August -- stressful, decorative, painful, and puzzling

**A reminder for those who may have forgotten -- we couldn't purchase our PA house until we sold our IA house.  With that reminder these next few paragraphs will make more sense.**

Stressful part:
The first two weeks of August took FOREVER to complete simply because of our house.  There were many esthetic repairs (and a few structural ones) that needed to be made on our house and those repairs got delayed until August 12th -- grrrr!  So we had to wait around for a few weeks before we could close on the house which made things stressful, trying, taxing, difficult, hard, tough, traumatic, tense, and extremely frustrating.  Those words alone cannot even come close to painting an accurate picture of what we went through the first few weeks.

However, the day finally came and we closed on our house here in PA.  Hallelujah!  It is all over with!

The day we closed on the house we went to Home Depot, picked up some new door knobs, and changed the locks on the house.  Hannah enjoyed helping Nathan using his tools.  She LOVES to help.

Decorative part:
In our little moments of spare time we have spent the last few weeks putting holes in our walls and making it OUR home by hanging pictures, mirrors, shelves, and other decorations.  I'm hoping that in several months we can slowly start painting our house to add more color and character to it.

First, we hung pictures above our mantle (for the last 14 months we had them on the mantle leaning up against the wall).

We bought this mirror on sale over a year ago at Home Depot with the intention of hanging it in our bedroom.  Well, we finally hung it this weekend!  Now I just need to find a dresser or some other kind of furniture to re-finish so that I can put it underneath the mirror.

Nathan (with Hannah's help in finding wall studs) also hung this mirror that I found at Hobby Lobby a month ago.  It was originally a $180 mirror, and I got it for $36.  Gotta love Hobby Lobby!  Again, now I just need to find a small table to re-finish to put underneath the mirror.

In April, I found this letter decoration at Hobby Lobby for $13.  I thought it would look awesome in our entry way so I purchased it and have been holding onto it for 4 months.  I knew I wanted to change the color of the letter, but I wasn't quite sure what color so I waited (you'll see the final product a few pictures down).

Earlier this summer one of my friends from church gave me this shelf that she no longer wanted. I took it off her hands and figured I could refinish it.  So I sanded it down, spray painted it, and we just hung it on the wall, along with our newly colored letter decoration.  I think it looks pretty good.

Before:

After:

So far, those are the decorating things we have done to the house this month.  When I get my fall decorations our house will look more festive.

Painful part:
Many of you know I've been taking horseback riding lessons from a dear friend, Shawn, who owns several horses.  Earlier this month I went for a riding lesson and got to ride a different horse so that I could see/feel how each horse has different strides, trots, canters, behaviors, quirks, etc. This here is Ilana, but she is nicknamed "Lans."

Things were going great and we were all having a good time.  But then Lans got spooked by something in the training rink and bucked me off.  Not very fun!  Apparently I did everything right during my fall so I didn't get injured too much.  My nerves were a little rattled, but that's normal.

I knew that the best thing for me to do was to get right back on the horse, so I did.  Shawn attached her training rope to Lans' apparatus in case of another incident, and we started to walk around some with me on the horse to gain my confidence back.  After 10 minutes of walking, we headed back over to the scene of the accident and Lans got spooked again by something, reflexed causing me to loose my balance and fall off again.

With this fall I got some minor rope burns on my hands and I knew that my entire body would be sore the next day.  As I was getting up from my fall I noticed Shawn went right into action and started disciplining her horse by doing some training exercises with Lans in that corner of the rink.  I just sat back and watched Shawn work her magic.  It was pretty cool.  Ten minutes later, she had me get back on the horse and we walked around for about 5 minutes before I dismounted and called it a day.

The next several days were filled with aches and bruises, sore muscles, and a few bandages on my hands for my rope burns.  All of this, of course, took place at the beginning of the month with the drama of the house.  Timing was awful.

I am happy to say though that since then I have been back for another riding lesson (with my original horse) and things are going great!

Puzzling part:
My house has become the gathering place for some of the kids on our street during the summer. I think it's because they get bored at their homes so they come over to mine.  One day the kids wanted to play with puzzles so I let them go to town.  That inspired me to do this 750 piece puzzle of the World Trade Center.  Pretty cool.

Well, that is what happened to us in August.  Glad it's over with!