The New House

Making this house our home has had its ups and its downs. Ryan and I moved about an hour away from where we grew up last June of 2014. We spent 5 months designing our home and watching the building process before we moved and those last few weeks were some of the most stressful weeks… There were definitely a few moments where I wanted to give up on the process all together. Not only were we moving a little ways away, but also we were selling my mom’s home… the home that held such precious and tender memories for me. It was the home my husband asked me to be his wife in. Right there, down on one knee in front of our beautiful fireplace. It was the last home I will have memories of my mom in. A lot of good moments and of course the memory of her last day here… The day she met her Savior face to face. That day I held her hand as God called her home. What an honor it is to be her daughter.

Me with my precious mama about a year before she was diagnosed with terminal cancer

Our living room where Ryan proposed to me on November 20,2014

The night he proposed to me with this gorgeous ring

Selling the house was a decision to loose that precious link to my mom. But I knew that for the health of my marriage and future babies it was the best decision to make. We were up sizing from 1200sq ft to 4000 sq ft (holy moly I didn’t realize how much furniture we’d be buying). Literally my old living room fit entirely into our loft in the new house. My old living room is the size of a bedroom here! Plus it was a move we needed for our marriage. Having a house that was “ours” not just mine was really important. We tried from the very beginning to make sure the house felt like ours, but it was definitely an unsaid thought in the back of our minds somewhere that it was my and my mama’s house. So I knew I needed to be unselfish and we needed to move as husband and wife into our home.

This was my cute old kitchen

The new kitchen being built

The new kitchen the night we moved in (before we bought a kitchen table)

Designing our house was a small nightmare. It didn’t seem like the lady we were working with had her act together and in an already nerve-racking situation, this fact did not help us. Moving day was no better as I was slowly starting to panic leaving my home. I loved this little house so much and the emotional aspect made the home nearly invaluable to me. After all, it had only been a year since I lost my mom and about 6 months since Ryan proposed to me in front of our beautiful fireplace. I could still see those moments so clearly in my mind and I wasn’t ready to loose them. But needless to say it was too late to turn around so off we went… my parents in law, Ryan, the movers that didn’t like us, and 3 traumatized wiener dogs…Eesh! What a sight we were!

Needless to say moving made us all a little grumpy, haha!

As we pulled up to the new house I knew we made the right decision and couldn’t have been happier to start the rest of our lives in this house. We were all unpacked the day we moved in and we owe our parents a huge thank you for that! As the weeks went on we started to realize the reality of buying a brand new home. It hasn’t been “broken in” and is so new and not to mention, white! The lack of character and color started to get me down from pretty early on. I wasn’t working and felt like the list of projects piling up around me was getting overwhelming.

One weekend Ryan and I really tried to tackle a few of these projects and from there on out we were unstoppable. We knew that the hard work and time spent on our house was time well spent. It was all paying off!

We started with a painting the office and the niches in our living room. This little bit of color made a world of difference! We bought a couple pieces of furniture including a coffee table and dining room table set which helped the rooms not seem so bare. We had bought a new couch before we moved in for the downstairs living room and I finally felt like the rooms were coming together. The house was feeling more like a home. 

Painting the niches in the living room added just enough color for now… Until we get all the “common” areas painted by a professional    

We were able to host Christmas last year at our new house for Ryan’s family which I was super excited about as my mom used to always host Christmas. Because of this, we painted a few more rooms and I had a good excuse to buy a couple fun decorations. Our house looked to pretty all festive for Christmas. To be honest, we haven’t taken down our tree yet! We keep saying each weekend we are going to do it and “haven’t had a chance.”

I just loved out house all decorated for Christmas!

The projects that are currently on our “docket” include my office/craft room upstairs (which I will post on when that is done), painting and adding wainscoting to our dining room, and painting out downstairs guest bedroom. We will end up hiring someone to paint the main areas of our house as we have really tall ceilings and our entry way is 2+ stories tall. It’s just more cost effective to have them done correctly with the right equipment rather that trying to DIY it all. We are also in the process of designing a patio in the back yard, which I’m really excited about! We are hoping to start that project around September of this year. Anyways, anyone that owns a house knows it’s a never-ending list of projects so I’m sure our list will only keep growing. But for now we are having so much fun adding our stamp on this house!

“Behold, I am doing a new thing…” Isaiah 43