Five Years Minnesotan, Three Years DIY'in

Alex and I are celebrating two different milestones today. The first milestone we recognizing feels kind of like a BIG one for us....

It has been five whole years since we packed up that 16 foot Penske truck and headed to Minneapolis to start our lives as "grown-ups".

2007: Alex giving me the thumbs up to hop on I-94 to continue our trek to Minnesota


Looking back now, I can't believe how much life has changed in those five years.

In 2007 I was 22 years old, geeked about accepting my first big job offer in the corporate world, moving to a bigger city with my hunky boyfriend, and of course making money for the first time (not counting minimum wage part time jobs in college).  Just like Mary Tyler Moore, I was headed to Minneapolis and I was going to make it after all!!!!

At the time it felt like moving to Minneapolis was a happy ending to the "life after college story" story.  But that was only the beginning of our story.

~Uh oh~
 Are you feeling what I am feeling?!? Cue Cher's "Turn Back Time" (minus her creepy leotard outfit)- I think it is time to stroll down memory lane....

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With the help of a relocation team, Alex and I settled into our first apartment.  It was a little 1 bedroom/ studio apartment in downtown Minneapolis with a beautiful balcony view.  Yes, we survived our first year living together in a studio type apartment- crazy!  I don't have a ton of pictures of that apartment, these are the few that I have.  You can see in the bottom left photo that there isn't a wall separating the living room and bedroom.  So Alex and I didn't have much space to ourselves... goodbye SSB ("secret single behavior")!

Man, white and beige... everywhere!  Barf! Funny to see how our style has evolved.

Anyway, the next step we took together was getting our first puppy.  We found the cutest little Shih Tzu to take home and named him Rocco.  Ugh, miss that cute little puppy size!

When our one year lease was up at the apartment, we decided to move into a slightly larger place downtown that offered more space and privacy for Alex and I.  We fell in love with this ultra chic condo and settled into home #2.  Again, I don't have the best photos of the condo decorated (most are of us holding Rocco like a baby) but you can see our style was very clean and modern... lots of Ikea all over the place. 

A few months later, one of the most exciting events happened during a visit to Michigan.  In the same location of our first spoken "I love you" to each other, Alex asked me to marry him.

By now you know I said yes.

Once we returned to Minneapolis and started wedding planning, we both realized that our condo wasn't going to be ideal for much longer.  With the amount of stuff we were accumulating from/ for our wedding along with having to travel down 21 floors to take Rocco outside to pee made us realize it was time to get a house.

Which leads me to the other milestone we are celebrating today...

Three years ago on March 27th, we bought our first home and began moving in! 

The day wasn't totally perfect (which is reflected in one of my first ever blog posts), but from that day on our DIY-ing and home renovation adventures began!!!

Sometime between all the crazy going on at our house, we got married and began life together as husband and wife...

After I officially became Mrs. Zidarevich, we thought it was time to have a little one... errr... another little one, in the form of a puppy.  Rocco got his first sibling when we brought home our little German Shorthair Pointer named Sadie.

Over time, we continued to revamp our house, DIY style of course....

Which lead to creating this blog so we could share our stories...

Which then lead to some other cool opportunities related to our blog... like getting a room redo for a possible TV show from Layla and Kevin Palmer of The Lettered Cottage blog (huge fan!), filming a segment for a local documentary about our neighborhood, and getting connected with so many people in the blog world that love what I love!

Now, this post certainly doesn't cover everything from the last five years. Things like family visits, job promotions, trips, vacations, parties, etc., still happened and everday we are together brings new adventures along with ups and downs.  But, I think that is a fun ~small~ glimpse of our story in the past five years making Minnesota home.

So there you have it, five years in a FLASH!

 Are we "Minnesotan" now?  You sure betcha don't cha know!