Happy New Years 2011!

Wow, what a productive, wonderful weekend to start off the new year!

Saturday we took a bike ride around Town Lake.

If I remember correctly, it's become a New Year's Day tradition as it's a day where we know we get to sleep in, yet the whole afternoon stretches in front of us, begging to be filled with a bike ride.

Town Lake is the perfect leisurely ride with plenty of room at the The Palmer Event Center

to stretch out on the grass and relax.

Today, we ran by Costco and found the most beautiful, functional bookcases and took the very. first. steps. towards decorating our home together (those periods are. so. overdone. but they get the point across oh so well). We chose the bookcases together. Brando and Justinbustin set up the first one together, then Brando set up the second one and switched things up a bit with only leaving a few of the linen baskets in. He even rehung the artwork to accomodate the new bookcase, put the lamp on top, framed a picture from our wedding renewal and put that on top, and moved flowers from another into the now available shelves. I put the finishing touches on it by filling a vase with coral from our first trip to Hawaii celebrating our nine year anniversary. The whole thing makes my heart smile every time I look at it from the corner of my eye as I sit here and type.

This is exciting to me for so many reasons, the most important of which are that I've always been the one to decorate our house, and for the past few years have mostly given up. Thanks to the inspiration of these amazing bloggers and specifically this post (check under Lovey Dovey Stuff on their Projects page for even more sweet and romantic couple decorating ideas), I have gotten Brando excited about creating a beautiful home for us to enjoy and relax in together. This was our first step.

In addition to that, Justinbustin volunteered at church this morning again, and we volunteered as a host family yesterday evening in an amazing program for families who are homeless or, better put, in transition, where the families are able to stay comfortably in churches for a week to two weeks at a time and are able to have their own room for their family instead of having to stay in shelters where quarters are often cramped and/or separated and the stay is less personal. As well, Brando surprised me with breakfast in bed this morning - yummy ,

and tonight we are relaxing with a clean house, a glass of Pinot Noir for me, and a Dos Equis for Brando, while the boys play one of their Christmas gifts on the Wii.