My 27th Birthday!

It's my 27th birthday!

 

The first thing my mom and I did was go get my birthday gift from her and my dad. I had been talking about this navy Michael Kors purse and she got it for me! While we were at Nordstrom, I mentioned to the sales girl that my strap on my camel MK bag from last years birthday was starting to wear, so she traded it out for me....FOR FREE! We couldn't believe it. Two purses for this birthday girl!

After some shopping we headed to Texas Rangers Stadium (now called Globe Life) for opening day. We had so much fun and thanks so much to Chance for getting us tickets!

 

My mom and I at the game!

 

Our view (we sat in the all you can eat section - free hot dogs, chicken sandwiches', nachos, popcorn, peanuts and drinks!)

Chance had to work today, but he stopped by to say hi to us :)

 

When we got home I noticed some goodies on the dining room table that my brother went and picked up for me....my favorite - Nothin Bundt Cake. When I opened the box I was in heaven....they were all RED VELVET! Yall know me too well.

 

 

After dessert it was time for presents....I already received my parents gifts, and Stacey and Mandy's gifts prior (Ray Ban's and $$), and this is what Chance got me. He did so good! I have been wanting this dainty infinity necklace for some time now, and he knows I wear diamond studs almost every day, so he bought me a beautiful pair! What girl doesn't want diamonds?! ;)

All in all, this was an A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. birthday!

Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes.

When I returned back to work my co-workers decorated my cube...

 

Spring Birthdays 2014

This year for Spring Brithdays (Me 3/31, Mandy 42/, Nate 4/12, Carolyn 4/14) we celebrated over at MiMi and Granddads house. Of course the boys just had to bring their fishing gear and fish the whole time.

 

 

 

 

 

This is a cute video of Jax. He isn't so sure at first and I love how he says "no, that one scares me!" and then he gathers the courage to run one finger down his back, and then proceeds to tell Chance "now you need to throw him back in the water." haha precious!

Kyler and Ethan were really into fishing this day. Most days they want to cast just a few times, but this weekend they were out there for hours!

 

 

 

My grandparents put corn out for the birds, so there are always ducks in their yard 

 

2 of the birthday girls! Aunt Carolyn and Mandy.

 

Stacey with Jax

 

Ethan being silly

He is wearing his medal he won at flag football for MVP

 

And then he thought Rylee should wear it

 

Jax being silly too

 

Mandy, Stacey and I

 

Sibling love :)

Fun night out!

For my dad's friends birthday we all went to a bar in Sachse and listened to a Stevie Ray Vaughan cover band. My dad and his friends went to school with Stevie and were good friends, so it was really cool to hear this guy play. My dad said, "If you didn't know Stevie wasn't alive, you would think this was him" that's how good the guitarist/singer in this band was!

Here are some pics of my mom and Keri dancing!

We had such a great time, and my dad got a signed shirt by the singer!

Inspiration Boards

All of our friends keep asking how we plan to decorate once the reno is complete, and what we would call our style. I keep thinking of a name to call our style but can't come up with anything other than "eclectic". It's traditional, modern, french country, industrial...and a whole lot more all balled up together.

We actually got rid of most everything we owned before moving except our 2 breakfast nook tables and couch. Everything else was too modern for us. We moved out of our apartment in June and moved everything into a storage unit. I started buying things for the new house a few months before we moved out of the apartment and I just can't seem to stop! I make trips all the way out to our storage unit every now and again to drop things off. I have bought so much I can't even tell you what we have anymore. We had an opportunity to donate a lot of our things so I went to storage and was going through boxes. A few times I came across boxes with shopping bags in them and I thought to myself "What is this stuff?" I opened it and realized I had bought outdoor summer pillows at Pier 1 one day when they were on sale...so it will be exciting to finally unpack everything and get it all situated. I'm obsessed with throw pillows and just keep buying and buying...I can't remember what color schemes they are or design or how many we have...so I guess I should stop buying those until we move in and un pack.

The other day when Chance and I were talking about a color scheme for the master, I told him I had bought us a new comforter, pillow shams, throw pillows, etc...from Target and he asked what they look like.....and I couldn't remember :( That's how long it's been since I've seen this stuff. All I know is that it is some sort of gray, white and yellow combo. At this very moment there are actually two of our 4 breakfast nook chairs in the back of my car. I don't want to make the 2 hour round trip drive to our storage just to drop those off. So how long will they stay in the back of my car? Who knows! ;)

Pinterest has been the best creation ever! I've picked some of my favorite pictures and created "inspirational boards" for when it's time to decorate.

If you can come up with a word to describe our style...please share :)

We would love a cheerful and welcoming entrance...

We would love double doors and a console table in the foyer...

We are hoping we find a house with a study, and if not we can just use an extra bedroom...

A must for us is a separate dining room. We can't wait to host dinner parties and I can't wait to put up some board and batten. I want a really cool barn style table and Chance said he might attempt to build one ;)

In the living room we want natural and gray colors. 

We currently have a sectional, but want to get a new linen sectional. 

We love the rock fireplace below!

I am obsessed with the industrial look and can't wait to build a shelving unit somewhere in the house.

I would like for the kitchen to be open and airy. 

I never thought gray cabinets would make a kitchen look airy...but my mind has been changed. I'm now convinced we need gray cabinets and white stone countertops. I'm in love with carrera marble but everyone says they stain so easily and to be careful putting them in your kitchen. 

I love granite but I can't find any pieces that have the veining to match marble. What I'm finding is similar but darker....so a decision hasn't been made just yet on the countertops. I have made a decision on the sink though! I want an apron front country style sink, like the picture below. I also want a wine area so a small wine fridge would be fun. 

I'm incredibly organized and it would be a dream to have a pantry look like this. We don't have children right now so I'm hopeful we can have a pantry like this for the next few years ;)

In the breakfast nook we already have a square shaped table like the top right picture below, and chairs similar to the bottom right picture but are Parson dining chairs.

I also love the coffee set up in the picture to the left.

In the extra bedroom I want to use some bright fun colors and experiment painting large furniture some brighter colors than I normally would. I also love the faux taxidermy animal heads...I want to use that somewhere in the house. 

In our master, I want to go with a gray and white color scheme and Chance loves navy blue and so do I, so I'll bring that in to make the room more "masculine".

I especially love these photos over the bed. I would love to find some really neat prints and knobs to hang these frames.

In the two restrooms, I would like for them to feel like a spa. Lots of spa like products, cozy fluffy towels and plenty of candles. 

We can't wait until we get our new front loaders. I most definitely want a countertop over the washer/dryer because I would love to decorate that area and I won't have to worry about reaching and breaking my back to find random socks.

The houses we have been looking at have large back yards so we are really looking forward to decorating that area as well. 

I love the string lights in the top right picture below. I also think the picnic table turned drink holder is pretty cool. 

I'm really looking forward to starting a garden, including a wall succulent garden. 

These are a few industrial style lights we are loving and can't wait to purchase!

These are just a few randoms we love...

Somewhere in our house, we will have sliding barn doors...just not sure where :)

Day #1 of house hunting

Today was our first day in search for "The One"....we had 7 homes to check out and we really liked 2 of them. One we didn't even go inside, and one was a foreclosure and the homeowners pretty much destroyed it so it was a 100% gut. Here are a few pics from the two homes we have still on our list...oh and like I said, it's still pretty early in the game so both of these homes will probably be sold soon. We would've wanted to make changes but they are atill considered "move-in" ready.

So here is our #1 option:

We would want to completely re-do the exterior.

We would want to remove a lot of interior walls to open the space up.

We would want to completely renovate the kitchen.

We would want to expand the master en suite into the closet and build another closet with access from the bathroom.

And that about sums it up...we really love this additional living room in the back, we could totally see the family over for bbq's and the holidays.

And here is option #2:

Now this home is pretty turn key, but it needs a few changes. The master en suite has access from the bedroom and the main hallway. This might be weird but I don't want our guest using the master, I want them using the hall bath so I would want to close that door off and we could use that area for either a hall closet or closet in the bathroom for towels. 

The dining room is a little closed off so we would want to remove one wall. 

The fridge is located in the breakfast nook which is very odd, so we haven't come up with any kind of solution for that.

The 1/2 bath is near the utility room so to get to it you would see the utility room...which would mean it would have to stay clean at all times! 

Both homes had huge yards so we know Rylee will be excited about that!

TaTa for now!

How to buy a home....

I've been receiving a lot of emails of people asking how we are going about buying a home, so this post is about our process and an update of where we are now.

We got really lucky since we have a family friend in the mortgage business so he is doing all of our important financial "stuff", as I like to call it. We got a few other quotes just so we could compare the best deals, and sure enough our family friend has the best deal for us. We aren't ready to buy so we didn't request to be pre-approved, we just want to know what price range we will be in so we got pre-qualified. Which most realtors require you to do before they start spending time showing you homes you might not be able to afford. 

You might be surprised with what you pre-qualify for, or at least we were. We knew what we wanted to spend in our mortgage so we worked backwards and figured out what price range that puts us in. Well we were qualified for A LOT more, so be careful to not use every penny they qualify you for. Or do and pay a large mortgage every month. We decided to go with a cheaper fixer upper for many different reasons: our mortgage is cheaper, we can renovate over time, and we can put our own touch on it and make it ours. And with a cheaper mortgage we don't have to worry about other finances (bills, groceries, gas, 2 car payments, school loans, toll bills, etc) and we can put more money in savings for a wedding, travels, etc...

We also are buying a used home and don't have 20% to put down, so we qualified for a FHA loan and only have to put down 3.5%. There are also a lot of renovation loans out there, but we have decided not to go with the FHA 203k loan because most mortgage companies don't have that because it's so risky. Our mortgage lender we are going with doesn't offer that and we don't want to go with anyone else. And we don't want to pay a ton of interest on a $10,000 loan when we can save money over time and pay $10,000 cash to do renovations.

Now on to the realtor process. We got really lucky here as well since my sisters childhood friend, Carrie Ingram with Keller Williams, is a local realtor and we know she will take care of us. We start our house hunting process tomorrow and we are so excited! It's still a little early in the game but our realtor wants to get an idea of our likes and dislikes. 

We had an idea of what area we wanted to live in but right now there is only one home (in our price range) in that area, so we had to expand our search. We are now convinced that our plan b area is now where we want to live! We love the area, and we can get a lot more land than where we first started looking. I didn't know much about this area and it's a lot further drive for me to work, but we would rather have land and be in a safe area. The drive is actually shorter than my drive now and I like my quiet time in the car. So my drive is about 35 minutes and Chance's is about 15 minutes.

Stay tuned and follow us on our house hunt tomorrow!