Home Progression: Getting settled

David and I were talking about it, and we decided it was probably time for another "House Progression" post. However, I decided to title this "Home Progression", because now our house is completely finished - but we are just getting started on our Home. 

We are well on our way in the process of unpacking. The end isn't in sight yet - but we have unpacked pretty much everything we need for a normal, functioning life. We absolutely LOVE our new house. Pretty much every day ends with one (or both) of us saying "I love this house, don't you just love this house? I can't believe we actually live here and that it is ours." It really is just such a beautiful home, and we are so blessed to have been able to get in while we did. (In just the past two months since we moved in - the base price on building a house exactly like ours, the Cameron, went up by $18,000. Effectively pushing it WAY out of our price range. We are so blessed that we found it and were able to build when we did.) I could go on an on about how much we love our house, but instead I'll just insert comments along with the pictures. 

As you enter the house you see this little living room. It's small and simple, but I love that it is there. We have a beautiful temple picture that is going to hang over one of the couches (if we ever have time to start hanging things on the walls). The other wall will have a large family picture, and maybe some other fun pictures of us together. Our favorite part about this room is having a place to display our printed blog books. (On the right side of the coffee table, next to my Young House Love book.) The coat closet is right across the way from the living room. It's obviously not organized. Who knows when our coats will make it out of those plastic sacks now that the weather has started to warm up? 

Next, you pass the stairs that has been decorated with a baby gate. So grateful to Wendy and Sam who gave us their old one, because it is VERY much needed. Lydia has this innate ability to sense if we ever forget to latch it and will make a beeline for the stairs. She LOVES to climb those stairs. We still have plans to build a window seat and bookcase in the little stair landing, but until we are actually able to do that - my cedar chest (made by my Grandpa Brown) fills the space nicely. I actually really love it there. 

Our tech center has become the central point of our home, just as we knew it would be. I can't believe how much I love it. The only obstacles is going to be keeping the counter area clean. (However, we have already come to terms with the fact that this will be the paper filled, drop and go counter. We'd rather have that than have any of our kitchen counters get cluttered up.) 

The family room is still one of our favorite rooms. The rug, chaise, and couches are so fun! When we first moved in, we moved our little TV stand downstairs and just put the TV on the coffee table because we were planning to buy a new entertainment center. However, we can't find one that we love so we are still in the market. Also: the blanket, toys, balloons, and bridal shower decorations? Yea, just trying to keep it real. That is what the room looked like when I was walking around taking pictures. 

Our kitchen is awesome. We're not completely settled on where everything belongs, but things are coming together. I love having so much space to prep and cook. It's not uncommon for me to set Lydia in the middle of the giant square island while I'm making dinner. I love that she is able to sit there and can't really get to an edge without crawling (and if she starts to crawl, I just pick her up and put her on the ground). At first I thought the island was much too large, but now that we are living here - I love love love it! Lydia has her own little play station at the bottom of the fridge and loves to play with her little farm animals and love to pull off all the magnets onto the floor. 

Next to the fridge is our pantry. It's nice and spacious, and is already filled up with all sorts of food. One of my favorite pars is the little bins that I bought to organize our spice/food/drink packets. Before these were all just stored in little plastic baggies, but I bought these in the dollar idle at Target and I really like them. It brightens up the space, keeps things organized, and plus I just really do like them. 

We also love our mudroom. It's so nice to have a designated area to drop our coats and shoes. I also have put a little laundry basket in one of the cubbies, and it is so nice to be able to put my dirty dishtowels there before taking them up to my favorite laundry room. Also, the little "P" hanging in the mudroom is officially the only thing that we have hung in our whole house. 

Taking a quick detour downstairs: 

Look at all of those empty boxes! Obviously nothing is organized down there, but it is so nice to have such a large space for storage/boxes now, and for our future family later.

The weather warmed up and McArthur finally came to do our final grade on our yard. They cleaned up all the junk/plastic/metal that they had left and made it look nice and pretty. Then they left their little tractor in front of our house for days. I'm glad I got a picture of it, because it was so funny to us. (Like, they just leave it after they finish a job until they need it at the next one.)  

I couldn't resist adding this picture in as well. If you look close you can see at least two sets of workers working on houses down the street. We are lucky that we moved in towards the end, because we already can't wait for all the construction to be done! 

Okay, back inside and up the stairs:

From the top of the stairs you see this... our diaper changing center. It just works for us. I'm sure someday we will move it out of the hallway, but for now it is perfect for those early morning and right before bed diaper changes. When we pull Lydia out of the tub at night, we lay her down right here and team up to get her into a diaper and pajamas. 

The someday "Nursery" is doubling as storage for all of the pictures and things that are not on our walls. (Really, we need to get on that already.)

Down the hall, the "Extra Bedroom/Red Ladder Room" isn't looking much better...

In fact, I'd dare say it is quite a bit worse. When we decided to go to a Bridal fair that was just eight days away after just weeks of living in our house, we knew that it was going to result in quite the whirlwind in this room. After all was said and done, we just shut the door and someday we will return to clean up our mess. (Do you see all the piles of wedding announcements on the ground? What an adventure.)

On to Lydia's room: 

Although not really decorated, for the most part everything is in it's place. Still no blinds, which means that a blanket over the window is our only option for window coverage during nap time. Our old microwave stand is now the dedicated toy-holder. I love it, and so does Lydia. She will pull herself up and pull the toys off of the shelf so she can play with them.  

Lydia loves to take baths, so we spend a good amount of time in here each night before bed. Things are slowly getting put together, although when I went to hang the shower curtain, I realized that we don't have a curtain rod! Apparently we have to go buy one. (Haha... I've been living in apartments for far too long.)  

Our hall closet is really pretty empty. I'm sure it will fill up quickly though. 

The sewing/laundry room is still my favorite room in the house, even if it isn't the most put together. 

I won't go on and on. But let me just say I am in love with having my own laundry room. Love, love, love it. I especially love that Lydia will crawl in with me and "help" me pull the clothes from the washer as I am moving them over the the dryer. I also love that I can pull the clothes from the dryer, set them on the ground in the sewing room, fold them, and then put them away immediately. No moving them into a basket then into a bedroom or family room where they will sit for days or be visible to visitors. It's so nice. My next project is to get the laundry stand my dad made for me painted so that I can get the washer and dryer up a bit higher. (Oh, and I also got some free subway tile from the wonderful Mindy Black - I think that I am going to tile in a beautiful little backsplash above the counter here in the laundry room. SO excited.) 

And, to end: The master bedroom/bathroom.

We are kind of dorky and don't really have a bedspread right now. The red blanket is a twin-sized comforter from my college days that it probably the most comfortable blanket ever. Underneath is a fuzzy Westlake High School blanket I was given for helping the marching band make sails. We stopped using our sheets/bedspread during this last winter because Lydia's room would get cold during the night, so we kept the heat up high even though our bedroom would roast. Now we are used to sleeping with just a couple of blankets. We start out with both blankets over both of us and almost always end up with one blanket each. I guess we are both blanket hogs. Who knew? 

Also, it took a bit of courage to post pictures of our bedroom, because it's not cute, and our bed is hardly ever made, and we don't even really know what we want to do in there, and it's definitely not pinterest worthy. But I've learned that not everything has to be pinterest-perfect. And that's okay. 

Speaking of keeping it real, we always have at least 2-3 toys on the bathroom floor for Lydia to play with in the morning while we get ready. No point in cleaning them up because the only time we are in there is when we need to keep her occupied.

Originally we each took half of the closet (1/2 top shelf, 1/2 bottom shelf), but then we realized that wasn't really working for us. So we switched so that David is all the way across the top, and I've got the whole bottom. We both like it a lot. Also, just for description purposes, I get the bottom two shelves and David gets the top two shelves. On the other side of the shelving unit (pictured below), David gets half for his suits and I get half for my dresses.  

We also bought some hooks for David to hang his belts. They fit perfectly right by his suits. 

Look at that view. Soon we will get blinds and curtains and it won't look so open. But until then, I am seriously enjoying the view. 

So there you go! A month and a half in - lots and lots of years to go. We have lots of plans and are excited to slowly start getting this house turned into the home we want it to be. I probably won't do a big house post like this again, instead I'll probably just post the rooms as we start getting them more put together - but we wanted a post of what our house really looks like right now. It will be fun someday to be able to see how far it has come.