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Mini House Tour (Before)

Published on December 6, 2018 by Jamie ShugartLeave a comment

We bought a house! Our very first home purchase. It is a big deal and we are excited and nervous. But mostly excited.

So excited that we are bringing you along on the adventure of home ownership. From the $300 microwave that needs replacing within the first month, to the fun paint colors and new furniture, we are bringing you along for the ride!

First up are our “before” photos. I took these literally the day we moved in, and as moving days go we were running behind so my photos have some of our stuff in them, despite my best efforts. Oh well!

Our living room! It has an electric fireplace and is the central hub of the whole house. Right now our intention is to not have a television in our living room and make it a place of conversation, reading, and quality time.

Here is our little kitchen, with not quite enough cabinet space and no pantry whatsoever. That door leads to our tiny laundry room, which we will be creating additional storage space in to use as a pantry.

It is a three bedroom, two bathroom house. As a couple with no kids but a good amount of friends who will likely come over, the second bathroom is ideal for guests. Eventually it will be great for kids too, but for now it is just a luxury to have two bathrooms and we LOVE it.

The master bedroom is just the right size for us and gets great natural light throughout the day. There is a perfect amount of space for me, Will and Blue and once we got our furniture it became a lot easier to keep it pretty clean. Also, I never knew that a jetted tub is what my life was missing, but that thing is a dream.

The bonus room is our favorite room. We are going to create a great relaxing hang out space. We are going to have movie marathons and game nights and plenty of room for my at home work outs. We literally get so excited to go upstairs and watch a show or just relax together as a family.

Last but not least is our beautiful, roomy two car garage. I never knew that I as a grownup could get so excited about a garage. I love that our cars get to live inside. That I don’t have to go out in the cold or the rain to get in my vehicle at home. That we have a place to store our lawnmower (that we will eventually purchase). I feel like such an adult, but honestly. Pulling into our garage every day is so cool.

Stay tuned for updates and decor throughout our time in this home. We are so excited to share!

Until next time,
Jamie out

We got a puppy!

Published on November 28, 2018September 16, 2019 by Jamie Shugart6 Comments

Friend, meet Blue. Blue, meet friend!

She is a pure bred Golden Retriever with so much spunk and sass, I’m not certain what we have gotten ourselves into.

This is Blue at six weeks old. We started looking for her in October, deciding that getting a puppy around the holidays would be easier with our work schedules being a little more open than normal. We had known for a long time that we wanted to get a puppy to grow our family, and while she came a few weeks sooner than we had planned, we couldn’t pass up on this beauty.

We drove up to Virginia when all of the puppies were six weeks old. Blue’s mom had ten puppies, six of which were girls. We already had our eye on Blue from all of the photos and videos we had seen, but we really wanted to meet all of them in person before deciding.

Blue was always in the thick of the playtime. She would run and leap into the doggy pile. If there was a tug of war over a water bowl happening, she was definitely going to be involved. She was also sweet and loved sitting on our laps being snuggled and giving sweet puppy kisses. We knew she was our girl almost right away.

Two weeks later we got to bring her home. She did great on the car ride back, even though being removed from her mom and siblings was hard at first. She slept most of the drive and we got to enjoy lots of puppy snuggles before we encountered potty training, puppy nips, and lots of trips outside at night.

I will have a lot of updates coming your way—Blue’s blogs will be two Wednesdays a month while she is young. There is just so much growing and learning going on at this age! She gained over a pound in the first week we had her and has learned to sit. Until that next blog post, here’s a mini photoshoot we had on her eight week birthday.

Have you ever had a puppy? I need ALL of the advice! From crate training, potty training, training her to thrive while being alone, EVERYTHING. Please leave it in the comments! If you think my pup is adorable, give this post a like and don’t forget to subscribe and join our family if you haven’t already!

Until next time,
Jamie out

we lost it all in Hurricane Florence

Published on November 26, 2018 by Jamie Shugart5 Comments

If you watched the news in September, you know that Hurricane Florence hit the east coast and caused a lot of damage. Most of the severe losses were in coastal towns, but places inland were affected as well. The Cape Fear River that runs through Fayetteville and the surrounding towns crested around 60 feet, majorly surpassing the 35 foot flood stage and causing families along the river and other water ways that run off it to be evacuated.

While we were in Arizona, most of our worldly possessions were in a storage unit in Fayetteville. We, luckily, decided to opt into the insurance the facility offered well before the storm. While I do not believe the storage unit was within a mandatory flood evacuation zone, we were informed by management that our unit had flooded.

We returned home at the end of October and took a peek at the damage. Initially we thought it wasn’t so bad—only a few boxes had been on the ground and it was mostly furniture that took the brunt of the water. We assumed we would be able to clean them off and be on our merry way.

After closing on our home, the next day we got a U-Haul and invited friends and family to help us empty our unit. We went out and bought gloves and masks for everyone, as long as a lot of white vinegar and cleaning supplies.

It was not just a little bit of damage. A whole box of picture albums was on the ground. Most of our furniture is wood or fabric, so the material held onto the moisture and mold grew rampant. Even boxes that weren’t soaked with water allowed moisture and eventually mold inside and we had to go through everything carefully.

Luckily, we were able to save money while we were in Arizona and we deliberately put some away for purchasing things we would need—like a washer and dryer. Luckily, like I said above, we put insurance on our unit and its contents. Luckily, we had the support of our loved ones as we unpacked, cleaned, and photographed the damage. Luckily, we serve a great God who has been gracious in providing, even through the troubled times.

I know people who lost everything in Hurricane Matthew. People who lost their homes and all of their possessions. In the hurricanes that have hit the Carolinas recently, many people have lost their lives.

We lost some furniture. Financially and emotionally that is certainly not the easiest thing to go through. But we have our lives, and we have each other.

On the plus side, we get new stuff. We get to pick the things that are to our taste. We get to design our house from the ground up, so to speak. And while it may be tough and draining and arduous, especially during the waiting (we are still working through the insurance claims process and have not been reimbursed for our losses yet), we know that now is not forever and that now will always change.

After over three weeks, we have been able to almost fully furnish our home with what we NEED, with either the money we saved or the generosity of others. We are grateful and happy for what we have, and we know that having each other is much more important than having a mattress, although it is much easier to sleep at night with one. For real.

Until next time,
Jamie out.

We bought a house!

Published on November 21, 2018 by Jamie Shugart3 Comments

We are first time home owners! And we did it all from over two thousand miles away.

What a rollercoaster this process was. I was super surprised that the part I thought I would love—the actual house hunting—was the worst aspect for me. When it got down to the nitty gritty though, we had some amazing professionals on our team who worked super hard behind the scenes to pull it all together in less than 30 days.

Our realtor was a good friend of mine who has been building me up and encouraging me for almost four years now. She is a rockstar. When we told her we wanted to buy a house in North Carolina, but do basically all of it while we were in Arizona, she didn’t bat an eye. She was down for the challenge.

My parents, who coincidentally LOVE “window shopping” for houses were game to go look at houses for us. They looked at neighborhoods, the condition of the property, the drainage of the lot—all of the things you can’t change and all of the things you can’t see in the photos.

Our realtor took us on video walkthroughs so that we could get a feel for the place as well. We talked over all of the positives and negatives. We searched for over a month and we fell in love with multiple homes. We were so ready!

Finally we found The One and we got an accepted offer. It was smooth sailing from then out (for us, not so sure about everyone else on our team, haha!) and we were so excited to close and get our keys just four days after we arrived in North Carolina.

Since leaving Arizona, everything has been a little crazy for us. We got in a car accident and my car was totaled, but because we were under contract on a house, we could not buy a car until we closed, otherwise it could mess up our mortgage. Luckily we were able to close just a week after the accident and our insurance was understanding so they let us keep our rental car a little longer than normal.

We were also super lucky because we closed on our house on a Friday and got our keys the same day, which doesn’t always happen in North Carolina because of the legal process here.

Even though we had no furniture, food, or toilet paper, we booked it to the house as soon as we got the call. Just thirty minutes before the courts closed, our realtor called us to tell us that the house was officially ours! We drove through the rain and pulled up outside just after five. Will even insisted on carrying me over the threshold. It was amazing.

We spent the evening at the grocery store buying toilet paper and frozen lasagna, and then back in our house to just soak in every foot of its perfections.

We are so excited to make it our own. To fill it, and decorate it, and host in it. It is our favorite investment, and we are so very happy.

Until next time,
Jamie out.