Updates

Over the past few weeks, I've had some requests for updates on 2 things:

1. The current health (or lack thereof) of our Bonsai tree
   
2. Photos of our home
   

Let's start with the Bonsai tree (click here to get the background story). We found out that our friend Mani sent the tree to us as a housewarming gift (so thoughful of you, Mani!). He comes over to our house a few times each week and we wanted to show him that we were really appreciative of his gift by keeping it alive.

Here's what the Bonsai looked like in March:

And here's what the Bonsai tree looks like after 5 months in our care:

Oops.

We tried to keep the tree alive! I swear...we really did. I don't know what happened. We watered it, put it in the sunshine, pruned it, and loved it...but to no avail.

After many of the needles began to fall off, Aaron decided to prune the entire thing and force it into a "false winter" (something he learned about on an online forum). As much as I hate to say it, I think our Bonsai tree is a goner. For obvious reasons, I'm too embarrassed to take it to a nursery to see if it's truly dead. Why couldn't I have inherited my parents' green thumbs?

Let's move on to something I've been more successful at - decorating my home. I took a few photos this morning after the furniture repair guy left (another post entirely).

*The following photos were taken with a 16mm fisheye lens (which is why they're all skewed around the edges). The fisheye is the only lens I have that allowed me to photograph an entire room at once.

This is where I spend most of my time when I'm home! I love my kitchen because it has plenty of room for me to move around and lots of cabinet space. I would eventually like to purchase this island (which doubles as a breakfast nook) and place it in front of the windows (left of the pantry door) to add more seating and increase my amount of counter space.

This is our dining room. The table is a hand-me-down from my parents (thank you, Mama and Daddy!). Since the floor plan is so open, we decided to paint the dining room and living room walls the same shade of brown. We painted the beams a darker shade of brown to help separate the two rooms a bit. I look forward to eventually putting up light-colored curtains and unique artwork to brighten up the walls.

This is what you see when you walk through our front door. I love the amount of natural light that comes through our windows!

This is our master bedroom. We chose to paint the walls a beautiful shade of blue (and we painted the tray ceiling an even lighter shade of the blue on the walls). I love how open our room is and how relaxed it makes me feel.

This is the green guest bedroom (and the only room in the house sporting curtains!) I love how bright and girlie this room is. Sometimes I just sit and read in here because it's so inviting and homey. I want to paint four 8x8 canvasses and place them in a square above the bed to finish up the decorations in this room.

Thanks to our wonderful friend Courtney for helping us choose paint colors! We still have a lot of decorating to do, but it's fun to do it piece by piece. I'll post pictures of the other rooms when they're a little more complete. I hope you've enjoyed the updates!

**After reading back through this post, I realized that this past Thursday, July 24th marked exactly six months that Aaron and I have been official homeowners :) We are truly blessed!