Throwing a housewarming party

One of the most exciting achievements Chad and I have worked toward was buying a house of our own. From simple upgrades to interior design, we’ve loved our journey so far of ownership. Though we moved in over a year ago in May 2020, we were only just able to celebrate with a housewarming party at the end of July 2021.

It was worth the wait for us, especially given the time we’ve used to make our house a home.

My favorite details

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Here were some of my favorite things that we came up with for the party.

• Grass photo wall, from Amazon. We (Alexis and Jessica, thank you!!!) covered a small fence in our yard with artificial grass panels and balloons that read “home.” It’s cool-looking and could’ve been a neat photo opp if it hadn’t been so rainy.
• A completed backyard patio! We threw together a patio spot, including a fire pit we got for our wedding that’s been sitting in the garage for almost four years, lol.
• Solar lights. Thank you to Jessica, Chad, and my Dad for hanging them!
• Cute floral paper straws from Amazon.
• Custom sugar cookies with our house number, baked by Rifle-based Amy Thompson.
• A “welcome to our house” letterboard sign that a toddler got ahold of and altered by the end of the night.
• Super cute drink dispensers, from Target.

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The refreshments

Food and drink-wise, things came together pretty well. We had:

• Meat, cheese, fruit, and veggie platters plus boxes of crackers from City Market that we combined to make charcuterie boards
• Sushi platter, also from City Market
• Custom-made iced sugar cookies, shaped like a door with our house number
• Chips, chocolates, pretzels
• Kid-friendly lemonade, sodas, flavored water
• Two “signature” booze drinks: a grapefruit Moscow mule and a gin lemonade (shout out to bartender Chad for making these!)
• Wine, beer, cider

Traveling woes

Though the party was successful, it didn’t necessarily go off without a hitch. It rained for most of the night, which was a bit of a bummer for our outdoor setup. But most, the rain affected us before the party every started. We live in an area that is totally dependent on i-70, the freeway that runs through our state and connects us to literally everywhere we need to go, including Denver (as well as Glenwood Springs, Rifle, Silt, Grand Junction, and literally everywhere in between).

Wellllll, because of last year’s Grizzly Creek Fire, the vegetation in Glenwood Canyon (on i-70) is no longer strong enough to hold everything together. Last week it rained, resulted in massive mudslides and dangerous conditions that have closed down the interstate indefinitely.

Sadly for us and several of our friends and family, that makes it extremely hard to travel to and from our neck of the woods. It is possible to take three different hours, all of which involve a mountain pass and an additional four hours of driving (more, with crazy traffic). Many guests had to cancel their RSVPS, which is completely understandable but still a bummer.

Note: shoutout to our besties-for-the-resties Alexis and Jessica, who knew about the closures and came anyway, making a huge trip for themselves. So generous! They are truly the best!!!!!!!!

Thank you!

I would like to extend a thank you to everyone who was able to come and who sent well-wishes our way. Thank you so much for being a member of our community and making this chapter of our lives so special. <3

We didn’t get very many pictures, which I think is a good sign that we were all too busy having fun.