Moving dates.

Even though a lot of my readers live far away and I have never met some of you, I still thought blogging our moving dates/times would be an easy way to let everyone know when we are planning on making our move.

We close on the 16th (in the AM) but we don't technically get possession of our house until 5:00 on the 19th (Monday).  Therefore we'll be in the house at 5:01 on Monday night (hehe) starting to paint, and all day Tuesday (the 20th) painting.  Hopefully we'll get most of it done, or at least the bedrooms, before we move the rest of the stuff in.  We are going to plan on moving our big furniture and boxes during the evening on the 20th, around 6:00 pm-ish.  We really don't have that much furniture to move so we are thinking we should be able to get it done in a "quick" evening.

If you want to help, send me an email or text and I'll give you more details!

Paint colors are stressing me out.

Here's a quick run-down of what I'm thinking for color choices.  The problem with our house is that every wall is white.  In all of the other houses we looked at, I liked most of the colors of the walls and knew I'd leave a majority of the paint colors the same.  However, in our house, I literally have  blank slate.  There is nothing, nada, on the walls. 

The kitchen

   

I am doing a striped accent wall with these colors, with the second color as the "base" and then using the other 3 colors as stripes.  Then I'll use the base color throughout the kitchen as the kitchen wall color also. 

Living Room

 The walls will be this color
 And then the wall that has the fireplace I'm going to do a couple shades darker, so something like this.  I would rather do a color, but I can't figure out what color to do without it being so permanent that I can never change my decor.

Office



Blue!!!  Crazy, huh?  This isn't the exact shade, but I'd like to do a slate blue of some sort. 

Basement



I'm not completely sold on this, but we want something light and airy since the basement is so open and bright.  Any other suggestions?

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So, what do you think? Likes/dislikes?  HELP!!!

Weekend recap.

It's Monday morning, and I feel like my weekend didn't exist.  I hate that feeling!  It comes from having an extremely busy weekend, and even though it was a great weekend, it was just very busy.

Friday night after I got off work I headed to Columbia.  I love going to Columbia - I seriously feel like it's a vacation everytime we go.  I love the town, the atmosphere, and being with my parents.  It's a 2 hour drive, which I dread, and it started the same way it always does.  Me taking my phone out of my purse, placing it on my lap and hoping that someone, anyone, will call me and talk to me for 2 hours to make the time fly by faster.  I tried calling my sister, my best friend from college, and neither of them answered.  Okay, now what?  I started texting a few random people, but after those "conversations" died down, I was bored.  I put in one of my New Life CD's and started singing along with my favorite worship leader ever (Ross Parsley), and then it hit me.  Why do I always have to be doing something?  I turned the music off, shut my phone off, and sat in silence.  To be honest, it was awkward at first.  It was weird.  So, I started praying outloud.  I went on and on and on about everything in my life that is going on, cried, sobbed, laughed, screamed... I probably looked like a whack-job to anyone passing me.  But it was the most rewarding and fulfilling 1.5 hours I've had in a long time.  You see, even though God already knew the millions of emotions I am feeling in my heart and mind, He still desires and wants me to talk to him about them anyways.  He knows why my heart feels broken, why I go from feeling discouraged to feeling ecstatic in a matter of moments... He knows it all.  But He also desires and craves times where we just talk to him.  I arrived in Columbia and felt refreshed.  It was absolutely amazing.

Saturday we woke up at 6am to start the garage sale.  This wasn't your typical garage sale, it was NUTS.  The subdivision Mom & Dad live in was completely packed out, they estimate that 10,000 people go in/out of that subdivision on garage sale day.  It was nuts.  It was totally worth it though, because Tyler and I made $220!  I expected to make around $100, so that was a nice surprise.

Sunday we had church, I went to the gym, and then we spent our afternoon at Home Goods, Pier 1, and Home Depot.  We are getting sooooo excited to be in our house, it was fun going around to different stores and talking about what we want to do with the house.  OUR house.  Our very own house.  :)  We are so excited.  If you have any paint color ideas, feel free to throw them at me.  I think I finally figured out the kitchen/dining room colors, so now I'm stuck on the living room and basement.

Sorry to ramble on and on about nothing... blogging is such an "outlet" for me, I truly enjoy writing and I hope I don't bore you to death.  Thanks to all my faithful readers.  You are loved!

Inspections are scary.

I'm a nut job, and anytime anyone says to me "So I heard you bought a house!!" my reply is always "Yes, we did!  Well... that's assuming inspections go okay."  Tyler lectured me one night about how I shouldn't be saying that since our house is only 5 years old and in great shape, but I am somewhat of a pestimistic person when it comes to big things like this.  I never want to get my hopes up, only to be disappointed.  After I told Tyler that, he said "Well, that's very logical of you, however... I have no doubts our inspection will pass with flying colors."

Here's the good news.  It did.  Our inspector was really impressed with the condition of the house... he said the "bones" of the house are fabulous and he only had two concerns.  One: there is a leak coming from 'somewhere' that leaks into the garage.  They'll have to get that fixed before we move in.  Second: the furnace needs cleaned.  Amazing, right?  Nothing major.  The leak is the biggest issue, but since it leaks into the garage, there isn't any major damage, and he said it's a new leak... he thought within the past month or so it developed. 

Want to hear something else that's amazing?  When we originally made an offer on the house and they accepted, they offered to let us buy the pool table that is downstairs for a measly $7,000.  That's right; 7 grand for a stinkin' pool table.  Of course it wasn't even an option - in fact, our realtor told them NO before she even told us that they offered it to us for 7 grand.  (She knows us well.)  Well, last night when we showed up for inspections, Jacki (our realtor) says to us "do you want a free pool table and free weight/gym equipment?"  Tyler and I looked at eachother and smiled... she said that while the owner was leaving the home right before we got there, he told Jacki that if we wanted the pool table & supplies AND his weight/gym equipment we could have it for free.  SCORE!!!!  Totally ironic that originally he wanted 7 grand from us for just the pool table, and now he's giving it to us for free PLUS the weight/gym equipment.  We are going to sell the pool table, but we are excited because it's obviously top of the line and in super good condition, so we'll hopefully be getting a really pretty chunk of change for it.  As far as the gym/weight equipment goes, we are definitely keeping it.  It is located in the sub-basement right now, so it's not even in the way.  Amazing!

Isn't God incredible?!  We are so excited.  He has totally opened the doors for us in this house situation... it has been such a smooth, pleasant process.  It is very obvious that we are right in the center of where He wants us right now.  What an amazing feeling.

I'm thinking stripes.

I have been torn thinking about all the million different paint color choices we could have in our new home, and especially torn about which color to choose for our kitchen/dining room.  Our house has a very open layout, so I'm struggling with how to paint different colors without breaking up the rooms.  One solution I came up with is to paint stripes on ONE accent wall in the dining room.  Then we would carry one of the colors from the stripes into the kitchen, above the cabinets. 

One idea with the stripes is to do vertical stripes, such as this:

(Picture courtesy of Eastcoastbride from TheNest)
She used two different colors of paint, just a couple shades lighter/darker.  She did stripes throughout the entire room, which I won't do, but I love the look of these stripes and I think it would look awesome on the accent wall.

Another idea is to do horizontal stripes, with different colors.


(Photos courtesy of Mamabear7 from TheNest)
So, I really like how she took one of those colors from the stripes and painted the rest of the room that way.  However, since the wall that I'm doing is so long, I'm wondering if vertical stripes would be better than horizontal.

The last thought I had was to do "sheen" stripes, which means that it's the same paint color on the stripes, however you would use 2 different types of paint, such as a flat paint for half the stripes, then a glossy paint type for the others, while still using the same color.  Confusing, right?  But it gives it the look that it is 2 different colors, even though it's not.  Here's a pic of that:


(Sorry about the crappy picture, it's all I could find.)

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Any suggestions on a paint color?  I have red/black countertop appliances (ie: kitchenaid mixer, knife set, canister set, toaster, etc) - and the appliances that are in the home are white, such as the fridge, oven/stove, and microwave.

Your thoughts?