The Ramblings of my Life: October 2008

Nana & Pawpaw are here to spend Fall Break with us and check out our new house. Brayden was so exicted waiting for them last night.
It's really sad that I don't have any updated pics of Brayden with his nana & pawpaw, but I'm the world's worst when it comes to downloading pics from my camera. Notice I'm trying REAL hard to update my blog everyday and with pics.

Here's a pic itty bitty Brayden with Nana the 1st day we came home from the hospital. My mom stayed with us for 3 weeks after he was born, talk about a lifesaver. It's so hard to imagine him that little, how time flies.

Here's Brayden with his pawpaw at Sulphur when he was a lil guy. This town is absolutely beautiful year yard, and they have so much to do. Brayden loves it there, so we go everytime we're at my parents. They took my brother and I all the time, and we have such great memories. So now when we go it brings back such wonderful memories of my childhood and Brayden's making some great memories too.

We've had so much going these past couple of months.........WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!!!! I'm so excited words can't even explain it. It's so ironic how the whole thing happened. In my daily house hunting(haha) I found a house in the area we were wanting, in our price range, & the perfect size. So we went to look at it, keep in my mind the house had just been on the market one day before we went to look at it. By that time 5 other people had already looked at it. This was Labor Day weekend so we had lots of time to think it over. I called our realtor that Sunday to make another appt. to look at it again. On Monday Labor Day we went for a 2nd look & found out 4 of the other people had been back for a 2nd look as well, talk about a bummer. But we decided we wanted to take a chance and make an offer. Our realtor called us late Monday night to let us know someone else had just made an offer BUT the sellers wanted to see our offer too. Shawnn and I being 1st time home buyers really had no clue as to what we were doing, our realtor and lender were helping as much as they legally could. So we wrote our offer, & they countered, we countered back, they countered again, & we denied. Needless to say I was bummed but I was ok to. I just knew if it were meant to be then it would happen and apparently it wasn't suppose to. WELL, Wednesday evening we get a call from our realtor informing us they wanted to ACCEPT our offer afterall!!!! I was in shock, actually I think we both were, but once the shock settled we knew it was meant to be. It's still hard for me to believe I have my own house!!! This is something I've waited for, for 5 years and we both have worked so hard to get to where we are and it's wonderful. Of course the house needs some updating and minor issues that need to be fixed but overall the house is perfect. Our inspector told us he hadn't ever inspected a house for the price we paid and it be in such good condition, that made us feel really good!! The sellers made lots of good updates like top of line the water heater, & heating and air unit. But they were so lazy with alot of stuff to. I swear they never cleaned and when they made changes inside the house they were so lazy about stuff. Of course everytime we went into the house they had all their stuff and man did they have stuff!!! So alot of the little problems we didn't see. I guess this just goes with buying a house, huh?!?! So Shawnn and I have been working our booties off painting removing wallpaper, mowing, unpacking boxes and most of all cleaning. Of course we had some GREAT help from family, without them we wouldn't have been able to get all of this done. We have managed to get our bedroom painted the hall bathroom painted and the living room painted, but still have tons left to do. Here are pics of the house when it was listed. Later I'll post pics of the house when we got the keys and of course I'll be updating with the process of changing everything too.

Here's our 1st Home!! They put lots of time and money into the landscaping out front, they have tons of purple and yellow mums they have just started blooming and they are beautiful. I think once they realized they had their house sold they stopped tending to the landscaping so we have some cleaning up to do but once we get it done it's going to look AWESOME!!!

Our back porch when I first saw the pic of this online I wasn't that crazy about it b/c it looks like it's screened it, but it's not and I think it may be my favorite spot at the house. It has a skylight and is so roomy.

Our backyard of course,haha. We're going to tear up the gardens so Brayden can have lots more room to run and play and we can finally bring his swing set home from Nana & Pawpaw's

Our dining area. I'm not real into having a formal dining room but glad we had a big enough area for a decent size table. I'm also LUVIN' my garden(I'm guessing that's what it's called) window. I have yet to put any plants in there but eventually I'll get some.

.....and here are the wonderful(sarcasm) green cabinets. Those things drove me crazy for about 2 weeks trying to decide what I was going to do with them. The cabinet doors are so plain, meaning they have no detail to them so I really didn't want to strip the paint and stain them. I really wanted to paint them black but was afraid that might not look good either. SO Shawnn said we could at least get new cabinet doors sometime next year so I found a color for the walls that complement the cabinets nicely. I don't know if you can tell but the hardware is silverware(tacky!!!) so I think once I change that and get that awful wallpaper done it'll look allot better. The green cabinets are actually starting to grow on me. They were absolutely flithy though, after a good cleaning they looks lots better. Another thing that changed the look was we got a new stove, the stove that was there was I swear the original stove that came with the house, It came from JCPenney. Like I mentioned before she had tons of stuff

More of the kitchen, it's a great size and has lots of cabinets and counter space, the only downfall about the kitchen is I only have 4 drawers, I was used to my apt. where I had 4 junk drawers, talk about a new adjustment!!! But hey at least now I have a linen closet and a garage, oh and a storage building....

This is the living room, we painted it a muted gold (kinda brownish/gold) it really warmed the room up. She had 5 ceiling to floor bookshelves all on one wall in there which close the room up so much. When we got to go in the house for the 1st time empty we couldn't believe how big it looked. I love how they did the walls, they're textured but not just regular texture they did some different technique in there. Come to find out there was wallpaper on there before and instead of them ripping the wallpaper down they decided to leave it and texture and paint. So eventually we're going to have to fix all of that. I told Shawnn that'll be something we probably pay someone to do!!

Another pic of the living room. It's more long than wide and has no windows. I know that seems crazy to alot of people, especially for someone who loves windows. We have 6 windows, one in each of the bedrooms & 2 in the kitchen. But our back door has a window and a storm door and the front door has a storm door too, so I keep those open and we get plenty of sunlight. I would love to add a skylight in the hall bath but Shawnn says that will be WAAAAAYYYY down the line.

This is our office/treadmill room. It's the last room that's going to get painted but I'm thinking I want to do a red/black/white theme in here. Who knows that could change by the time I get to this room,haha. We did however get all the wallpaper(it's hard to see in this pic) ripped down out of here, thanks to wonderful family!!

This is Brayden's room, it's the biggest of the other 2 bedrooms. It's going to be transformed into a Speed Racer room this weekend. His favorite color is red, so when we asked him what color he wanted his bedroom his response was RED!!! OMG, I'm thinking no way will I let him have a red bedroom, it's suppose to hype you up. So we've comprimised 2 walls red & 2 walls white. I really wanted to do the bottom 1/2 red & the top 1/2 white or blue with a blue or white painted border, BUT my darling husband has talked me out of it b/c he thinks it'll be to hard, and with the headache I had with the hall bath I'm not wanting another difficult project right now.

This is going to be our guest room. We don't have allot of overnight guest usually so it's mainly going to be Nana's room. I'm painting it a pale yellow(her new favorite color) and decorating it her style. She does so much for us & spends allot of time her in the summer that I want her to have her own room at our house.

The Master Bedroom It was the 1st room that had to be changed Shawnn couldn't stand to look at it. We both love black, so we painted the walls a greyish color it's kinda got a lavendar tint to it and we're going to get black furniture. I'll save all my ideas for another post.

Here's the hall bath that I've worked so hard on. I pretty much started ripping wallpaper down the first day we got in there and just finished it this past weekend. I even had several people helping. It has by far been the hardest room to deal with and the funny thing is it's the smallest room. I think b/c of the fixtures in there it makes it hard to work around. I kept asking Shawnn to please take the mirror, light fixture, vanity, and toliet out but he wouldn't b/c he hadn't ever done anything like that and was afraid he would screw something up. Oh well we managed and it's DONE that's the important thing.

They didn't put any pics of the master bathroom on the realtor site. We're not changing it and if we do it'll be a long time from now. That bathroom is by far the best done project, I think they had someone professionally come in to do that room. The hall bath was done horribly. We have lots of things to fix, I'm just so thankful that all of the stuff is minor not major problems. It's all stuff that you have to really look for to see. Now before we got all of our stuff in there we could see lots of flaws but now that we're slowly fixing them and have our stuff in it's harder to see them. I wish they would've put pics of the entrance way & hallway b/c they did a really cool wallpaper technique. They took wallpaper ripped it up, dipped in some mixture then put it on the wall, looks really good!! Don't get me wrong I love my house and I know I've focused a lot on what is wrong with the house, but there's lots of good too. They updated major things and put in new light fixtures. Oh did I mention we got a brand new roof 2 weeks before we moved in, I mean that's a great house. We feel like we got a wonderful house that's in great condition it just needs some cleaning and maintanice.

Anyways now that I've told you all about my new house I really need to get to work. I hope you've enjoyed my tour. I promise to post more often now especially since I'm updating our house. Hopefully tomorrow I can show you the pics of the house when it was empty!!!