gswarfield

So, Grant and I are really excited because we have finally found a place to live. We have been very blessed lately with a whole bunch of different things, but here is the story. A family called the Rivas in our young married’s class are going to El Salvador for various reasons. They needed someone to stay in their house, and we needed a place to stay.

This means that we get to live there for 5 and a half to 6 months until they are ready to return. We are paying for utilities and they are paying for our internet which is definitely awesome of them. Their House is in the Lakeway Area/ Hill country of Austin. It made me laugh because Grant and I were like, Man, this is a ritzy area… come to find out it is a one of the wealthiest areas of Austin. Their house is beautiful, and later I will add some pictures.

Also, another very exciting piece of news is that I got a different job within my company where I am now the estimator. I help the sales people out with quotes, commercial take offs, and some customer sales myself. The best part of this position is a pay raise which means that the longer drive isn’t going to be as big of a deal anymore. Grant and I feel so blessed because this opportunity!

So, I have needed things to Blog about, so here is a house that is for sale here in Austin! It is SO beautiful, and there are a lot of things that I just love about it, and so I guess I will share with you why; whether anyone reads it or not is fine. This house is built in the 969 neighborhood where they build modern green homes, the main difference between this neighborhood and the Mueller neighborhood is that they don’t have the nice urban flair and the awesome community. This is pretty much suburbia with modern houses.

So for Starters, I love the sleek, modern outside. I love the Stucco and the beautiful dark wood fence.

The porch in the back is nice, but a little bit large; I mean I’m sure you could use it,but for everyday life a little bit large.

A better picture of the porches, I love the window placement in this house.

This is the entry way/ living room / kitchen area. Please notice the awesome aggregate concrete flooring.

The furniture is OK,but I love all the windows/doors.

Their living room area.

Here you can see the nice island and the retail doors in this house.

The Amazing Kitchen, I LOVE the clerestory windows above the upper cabinets so that you don’t have to find anything to put above your cabinets, and it lets in great light.

This room is great, the bamboo floors are beautiful, and again great window placement! This room is huge, but of course if I had one this size I would not be complaining.

Another view.

Great window placement, nice drawer pulls, and also the mosaic tiles in the shower are nice. I prefer no tub and just a shower.

Pony wall is also nice, I prefer an enclosed linen closet,but I could deal with an open one like that.

The Guest Bedroom, I like the room, and especially the balcony.

This is the other bedroom that they have as an office/ hang out room.

Another View.

The Guest bathroom, not to shabby, not too small,but still looks pretty classy.

Full bamboo steps are always nice.

Did I mention I love the window placement?

This is the great view from the Balcony of downtown Austin. I think this house is 6 miles away.

In Texas, I have seen a decent amount of car ports rather than garages. I like that you can store a lot of stuff in garages, but here they built in lockable storage which is also nice.

The front of the house, the retail door and the window placement, also the stained cedar portion of the house is also nice.

Some of the other houses in the neighborhood, and also the fun walk way in the front.

I love the Cement planters that they added to their house.

So here is one of the houses that I love, it is definitely expensive, but it is still on the market, and I love it.

http://www.5400senderohills.com/

Grant and I sometimes “watch” Mia and Ally. When I say watching I mean, we are at home while the girls are sleeping. Every once in a while, the girls wake up before Tanya gets back, so we try to entertain them until Tanya gets home. Here is one of those times.

Here is a fun freebie that I found while looking on online. You sign up for a e-mail newsletter they send you some granola and a granola bar for free, and then if you don’t like the e-mail newsletter, you can always unsubscribe. I e-mailed it to some people, but I wasn’t sure who else was interested in it.

So, our Wednesday night Bible class for the young marrieds is a small, but fun class. We have finally picked a study, and the youngest… being me, got to teach first. I love food especially baking, so I wanted to make something. Well, all of us are trying to be healthy and some even dieting, so I knew I should take that into consideration. Grant was awesome and helped me come up with different things I could bring to munch on… only problem was each one was fatty and the last resort was always cookies. Cookies are great,but not very nice when most people can eat them and one or two can’t and are trying not to. So, I decided that if I brought in strawberries that would be healthy, and I could cover a few with chocolate so we each get one unhealthy strawberry, and the rest would be better and just as good.

I wanted a visual because I forgot to take any pictures of mine, so I am not as cool as whoever made these strawberries, but we can pretend that I was. Mine were tasty and not a pretty,but since no one was expecting it, it was fun. I don’t know how well me teaching went, but I know that at least my strawberries were good.

Last Week:

I ended up having too much dough, so I made two little pies intending them for the girls, but I ended up taking the to work as dessert on two different days which was an awesome treat! Wilson said he liked the pies, and I thought it was pretty good and an improvement from the first apple crumb pie that I ever made so that is always nice.