Home Improvements

I have had a fun time slowly fixing up our home.  We have a long porch that spans the length of the house.  It was so long and empty.  For next to nothing, I was able to score this old wood bench from Craigslist.  Here are the before and after pictures of my DIY project.

Our home also came with a huge garden plot.  Ian and I have been trying our hand at gardening as well.  It's hard to believe our little garden went from this...

...to this the last few months.

While we are still novice gardeners, it has been fun to grow something in our backyard!  With the warm Southern California weather, we were able to start planting our crops at the end of March.  We just enjoyed our first meal from our garden the other night - fresh basil pesto pasta and green beans. Yumm!!   

Welcome To Our New Home

After a few months of looking for homes in California, we finally bought one!  We feel so lucky to call this house our own.  With wealthy investors, houses were flying off the market so quickly with offers far above the asking price.  We feel we were being watched out for as there was no way we could compete.  This became our home November 11th.  Thank you to all the friends and family who helped us move!

We live in the San Gabriel Valley of California and love the warm weather.  Our neighbors are very nice and share their fresh avocados and lemons with us.  Most nights we hear Taps played on the trumpet by someone near the city hall down the street.  We are close to Ian's family and get to spend a lot more time with them now.  We are loving having our own space and not living in a one bedroom apartment any more:)

This is our backyard.  We have made some changes to it over the last few months, including the garden, but I will post about that later.   

This house was built in the late 1940's.  We are the second family to own the home!  The owner gave us the original blue prints for the house.  We are enjoying updating and improving the home little by little.   

July Happenings

Well, I always mean to blog but then I start reading other people's blogs and run out of time to share what is happening in the Finlay family.  So, here are some of the fun things we have been doing this summer.  

We celebrated our one year anniversary in Colorado Springs.  We hiked through Garden of the Gods, ate at a really fun restaurant, and drove to the top of Pikes Peak.  I was very happy to be driving to the top instead of hiking this time:)

 At the top of Pikes Peak they sell world famous donuts which were quite disgusting.  

 It was so windy at the top of the peak we didn't get many good pictures, but this is at a lake on the way down with the mountain in the background.  How I love beautiful Colorado.

We also took a trip to California to work on our house a little bit.  Ian's sister Megan taught us how to tile the bathroom floor.  Here is the before picture after we had demolished the bathroom.  

 We don't have an after picture yet as we had to leave before it was all completed.  But, I hope it looks better than when we started.  

Ian's mom took us on a sanitation district boat tour off of the LA coast.  It was really interesting learning about how the sanitation is handled in LA and how different chemicals affect the ocean animals.  The boat crew dragged big nets along the ocean bottom and pulled up all kinds of creatures.  This is our nephew Ethan looking at a huge starfish.

We went with Ian's family to an Italian restaurant Miceli's where the waiters all take turns singing when they aren't serving food.  We were celebrating many anniversaries that night.

Robbed

Today I got robbed.  Ian and I went to play tennis at some nearby courts this afternoon.  It was a perfectly sunny day.  We walked to our car and found this when we were done playing.  

My purse and my wallet were gone.  Having my wallet stolen is highly inconvenient.  Having my wallet stolen makes me feel uncomfortable because someone now has my personal information and a piece of my life.  Having my wallet stolen has reminded me that there is more to life than just money and possessions.