New Home Tour: Part 3 or ~A Surprise~

This is the last of the home tour. I'll probably show before/after pictures as we do some updating on the house. Right now we don't have any work planned, but we know what our projects are for the future.

Below is Chloe's room. I decided to go with a blue since her room at our other house was pink. I needed to change it up a bit. She seems to like it. I knew I wanted polka dots, but I wasn't really sure how to accomplish the task. I've never used a stencil, but I was pretty sure it would be messy and smudge everywhere. After checking out the InterWeb, I came across this YouTube video on Polka Dot Wall Painting. It was a perfect solution. It was so easy and fast! Chloe loves it and she tries to lick the wall the dots on the wall...she seems to think it's ice cream.

As you can see, I only did one and a half walls with the dots. I didn't want the whole room to be so busy.

This is the laundry room. It's directly across from Chloe's room. I'll eventually paint and put some organizational shelving and such in here.

Now, don't judge. I was going to clean this room for pictures, but then I decided to just be honest. This is the second guest room. It's not decorated. I use it to sort and fold my laundry. I haven't bothered decorating it, because it's going to be a baby room in a few short months! That's right...

We are having baby G2 in June of 2013. We are about 14 weeks right now...starting the second trimester.

Chloe turns 3 in May and this baby will make his/her appearance shortly after her celebration. We are so excited!

Chloe is very adamant that she wants a brother. Mark is sure it's another girl. I have no idea nor do I care. I really don't. I would love to have son and think I would be sad to never have a boy. But, Chloe's so much fun that another girl would be a wonderful addition...plus I have a lot of girl clothes. We'll know more in January! 

New Home Tour: Part 2

This is probably my favorite part of our home. After living in a box for the last five years (don't get me wrong...our first home was great), this open floor plan is just what we needed. I love that I can be in the kitchen and still be a part of the family room activities.

This part of our house is hidden in the back after you walk through the formal area. In our other house, you walked in the front door and were immediately standing in our family room. It can be a little awkward when you don't really know the person ringing the doorbell.

The only two drawbacks to an open kitchen?

1. The dishwasher is loud. If you want to talk, you have to wait until bedtime to run it.
2. The kitchen must be kept clean at all times...everybody can see the mess when your kitchen isn't hidden behind a wall.

I'm not complaining about either drawback. It doesn't bother me at all. I'm just pointing out the cons.

Below is the kitchen. When we moved in the entire house was white. I don't mean a shade of white. I mean the base color white that they use to mix another color...as white as white can get. Blinding white. So we toned everything down by painting the walls a sandy beige and the kitchen 'Chocolate Milk.' We also had the counter tops replaced. They were white Formica...we had that in the other house and so we decided we wanted to upgrade to quartz.

The view from the family room.

View from the hallway entrance. The door you see in the picture leads to the master suite.

Just another angle of the hallway entrance. I know there are a ridiculous amount of pictures of the kitchen...it's my favorite part of this house.

This is the family room. I haven't put up mini blinds yet. I'm still trying to figure out how to handle this situation. I love the natural light that flows in and this our backyard, so I'm tempted to leave it so I can have the light. It's not like we sit around naked watching television...

View of the family room fireplace.

Art niche which I'm clearly not using for 'art.'

This is the breakfast nook. It's huge for a 'nook' so now you see why we really have no use for the formal dining area. Don't mind the ugly linoleum. I'll put tile in someday, but I've discovered that linoleum is really easy to clean which comes in very handy with a messy toddler and mealtime.

View of the hallway that leads to the spare bedrooms and laundry room...which is next up on the home tour.

New Home Tour: Part 1

This is long overdue. But, I'm happy to start the tour of our new home. Below is our formal living/dining combo room. You can see the tree set up in the front window. When you turn to your right as you come in the front door, there is a double door to our office (pictures included in post).

Below is the formal dining portion of the combo room. For the immediate future it will function as a play area. We don't really have use for a formal dining area and we really could use the play room for Chloe. You can see Chloe walking through the entry way into our open kitchen/living area. You can also see that there are quite a few toys in there...

These are the double doors to the right of the front door that lead to our office area/man cave.

Office. Mark picked the desk off Craigslist. I painted the room Antique Pewter. I just love the color!

Please excuse the lack of curtains. When we moved in there were no mini blinds, so we spend quite a bit putting those up for privacy. Someday I'll get around to putting up curtains and window toppers to add warmth and personality. I honestly don't have a sense of urgency about it. We plan to be in the house for a very long time.

 

That's all for now. I'll show our living room, kitchen and breakfast nooks next. I just need to do a little de-cluttering and that's difficult while Chloe is awake.