventually be remodeled completely, but until then we will simply be changing out the light fixtures and ceiling fan, installing a base cabinet where the pedestal sink is located, changing the mirror above the sink and then installing a medicine cabinet above the toilet. Mom and I have been taking a furniture refinishing class and have learned all sorts of neat finishes, and she has re-finished a base cabinet from Carrie's bathroom (they just remodeled...) and a matching medicine cabinet. It's going to be snazzy!



"Office":
The bedrooms are all very similar... but this gives you an idea. This room will actually become an office... but for the time being it is a furniture warehouse. The previous owners actually called and asked if we'd like for them to leave these things for us, so we were very thankful. Sarah has actually refinished the dresser and bed for grad school- I'll have to post pictures of what she's done- such a creative sister!

Guest Bath:
Yes, if you come visit me at my house, you will more than likely get a close-up of this gorgeous yellow. :)
This will also be staying for now but eventually compeltely remodeled. For now, fixtures will change... and we'll
enjoy a bright, yellow bathroom. I'm actually a little excited about working with the yellow!!



Guest Bedroom:
Day 1 the family was over helping pull carpet out of the bedrooms, trim bushes, trim trees, pull up flooring...
just the beginning of the work. :) So thankful for the family and friends who have already been
a huge help!

 

Note that the paneling will be sheetrocked in, and the desk that Jon is standing at has been removed... ceilings
have now been painted white and the beams will be painted the trim color.
All of the walls will be changing color, outlets replaced, fixtures replaced (not one fixture matches
another right now... it's pretty humorous!) , hardwood installed in the den and kitchen, other hardwoods refinished,...
LOTS of work to be done! (along with finding a new gas range, installing gas logs in the fireplace, . . .)

Never a dull moment during this process... never a dull moment at all!

This gives you a glimpse of what we are looking at right now. We've actually begun painting the bedrooms/hallway, we've removed the chair rail in the living/dining rooms and worked on patching those walls, the subfloor in the den/kitchen has been removed. . . and the contractor will begin his part in the next week. Lots of changes soon to come. . . very blessed and excited!!

(I apologize for those who read this earlier today... I just went back through and found SO MANY misspellings and type-o's. :/ That's what I get for trying to get a post up early. :))

488/365

Starting off with the arrival at Alpine, AZ... after a GORGEOUS drive through the state of Arizona we arrived in Alpine to see the welcoming committee! 

We had so many great adventures during the week- some calm, and some not-so-calm. We relaxed and enoed (if you look up this word it isn't found in the dictionary); we also scaled mountains and canyons. We loved our time visiting our family by blood and our family in Jesus (Grandview Camp staff).

So, I will now post pictures and walk you through our adventure. This will be a long post... here goes!

Jon and Benton... enoing. :)

Hannah Sute... SO HAPPY SHE COULD COME!

One morning we drove to the New Mexico border and spent some time legitimately "hanging out"...
enjoyed time in the Word, in God's beautiful creation. . . JUST relaxing!

Funny story is that we woke up around 4:15am so we could get packed and to the canyon for the sunrise. We then
RAN from the car to the canyon as not to miss the grand event.
Did we see a sunrise? No. Apparently clouds hinder that gorgeous sight. :)
We still had fun, though, only to dash back to the car in a rain storm!

Evidence of the rain... 

Couldn't resist... this about sums us up.

So very thankful for him!

 We also climbed a few mountains while we were in AZ, one of them being Gobblers Peak in Alpine (close to 9,000 feet elevation... HARD to breathe!).

We made it to the top of Gobblers Peak and got a gorgeous view of Alpine, AZ and its surrounding area.
You can see the remnants of the Wallow fire last year that almost burned the camp.
Incredible to see the burn and then the new growth- so much scarring yet new life poking through.

Such a strange thing. At the top of the mountain was a massive swarm of flying ants. You can see them all
above Jon's head... 

SO MUCH BURN!

We were attacked by briers all the way up the mountain... it was an intense little climb!

You can see the summit behind us... 

Jon carried Benton for part of the hike... he was pretty pooped by the end of the hike! ;)

We also enjoyed visiting the new camp property. For those of you who might not know, Grandview Camp has been working on building an entirely new camp outside of Eagar, AZ and are hoping to be full-time at the new site by next May. It's been exciting to see the process take place and the buildings/location are just gorgeous!

Dad and Mom were able to come out to visit while we were there which was a real treat!

Kathryn is growing up so quickly! Trying to break into one of the cabins...

You can see the burn all around the camp site but the buildings were all spared from the fire (minus one cabin...)

This is the view of Escadilla from the multi-purpose building that is underway.
Can't wait to see this finished!

WE ALSO got to visit Big Lake, AZ. It's about 10,000 ft in elevation which is pretty incredible for a LAKE. In fact, there are more deaths by lightning strikes here than anywhere else in the US. Pretty crazy how quickly the storms come and go!

Mom and Hannah

(I know, you're probably getting tired of pictures of Ronnie and me... sorry!!!)

LOVE these two!!!

Proud to call them family!

Man, there is so much more I could post right now but I'll leave it here for now. SO thankful for a safe trip to AZ and back and the time we could all spend together!

487/365

Had the GREAT OPPORTUNITY to go visit Matt, Rach, Kathryn, Benton and Sarah (and the rest of the Grandview staff) in Arizona this week. Ronnie, Jon and I packed up our bags and enjoyed a beautiful trek across the country.

We were able to see a lot of exciting sights and experience many new things. It was so neat to show Ronnie the camp and to catch up with our family. Benton and Kathryn are just precious and growing like little weeds!

I hope to highlight different parts of the trip over the next few days, but for now I will leave you in suspense with this...

This was the drive to camp from Phoenix. Talk about a beautiful, unique, open sky!

Thankful for the last week of safety and fun... and also, very thankful to be HOME in Clemson!