Is a post still a post without a picture?

I've been getting a little pressure from friends (ehm, you know who you are) to keep blogging since I've apparently been lazy in the past week. It's not that our lives aren't exciting... but it's just that we've actually been living our lives and haven't been so concerned with this side of things. But... I'm not quitting. Have no fear.

Within the last few weeks, we've been up to our knees in housework. Between the abundance of yardwork (have I mentioned my intense hatred for dandelions?) and the wallpaper massacre that has been taking place in our dining room, we've been busy. After about 3 weeks of wallpaper stripping, glue scraping, sanding and patching, 2 coats of oil-based primer, and 2 coats of paint, we're happy to say that we're nearly complete with that project. Ray has been touching up the last of the paint scraping from our beloved molding and it's nearly ready for a table...

Which means we're making a big purchase! We are hoping to buy our table this week and order some chairs to go with it! The elk antler chandelier is going to wait a bit longer since we haven't found the perfect one (or the funds) to go intense on purchases at this moment. Alas, the gold chandelier will have to stay a smidge longer.

On the personal side of things, we're meeting friends. We started attending a church about a month ago in our area and were immediately connected to a few people in our stage of life. We started volunteering at the various opportunities and community enriching Saturdays they engage in and that has helped even more. We met 3 married couples about our age that we've connected well with. We even had lunch with one of them and have started attending a weekly Bible study with some of the couples to get further connected. We're hosting a dinner for a couple from Ray's work this week who has been incredibly welcoming and gracious to us since we've stepped foot in the Midwest and we've already had dinner with Mike & Toni.

We've been keeping busy and the spring has been great so far! It's not quite California weather, but we love where we live and the people have been nothing but welcoming to us.

As for some Chicago favorites... we just tried Garrett's popcorn. Words cannot express the mix of deliciousness that goes into every bag!