Brand new year, same old me. Take a look as I continue with old traditions and get started creating new memories.

MONDAY

As is now tradition, we celebrated New Year’s Eve with all of our favorites at Shawn & Julia’s house. The duo are perfect hosts and always make sure to include a photo wall for the camera-obsessed like myself. Here are a bunch of photos from the night in order from least to most intoxicated.

I can’t believe I finally get to see these two beautiful humans get married this year.

Consistently the best:

My new favorite photo of us:

A good lookin’ group:

Seriously the cutest and the best:

Lovely ladies:

And a whole pack of wonderful weirdos:

And a final reminder that I should find my Polaroid camera soon:

Happy New Year!

TUESDAY

New Years Day was less exciting. Jason and I slept in for a while and then made our way back to the renovation. We put up most of the crown molding on the brick!

For dinner, we headed to Home Depot and then treated ourselves to a big ass plate of Mexican food.

WEDNESDAY

Back to work and then off to the tile store. We picked up our backsplash tile which I failed to photograph. However, I did manage to snap a pic of this loaf of bread from dinner that kind of looks like a butt:

THURSDAY

This time of year is always fun but exhausting. Even Bean sleeps in more.

I’ve also been having a lot of issues with my skin and eyes for a while now. Maybe these weird gold eye pad things will help?

FRIDAY

Friday was Jason’s birthday but it was an exciting day for both of us! Jason woke up nice and early to greet the countertop installers! Please ignore the craziness that is happening on our wall and enjoy this single shot of the shiny new countertops…oooo!…ahhhh!

They look more exciting up close and in person but I was pretty terrible at snapping proper photographs.

Anywho, after the counters were installed, my dad helped us move some of the last big trash items out of the house! (This is a massive help/relief.) Then, Ellie was treated to her own day of excitement with a visit to see her favorite pup pals.

SATURDAY

Ellie likes my new lounge pants as much as I do.

Once we popped our butts out of bed, we made a quick visit to R House and grabbed breakfast at Little Fig Bakeshop. This quick access to donuts is both delightful and dangerous.

We worked on a smattering of house projects but one of my major assignments for the day was to finish the living room accent wall. We really fell in love with the idea of a black wood wall so we researched and tested multiple ways to get the desired result. We chose to go with a wood dye for a few reasons but mainly because we preferred the look for the end product. We went through with dying the wall and while the process was simple enough, we didn’t anticipate how hard it would be to evenly coat such a large, contiguous surface area. If we had used planks or smaller pieces, then it may have turned out more consistent. Basically, we thought it looked okay but not great.

We ultimately decided that we should paint over the dye and opted to go with the same paint we used to accent the upstairs hallway.

In the end, I think we made the right choice. The painted wall looks soooo much better and has quickly become my favorite part of the room. I’m happy with how the whole project fleshed out.

Later on, we spent the night out and about in the neighborhood to celebrate Jason’s birthday! All of the best people were there and we even tried out a new bar spot – Fadensonnen.

SUNDAY

This stage in the renovation has been one of the most exciting times yet. Everything is starting to take shape and we are so pumped to work on all of the fun details. We started working right away but Ellie went right back to bed after her long morning walk.

I guess I didn’t snap many photos during the day but we put up a good portion of trim on both floors. Jason and I came up with a cool idea to finish the stairs with a metal trim that we painted black and attached to the corners. I love the clean visual line it creates.

Ellie found her favorite stair seat and surveyed our work.

All in all, it was a productive day and we felt like were finally able to see the progress throughout the first floor. This is the most empty the house has been since we moved in. Now if we could just move out some of our tools…