2011 faves

2011 has been a simply wonderful year for us in the Nate Berrett family. My top 10 events of 2011 are:

1.  Buying our first home. On November 8th we were given the key to our first home. After what seemed like a painstakingly long wait for our loan to go through we got it. And we got a wonderful house too, with a perfect yard for us and the pup to play in.

2. Trip to Montana. Near the end of July we were able to get a few days of work and head to Montana for a vacation. I learned how to fly fish, and Nate finally got to fish the famous rivers of Montana. We enjoyed spending time with some of my extended family, the Larsons. We got to go to the famous Glacier National Park which had absolutely breath taking views. We went to the famous Missoula farmer's market and much more. We can't wait to see what trips we'll get to go on in 2012.

3. Trip to Virginia. In August we were able to go to Virginia to spend a few days with Nate's family, and we even got to sneak in seeing my brother's family as well. We spent the first couple days in Virginia Beach enjoying the sand and the surf. Followed by a couple relaxed days at the Berrett residence, and a quick trip to Baltimore too.

4. Hiking. We went on a lot of different hikes this year. Though a few of them weren't on actual trails, we saw lots of beautiful sites. We especially enjoyed hiking to Stewart Falls in autumn with some of our friends and enjoying the beautiful changing leaves.

5. Garrett Family Reunion. My dad's side of the family tries to have a family reunion every couple of years. With the growing family size it is getting more and more difficult to find a place to hold us all, but we really enjoyed going to Duck Creek this July. We got to spend time hiking, fishing, playing games, and more.

6. Camping camping and more camping. I'm sure I didn't blog about each time we went camping, but as you know it is one of our favorite hobbies and this year did not disappoint. We especially enjoyed Scofield and Tabiona camping this year, and even got in a quick Labor Day camping trip with my parents.

7. One year anniversary.  Nate and I had the best first year married because we were able to do so many fun things. To celebrate our grand one year of marriage we headed to Salt Lake for a fancy night out to dinner and staying at a hotel and went camping a second night. The best of both worlds for us.

8. New jobs. With my graduation at the end of last year I needed to find something to do with myself, and I figured I should make some money while I'm at it ;). In January I started teaching ESL at Nomen Global, in August I moved from teaching just morning to teaching nights too. And my second job is working at Heritage Schools. I started at Heritage in February and I recently got a small promotion too.

9. Cooking. I made a goal for myself to cook one new recipe every week. Though I can't guarantee I have been perfect with this goal, I think I have done pretty good and I have gotten more and more into sharing recipes on my cooking blog. For Christmas Nate bought my the domain for our blog and I am so excited to transition to the new space.

10. Graduation. Although I actually graduated in December, come April I was able to walk and make it official with the cap and gown. I was so spoiled to have my parents, my inlaws, and both sets of grandparents come to my graduation and support me there.

Two thousand eleven was an absolutely wonderful year for us. And I can't wait to see what adventures 2012 has in store for us.

What were your 2011 highlights?

Outside Pics of the House

Although by last night you couldn't tell, I spent at least an hour or two raking the leaves in the front and back yard. Of course the wind decided it needed to blow yesterday and knock half of the leaves from our tree back on to the ground so that it doesn't look like I did any work.

This separate area was blocked off with two layers of these bricks, and we decided to use about half of them to build a fire pit. We will be building a cheap fence in the spring to separate this area (so the pup can't get in) and plant a garden in there.

We had a fire in our fire pit the same night we built it. We roasted some marshmallows and enjoyed the heat, while Aspen enjoyed stomping out some of the rogue ashes.

We have two of these Bradford Pear trees in our yard. And although most other trees in the area changed colors months ago, our trees are just reaching their peak now. The colors are absolutely astounding.

A view of the front of our house. You can see both of our Bradford Pear trees in all their glory, and the mountain looks beautiful behind. We have such an amazing view of the mountains from our home, and we live only about 5 minutes from the canyon entrance. Perfection.

Our home - updated

We are finally (almost) completely settled in our home. There are still one or two or three boxes that need to be unpacked and put away, but they are doing just fine sitting in our "storage rooms" We got most of pictures and decorations hung on the walls this week too. We had a lot of free time this week because I didn't have school to teach, and we were able to get lots of things around the home done. We even did some yard work this week. Raking leaves, power washing the house, building a fire pit with spare bricks that were left. So our house is finally coming together and we think it might just be the coziest thing ever. We are so happy coming home to OUR HOME after work, and it helps that its so close to work as well.

And for your pleasure (and journal keeping), here are a few pictures of the updates. :)

kitchen.

kitchen table. and a pup!

kitchen, leading to the garage

living/sitting room.

electric fireplace. so warm.

work out room.

office. its still a little messy, its being used to hold extra pictures and things  that I don't know where to put, haha. And I've been using the desk for crafts.

bedroom.

our closet.

upstairs bathroom

why, hello :)

guest bedroom. so come stay with us!

fly tying and sewing room.

family room.

our new couch. so nice and so comfy!

downstairs bathroom.

laundry room. it even has its own microwave so we can pop corn while watching movies.

So there you have it. Our humble abode. What do you think?

I'll put up outside pictures tomorrow (I don't have the camera with me now to upload the pictures to the computer)

Finally! Our home!

Nate and I finally got the key to our new home yesterday. We have been so anxious with this process for the past 3 or 4 weeks, so we are seriously grateful to have it done.

We started packing our apartment up a couple of weeks ago, so we've been in a state of disarray since then, while not being able to use the things that were in the boxes and eating fast food and frozen pizza for the past few days.

But finally last night we were able to start taking some of these boxes over, and tonight with the help of some AWESOME family and friends we will take our heavier items over, with the help of a Uhaul truck.

We will be sleeping in our new place tonight, and I can't wait!

Our new home is still in Orem, and although its a little farther from the freeway and fast food, its even closer to work (at Heritage), and will shorten our drive from about 12 mins, to about 4 mins.

It is in a great area, where everyone seems to take great care of their homes and yards and we've even met a couple of the neighbors who seems super friendly.

We fondly nick named the home the yellow dellow.

The home is on the corner of a quiet culdesac in a quiet neighborhood.

It has a fenced back yard with a big tree in the yard for shade, and a huge storage shed.

we are going to build a fire pit using these big bricks

We will have a two car garage now, so we will no longer have to take turns with the misery of having the cold car in the winter, or scraping off the ice from the windshield. Plus the garage gives us even more storage space.

It has a doggy door from the kitchen to the garage and from the garage to outside, which seems perfectly designed for our pup. Now we just need to teach him to take himself out to tink.

The home has 4 bedrooms, 2 full bath, a family room, a living room, an office, and a laundry room. The home is about 2,100 square feet and we got an awesome price for it too.

kitchen

living room

one bedroom, will be the workout room for now

bedroom two, will be the office for now

master bedroom

upstairs bathroom

bedroom four, future guest bedroom

family room

downstairs bathroom

laundry room, and storage

 This home is perfect for us, and we are so excited to decorate it and make it our own!

so happy to own our first home!

our first meal in the home, frozen pizza and apple grape cider

Ps. A big shout out to my uncle Lance who was our real estate agent and helped us find and get the home.

Pps. A thank you to my parents for giving us a chunk of money so that we could make our house payments a little cheaper each month.

Ppps. I will post pictures once we have all our furniture in and things unpacked as well.