Our casa journey...to be continued.

Wow have we been talking about this for a loooooong time!  Four 1/2 years ago we decided we had outgrown our first home(1st misconception) and decided to build one that was bigger and way too pricey.  

This (below)

was our first home! 

Our baby!  She welcomed us not so warmly to Austin but we grew to love her after many tears, lots of sweat, and in the end she was a true gem that we were sad to leave.  We will never forget all of the long late nights of sanding, hammering, ripping down and building back up.  

Here is my father in law helping clean up after I sanded some of the walls in the Master.

 Our friend Brent drove 5 hours to come stay with us and help us out.  He even bought us a reciprocating saw!  What a sweet friend!  We definitely needed it and I am sure he was thinking "I will never get out of here if I don't go buy them one"  Just kidding he just has a big huge generous heart!

Oh and the kitchen...We lived without one for almost a whole year.  Yep we washed dishes in the backyard and guest bathroom.  I have yet to post about that transformation...I 'll get to it one of these days!

Here are hubby and his brother putting up the new sheetrock

 Here is hubby applying the slate back slpash tile..Side note...it is not wise to do the backsplash before the countertops are in!  We learned that one the hard way.  We were younger, dumber, and anxious to get her done!

 Oh and of course we had to work in some play time before all of that.  Yes this is all out of order but you get it..I know you do!  Seriously demo can be fun!

We have mostly fond memories of sleeping on an air mattress in our first master bedroom cringing at the thought of HUGE roaches crawling over us at night.  We actually even had one get up on it's hind legs and run after hubby one night.  FREAKED us OUT!  

Ok. Enough about our first love....

The hubby had a new job that we thought would help us afford to move up a bit (2nd big, big, huge misconception). and we knew we would make some decent  $ when we sold our first house. This was 4 years ago and decent homes were flying off the market quick.   From the get go I think we were both nervous about taking on such a big mortgage but we continued to move forward because the truth is we are just thrifty and big purchases make us ill every time they come up.  Heck I once lost a whole nights sleep when we ordered a dining room table that was $400 and the next morning I confessed my upset stomach to the hubby and called and cancelled it.  He built us one instead and the truth is we may have only saved a $100 but it made us feel better;)!  

Why spend your hard earned dough when you can build it was our motto!

 During the whole process we took lots of pics of the model home that would be like ours.  You can see how the builders win you over with all of their finishes and decorating tricks!  As I look back at these today I realize how much my taste has changed.  Don't get me wrong it is a nice house my decor preferences have just changed.

 The floor to ceiling 2 story stone fireplace you can see on the right had me at hello...

 Upon entering the front door you saw this...

 This was a little catwalk to the master

 Formal dining

 Cozy office

 Love me some 8 foot doors

 It was very open..almost too open.  I had an inkling it would be a very loud house.  Of course now as a mom of 3 I know that even the smallest most closed in places are very loud.

 Open hallway to the bedrooms

 Looking down from the gameroom

 Kids rooms all model homeish

 Looking towards the gameroom

 Master

 Master Bath

 Here is my man hangin in what we thought would be our game room.  We are not sad about this..It is really o.k. We know there was and is a plan for us!

 the view of the fireplace(I mean the living room) from the kitchen

 This is exactly how my pantry looks

So that was the model home..

Here was our house in progress...It was fun and overwhelming all at the same time

 We would stop by after work(scrubs and all) and check on the progress with our little buddy!

 Checking out the back

We probably would have been fine but the thought of potentially ending up house broke was heartbreaking and it was taking the fun out of it!  At the time our son was probably about 7 months old.  A couple of months before the house was to be done we found out he would be welcoming a sibling into his world much sooner than anticipated!  Learning this helped us seal the deal  (or unseal it I guess).  We decided to pull out of the process of building. Thankfully the builder gave us our earnest money back and we decide to continue on with moving yet to a home much more in our comfort zone.  So after spending way too much time making decisions about floor plans, picking out finishes, and making trips out to see the building in progress we were done.

We put our first love on the market, she sold in 3 days, we paid off our very disappointing business loan(whole other story but thankful we could pay it off) and moved on!   To be continued........

Hi!

You know I'm bad I'm bad you know it!  Yep that is what is going through my mind as I stare at my computer and attempt to put a post together.  No suprise to some I have been on a long blogging hiatus.  The truth is I got tired and had to sit back and re-eval my time.  I was staying up way too late(not necessarily posting) on the computer and just wasn't feeling good about where my time was being spent.  I want this to be a place where I can shoot out ideas, questions about DIY and design, and post lots of Before and After pics(because that is what everybody loves right) on a whim and not feel any kind of pressure to do so.  So that being said I am still alive just way way way too busy trying to stay that way;)  No really all is well and we have tons of BIG HUGE stuff going on but until then...I will be sharing a couple more staging posts.  Did you know we have essentially been staging our casa for over a year?  More on that too............

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

So here we are...Somewhat at a stand still.  The house has been all tidied up for the market and I don't need to spend another dime on decorating of any sort so I will pretend!

When we move the girls will be sharing a room.  Now keep in mind they are 1 1/2 and 3 1/2 so I may be going a little overboard with the mood board but they are too much fun to throw together.  Unfortunately as usually my brain is all over the place when thinking about how I want to do the girls room.  I figure this will be my one and only chance to do it without lots of opinions from them so I should just go for it. I am really drawn to red/turquoise and pink/turquoise combos but I am also loving gray/yellow and then flat out beachy beigey neutral looks.  Who knows where it will end up.  Actually I am sure it will end up not being decorated for a long time.  Until that is I find a couple of great comforters at a great price at Marshals or something and then I will just go that route because that is how I roll..No plan..just buy it if I like it and it is cheap enough kind of decorating.   So if I could go out and decorate their room today with no limit on budget...this is how it would turn out.  

I threw a lot of what I am liking these days in there.  Mix matched furniture and pillows. Ruffles, rustic and new, classic and chippy with a little mod and definitely a splash of bold.  

You know what is funny?  A while back I did the same thing for my pretend living room and look what I chose.

Same exact floors...and very possibly the same wall color although I think the one in the girls room is brighter.  I guess I am more consistent than I think;)!

Last Minute Fathers Day Gift

Have you already prepared the perfect Fathers Day Gift for Dad?  Well if not you still have time!  Here is a super simple yet meaningful way to show him the love.  Hubby is always wishing for updated pics of the kids for his desk at work so I thought this would make his day.

I went to hobby lobby to buy some cardboard letters to decorate for the kids to hold but when I found these at 50% I decided it was worth it to save a little time and they were actually going to be cheaper than making something.

Prepare for a photo shoot!

First instruct your children to actually put clothes on. (Mine don't really care for clothes so this is a chore;).  I  didn't want them in nice dress clothes for this so I essentially told them to put on what they typically wear around the house(besides their undies).  They enjoyed being in control of their outfits!

Next find a good place with decent lighting and shoot away.  I was tempted to do action shots(you know one is always doing ballet, one is crying, one is crime fighting) but I felt like the sit still and take a quick pic approach was going to keep everyone from getting frustrated.  And I didn't want little dude to have his crime fighting face on anyway.

Then we went and picked out some frames from Michaels which were all 40% off.  I decided to go with 3 separate frames so that hubby could set them on his desk instead doing one of those all in one hang on the wall frames.  Make since?

Anywho..Here is how it turned out! 

Guess what he loved it!!  The kids couldn't wait and actually I couldn't either so we surprised him a day early.  Unfortunately about 20 seconds after he opened it the first "D" that you see in the picture actually stepped on hers broke the glass and got a piece in her foot.  Ah...never a dull moment.

If you haven't tried Ebates you should!

I did most of my Christmas shopping through ebates this year and then recieved a rebate check for it!  Almost any store you can think of offers rebates through ebates. You can purchase anything from gift cards to appliances!  For instance Barnes and Noble,  Home Depot, and even I Tunes offer rebates.  After you sign up then you have the opportunity to refer friends and earn even more!  Super easy and of course totally worth it if you find you would be shopping at any of the over 1200 stores represented anyway.  Just click here  to check it out.

First Impressions

What do you base your first impression of a home on?  Is it the lawn, the front door, or the all of the above?  I think it is probably all of the above for most of us but I do think the yard makes a huge difference...Post coming soon on that one.(see how we dealt with one lawn issue here)

Let's talk front doors.  Our door was fine..nothing special(still nothing special really) but I felt like it could give a bad first impression to any would be buyers as they entered the house.

This was it.  We attempted to paint it black a year or so ago but made the mistake of picking black from a swatch and it had a purple tint to it.

This was the "super cheap" DR Horton choice of door bell.  Almost every doorbell in the neighborhood has broken like this..No plastic left on the button so it's a "push at your own risk" doorbell.

And here is the not so quality choice of door knob that Dr. Horton supplied.  We have lived here 4 years and the finish is almost completely worn off plus the deadbolt was really hard to unlock(not real welcoming to a potential buyer if their realtor has a hard time unlocking the door right?)  And..the paint was already a little chipped on the front door.

So I thought we should freshen this spot up a bit.  We replaced the doorbell(our selection is not fancy either but guests won't be shocked).  On a side note...when you have lost a ton of value on your home it is really hard to make changes and spiffy it up without feeling like your throwing more money down the drain.  So we had to be conservative yet make it look clean and well taken care of.

We then repainted the door black.  We just asked the guy at Sherwin Williams for a basic black this time instead of looking for a swatch.

Then we replaced the door knob and deadbolt.

We then added a little color in the form of some flowers in the corner instead of the pencil cactus that was there.  Hopefully this will get bigger and more vibrant quickly!

So now we have this..Again nothing huge but when you approach the door you don't notice chipping paint, a worn out door knob, and an electrocuting door bell(that is one way to keep the solicitors away though..hmmm)!

Before

After

Linked up to the great daily parties on the right and:

Between Naps on the Porch

The Stories of A 2 Z

Momnivores Dilemma

Tweak 2

Wow I forgot how our kitchen use to look....now of course this is a horrible picture(dark and baby junk abounds) but it really has changed without even really "changing it" too much.

You will see what I mean down below but I put this picture here to show what our kitchen usually looks like on a day to day basis(and thankfully I know I am not alone!) We don't have as much baby stuff crowding the room these days but there of course is always stuff everywhere and there always will be. But....when it is all tidy you can see it has taken on a new life after removing that little half wall and replacing all the flooring in the space. Oh and the island! Hubby trimmed it out and painted it my at the moment favorite color from Sherwin Williams. The walls also had a slight color change from a slight green tint to Sherwin Williams relaxed Khaki which is now throughout most of the house.

This next pic shows my little "hiding place" for the stuff that seems to be around on a day to day basis. Notes, grocery lists, random easter baskets, artwork, things to fix or add batteries to. They all end up shoved in this little corner because from the living room you can't see it and that in itself is all I need to make it feel a little less chaotic. You feelin me? I bet you are!

 And here is another view...See how you can't see my junk corner from the living area?  Gotta have me a hiding space in the house we build.

So the point of this post was actually to show a few little things I tweaked in order to stage the house for pictures and showings since we are finally getting closer.

The kitchen looks absolutely fine I know but I felt like I needed to remove a few more things to make for  better pictures.  1st thing I did was remove the fridge clutter of artwork and to do lists and decided what needed to go from my junk nook.

There is nothing spectacular here but I made this 

look more like this

(with some great photography at hand of course..more on that in another post..and no they are not my photography skills;)

Just by de-junking, placing the blender in a cabinet(and I actually moved the knives to the pantry during the shoot) I think it opened up the space and will let people see the space and not the stuff.

Then there is this corner.  Since we use our coffee maker religiously twice a day I could not bear to tuck it away in a cabinet so I moved it to.

.Guess where?

See it?  She doesn't look bad there does she?

The mixer on the other hand is a nice appliance that happens to match everything and helps it look like a real functioning kitchen(which it sometimes isn't due to my lack of desire to cook these days) so I left her there in all her glory.  I did however move the silver bucket of cooking utensils to the pantry for photos as well..At the moment they are neighboring up with Mrs. Bunn(the coffeemaker).

So what do ya think?  She looks all clean and organized doesn't she...Like "move in ready" I would say!

I present the final before and after below:

(as you have probably noticed we didn't end up painting the cabinets like I had discussed in this post.

Here is the not so appealing before...

To um "we would like to make a very generous offer and move in next week"!

Have I ever mentioned I'm a dreamer?

Linking to: the fab blogs in my right sidebar and...

Between Naps on the Porch

Craftomaniac

CRAFT

Making the World Cuter

Thrifty Decor Chick

The Stories of A 2 Z