Miles and Memories

JuJu and I have been very blessed the past few months with family coming to visit us in good ole Liberal, Kansas.  We had William and Julia drive from Denver to celebrate Thanksgiving with us and we had Zac come for a weekend in the middle of December. Kayla has been here almost the whole month and Bradley joined us for two weeks as well to celebrate Christmas.  And we just waved "see you later" to my parents as they start the next leg of their journey together to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary this year!

We finally had an opportunity to visit with my parents with no schedules, no jobs, no weddings or showers getting in the way.  I think it was exactly what JuJu I needed as we wind down from the fast paced Christmas gatherings.  My mom and I did some baking from the Six Sisters' book I got from "Santa," we made some simple meals from the Putnam cookbook, lots of game playing, I highly suggest the game "A Ticket to Ride!" We also did a lot of talking about life and what may come next in Our Reclaimed Life together.  We don't get to see my parents often, considering they live in Michigan, so when they come, my heart overflows.

These are the Cherry Cheesecake Cookies, enjoy the recipe yourself!

Here is the newest family favorite game, Ticket to Ride!

Mom and Dad playing!

While my dad, Randy, was snoozing, we decided to take down all of our Christmas decorations and JuJu got the great idea to rearrange the living room.  We have learned that a little bit goes a long way in a smaller home.  When you see the pictures you will notice a lot of RECLAIMED pieces of furniture but also amazing work that JuJu has spent endless hours with in making our home, a home.

Here is our "Remember Who You Are" Family wall.  We have pictures of our family, near and far!  JuJu built our sofa table, it was the first thing he ever put together!  Of course, I was there to help paint and stain it.  The shelf on the wall is from a field around town, the high chair was dirt cheap at a garage sale, and the old flour bin to the left of the sofa table was a must buy for our home!

We moved the couches and TV hutch to make more of an entry way for our house.  The coffee table was JuJu's second project and we were not able to stop him after that! 

Our media center was another project JuJu spent countless hours on, and one of my favorite pieces!   It is kind of hard to see, but next to the love seat, JuJu was in the mood to build one day so he made a side table out of RECLAIMED siding from a house down the street.

Today is the Alamo Bowl and our favorite, Kansas State, is playing so we are off to make K-State Wildcat cookies and enjoy the game with family!

Neen and JuJu

Twenty-Fifteen

Goodbye to 2014, and…Facebook

Let us start by introducing ourselves, we are JMVarnes.  We got married on March 15, and on that day our initials instantly became the same. I'm Justin and she is Janine and together we are proud to be living Our Reclaimed Life.  We first got the idea of starting a blog several months ago when we were working on remodeling our first house together.  A lot of our family and friends live out of town and some even mentioned to us that we should start a blog with our before and after pictures with details on how in the world we actually did it!  Another reason we have decided to start this blog is to get rid of the all time consuming, fight starting, drama and gossip filled pages of Facebook (we don't need to say anything more about that).  Let's get to the introductions:

Him - JuJu as most people call me.  If my wife or family call me Justin I know that I have either done something wrong or they aren't in the mood for my humor.  I love to run, grill out, build furniture with my wife, play under the bed with our Puppy, sing in the choir, and spend time with my awesome nieces.

Her - Aunt Neen as the nieces call her.  She is the best educator in the tri-state area teaching second grade.  She loves to run, watch her awesome husband and Puppy play under the bed, sing in the choir, eat the grilled out food and make some mean home made bagels, the best partner in crime and will stain and paint anything I make in the garage!

4 Legged Daughter - The Kleiner - Where would our life be without this awesome pup?!  We got her almost two years ago from someone who was giving puppies away, and instantly she has been our best friend ever since.  She will hide under the bed with JuJu and hide from pretend robbers in case she is to be dog-napped, play tag down the hallway, build in the garage with Mom and Dad and she will never leave your side.  She has been, hands down, the greatest dog a family could ask for, and with Klein there is always a story to tell, so hold on because her's are pretty hilarious.

The third and final reason that we have decided to start this blog is to journal and share our life experiences with our family and our friends.  Janine and I find ourselves extremely blessed to have lived the life we did in 2014, but are equally fortunate to be going into 2015 with some amazing goals and excited to see where God is going to take our family in this next year.  I have a feeling it is going to be our greatest year yet. 

We issued a challenge to our family during Christmas to read through the Bible in a year, pictured below, we built boxes out of RECLAIMED wood that we salvaged from someones back yard this summer, and designed note cards with each days Bible passage, complete with notes and family prayer requests on the back.  It is our hope that God will use this challenge to strengthen our family, our marriage,  and each other personally.

We will get into the others as the year progresses, but for tonight we will end with this.  We love to build together and take broken, thrown out, and forgotten pieces of lumber and turn them into something that we will forever use in our home! We hope that you will enjoy the ride with us and we are excited to share our projects and experiences with all of you. 

Here's to a great 2015 and Our Reclaimed Life! - JuJu and Neen