We have a hole! (and a new puppy...)

The last week has been kind of crazy. My sister flew in from California on the 19th and we picked up our new puppy, Bear, on the 20th. Since then life has been busy! I've been spending a lot of time with my sister, and I've been on potty training duty. I was able to take off three days from work so I camped out at my parents house for the past 5 days which made things easier.

Since I only see my sister once a year, and she won't see our house until a year after it's done, I wanted to take her to see our homesite. We decided the family would head down there on Wednesday and coincidentally my boyfriend got the call that they started excavating the property that day! We got there and we had a hole for our house! They definitely hadn't finished digging at that point so it was more like a shallow hole in the shape of our house haha! Our PM, Mr. Roof, said we should have a foundation poured by Friday. I'm not sure if he meant Friday as in July 25th or this upcoming Friday.. But regardless, I've never been so happy to see a hole in the ground! We ran into another guy while we were there and he was really friendly. I think he's the second man in command around there. He humored my mom and let her walk around the development, even though there was construction going on everywhere, and even let us into the model home (which isn't quite finished yet). The model has white cabinets, and I LOVED them so once again I'm so happy I picked white cabinets!

Our Lot all excavated and ready to go!

I also ended up buying a couch! In my last post I mentioned that we were getting a red couch from family friends. We're still going to take that couch, but I think we'll put it in the dining/living room instead. My boyfriend has designated that room the place for our Christmas tree so the red couch will compliment that nicely! haha!

I ended up getting this couch from the Habitat for Humanity Re-store (I know.. that's all I talk about anymore! I have a problem!). The one I go to the most is the Wilmington, DE store and they recently partnered up with the La-Z-Boy warehouse in Newark, DE. Every Tuesday they will be going down to the warehouse, and La-Z-Boy is donating furniture that either has a few things wrong with it (a small rip, scratch, stain, etc) that would prevent them from selling it new for full price or was just order incorrectly or by mistake. Every piece I have seen from there so far looks perfect .. I can't even find what may/may not be wrong with them. We ended up getting this sectional for $1000. Right now it's on sale for about $2300 and retails for around $2700 so it was a great deal and its exactly what I wanted! I wanted a tan sectional with deep comfy cushions and that's exactly what I got! So excited!

Here's La-Z-Boy's picture on their website ..

I've been officially banned by my family from going to this store for awhile. Everyone in my family agreed the couch was a great deal but now I have no money so I can't go back! haha! Oh well. I love my couch and I have plenty of other stuff to keep me occupied! Once we have money again I'll definitely go back and look for a recliner chair. They had two leather recliners there that were so nice! They were being sold for $400 and $500 and they retail anywhere from $700-$1000 so not a bad deal! I don't know if I could stomache buying a chair for $500 though.

 

I also did a few more DIY projects. I seriously love Chalk Paint. I painted some Mason Jars to use as containers in the bathroom for cotton balls, q-tips, and my make-up brushes. I LOVE how they turned out. So cute. I also painted this old media chest I had in my room growing up. I forgot to take a before picture but it was all black. It will be perfect to put a TV on in our bedroom though especially since there are blues and greys in our quilt.

 

 

Mason Jars - Using them for cotton balls, q-tips, and make-up brushes in the bathroom

Media cabinet - Used to be all black

 

 

Here are some pictures of my puppy Bear (and Loki), because he's too cute not to share!

 

Loki and Bear - We had a photo-shoot, because I'm obsessed with them both, and they run my life

Bear snoozing away - Loki loves this sleeping position too

Bear in the car on the way home! He's so freakin' cute!



Hope everything is going smoothly with everyone else!
 

Living on a Budget Successfully

This weekend I was on a mission. A mission to be productive! I bought (or already had) a bunch of old furniture that I was determined to refinish and bring back to life, but I had to find a place to do this.

Currently, we live in an apartment, and by apartment, I mean we live in cracker jack box. It is TINY. This is a bachelor pad for two dudes and a dog turned into an apartment with two dudes, a girlfriend, and two dogs (soon to be three). The kitchen is so small cooking a decent meal in it should be part of the cirque du soleil show, because it's basically impossible. Anyways, this lack of space gives me nowhere to do my craft projects, so my parents home has become my storage unit/craft area. They have a large house with a large basement, and my dad has pretty much everything you could ever need for refinishing furniture, and my mom has the craft supply closet stocked. This was my destination this weekend so I left the dog with the boyfriend and headed up to my parents house, and got productive!

First, here is the mirror and end table I blogged about last week, so here are some before and after pictures of those.

 

Mirror ($50) - Painted in Duck Egg Annie Sloan chalk paint (a little lighter in person and gold specs showing through)

 

 End Table ($10) - French Linen/Old White/Duck Egg Annie Sloan chalk paint

Now, here are some other things I found on Saturday morning (Habitat for Humanity re-stores). This end table was about $40 so I almost didn't buy it, but I really like it and it's still cheaper than buying one new! It was this ugly yellowish brown color when I got it.

End Table ($40) - French Linen/Old White 

 

This is a mirror I found on Saturday - It was only $15! It looks like it was a door of something and it's really old and REALLY heavy. I love it. It's one of those things that looks worthless at first glance, but when you really look you realize it has so much character! I'm just going to leave it as-is. I'm going to put it in our bedroom for a full length mirror! The price was unbeatable... I think my dorm room mirror from Target with the plastic frame that always broke was around the same price haha!

 

Mirror ($15)

 

Metal Trash Can (Home Depot - $25) - Painted in Chalkboard spray paint (I'll decorate it with chalk once we move in) - using as a cute/cheap dog food container

 

 

And here is an updated picture of our future puppy (just because puppies are adorable)! He's 6 weeks old! Can't wait to meet this handsome boy! We pick him up on July 20th. We're naming him Bear.

 

We Have Chosen

Over the last couple of weeks we have gone over every option. Back and forth, back and forth. "Let's just move lots .. Wait .. Let's get a different model .. Wait .. Maybe we should look somewhere else .. No.. I like this community..." We repeated this train of thought about a thousand times.

Final Verdict : We're changing lots!

There are several things that led us to this decision.

1) We really do love the Palermo. We love our elevation, we were able to get the exact colors we liked at this new lot, the finished basement is HUGE with the morning room area finished, we like that there is line of site to both the great room and the dining room from the kitchen, and we love the big shower we can get with two shower heads.

2) We really are getting a good deal by moving to this lot. It may not be as pretty, but it is bigger. We have 2 dogs and we want a deck (which we are now building) so a bigger yard is nice. The lot is also layed out so it get's wider towards the back while our old lot got narrower towards the back. This also helps with increasing the back yard. This big lot usually has a premium ($2500) but they knocked that off because of the inconvenience. We also are saving money by not paying the much higher premium at our previous lot ($7500). So overall, the house will start off at $7500 less than what we were going to pay.

3) Saved money on the lot means we can get some other upgrades we had to take off our list early on. One of these is an upgraded carpet on the first floor. We're also getting ceramic in our first floor powder room now. We may also add on a couple more outlets or some crown molding on the cabinets.

4)We are now getting a composite material deck (14 ft x 22 ft). Ryan agreed to pay for half and we will pay for the other half. We asked some friends what they paid for their deck and the price per square foot was pretty competitive ($40/sq. ft - our friend payed $36/sq. ft for a wood deck). A deck will be awesome because a) we'll have somewhere extra to entertain or have a drink/dinner on nice days and b) we have direct access into our backyard for our dogs.

5) If we got the Milan on our previous lot it would end up costing more than we would like to spend. This was a big one, and really helped us make the final decision.

Overall, we feel good with the decision. I am a little sad we aren't getting as pretty of a lot, but we'll just plant some pine trees in the back of our property so we can't see the guy's yard behind us all year. Plus, it's not like his yard is directly behind us like we would have had on the other side of the street.

Here are some new upgrades we're doing.

Carpet (Upgrade C)

Ceramic Tile - Upgrade B - Mushroom

And, as promised, here is an updated picture of our puppy at 2 weeks old (we'll be picking him up in about 6 weeks). 

Our Puppy Was Born!!!

This post has nothing to do with our house, but I think I mentioned somewhere in this blog that we were getting our second husky puppy and he has finally been born! Originally, I wanted a female buuuut we ended up picking a male (so I will continue to be surrounded by testosterone). He's only a week old now so he's kind of in that blob stage but I wanted to post a picture. We'll be getting updated pictures every 2 weeks until we can bring him home, so I'll try and remember to post some on here (because who doesn't want to look at an adorable puppy?).

 

New Born

 

We haven't thought of a name yet. Any recommendations are welcome!