Serving Home

After we moved out of our former home and into my parent's home I took a blogging break minus a few family posts here and there.  I spent the summer praying and obsessively talking to my husband about our family blog and the possibility of starting a new blog.  I kept thinking about what I wanted to blog about and even though "food" seemed an easy choice there are tons of food blogs and it didn't encompass the new home we were about to have and what we wanted to do with our home.

What is it that we want to do with our home?  Well, this is "the home" which means we aren't going anywhere for a good while.  This is it.  No more checking the MLS listings and counting out pennies to see what we can afford.  Our new home has enough room in it for us to grow and expand as a family (no I'm not pregnant) and have room to entertain.  But not just entertaining.  Entertaining with a purpose.

For awhile Korey and I have been talking about using our home to bless others.  For example, we've already signed up to host DNow in November.  Actually, I signed us up before we ever moved in.  Crazy, I know.  I grew up going to DNow as a youth in our church and I have fond memories and it's always been one of my desires to be able to host.  We also really want to get to know our neighbors, invite them over for dinner, and build a relationship with them in the hope that we can share God with them.  Both of us have been overseas to share God's love with people but we feel a burden for us to just go across the street and get to know people.

All this to say that I decided I wanted to start a blog about this process.  I wanted it to be separate from our personal, family blog which is not going away.  So yes, I will have two blogs and no, I don't know how I'm going to keep up with them when I work full-time outside of the home and I'm a parent to a toddler.  But try I must.

What's in the blog?  Well, because I like to multi-task there will be a chronicle on decorating, organizing, entertaining, and feeding others.  It will be about how I make our home a place to welcome others.  I don't claim to know everything or even have the necessary skills.  I'm just jumping out into the deep end and seeing what happens.

Our family blog is hosted on Blogger but after doing some research I started the new blog on Wordpress.  All.By.Myself.  Without paying a designer.  And I still don't think I know what I'm doing.  But somehow I managed to go through all the steps to get it to where it is today.  Oh and let me just say that Wordpress and I almost broke up a couple of times.  I told Korey somedays it felt like I was walking into a BioChemistry class and being asked to take a test on something I knew nothing about!  It was exhausting, people.  And I still have a long list of things that need to be tweaked, added, or fixed on my blog.  I see why blog designers charge the prices they do.  You deserve it!

With all that said, join me as I blog here and at my new place, Serving Home!

House Update - Walls & Wood

Here's this week's latest house update. 

Meet our chief inspector!  If he doesn't like what he sees he might engage you in a game of basketball.  Or hide in a closet when you're not watching.

They've added in the wood trim around the ceilings and the stairs.  Below is our dining room looking out onto the stairs.  We now have the wrought iron spindles added in.  We upgraded the spindles from the plain wooden ones all the way up to the top of the stairs and gracing one side of the landing.  We could have had spindles on the gameroom side but we decided to save our money there and let it just be a wall.  It's not a full wall as the gameroom has "windows" in the walls which are just large openings that look out over the stairs.

They've also finished the texture over the sheetrock which is the basis for our walls.  I guess it's just sprayed on.  Don't you just love those arched doorways!

We have kitchen cabinets!  The window you see in the far right of the picture will be over our sink.  We chose the darkest color of cabinets they had to choose from.  The current trend is painting your cabinets white but we'll stick with our dark colors.

The hole in the middle of the cabinets is where our dishwasher is going.  I wonder if I should add knobs to all the cabinets??

Alas, this is our kitchen island.  And the cabinet maker in the background.  Korey said he did all of this in one day.  This kitchen island is something I've always wanted in my future kitchen.  No matter how big or small, I wanted an island to be able to prep food on.  With the floorplan we chose, I didn't like the island that came with it.  I lobbied our sales guy to get the island that came with another floorplan.  It was supposed to have a breakfast bar area on the backside (the cabinet guy's side).  Well....this is what I got below.  Not the original one, and not the one I asked for.  A completely different island.   See the four cabinets and four drawers?  It looks exactly the same on the other side. We spent an hour last night debating about it.  Do we make them change it or do we keep it?  Then I went to look at it on my way to work and then Korey met the builder there.  I talked to the builder about it.  Then I called our sales guy on his day off (sorry!) to talk about it.  The dilemma was do we keep it, gain extra storage space and give up the eating area considering the kitchen table will be rightthere or do we have them rebuild the whole thing.
I think we've decided .to keep the island as it is.  After talking to the sales guy he said we're basically getting a custom island for free.  Well, not really for free because our house isn't free.  But it's a free upgrade, I guess.  I'm off to buy more dishes!

House Update - July

Our house is finally making progress.  The walls have gone up and it's beginning to take shape.  It's so exciting to see each room beginning to appear.  I went by this week and found standing water in the shower and the bathtub.  Guess they were testing out the drains.

The window at the bottom left is our dining room and the window above that is a bedroom.  The three windows on the top right are our game room and of the course the garage is below that.  I get a dining room!  I'm so excited about that because at our previous home if we maxed out the seating at the kitchen table people had to sit on the fireplace in our living room.  But with our new house we will have seating in the dining room (when we get a table), at our kitchen island, and at our kitchen table.  We could invite the Duggars over!  Well, maybe not.

And... we have shingles on our roof!  Check out the bay windows that will be in master bedroom at the bottom left!  There will be space for a sitting area.  So many times in our old house Korey would walk around to his side of the bed and catch a pants pocket on one of our dresser knobs.  It was thattight of a space!

Korey said they have also delivered the brick and the interior sheetrock is going up soon.  Stay tuned!

What We've Been Up to

Well!  It's been an adventure lately.  It all started one afternoon when Korey and Hunter went park hunting.  They came across a neighborhood he really liked and he texted me saying how nice it was.  Then he mentioned there was a model home.  I encouraged him to go in just to see what it looked like.  He went in and was in love!  This was in April.  So on Good Friday since I had the day off he took me to see it.  I started crying when I walked in it was so nice.  And there was space!  Lots of space!

Then Korey started talking about the possibility of us building with this particular builder.  We knew what the price was and I told him we'd have to eat beans and rice for another year.  Literally.  It made my hyperventilate.  Then Korey discovered that the same builder was building the same house in another neighborhood that was significantly cheaper.  When he told me the price the hyperventilating returned.  But neither one of us could stop talking about the house and one night we finally crunched numbers and figured out financially we could do it.  Korey even brought me a 3 page strategic plan that outlined our expenses and our savings and what would happen if we had two mortgages.  He was speaking this accountant's love language.  And may I remind you that he is the artist and I'm the numbers person.

Here's a quick timeline of how our April went:

April 6- Good Friday - Model Home visit

April 15 - Both felt led to see "cheaper" neighborhood again
April 16-20 - Korey got our house ready to show.  He steam cleaned carpets and moved out half of our belongings.
April 20 - Met with realtor
April 23 - Signed contract on new house
Aprl 26 - Our current house was listed
April 27 - 3 showings
April 28 - 2 showings and 2 offers

To date we've had at least 15 showings.  That is exhausting!

I can't believe how fast this was going!  So fast that everytime Korey and I talked it was a logistical conversation about being out of the house and meetings and contracts to sign.  It was super stressful!  But Korey was a rockstar through this whole process because whenever the new house sales guy or the realtor needed to talk to someone they called him.

Side note - Korey and I have been talking about buying a new house for a couple of years now but we said we would never build because lots were just too expensive.  Well...scratch that!

Whenever we got a call for a house showing we camped out at my parent's house.  Here are a few pictures from our time there.

The dogs were in doggy heaven with that big water bowl/pool.


We spent most of our time on the back porch.  My mom was super awesome in feeding us at the last minute whenever I called her.

Korey and Hunter was watching water squirt out of the "sting ray."

And here it is!  The site of our new home.  It's the big grassy lot.

And this was taken on 5/17.  This is really a dream come true for us!  Not because we're going to have a bigger, "material" item to own but because my dream for so long is to be able to use our home for ministry purposes. We both have been praying for our future neighbors and how we can use our home for God's glory. Can't wait to see what God has in store!