holiday house tour
I know several of you have been waiting for me to post pictures of our house, but I will admit that until recently, our house didn't really feel like our "home" yet. Maybe it was the fact that we had been so busy when we first moved in that it took us a long time to get settled, or because we had lived in our old home for almost 7 years that it was hard to get used to something so new and different. But, really, it wasn't until a few weeks ago when I finally walked into our home and said, "I LOVE this house!"We have officially been living in our new home for 3 months and really didn't get totally settled until just a few weeks ago. We still had boxes in closets and you don't even want to see our disaster of a basement right now. But, after getting Moose's and MacKenna's rooms put together (besides paint on Kenna's walls), I finally feel at HOME. Now, all we need are some light fixtures that I've been too cheap to go buy and I'll start feeling a LOT better about our home. Light bulbs make good light fixtures, right?!The new house is a HUGE upgrade from our old house. At less than 1,000 square feet (not including our finished basement, which really wasn't much and we very rarely used), we were in need of something much bigger, especially since we were planning on expanding our family at the time (I got pregnant soon after we put the contract on our new house). It had become a money pit (like any house) and it just wasn't worth our time and effort any more. Nor did we like the neighborhood we lived in or the fact that we were completely upside-down in our mortgage and were advised not to refinance since we were planning on selling soon. It was definitely time to move.
Almost a year ago, I walked into my best friend's brand new house and absolutely fell in love with it. Soon after, Matt was able to see it and talked to some of the guys in the neighborhood about buying their houses and the benefits of it, and he was sold too. Plus, it was in our budget and fit our criteria of within a mile of running trails and close to the highway for my work commute. A few months later, and we were signing the contract to our soon-to-be-built home, which just so happens to be right next door to my best friend - an added bonus!
We spent a few months customizing our home, moved in with my parents, and finally broke ground in May. We closed on our house on September 15th and moved in the following weekend. And yes, it took me 3 months to finally feel settled in and that this will be our forever home. (Although, I will admit that I drove by our old house a few days ago to see what they were doing as far as Christmas decorations and changes they had made... nothing exciting to report. But, it did finally feel weird driving that way, although I miss my old running routes from time to time.) I'm already looking forward to bringing our new baby home to this house as well as celebrating our first "Christmas" in our new home - with a REAL fireplace, instead of the Yule Log on TV! (Christmas will probably not be celebrated on Christmas, but we're going to pretend that it is Christmas day without our usual family traditions.)
And since we have our Christmas decorations up, I thought this would be the perfect time to give a little bit of a "house tour". Holiday house tours are really popular in our area and it's always a great way to show off beautiful homes that are gorgeously decorated for the holidays.MacKenna's Room
Moose's Nursery (eventually I will get things on his walls... and the ladder will be moved this weekend too)
Dining Room/Play Room
Kitchen (the selling point for me)
Living Room (the TV will be above the fireplace at some point)
Breakfast Room
Master Bedroom
Master Bathroom (another selling point for me)
Our home still is far from being complete and is definitely not gorgeously decorated (yet), but it's getting there. We know we have a lot of work to do before we really feel completely settled in, but we are just happy to call this "home" now...