The Moment You've All Been Waiting For...

I thought it would be kind of me to let Oliver speak his mind. My poor babies have been extremely patient with my house obsession and how much I neglect them with my busy schedule. I'll make it up to them, I promise.

I really hope no one is disappointed by this post. Looking at the pictures, I feel like I have put so much time and effort into the house and don't really have much to show for it. Then, I've gone and made such a big deal out of it that I've gotten everyone's hopes up. So, now I'm warning you, the house doesn't look like a page out of an interior design magazine, but let me tell you, it's much improved!

Let the fun begin! We did SO much (Mom and I for the most part...) and I'm gonna kind of take it step by step. I have to apologize though, because I don't really have pictures of the house "finished" before we fixed it up.


The Front Entrance:

Before (During Construction)

After with a little paint, some curtains, and a rug

The Kitchen:

Before (At the end of construction)

After! We painted (it's green...), added a couple of house plants, and some furniture. This is one of my favorite rooms in the house!

The breakfast room, also painted and our awesome counter-height kitchen table which I love (with Dudley looking out the back door)

The kitchen again (can you tell I like this room?) With our new fridge, some paint, a couple of rugs, and some paint!

Rob's Office:

Sorry, no before picture, but we just painted it an awesome shade of blue. It has some furniture in it now too!

Master Bathroom:

Before (During construction)

After, we painted it the same color as the kitchen, just because it so happened to be the perfect color and added some decorations. Now we just need a shower curtain rod!

Guest Bathroom:

After, paint, and various awesome decorations from Sears

The Great Room:

Before (Right at the end of construction)

After, paint, furniture and a few electronics... :o) Rob refuses to watch the "little" TV.

Another shot of the great room from the kitchen.

The Master Bedroom:

After some paint, furniture, and a lovely bedroom set from Linens N Things!

One of the dressers

I'm so in love with my house right now! It feels good to work on it and watch things take shape. There will definitely be more in the future! Next on the list is getting some pictures on the walls. But, we'll be doing a lot of that after the wedding. I hope it was at least worth the wait! I can't wait to move in!

Also, any suggestions are welcome as to how to make it better! I hope to be doing a lot of yard work in the future as well. Maybe we'll get grass soon?

Oh, and we got a TON of free carpet from our neighbors house and laid it all over the basement floor. I didn't get pictures of it yet, but it definitely helps warm it up a little bit, literally!

Have a great evening everyone!

Something's Missing...

Isn't there supposed to be a light at the end of this tunnel? We are officially homeowners and I wish I could convey to you just how good that feels. Now, my OCD/anal retentive side takes over and I immediately start making lists in my head of what I need/want to do at the house. For example, paint. We didn't need to paint right away but I HATE white walls and Rob agreed that we should do it before the furniture comes in a couple of weeks. We have a refrigerator now and I think we've about cleared all the junk out of my parents' basement. It gets harder and harder to leave! I constantly find myself trying to come up with something I need to do over there just so I can be there! Ahhh... only three more months until we move in! I'll post pictures on that later.

I really want to write a long-winded, picture-filled post about the past weeks events, but to tell you the truth, it's 11:00pm, I'm developing a sore throat, I just finished painting my gigantic 12 foot great room walls, and I'm exhausted. So, this post serves as a tiny update to my blog readers, my ever-so-patient blog readers, just letting you know that I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. I'm just filling every spare moment with projects (while successfully neglecting my schooling) and my list of things to blog about gets longer and longer with every day that passes. So here is my vow to you: I promise I will make the gigantic post that you've all been waiting for with tons of pictures and the details of all of the project advancement with the house, just as soon as I stop being so project-oriented! Also, I've been tagged by Julia, and I'm working on that one too! Hang in there guys!

Oh, and by the way, there's only 100 days until my wedding!!! Well, according to The Knot's countdown. My Facebook and Google countdowns say 101 days. But hey, who's counting?

Where to begin?

I've finally found a moment in this unbelievably hectic last several days to post some updates for my blog readers. I guess I'll start from the beginning:

• We ordered our invitations Friday! One less thing I have to think about. I'm pretty happy though, we ended up getting all of our invitations and enclosures for under $250. Now I get to wait and see how good the colors look... I hate this part. Updates on that in a couple of weeks.
• Saturday was jam-packed with running errands. Rob and I started the day with getting my new cell phone (more on that below) which, I'm not joking, took 2+ hours. It was totally ridiculous and made the rest of our day all the more rushed. Then we headed to get something to eat because after two hours of dealing with idiots, we were ravenously hungry. After getting a very quick bite to eat, we went over to Ashley Furniture to get some ideas for what we want for the house. We walked around for a while, spotted a couple of things we liked, but didn't love anything. Then we hit Thomasville - way out of our price range. After which we went home, showered, and went out with some friends. It was a solid day of accomplishments and wasted time. Is that possible.
• Ahhh, my new phone. I'm in love. We ended up getting our own T-Mobile plan at Costco where they happened to be running a deal where if you get your own plan, you get a brand new Blackberry Pearl, for free! Yes, I got a Blackberry Pearl for free! It's very different from the cell phone I'm used to, mainly because it's more like a mini-PC than a cell phone. All the better. Stephanie LOVES new technical gadgets! Isn't she a beauty?
• Sunday, I enjoyed a wedding shower thrown by Rob's family for a relative of Rob's that is getting married in March. It was great to get together and see every one (for four hours!) and it makes me all the more excited for my own... ;)
• Monday I subbed for a copy clerk at West High School which led to a very interesting turn of events. I took the job last minute because I hadn't gotten anything for that day quite yet and I had subbed as a copy clerk a couple of times before and quite enjoyed it. I got there and discovered that the woman I was subbing for is going to be out for an indefinite period of time and they were searching for a long-term replacement. Turns out, I'm very available! So now, I'm a temporary replacement for a copy clerk working from 7-2 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays which is quite a relief. Best of all? I have wireless!!! So after I program in a bunch of copy jobs to what I have dubbed as "The Beast," I have time to wait and do things I normally don't have time to do! Like blogging and homework! Woo-hoo! Check out the machine I'm using... yeah, I know.
• Today we had our walk through at the house. My wait to see my completed house has come to an end, and it's beautiful! I'm so happy. I didn't get to take any pictures, but they have taken care of almost all of the issues we had mentioned before, and are working on everything else. It's all very minimal though and I couldn't be happier. No, I take that back. I could be happier if we were closing tomorrow, when we are supposed to close. Not on Thursday because Vantage home was late in getting paperwork back in on their end. I WANT MY HOUSE!!! NOW!!! It'll be ours before we know it, along with the payments... :o)
• We also went shopping for furniture today again. We stopped at Rothman Furniture after eating at Bob Evans after the walk through. We have found our furniture! I love everything we've picked out and now we just need to purchase it! Of course we're waiting until we close, but it feels good to have something picked out. Check it out! Our lovely bedroom set. Very simple and elegant and I LOVE the dark wood. Our kitchen table set. It's also a very dark wood (to kind of go with the cabinets in the house), counter height (love it!) and we got 6 stools - we may get two more.... And last, but not least... our living room set. We fell in love with this the moment we saw it. We'll be getting the sofa, loveseat, and ottoman. I love the deep seat and the color and fabric. We need to take some measurements and make sure it will fit in our great room. There shouldn't be a problem.
• The next few days should be just as hectic and I'm very much looking forward to it! I can't wait to get the keys to our house and park in my OWN garage! I'm so excited!!!
• Mom and I also began the search for a dress for mom for the wedding. It's proving to me much more difficult that we expected. More to come on that venture :o)
  

Snow Day Miscellany

A little miscellany to fill a lovely snowy day...

• I have a snow day today! While the morning part of it was self-imposed... Lindenwood actually called off the afternoon classes, people. I'm not joking. They haven't called off school for weather in 20 years or something like that. I'm glad I didn't make myself drive for my morning classes. Woo-hoo for snow days!

• I'm so sick of winter. This year has been especially bad with the multiple storms we've had. But overall I'm just tired of being cold. I want summer sun and 90 degree weather, people. Mmmm.... love it.
• We're coming down to the wire with the house. Rob and I bought a dryer on Saturday during Sear's appliance sale. Now all we need is a refrigerator, and furniture, and various other things... :o)
  

• Good news with the house: they fixed our carpet! The seam was REALLY noticeable in the great room and we complained about it, not really expecting much, but they fixed it! Our real estate agent said he's going to get us in on Saturday so we can walk through ourselves before the final walk through with Vantage. I hope so! I want to see it! Say a prayer that everything else that needs to be fixed, gets fixed.
• I'm currently researching home security systems. I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm clueless as far as this is concerned, so any suggestions are welcome. Rob and I really want one when the house is done. I've checked out ADT and Brinks websites, so I'm going to make some appointments and talk to some people... we'll see.
  
• We DESPERATELY need to order our invitations for the wedding. We've been waiting until after the house is done because it's quite an expense, but now that I'm not on the loan, I can purchase them. We've pushed our time frame to the max... must do that this weekend.
• I'm officially the computer genius of my house. I successfully fixed the wireless internet on my brother's laptop, after Rob tried and failed. Go me!
• Deanna, who is doing the girls hair for the wedding, gave my hair a trim on Monday. She cut off about 2-3 inches. It should grow back nicely for the wedding. Right now though, I feel as though a weight has been lifted off my shoulders (pun intended).
  
• We are approaching the 100 day mark with the wedding. I really need to get back in the gym. I've been successfully using the cold as an excuse to not go. I refuse to go outside in 10 degree weather in those thin gym pants when I'm miserable enough from the cold. But I really want to tone up for the wedding!

• I have a love-hate relationship with blogger. I LOVE blogging, but I hate putting pictures in my posts. First, it only lets you upload five photos at a time. Then getting them where you want and how you want them is a pain as well. But it doesn't help that I'm lazy and hate uploading pictures from my camera to my computer.
• I found out while watching Show Me St. Louis today that a woman that goes to my church is a pet photographer! She comes to peoples houses and takes pictures of their pets! I'm so doing this when we get the house to a livable point! She's got a website here. How fun!
  
• My dad is watching a show on TV about doughnuts, and I'm really growing a craving... Care to join me? Mmmm... chocolate long johns...
  

• My cell phone has gone off the deep end. It keeps turning itself off and on, off and on. The buttons aren't working right. Rob and I are going to go look at a plan on Saturday... I'm kinda bummed because I love my phone: I've had it for almost two years. But compared to my last phone, that's nothing. I had my first phone for about 5 years. It was great. Hopefully we get something good!
• Mom and Dad may be going on a vacation to Hawaii this year. I really hope they can go, they deserve it. But at the same time, I'm VERY jealous. I really want to go on a vacation. We thought about going, too, for our belated honeymoon, but I really don't think we can afford it. That, and our good friends Greg and Valerie (Valerie is a bridesmaid in my wedding) may be getting married in the Caribbean this December, so we'd need to save money for that trip! I can dream though, right?

• I'm now going to take advantage of this dreary, cold period and make some cookies and chicken and dumplings. Mmmm... since I can't have doughnuts....
  

Happy snow days everyone! Drive safe!

Countdowns and Random Miscellany

I have so much to look forward to in the next 6 months. It's fun because I have random countdowns everywhere I go on my computer. Here's my list, in order of their arrival:

1. 12 days until my dear friend, Samantha's, bridal shower (yay!)
   
2. 15 days until our house is supposed to be done
3. 23 days until we close on our house (and get to start looking at furniture!)
4. 1 month, 18 days until my bridal shower (double yay!)
5. 2 months, 1 day until Chris and Samantha's wedding (I can't wait!)
6. 3 months, 11 days until school's out!
7. 4 MONTHS, 9 DAYS UNTIL I GET MARRIED!!!
   

Okay, nothing can compare to the last one, so I'm gonna stop there. The main reason for so many countdowns? It gets me through to the wedding! I feel like I'm taking it step by step, reaching each goal as it comes. We're 18 weeks away! I can't believe it, but I couldn't be more happy. In the mean time, I'll enjoy the events that are in between.

And since I'm too lazy to make another post about it, Rob and I made our first "big" purchase for the house! We've been really careful about buying stuff until we close, because EVERYTHING matters, but we couldn't pass up this deal:

Our mattress!! It's not much, but I'm happy with it:

It's a Sealy Posturepedic Sedona Springs "Ultra Plush" queen size mattress. We got it for $489 (both the mattress and boxspring) with a $100 off coupon at Costco. Woo-hoo! I love a bargain!


We're also hoping to find a nice bedroom set for a decent price. I'm currently loving this one:

It's from Costco (I love Costco!) and at $2,000 for a 6 piece (bed, 2 nightstands, dresser, mirror, and chest) it isn't half bad (I don't think...). But, we were kind of hoping to catch one of those sales at a furniture store where they give you no interest financing for 3 years. The only way to finance at Costco is to open an American Express... we'll see.

Wouldn't the bed set we registered for look great with it???

I can't wait to start decorating the house... :o)

Furniture

We got a JcPenney's home catalog in the mail today and I am currently drooling over quite a few things. I could seriously decorate my whole house out of this single catalog.

I am currently in love with platform beds (and this comforter set)


Oh, and dining sets...

This is my favorite!


And I have been eying these shelves for the living room wall for months!


Although I don't think it will fit where our TV will go, a good entertainment center is a must!


Okay, enough drooling for now. I need to get some sleep!