Painting Adventures

For my birthday, I told Mike I wanted to go see my sister and her husband in Ohio. He obliged and we planned to travel there for my birthday weekend, yay! Jaclyn texted me asking me what I wanted for my birthday and I told her I had to think about it.
I recently have been making a more concerted effort to match decor items around my house and actually start decorating. So as I thought about what I wanted, I thought of the gorgeous canvas paintings she did in her house. Lightbulb! I would have her help me make cute canvas paintings for my house. So the plan was hatched!

Here is a picture of the one in her living room complete with my sloth of a husband and the gorgeous chunky blanket I made her (don't worry a blog on that blanket will come eventually).

So my colors were chosen and we started painting! I think she used this tutorial when she did her original one.

Step 1: Paint on the colors & let dry. 

Jaclyn must've blocked this part from her memory because it literally took us TWO HOURS to get this tape on there. It was insane. 

But the finished project is so worth it! 

 We did have other fun besides painting! We did some shooting and swimming. We always have fun hanging with these two.

We also painted a set of three canvases for my office at work. We just found the picture on google images when we searched "tape canvas art." 

First we taped the canvases in the pattern we wanted. We made the mistake of leaving them all taped together so we had to go back and free-hand the edges. We probably should've cut the tape and added some on the edges after we separated the canvases. 

It looked awesome once we peeled the tape off! It looks perfect in my office with yellow walls! 

Thanks Jaclyn for being the best sister and built-in-best-friend for always. I love you so much and can't wait to see you guys soon! 

One Year

 I cannot believe it's been a year since this wonderful day. God continues to bless me through Michael every single day. We have so much fun and are always laughing. It's such a special relationship. I am forever grateful that God brought us together. Here are some highlights from our first year of marriage!

September 28th-October 4th: Of course our honeymoon was so fun! From lunch with the Disney princesses to me saving his life while he almost got stung by a huge jellyfish in Sanibel. It was a lovely trip!

 October 17th--Watching him do his exercises and walk the hallway after his knee surgery. I couldn't believe how strong and determined he was.

November 3rd--Omgsh. I will never forget the JOY I felt this day to bring Mike home from the hospital. I would go home to our apartment every evening before I went to the hospital to be with him and our apartment was always so eerie without him. It was so nice to have him home.

November 29th--Yes, the DAY after Thanksgiving we got our FIRST CHRISTMAS TREE. Such an exciting moment! Especially since Mike lovessssss Christmas so much.

December 24th-- I'll never forget us laying on the floor next to our crispy, dried up tree (because we got it in November...) talking about our Christmas wishes and dreams for the future. What a special night.

December 31st-- We rang in the New Year with Mandy and Jared. We had such a fun night with them. We came back to our apartment the next day to find it was below 50 degrees in our apartment because our heat was broken...

2015

February 14th-- First married Valentine's Day. Good thing we didn't make any fancy dinner plans since it snowed like crazy. We watched people getting stuck on the road outside our apartment and ordered pizza for dinner.

April 27th-- We got to relive our honeymoon when I made orange crunch cake from The Bubble Room for Mike's birthday! Yum.

May 15th--We settled on our condo!

May 27th--After MONTHS of torture, drills, weights,  and running, Tim kicked Mike out of PT. We both left a little dumb-founded, like did that really just happen? Big moment for Mike in his ACL rehab.

June 19th--Mike's first time hitting at the batting cages! I think I was more excited than he was--I even shed a few tears of joy watching him. :)

June 24th--Mike's first softball game since his ACL surgery. Wow, what an exciting and special night to see all his hard work pay off!

Summer 2015--It was full of NATS games and trips to the country while we slowly pieced our condo together. I loved every minute spent working beside my husband. He worked so hard on our condo but we still took time to relax and have fun.

September 5th--My first time on the Williford Family Vacation to Salvo, Hatteras, NC. I definitely fell in love with Hatteras and cannot wait to go back. We spent every day with Kristen on the beach. We did lots of shopping, seafood-eating and swimming. We even got to see baby sea turtles!

It's been a wild year, but I've loved every minute of it. I love you Michael!

Condo Before-After Reveal

OKAY. The pictures are finally here! Things are not fully done yet, but I felt bad not sharing any after pictures. There is still much decorating and organizing to be done, but here's what we've got so far.

Dining room view when you walk in.  

Dining room view when you walk out of the kitchen. 

Living area.

Note the pink table on the left of this image. I really wanted to paint the powder room that color, but felt it was too pink. So we decided to do a little side table with it instead. And we both love it (I was definitely surprised Mike was on board with a pink table). :) 

When we first saw the condo, I felt like the kitchen was livable. But as our renovation plans continued to develop we decided to just do the kitchen. So we painted the cabinets, laid new flooring, painted the walls and ordered new countertops. Eventually we plan to replace the appliances with stainless steel.

So with the help of my father, I built that large pantry closet to the left of center. With the laundry unit in the kitchen closet, that left literally no space for food. So I got that huge pantry closet for maybe $160. It's quite nice and wasn't too difficult to build...except for the fact that it's taller than me...

We really like our fancy faucet. Check it out here.

And YAY, here's my pretty coral bathroom! Coral Reef by HGTV Home-Sherwin Williams. Love love love it. 

So that was a TON of work and we're not done. It's been so much fun. And we could NOT have done all this work without help from my mom and stepdad, Dave, and Mike's grandad. My mom and I painted and cleaned the appliances while Dave, Grandad and Mike did the floors, replaced the toilet in the powder room and all kinds of other projects. 

ACL Reconstruction: Part 2

Choosing a Graft Type

So Mike's first opinion doctor gave us the following options for choosing the type of graft to reconstruct his torn ACL: hamstring graft or allograft (cadaver ACL).  I believe the hamstring graft they take part of the hamstring insertion tendon from behind the knee and use that. The allograft is an ACL from a cadaver. I originally thought that would be a good option since it would be equally as strong, but then you have to worry about diseases that come with donor tissue and that option was out. This doctors' office did not offer the option of using part of the patellar tendon for the ACL graft. The PA actually used Jerry Rice as an example; stating that Jerry Rice had the patellar tendon graft and in turn shattered his knee cap. Mike was BEYOND irritated with this since Jerry Rice had his surgery in what year...like 1997. Talk about OUTDATED evidence based practice....haha. And what this PA also failed to mention was that Jerry Rice returned to football 3 and 1/2 months after surgery! No wonder he shattered his knee cap... So we were pretty irritated. And I started doing my own evidence-based research since these docs clearly weren't.

I kept coming back to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons website stating that the patellar tendon graft is often referred to as the "gold standard" for ACL reconstruction (side note, I love the AAOS website and I literally use it for everything).  I kept thinking   Okay, so how does this one practice not even offer that technique if it's considered the gold standard?? And why are they telling us stories about Jerry Rice from almost 20 years ago... It just wasn't adding up, so thankfully we had the second opinion appointment with the doc who did Kristen's knee.

Without hesitation, Dr. Matthews immediately said he'd do the patellar tendon graft.  He also didn't see an issue with postponing the surgery until after our wedding--great news! He referred Mike to pre-op PT to help with swelling and strengthen the muscles. I wonder what post-op rehab would've been like if Mike had actually attended PT pre-op, but who knows. We went to a PT evaluation at a small clinic near his parents' house and had a horrific experience. I am still contemplating writing them a letter regarding their terrible first impression. But that's another story...

Needless to say, do you research when choosing a graft. You want to choose what's going to be best for you. For Mike, who wants to be able to play sports again...he needed the Adrian Peterson treatment as he would say. If the major athletes get the patellar tendon graft, I wouldn't see why everyone else wouldn't, haha, although that might not apply in all scenarios.

Reno in Progress!

Mike and I have been watching disturbing amounts of HGTV. So of course we were excited to get started working on our condo as soon as we settled! The night we settled we actually went over and painted some samples on the wall to see which colors we liked. Here are some pictures of what we've been up to so far...

Painting 

We celebrated our first night of homeowner-ship with pizza. 

Fun colors for the powder room.

Painting in progress! We chose purple for the bedroom...well Mike actually picked it out originally...He apparently has good taste...haha. 

Choosing a blue accent wall for the dining area...

We chose Denim by Sherwin Williams HGTV line. And I could not be happier about our choice! I thought it would be too dark, but I love it. 

Flooring

After starting to peel up the nasty vinyl that was there we discovered an even more disgusting layer of vinyl in the kitchen. What an adventure it was getting that out of there...

At one point we panicked that the vinyl might contain asbestos, so we bought masks. 

Kitchen Cabinets

Here are the cabinets being primed. I read so many blogs before deciding to go ahead with this project. I followed the instructions on this blog: http://www.livelovediy.com/2013/04/10-easy-steps-to-paint-kitchen-cabinets.html. She made it seem like a realistic process, so I stuck to her instructions.

We have done so much more, but I think I'll wait until I can do full before-after pictures to show everyone the rest! And I hope to eventually get around to writing blogs in detail about some of the projects we completed. :) So stay tuned!

(Almost) Homeowners!

OMGsh OMGsh OMGsh! We are almost homeowners! So exciting and so scary all at the same time. Here's a little bit about how we came across this condo.

So our real estate agent, Susan Souder, is my aunt. She's been a realtor in Howard County for over 30 years. What a huge blessing and advantage it was to have her as our agent! So knowledgeable and so amazing at what she does! So we met with her maybe end of December or early January to get the whole process going. She got us on her email list so we could start getting a feel for what was out there. We would casually look, knowing we didn't need to get serious until around March-April.

Some properties stayed on our list, some went, and after a few months of starting at the list, we finally decided to go see a few. What a fun experience! Some places we'd seen in pictures and liked, we hated in person. And places we'd been indifferent to in pictures, we fell in love with in person. We started to fall in love with a neat condo and decided to put an offer on it. We met with Aunt Susan the next day and went over all the paperwork...boy was that insane. Come to find out that condo had already been sold and apparently the selling agent was still living in the stone ages. Haha. 
We were a little discouraged, and decided to give it a break. Of course the morning after we decided to give it a break, a small townhouse popped up on our automatic listing that was literally across the street from our apartment complex. We love this area, so then we had to go see it! We went and it was adorable and we loved it. So we decided to put an offer on it. While waiting to hear back, Aunt Susan got wind there was a second offer, so then Mike and I panicked. We spent a few hours trying to decide whether or not to change ours and we decided to leave it. Well...they took the other offer. Grr. We were so annoyed. 
Back to square one... Later that week, one afternoon, I was finishing up at work and Aunt Susan emailed me a listing and asked if we wanted to go see it that evening. I took a quick peek and saw it was cute and told her yes! Mike was annoyed and didn't want to go. We got there and it was older and weird shaped. For some reason, though, I kept picturing us there and trying to convince Mike. He was having nothing of it. So we left, discouraged again. 
A few days later, nothing new had really popped up and Mike emails me while at work saying..."I am kind of thinking I liked that last place we saw..." Shocking, he liked it, but didn't want to admit it! So we went to see it again that night. And we thought we could make it work so we decided to put an offer on it! And they accepted! We couldn't believe it! So we really have Aunt Susan to thank for the find and for begging the seller's to allow us to see it on a night they weren't planning to show it. :) 
We are already planning our DIY projects and yep, you guessed it...I'll be blogging about them! I am going to try to be good about it, haha! So we'll see how that goes. 

Here are a few fun pictures from our search: 

This is the first condo we really liked & tried to put an offer on. It had some neat aspects and a loft. 

This was the townhouse we loved loved loved but that went for way above asking price. 

Here is the place we chose! Mike was obviously over looking at it. Haha. 

Our future kitchen! :) 

So settlement is set for May 15th! We are counting the days--we can't wait!

ACL Reconstruction: Part 1

Getting a Second Opinion

So Mike calls me one summer night earlier than I expected. I knew he had a softball game and that it was a double-header that wouldn't be over until late. But nonetheless he was calling me early. I wasn't too alarmed because it could've ended early for any number of reasons. I answer the phone and he's like "I hurt my knee..." I thought to myself oh he probably just sprained something and it hurts, but he'll be fine. But he began telling me he couldn't walk on it and so on and so forth, so I panicked a bit. Of course his father tells him, "I won't make you go to the emergency room." But I said, "oh you're at least going to an immediate care!" So I made him go but he only agreed after he could go home and shower. If you know my husband at all, you know how important cleanliness is (he would take 3 showers a day if he could). 

Of course at the immediate care center all they did was do an x-ray and tell him nothing was broken. Then the PA-C preceded to give him a ridiculous knee immobilizer and told him to wear it for a few days. My mom recommended an orthopedics group in Frederick (who I will not name for reasons you'll see later) and of course I think Mike had to be seen before they'd order an MRI. He passed the clinical ACL examination, and the doc there told him his ACL was probably fine but they'd order the MRI anyways. 

MRI came back with a crazy report of a tibial plateau fracture, completely destroyed ACL, cartilage damage, mensical tears...it was crazy. Frederick doctors read that MRI and tell Mike because of said tibial plateau fracture that he shouldn't put any weight on his leg for 2-3 weeks. Great, he's on crutches which is so irritating and I watch his whole left leg shrink before my eyes as his muscles atrophy. The PA-C we saw here also went over Mike's options as far as ACL grafts, but more about that in Part 2. 

Meanwhile, Mike's mom gets Mike set up with a second opinion appointment with Dr. Leslie Matthews at MedStar Union Memorial (mentioning him because he is AWESOME). He takes one look at the MRI and dismisses a lot of the craziness on the radiology report. He also says Mike does NOT need to be using the crutches and emphasizes the importance that Mike start PT prior to surgery so that he can strengthen the muscles around the knee (I didn't then see the importance of this, although I should've). 

So the moral of Part 1 of the story is always get a second opinion. This is something my boss preaches daily and it was interesting to see it play true in our lives. Sometimes the first opinion may be the one you end up going back to, but it's always good to have a second set of doctor eyes on the issue. To go along with that, unless it is a life or death surgery, you have time to get a second opinion. I did TONS of research on the timing of when to have ACL reconstruction because we wanted to wait until after the wedding. I don't remember exact numbers, but I was able to find a range, and it did allow time for a second opinion. 

Mike's dad brought us chocolate milk since the wait at the urgent care center was going to be 2 hours or something crazy. 

Of course he barely fit on the table...

And there he is with the total unnecessary and ridiculous knee immobilizer. Haha. 

Stay tuned for Part 2: Choosing an ACL Graft!