Guest Posting on Life Blessons

I'm guest posting at Life Blessons as part of a Secrets of a Newlywed series. Carmen is one of my favorite bloggers, so it's an honor to be able to have a post there. If you're a newlywed or yet to be married, you should check out the other posts in the series as well as the rest of her blog.

A Simple Living Room Makeover

After a year of living together, we've come up with a lot of ideas of how we could make our space work better for us. Our big project this summer has been trying to better organize and arrange our apartment and, more importantly, get rid of anything we don't need in order to make our lives easier the next time we move. We aren't spending a lot of money or making enough changes to have dramatic before and after photos, but it's still been rewarding to see the improvements.

Before: Our bookshelves were a mess, and our floor was cluttered with hardware and tools that Nathan was using to build a test computer (for Server 2008 and Linux, for those who care).

After: With the bookshelves side by side and the TV moved out of the corner, suddenly we had tons of space! We used one of our end tables as a makeshift desk for the test computer. The TV is now directly in front of our couch.

Before

 

After: We finally hung up our wedding photo with our signed matte!

Before: I had my books on a couple small shelves on the far back wall behind the couch.

After: The larger shelf moved into the second bedroom to hold some of our less attractive books and binders, and the chair we had in the living room replaced it.

The other bookshelf replaced the end table we're now using as a computer desk.

To make more room on our bookshelves, we filled a box with books we want to sell or give away. We also boxed up some of our books that we want to keep but don't need on our shelves, most of which are kids' books.

And there you have it - a few small changes that have made our living room a much more pleasant place to live.

For Richer. For Poorer.

This past weekend, my longtime dream of riding a zip line finally came true! It wasn't a huge one, but it was a good starter zip line. Once we finished our adventure, Nathan broke the news to me that he no longer had a job. He wanted me to have my fun that day, but he couldn't put off telling me any longer.

For richer or poorer.

Those words are spoken in traditional wedding vows for a reason; both are very real possibilities in a marriage. When I made that vow at my own wedding, I started crying as I thought of everything we'd already been through and knew we could make it through anything. Sure enough, when Nathan lost his job after just a few weeks of marriage, we survived the poorer for a time. But then he got this new job, with great pay, and I thought everything would be better. Poorer? That was all behind us! And now, here we are, back to just my income. Although I hope this will once again be such a short period of unemployment that we'll hardly notice it, we have no way of knowing.

Marriage is kind of like a zip lining. Even though I'd looked forward to it for a very long time, I didn't know what it would be like when I jumped off that platform. Sometimes it seems like an easy ride, but sometimes you start spinning out of control. You just have to have faith that the cord holding you up is strong enough that you won't fall into the pond.  It's a crazy ride, but I wouldn't want to do it with anyone else.

I know we'll be okay. Living on my income is certainly possible, just not a lot of fun. I'm so thankful that we fully funded our emergency fund and paid off all consumer debt during our first year of marriage. If you have not yet done both of those things, I would truly encourage you to do so as soon as you possibly can. Although you may think everything is great now that you're richer, you never know when Poorer could come to visit.

Inconveniences and Blessings

When life gets a little rough, it's not always so easy to see the good in the situation, but sometimes bad circumstances or an inconvenience can turn into a blessing. We recently found ourselves faced with a series of inconveniences that worked out pretty well in the end, and it was pretty amazing.
 

Inconvenience #1: When Nathan's car was at the mechanic's, they dented the bottom of his door while putting it up on the lift.

Inconvenience #2: Although the door would be replaced for free, the mechanic is located in the town where Nathan used to live, about an hour and a half away. It's not so easy to just leave a car there a couple days, so we put off the repair for several months.

Inconvenience #3: Nathan walked out to his car one morning last week and saw this:

And this is where the blessing comes in. What's a broken car window when you already have a free car door with your name on it? Sure, Nathan still had to drive all that way to get it replaced, but I went along for a Wednesday night date night - dinner at a restaurant we both love and lots of time talking and listening to an audio book in our complimentary rental car. As for the stereo, we didn't like the one in that car anyway, and Nathan might be able to get a cheap basic one from a coworker. Not such a bad deal if you ask me!

Even though things did work out okay, this incident has added quite a bit of weight to our Reasons to Move list. It would be one thing if only our car had been vandalized, but after one neighbor had his car stolen and another had a wheel taken off their car, I knew our cars weren't safe. We're probably going to be getting out of here in six months, if not sooner.

Rethinking Gift Giving

 

When I received flowers at work last month, several people asked me if it was my anniversary. It wasn't; my anniversary wasn't for another week and a half. And no, Nathan hadn't sent them early worrying that he would forget our anniversary either. It was just his way of thanking me for my patience during a not so fun time.

On our actual anniversary, we didn't exchange gifts at all, unless you count the balloons and cake I bought for Nathan's graduation party. We didn't give each other gifts on Valentine's Day either. Is it because we don't care about each other? No. We just don't give gifts based solely on the calendar.

Early in our marriage, I came home to find a wrapped gift on the bed. I had no idea what it was or why Nathan had gotten it for me. It turned out to be a new hair dryer. I was having issues with my old one, so he just went out and bought a new one, and a nice one at that! Although I don't do as much random gift giving, as an incentive for Nathan to focus on his classes, I bought him a season of J.A.G. on DVD for each "A" he earned.

Gifts and special occasions don't have to go hand in hand, as long as you and your spouse are on the same page. If your spouse's love language is receiving gifts, they may feel differently. Dr. Gary Chapman says that "a missed birthday, anniversary, or a hasty, thoughtless gift would be disastrous" for one of these people. But Nathan and I both rank receiving gifts as our least significant love language. Gifts are nice, but we don't need them to feel loved or to make our holiday feel complete. And they're a lot more fun when they're unexpected.

 What's your take on gift giving?