Bridal Shower, TOMORROW!

My Bridal Shower Tea Party is tomorrow at 2pm! I am so excited and I absolutely cannot wait! I've gradually gotten more and more excited over the past week, but now that it's here- I can't contain myself! This past week has been full of craziness! Tuesday night we went to selections and picked out our floors, cabinets, colors, counters, etc. - all very, very fun! Here is ONE of many pictures I took with my phone, but I haven't uploaded them yet!



The wood will be in the kitchen/dining area and the entry. Love, love, love- favorite thing I got to pick out!

On to Wednesday- my parent's flew in around 3:45PM. I was still at work and once I got off of work Nate picked me up and we went straight to our appointment with ADI to select appliances at 5PM! Thursday at 5pm we had our lighting appointment with Breckers! *spins around in circles* And to add a little more fun to the mix- our Real Estate Agent is helping my parents look around at possible houses AND she's going to help them get their house sold. WHEW. Needless to say, we've been busy! But I did manage to get off around 1PM on Thursday, so there was plenty of time to do some damage at the mall! ;) We've just been browsing all of the shopping and eating out- I like it when my parents come to town! Tonight was spent eating at Johnny Carino's and viewing a possible house for them!

I think I know exactly what I'm wearing tomorrow- but I think I need to go stare into my closet for a while to make sure. I'm really scatterbrained right now so I have a feeling this post is going to sound all over the place- like my brain! I'll leave you with a few picturs I took of snow today.. before it started to melt. Today was the FIRST day I've seen sun and blue sky in ages! I'm hoping we get just a *tiny* bit more snow before my Mom leaves- she's seen plenty on the ground but I want her to see it fall from the sky! ;)

Just An FYI For Travelers..

I am working on finding out exactly how to go about blocking rooms. I'm not sure how I can possibly know how many rooms to block considering that many of you may not want to stay at our wedding site hotel, so please bare with me while I figure this out and look for other hotel options for anyone interested in staying somewhere else! Thank you!

Fortune Cookies :)

Mine: Right on the money! Here we come Hawaii!


Nate's: *crosses fingers* If the first one is true, maybe this one will be true!


:)

Initial Here, Here, Here.. and Here

We met with the agents again last night at 6pm to sign the contract on the piece of property we decided on! It's real now. We own this piece of property! This really doesn't make much sense to me because like, when it comes to what I feel "old enough to do" I have the list of things that a seventeen year old is "allowed to do" in my head. While we sat there I kept thinking how silly I must look in there with those "adults" .. signing papers and reading contracts- with a flower headband on my head. Haha! I know I'm being crazy, but it's really just a weird feeling when you realize, HEY I really am THIS grown up now! Weird!

So yes- we own the property. It's OURS. We have an address! We answered some questions about the structural things that we definitely wanted to add on as upgrades so that once all of the paper work goes through the city, they can start building! We decided against the fireplace because it was quite expensive and we had to really evaluate how often we'd use it. It's definitely pretty but, just something to hassle with and maintain (since it would have been wood burning). Plus, all of our electric wiring and such is underground in our community, meaning an ice storm can't take it out on us! I think I'd rather have a generator heat a good portion of our house with space heaters than sit a foot away from my fireplace for days on end, anyway. (I'm trying to talk you and myself into the whole "the fireplace is pretty- not a necessity" idea. How am I doing?) We also decided to go with the 9 foot ceilings- that is definitely worth the money to me, even on the resale side of things. In addition to those we decided to add the attic storage package and the garden tub/separate shower. I think those were the only things we really needed to decide on last night. Everything else is cosmetic, and you already know how excited I am to pick those things out! I believe we'll get to do that sometime next week, but we'll be able to go back a few times if we'd like just to make sure we really KNOW what we want.

Nate and I have been really in-tune through this whole thing for the most part. The only thing we've really "disagreed on" would be my interest in having wood throughout the living area- he wants carpet. But, where-as he is strongly against the idea of that much wood, I could do either and be happy so it's really not even a disagreement. I will most likely end up with wood in the kitchen/dining area and entry area. We will see! On the 16th there are going to be a ton of open houses put on by our builder so we are going to visit a handful to get ideas and see the actual floors/counters/cabinets in "real life" to figure out what we truly want.

So I guess I should show you a few pictures of the model of our home, huh? :)


Here we are standing outside looking at the front (in the dark!). Ours will actually be flipped due to the property we're on and the houses going up beside us.


The front door straight ahead. Door to the right (or left when you enter the front door) is a half bath. Door that you cannot see opposite that door is a nice sized closet under the stairs. The opening right after the half bath is to the door to the garage.


Looking up from the bottom of the stairs.


The desk/book shelves that you see here are an upgrade that costs way too much! We can get the phone jack, electric outlet, etc installed here and then put our own desk there or whatever we would like to do with that space. :)


Looking to the right, the kitchen! It's such an open floor plan.


The kitchen and the dining area!






And like I said, no fireplace. But this will give us more options for furniture placement!


Going up!


The doors you see on the right = the laundry closet room area.


Master bedroom. Standard ceilings. <3


Inside the bathroom... oh and yeah, that is my closet. <3 Nate gets his own closet too!


Garden tub! And that window with the block glass costs extra so we're going with a regular window. I will put gorgeous wood blinds on it and it will be just as wonderful!


Double bowl vanity!


So there you have it! There's a lot that I left out but I'm thinking you've got the idea! :) I can't wait until it starts going up and we can go out there every weekend to take progress pics. Fun, fun, fun! *stares around tiny messy room* ... I think I'm going to clean. And then, I'm going to go to the party store and pick out wedding invitations. I like the peacock invites that I picked BUT at this party store they have the entire book of that brand and collection of invitation and I found a few that I think I like MORE. Plus, my photographer got back to me and he can get them at a very reasonable price so! It's time to pick!

A Productive Three Hours

We had a meeting tonight with the realtor and an agent that deals strictly with new home builds to go over our interests in the different floor plans we had seen. He told us something that we didn't think was possible and I nearly fainted- we have the time to build a brand new house from scratch!!! SO we went from only looking at a few floor plans that were already in the process of being built to fit our time line to looking at ALL of the floor plans in our price range. After muling over what we had seen and what we would like to see - we decided that there was a particular one we hadn't seen that we definitely had interest in. Our realtors being the "go get 'em!" type of people that they are were like, "WELL - let's go look at one right now!" So after we spent a few minutes in the spec room looking at all of the possibilities of flooring, cabinets, colors, outside brick.. and swooning over the fact that I get to pick these things (within price range, lol)- we hopped in the car and drove out to see the model home! It was love at first sight- LOVE, LOVE, LOVE.

I'm beyond exhausted so pictures will have to wait (unless you're my friend on Facebook where I've already uploaded them!). But bottom line- we've picked our house, and we even drove out to see the lots we can chose from which we have pretty much already done! The lot is pretty secluded, near a beautiful pond, backyard opening up to a huge field that has no plans of being built on for a very long time if ever, close to the i-state for Nate, and 5 minutes from my work. UM, perfect? Yes.

I would say tonight was a very productive evening, wouldn't you!?

Our Story: Part 2

So you want to know how Nate & I met, huh? Well, if you've read part one, you're probably guessing that Ashley introduced us- and you'd be right. But how? Strangely enough (or maybe not, in this day and age!) we have technology to thank for most everything. Ashley and Nate had actually seen each other's profiles on Myspace and then happened to recognize each other at a UK football game. I don't think they talked that day in person, but I believe one of them messaged the other on Myspace like, "Hey! I saw you at a football game!" and I'm pretty sure that's how their friendship got started. So, when Ashley started talking about this Nate guy and how they were going to hang out I, of course, was in Florida admiring his Myspace pictures and feeling happy for Ashley that she'd met a nice and very good looking guy. ;) I got pretty used to hearing about Nate and his crew of friends as she hung out with him more, but for the most part there wasn't much indication that they thought of each other as anything more than friends. It's funny because the first time that I ever spoke to Nate on the phone, I angrily hung up on him. ;) He and Ashely were out with their usual group having dinner and I called her to rant about whatever usual drama I was going through in my 18 year old life (honestly, everything was a crisis). Nate, unsuspecting and having talked to me on AIM (internet chat) only a few times, thought it would be funny to answer the phone. After hearing a strange guys voice answer Ashley's phone and a bunch of laughing in the background I demanded to talk to Ashley and when that didn't happen I made some sort of unhappy noise (if you know me well enough, you can hear it in your mind I'm sure) and hung up. Nice, right?

So, Nate and I began to chat more online during this time- conversations consisting of: "Haha, I'm sorry I hung up on you.", small talk about music, and probably whatever drama I was experiencing (poor Nate!). This was in the beginning of 2006 and we were fast approaching Ashley's birthday in March. Somewhere in that time we decided that it would be TOO MUCH FUN to surprise Ashley with a visit from me for her birthday and we went to work on the plan! The day that I decided it was definitely going to happen was the first time we ever truly talked on the phone. I was so nervous, but I remember everything about it clearly- sitting at my desk in my room and playing with the sunglasses in my hands... and the fact that I had to go to work at Bob Evans in a few hours. We worked out the details with my Mom and Ashley's Mom, he helped me with the ticket, and it was done! I ended up flying there a little bit after Ash's birthday - March 21st, 2006. Her birthday is the 17th of March. It was great because she had absolutely NO idea and I think to this day this particular secret is probably the only one I've ever successfully kept from her. Her parents and Nate came to pick me up at the airport in Louisville that day while she was at home without a CLUE. I remember seeing Nate for the first time there in that airport- everything about it! And before we knew it we were in the backseat of Ashley's parent's Jeep and on our way! I don't remember a lot about the ride but that's probably because I acted awkward and stupid. ;) And you know how I know? Because I take pictures when I want to distract myself from being a moron.



Thus- the picture of Nate and I that was taken literally like 30 minutes after we met with my camera phone. <3 Love it so much!

In part 3 I will tell you about Ashley's reaction to her surprise, continue on with the story, and post more pictures of us where we look twelve! (This is turning out to be long, whoops! I just keep thinking of more details!)

Whirl Wind!

Okay- so let's see if I can recap our first time out looking at houses! Honestly, my brain is a little fried because I've got about a million and one things going on right now- bridesmaid dresses, flowers, cake, invitations... etc. I'm really trying to jump on-board with all of the wedding planning details because I've kind of just been doodling through the past few months like, "Yeahhh.. that'll get done." and now I'm all in house buying mode so that's making it even worse. Let me just tell you - I am a scatterbrained person with like a two-second attention span - so this is all QUITE overwhelming for me. Doesn't a fish have a two-second attention span, also? ....SEE WHAT I MEAN? Okay, right! Back to house hunting!

Our Real Estate Agent picked us up at 1:30PM on Sunday and we seriously didn't get home until around 7:30PM. It was awesome, but beyond exhausting. We went in around nine houses, hitting the one I blogged about a few posts down near the end of the list. The others we looked in- some were just okay, some were absolutely perfect until I realized it sounded like there was a race track in the living room and looked out the back window to see the interstate staring me in the face. There were different things in different ones that were definite deal breakers- like my second favorite that I had picked to go in that we found out was in foreclosure, had a lot to be upgraded/redone/cleaned due to being in foreclosure, and after spending a few minutes in it I noticed a familiar smell of smoke (gross & no thanks!). That was really disheartening considering the outside of that house is absolutely gorgeous. See?


Anyway, back to the house that I blogged about recently! I was ecstatic to go into it and it was mostly everything I had hoped for! The listing raved about the whirl pool tub in the master bathroom and I have to say- that is a joke! LOL. They have redone A LOT of things in the house (it's 14 years old) but.. the master bath has obviously not been touched. We would need to rip out most everything in there and start over. The tub is incased in this horrible (old) white tile .. and the tub itself is really old and small (and gross) and just- no. The declared master bedroom (on the first floor) is actually smaller than one of the bedrooms upstairs that has a very recently redone bathroom so, that could always be the master but- it's just a regular ol' bathroom - except for the sky light! ;) The "loft" area upstairs would be where Nate would have his "man room", however, that might be kind of bad considering it's completely open to the downstairs and this would defeat the purpose of him being in a separate room to do his sports watching/yelling or whatever he wants to do. We would definitely be doing battle with the TVs and any sound! There would just be a lot of things to consider with that house- but I'd still put it on our list as of now!

After that we went out of town to look at a brand new house because there isn't a finished version of this house in our area and our agent thought we might really like the floor plan in this one. It's HUGE, very reasonably priced, and of course it's brand new. I liked it but I'd say most of the things that I LOVED about it were cosmetic details that happened to be in that one but might not be in the one that's currently going up in our area. Our agent isn't sure exactly if we could get in there and make sure (for example) that I had the dark wood floors in the kitchen that I loved so much in the one out of town. This particular one is also near the interstate but not backed up to it. It's not a deal breaker but it is a little noisy and I'm not insanely impressed with the backyard. So, I just don't know at this point. Nate loves it, and I just like it.. at this point.. but I've almost forgotten it already. I'm going to need to go back in the last two again. We'll be going in two more houses on Wednesday to check out the floor plans in THOSE and I have a feeling that I might fall in love with one of those! I just .. have a feeling. :)

This is the huge, new one:


This is the new one that we will go in Wednesday that I think I might LOVE:


I know these little gray pictures don't say a lot but at least it's something. ;) So our outting was very exciting and informative. We learned a lot and even though this is stressful, we're having fun! If we're going to pick one of the new houses we have to act pretty fast based on some incentives that are going on right now, so I'm hoping that I walk into one on Wednesday and love every detail. *fingers crossed*