As our Nashville trip started to become a distant memory, we started looking forward to the holidays. I had no idea what to get Ethan and I remember stressing about it for weeks. What do y0u get someone who wants absolutely NOTHING?!? Well truth be told, I don’t even know what I ended up getting him that year BUT I do know what he got me.

It was Christmas Eve, we were sitting around his parent’s living room exchanging presents. Usually in my household, the person opening the present gets to choose which one to open first but E insisted that I open all of my presents in a very particular order.  Which was soooo frustrating! For starters, I don’t really like surprises. Like at all. I like to plan and prepare for everything. Secondly, I get anxiety when I have to open gifts in front of other people. And this was an extra stressful present opening experience…in front of E’s entire family.

So when it was time for me to finally open up my present from Ethan, I was a little hesitant. It was tiny, no bigger than a couple books stacked together. I slowly opened it up and found…

A dog leash.

It took me a second, because I’ll be honest. I thought it was an elaborate prank and honestly it broke my heart for a second because he KNEW how much I wanted a dog of my own. Petfinder was my #1 most googled site and I could tell you every single dog’s backstory as well as all pertinent information. Then the realization slowly hit me. He was getting me a dog. Well, letting me pick it out but letting it stay at his house since my landlord wouldn’t allow animals.

Little did Ethan know he would be getting TWO new roommates within a week. (You can read all about that here.)

I think I waited at most a month before starting to spruce the place up and make it feel more like a home versus a bachelor pad. I painted every surface, then moved on to redoing all the floors, building (well planning, since my dad did most of the work) a dining room table, reorganizing and moving furniture again and again and again. Fast forward a year and a half and here we are!

There were stressful times when we didn’t see eye to eye on changes or the timeline of when they should happen. Have I mentioned that I am not really known for my patience. But we made it through those rocky first couple months and because of it, the house has never looked better! But somewhere along the way, this house became our home. It is filled to the top with love and we wouldn’t have it any other way! So many memories have been made here, it was where we first said I love you. It was where E got me hooked on The Walking Dead. It is where E tells me to, “Drive safe,” every day before heading off to work. It is where we dance and sing at the top of our lungs after getting home in the evening. It was where we celebrated our engagement and planned our wedding and built this blog.

This little home with all of its quirks will always hold a special place in my heart and no matter where we travel, it will always be where our story began.

Check out a few of our favorite pictures from bringing Gunner home to what the house looks like today! Make sure to scroll all the way to the bottom for some before and afters.

P.S. Sorry some of the photos are sideways and upside down…technology is being difficult.

This was one of the first rooms I painted while Ethan was working on Saturday morning. This would turn into a weekly occurrence where he would come home to something drastically changed (…for the better I might add). Then little Tucker entered our life! Look how tiny he way!!! The kitchen reno begins! This one was very time consuming being that I was doing this while working full time, building up MHD as well as not really knowing what I was doing. Thank you Google! The finished project! Next up, this ugly green carpet. It started by ripping off the carpet from the wooden bump outs with some help from Lisa, E’s mom. Then it looked so good I just had to keep going!
Tucker’s birthday and celebrating the fact that the gross green carpet was gone! AND NOW IT IS TIME FOR THE BIG REVEAL!!! After literally months, this is where we stand! I’ll put some before photos below so you can see what it looked like BEFORE Ethan moved in since I forgot to take any photos before painting lol Still lots of stuff to do but we are happy with the progress 😀

BEFORE PHOTOS:

IT DOESN’T EVEN LOOK LIKE THE SAME HOUSE!!! I mean just look at these side by sides!

Okay, I will stop lol Only two installments left folks! Can you believe it? That means we are only two Friday’s away from officially being the Snitker’s!!!