Our Top 10 “newlywed mistakes”

Steve & I love being married. We just absolutely love it. Today while we were waiting for our lunch to heat up we kissed, hugged, and smiled at each other in the kitchen and I said “How cool is it that we are married and this is OUR house?” It totally feels like we are playing house…. except for the part where we have bills, which brings me to my first point…

1.BILLS. Steve and I both lived with roommates before we got married and were used to responsibilities like paying bills, but when you’re not the only one taking care of things that need taking care of you you can start to assume someone else is doing it. A roommate wouldn’t pay a bill for you or remind you that it’s due, but a spouse would, right? WRONG. We get the bills in the mail, open them, set them face up on the counter, and… well… that’s usually the end of it.  I can’t explain why they go unnoticed. We’re responsible people. But I can’t tell you how many times they end up being past due and then we laugh as we run to get the laptop and checkbook. Thank God we’ve never had a utility shut off on us! Ha!

2. FURNITURE. Steve and I care a lot about furnishing our home and making it comfy, stylish, and live-able. We loved looking at furniture and decor online and then occasionally purchasing it if it passed the test (I’m super picky). Well, I found this really beautiful white “custom” couch on craigslist. CUSTOM! OOooOoh, cool! WRONG again. The sectional couch forms a “U” shape and it’s incredibly awkward. Steve and I cannot  get comfy on it and the weird ways we have to position our bodies make us laugh, especially now that  Ron Swanson thinks he owns the couch! As if the shape wasn’t bad enough, the white color is hardly white just months after we got it. We spill little bits here and there, but the main problem is that our denim jeans rub off on the couch and leave behind its’ color. It just doesn’t work for us.

3. CHRISTMAS. We were SO excited for our 1st married Christmas that we weren’t really thinking frugally.  Our biggest regret of the holiday season was paying full price (ok, it was like $30 off, but still) for an artificial tree instead of buying a real tree and then scooping up a fake one after the holidays ON SALE. The tree that we paid $170 for was selling for $38 within days of Christmas. DAYS. We were too impatient.

4. BAKING. Sooooo no one warned me about the whole “gaining weight after marriage” thing. Well, it’s real, people. We became such home bodies and all we wanted to do was watch Cake Boss and then bake cupcakes, cake balls, brownies, cinnamon rolls, and all of those other amazingly delicious treats! We baked and we ate. Rinse, lather, repeat. And would you believe me if I told you we were shocked when we couldn’t fasten the button on our favorite jeans? Silly us. I still enjoy baking, but we’ve limited the indulging to special occasions. Anyone have a birthday coming up we can celebrate?

5. SILLY FIGHTS. We’ve honestly fought over a cucumber before. I mean, c’mon! How LAME is that? We were in a grocery store and I asked Steve to get a cucumber, and then he remembered a couple of others things we forgot, so I got in line while he picked up the last of the list. Well, about 1 minute before we pulled into the driveway I was explaining how good the cucumber appetizer was gonna be for that night…. and that’s when we realized no one bought the cucumber. We bought the seasoning for it (salad supreme, try it) but didn’t buy “IT”. We got into the silliest argument about it and it ended in bad attitudes and hurt feelings. We’re learning to not sweat the small stuff…. keyword learning.

6. CHORES. Last week we talked for the first time about what chores we like/hate to do and it turns out that we both hate doing the dishes. Yeah, I noticed… the evidence was as high as the chores in the sink.Ok, so maybe I hate doing all chores besides picking out my outfit. Either way, discussing this would have really helped both of us like 6 months ago.

7. LANDSCAPING.
The front yard— It’s pretty obvious that Steve and I love interior decorating, but EXTERIOR decorating is a whole new bag of bones! We are totally out of our element here. When we purchased our home the company that sold it to us finished the front yard. It’s really nothing special, lots of rocks, a couple trees, and about 15 randomly placed bushes and plants. Those random guys drove me crazy. One day Steve spent hours digging them up and then transplanting them to line up with our cement walkway. It looks really pretty and he did such a good job! However, a week or so later I saw that one of our neighbors had the same plants as us, just mature. Well, mature and ugly. I don’t know what the plant is but it’s not pretty. Steve wasted hours out there because we didn’t do our research ahead of time. SORRY HUNNY!
The backyard— That big mass of dirt stares at us daily. We tried to tackle it a couple weeks ago and drove off to Home Depot with excitement in our eyes. We came home with as many bricks and stones that could fit in our car and were so excited to get started! Well, we basically just have a beautiful brick doorstep now. The bricks hardly spread along our house and we were DUMB enough to buy stones that cost $5 a piece. The backyard won’t be done any time soon. Ha.

8. DISHES. I’m slowly learning how to be “domestic” and actually enjoying it more than I thought I would. While we were engaged I dreamt of our kitchen and how we would style it. You know how people chose style over comfort when shopping for clothes? Well, I didn’t realize that that applied to cookware! We bought the (heaviest) prettiest teal/robins egg ceramic bowls and I just love them… expect for when I use them. The darn things are so heavy I can hardly lift it to pour once it’s full of batter. I use my plastic $3 one from Target now.

9. PUPPY. We love our dog Ron Swanson and he completes our little family perfectly, but the pup can be a terror! Just last night Steve asked me “Why did we buy a brand new home and get a puppy?” Beats me! The little varmint has chewed up a major part of carpet in our living room and master bath, scratched up our pretty wallpaper in the guest bath, pees wherever he wants (and usually he wants to pee on our carpet and stain it. pee art), chewed up a shoe, and chewed through his kennel! Today Steve took my laptop cord away from him… oh please, Lord! NOT THE LAPTOP!
All in all… Ron Dog Millionaire is a really good puppy and we are so thankful everyday that we were able to save him from the pound!

10. DATES. Remember when I said we were total home bodies now? WHERE DID THAT COME FROM? I never want to leave the house. I’ll see a trailer for a movie that I really want to see and say “I can’t wait for that to come to Netlix!”. Ha! And as much as we love our quality time together, we realized recently that homeboy and homegirl have gotta get out once in awhile!!! We’re SUPPOSED to date still. And we’re supposed to have separate guy time and girl time. That last part is pretty huge. We’ll start to bicker about the dumbest things and then it’s like, “oh yeah, we’ve been home together for the last 2 days straight. When do you go back to work again?” HAHA. We love being around each other and if I was banned to a deserted island I’d chose him to accompany me FOR SURE, but man oh man is “me time” important. I usually spend my “me time” at Target or on Pinterest and Steve spends his playing bass or duties (modern warfare).

There’s new stuff everyday that Steve and I find out about each other and it’s a fun (most of the time) learning how to love and live together. I totally got the better end of the deal with this whole marriage thing because Steve is a cleaner, provider, gas filler upper, laundry hanger, onion dicer, dish dryer, plant waterer, poop scooper, duster, and general picker upper. Dang, I really gotta step up my game!

I hope this in some way helps you and your spouse or fiance prepare for the wonderful world of marriage! Please learn from us and COMMUNICATE clearly and try your best to speak the other persons language!I love being married!