My 200th Post: A Husband, Love, & Building

Hello Blog Readers and welcome to my 200th post. 200 POSTS?  Wow. My first blog post was on February 24, 2010 and since then I have had 7,223 page views. "Real" bloggers may not find that impressive, but I find it truly humbling. I can't believe that people are willing to read the things going on in our lives or the randomness that comes out of my head--but I do appreciate you for it.

I've blogged about all kinds of stuff over the past four years but I realized that I haven't really done a blog post just dedicated to Matt. I have done them about friends and politics and all kinds of green stuff but not just Matt. In large part I think a marriage is very private and not something you should speak of in detail on the internet. I mean, other bloggers can do it and I'll totally read it but I personally choose to protect my marriage. However, I have been thinking about this blog post for a while and I thought I would take you through a special component of our marriage where I tell you about one of the ways that Matt expresses his love through building things. A blog post that came to mind about Matt's approach to home ownership and craftsmanship was one from when we were engaged: The Port-A-Potty Story.

Matt is just a handy dude. If he wants to build something he just finds some plans on the internet and eventually it will become a useful item.

When we were engaged he just got a wild hair and decided to build a board for darts. He painted it with chalkboard paint (before Pinterest existed) and it even has a tray for the darts and chalk.

When we first got married we had separate closets which I think is a little piece of heaven. However, the entire house had really tall ceilings and I couldn't reach the top shelf in my closet. After a trip to Lowe's and several pieces of scrap wood he had lying around I had this.

When we moved into the new place in Oklahoma, Matt knew how much I loved our garden in Midland. We spent spring break of 2013 building these raised gardens and this year they have already taken off with new plants. I love them and I love him for making them.

Matt's parents are in the process of building a lake house so for Christmas Matt built a pair of these for them. They're extremely comfortable and I think a little treasure for the new home.

And I've always wanted chairs to lay out on on the patio. These chairs at Pottery Barn are crazy expensive. Like more than my couch each. Matt found the plans online and after months (with many breaks) of working on them they now are one of my new hang out spots. There's perks to working from home.

I am the executive cushion purchaser. I feel bad because Matt hates these because they're not the correct size. Cushions are pricey and I got these at the end of the season at Wal-Mart last year on super discount before the chairs were finished. I think they're a good place holder for a couple years...

And then most recently Matt fulfilled my dream of having a porch swing. There's something so nice and southern about a porch swing. My family spends so much time visiting on the porch that this brings back great memories. So Matt found some plans again and in no time I had a swing. I once again took on the difficult task of pillows. 

There are certainly perks to marrying an engineer. I was talking to Lo recently and told her that Matt really isn't anything like what I had pictured of my future husband when I was younger. She asked me what I had pictured and I said "Oh I don't know. Probably a tall dark haired cowboy cattle rancher or something." You get these pictures in your mind based on life experience (my dad is a tall dark haired cowboy) or movies (I watched the Princess Bride somewhere around 1,000 times as a very young girl) or heck even now social media about what relationships should be.  I don't have all or really any of the answers about relationships. I just know that any notions of relationships especially in terms of a husband were extremely short-sighted in my youth. The value that Matt can build things is so extreme to me and it's only a very small portion of what he brings to this relationship. So I'll sit on my porch swing and say a silent prayer thanking God for letting a silly girl like me find and even keep someone as cool as Matt.

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