Home Update: Craft Room

It's been a while since I've done a home update.

I'm still trying to piece together our home, but it's coming along slowly.
It's expensive to furnish a home, so I've got to find deals when I can.

I automatically knew that I wanted a pink craft room.
It's my favorite color.
But before we moved into our house, I got a teal Ikea cart.
My inspiration then came to mind.

Without further ado...welcome to my craft room!

Chalkboard made by me for my bff's bridal shower.

I asked for shelving and a table for Christmas and it went right in here!

Bow Garland made by me.  Hoop made by Canfieldhouse.

I have hopes to one day paint the bookshelf that I acquired at my very first estate sale.  
I kept the color splotch off of the Ikea box to hopefully match the color. :)
Anyhow,  Sally the Singer lives here as well as Charlee the Cricut.

You are Beautiful blocks from Bubblewrappd.

My mom made me my block name.  I forgot I had it until just recently!

Bible Verse Print from Katy Girl Designs.  Love canvas from Pen and Paint.  I painted the butterfly at Firehouse Pottery.

I absolutely love the chair that I found!  
Target, people!
Isn't it adorable?!?

Well, that's just about it!  
I hope to get to sit down and sew again one day.
It seems that we've just been completely busy.
I have hope to make myself a quilt, so I will see what I can do about that! ;)

Thanks for stopping by!

2 Years...

Dear St. Louis,

Wow!  It's been two years now since we've lived here.  I will admit that I like you more than I did last year at this time.

A lot has happened in this last year:

I got a new job.
We bought a house.
Tyler got a promotion--which I didn't write about.  Shame on me!  He got promoted to managing (and traveling) for his company!
We got a puppy! (I'll post about him tomorrow.)

Okay, so maybe that doesn't look like a lot, but those things are definitely life changing events.

When we got back from Hawaii (which I still need to post about...I have a TON of pictures to go through), I finally felt like I was home.  St. Louis is not an awful city.  It's actually a very fun city with lots of things to do.  We've really enjoyed living here (especially during baseball season).  

I don't feel like I need to go out and do things on the weekend as I did when we lived in our apartment.  Since purchasing our home, I've wanted to stay home on the weekends and turn this house into a home.  And maybe having all the extra space has been a factor in that as well. :)

Anyhow, it's been a really good year here in St. Louis.  We are really enjoying our time here.  We are really seeing God's plan play out when we had no idea why He would lead us here.

And for the yearly "out the front door" picture:  today it was cold and blowing flurries.

Home Update: Guest Bath!

Well, we've lived in our house for almost 5 months now.  I really can't believe it's been that long!  I am so thankful that we left our apartment when we did, because if we waited until our lease was up, we wouldn't be moving for another 2 weeks.

Coming from a 900 square foot apartment to a 2400 square foot house has been a wonderful challenge.  It's taken a bit of time to get settled (we still don't have every box unpacked), but we're slowly working on filling the rooms.

One vision I had right away was for the guest bathroom on the second floor. 

I knew that I wanted to do it in white and black.  I got all of the bathroom rugs and towels for Christmas, which was a HUGE help because those things are expensive!

I had several different shower curtains picked out, but I couldn't decide on which one to get!  I originally wanted a ruffled curtain, but they were back ordered every time I went to buy it.  I soon found one in Target, fell in love, and bought it.

I really love how it turned out.  Some of Tyler's friends gave us the gorgeous "Love" picture that is now hanging in the bathroom as a house warming gift.  I knew it would go perfectly in there.

I may still purchase a soap dispenser, but for now this will work.  Now we just need some guests to come stay with us!! :)

Towels:  Here
Shower Curtain:  Here
Rugs: Thomas O'Brien...looks like they aren't sold online anymore (from Target)

Home Series: The Before--The Basement

Have you been keeping up with our home tour?  If not, you can catch up here and here.

One of the requirements on our list when house shopping was a basement.  Living in Southwest Missouri my whole life, tornadoes were something that we had to be aware of.  My parents' house doesn't have a basement, but I never felt scared.  We couldn't even hear the tornado sirens because we lived so far out of town.  I went to school many times and my friends were talking about waking up to sirens in the middle of the night.  I slept right through them.

Fast-forward to May 2011...I was home when the Joplin tornado ripped apart their town.  My hometown is just north of Joplin, but I have family and friends that live there.  The day after the tornado, we went down to see how we could help.  What I saw that day, I will never forget.  The stories that I hear are forever ingrained in my brain.

Fast-forward again to May 2013 when a tornado went through St. Charles and north St. Louis.  Many of our friends live in the path of that tornado and we saw the devastation from it.  

I knew that we had to have a basement in whatever house we decided to buy.  It was a non-negotiable for me.  We got lucky and found a home with a finished basement.

The air hockey table came with the house...and it's really nice!  It has been very fun to play! :)

We also have a full bathroom in the basement.

The people who lived in this house before us have always lived here.  They really liked brass and the nasty orange colored walls.  I can't wait to paint them. 

Not pictured:  the dungeon (our unfinished storage area).  It's scary.

Well, there you have it!  Those are the pictures of our home on the day we got our keys!  I hope to be back soon with some "after" pictures! Hope you enjoyed the tour! :)  Come visit sometime!  We would love to have you!

Home Series: The Before--Second Floor

Welcome back!  How do you like our empty house so far?  Did you miss the first post of our main floor?  You can catch up here.

The one great thing about not having too much to move in is that we can make the house our own.  I mean, we squeezed as much as we could into a 900 square foot apartment.  All of that seemed to have fit on our main floor.  We have empty rooms still...but they will eventually have furniture in them.

Upstairs, we have three bedrooms and a master suite.  Two of the bedrooms will be used as guest bedrooms and the other will be used as my craft room. 

These are the two guest bedrooms.  

My future craft room:

The Master Suite is what really made me fall in love with this house.  It is amazing.  We have a double door entrance into the master suite, and if you know me, you know how much I love double door entrances. :)

This is the sitting room.

This is the bedroom, taken from the sitting room.

Taken from the bathroom, looking towards the sitting room.

We also have a double door entrance into the master bathroom.

I knew when I saw that Master Suite that I could eventually turn it into a place that we would want to come to rest in.  I am excited to turn these rooms into the vision that I have. :)

Well, that's all for the second floor!  Be sure to check back for the rest of the tour, including the basement and the backyard! :)

Home Series: The Before--The Main Floor

Welcome to our home! 

I know some of you are getting impatient about seeing pictures of our home. ;)  I really wanted to do before and after pictures, but those will have to wait.  Filling a home takes time, and I am picky about the things I want in my home.  So I decided to wet your appetite a little bit before I make you wait a little longer for the "after" photos.

Here are the pictures of our home on the day that we purchased it, taken by the iPhone.

Our gorgeous entry way.  A couple of the things that I fell in love with are the double closets on either side of the door and the beautiful wood flooring.

To the left of the entryway is our formal dining room.  There is a gorgeous "chandelier" hanging from the ceiling.

To the right of the entry way is a formal living room.  After our offer was accepted on the house, I was thinking long and hard about the rooms and what we would put in them.  One day, in church of all places, it hit me that this room would make a phenomenal piano room.  I could just picture our future kids practicing in here. :)

Through the formal living room, you walk into the family room, living room, whatever you want to call it.

We have a half bath on the main floor as well.

This picture is taken from the kitchen.  One reason we fell in love with this house is the open floor plan, which is great for hosting and entertaining.  We also have room for a kitchen table.

Our kitchen is fabulous.  I absolutely love the island.  However, to answer your question...I know you want to ask it...I do not like the dual colored cabinets/island.  I do love all the cabinet space and counter space.

On this floor but not pictured:  the laundry room, garage, and pantry.

And just for kicks and giggles...this is one of my favorite things of this house:

I'm really not kidding.  I grew up on a farm...on a gravel road.  We could hear people coming down the road from a half mile away.  We didn't have a door bell, so I really love that we have one now. :)

We are so blessed to have this home.  I pray that we can have many people stay with us and we will be able to have many over to fellowship with us.  Because everything that we have is not ours.  We want to use it to the glory of God.

Come back tomorrow for a tour of the second floor!

Our House Buying Experience

You know how when you're little and you dream about the future? Well, all my dreams have come or are coming true...but BETTER than I EVER could have imagined. I'm seeing Ephesians 3:20-21 played out in my life RIGHT NOW. My heart is so full...I am so completely blessed and so undeserving of these blessings in my life. This morning I'm filled with emotion that I'm not sure I've ever felt before {a good emotion}...but even more than that, I'm filled with a peace that surpasses ALL understanding. Even when I have no idea what the future holds, I KNOW that everything is going to be alright. I'm thankful for grace upon grace in my life. I'm thankful for peace. And I'm thankful for every. single. blessing that God has given me.

>>>>><<<<<

The above was written shortly after we offered on our house.  I couldn't convey how I felt exactly, but I can tell you that my reality is way better than my dreams.  

Several months ago, back when we went to Walt Disney World {here, here, and here}, Tyler and I started talking about actually saving for a down payment for a house.  We had just signed a new lease at our apartment, but we knew we wanted to get out of our apartment.  So we started saving and we actually had money transferred into our savings account.  Each week after payday, we would have a certain amount of money transferred out, and we watched {excitedly} as our house fund grew!

Ideally, we were hoping to find a house that we could move into after our lease was up at the end of March.  So we started looking slowly...as in, we looked online for houses that were available at the time.  My sister-in-law had just recently gotten her real estate license and connected us with a realtor here in St. Louis.  The realtor had contacted us to let us know she would be happy to show us houses.

Being the eager people we are, we took her up on that offer.  We looked at several houses, but found one we loved.  So we slept on it for a few days.  I couldn't stop thinking about that house.  We absolutely loved the floor plan, and Tyler could actually picture us living in that house.  I mean, I could picture it, but it was important to me that Tyler could as well.  So we called her back and said we wanted to take another look at it.

It's funny what you see the first time you take a look at a house.  It's also funny to come home and think about what you didn't see during that look.  So the second time we went back, I made sure to open every. single. door in the house.  I looked behind every door.  I had a list of things I wanted to make sure this house had before I fell even more in love with it.

We made an offer that night.  In the days that followed, we countered and finally came to an agreement.  The house would be ours!  I was thinking that it was too good to be true.  How could I, at 24 years old, own this house?  The inspection went beautifully.  We asked the sellers to fix the minor things, and that was that.  It was really just a waiting game for us.  At our final walk-through {a month and a half after the offer}, I got to see my future new home once again.  I had been dreaming about it since that night in September when we offered.  I couldn't wait to move in and make this house our home.  

Our realtor said she couldn't believe how smooth the sale went.  That was music to my ears.  Being a first time homebuyer is nerve-racking enough.  We closed the next day and immediately started moving things in.

Tyler and I are excited to use our home as a tool that God gave us.  We are excited to invite people over, have people stay with us, and enjoy our home.  In the coming weeks, I hope to have a home tour series on the blog.  So stay tuned for that!

We are so blessed to be able to move into this home, and we are looking forward to what God has in store for it!