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!?

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*

In Ten Minutes

At 1:30PM- in ten minutes - we will be picked up by our Real Estate Agent to go look at a few houses we've picked out and a few that she's picked! I can honestly tell you that this is somewhere near the top of my list in the most exciting things I've ever gotten to do that will change and shape my life. Yay!!!

House Hunting

We went out and about looking at houses yesterday. We've filled out the paperwork to prequalify for a loan and are waiting to hear back so we just went out driving around again. The last time we went looking I fell in LOVE with a few houses. We went and found a couple that are still for sale and I drooled. BUT, we got online tonight to look a little more into those few houses and found MORE houses.... and then... we found THE one. I know that so many things could happen between now and when we can actually make an offer but, God willing, I want THIS house. I suppose the pictures could be deceiving and I could walk in and hate it but I don't see that happening. I'm trying so hard not to get my hopes up.. but .. here, have a look!





It has a deck AND a gazebo in the backyard with actual YARD surrounded by a privacy fence. It has a whirlpool tub, too. It's perfect. I keep praying that God will let this be our house, but I also continue to add in to that prayer that I know he has the perfect house in mind for us and if this isn't it I know there will be something better. But at the same time- PLEASE, let this be it! ;) Waiting patiently is going to be hard from here on out!