The Kitchen

Here are photographs of our kitchen. I just took these last week, even though it's been painted since about the time we moved in. I still need to put some more decor up, but I haven't had much time to do any real artwork and I haven't found anything at stores that I'm too fond of. [I did the oil drawing above the one door. It's simple, but I like it.]

















We painted the kitchen using a no VOC paint. [I cannot tell you how AWESOME no VOC paints are! You can paint your whole house - pretty much what we did - and not have to open windows and have fans turned on because of fumes. I loved not having to have every window open and every fan turned on while I painted; and I loved not getting headaches and end up getting sick from paint fumes.] I'm still waiting on Mark to pull the refrigerator out a bit so that I can paint behind it. Hopefully he decided to get on that real soon because I'm annoyed with having 98% of the kitchen painted. I'd like to have the entire kitchen painted!

Our House: The Office

Since we have four bedrooms in our house, we have decided to turn one of the bedrooms into our office area. It's not a very large room, which is fine because what office needs to be massive? We're going to have to buy a desk for the room, and we're probably going to buy a computer because all we have right now is my laptop. I would really like to have an actual computer in our house instead of having to use my laptop for everything. I am always afraid that my laptop is going to crash on us, and I am going to be SOL with all of my school stuff. [Really, you have no idea how often and how bad I fear that my laptop is going to crash on me one day. I don't care if this laptop is a little over a year old, it gets used a lot and I get very nervous!]

I want to get a desk like this for the office:

I don't like the finish of it, but I like the style. I like the L shape because I prefer to have my pen and paper to the side of me when I'm on a computer and writing stuff down. Also, I just think that L-shaped desks look so much nicer than a regular desk.

Mark and I have decided to make the theme of the office Ohio State. We have so much Ohio State stuff and we're going to put it to use in our office. In the townhouse, the boys' room was all Ohio State stuff; and we've gotten so much Ohio State through the years. I don't know exactly what I am going to do with the wall color(s), but I will figure something out. I know people are probably thinking Paint the walls red. We already have at least one red room in the house, with another possible one. I am sure that I will figure out what to do though. I just don't want to get stuck with painting that room the same way I painted the boys' room in the townhouse because I wanted to throw every can of paint at the walls before it was over since it was just so tedious. Yeah, the boys' room looked amazing when I was done, but it was just too much for me due to total lack of help from Mark.

Having an office would be so beneficial for us! With me going to school, it would be so nice to have a space to do my schoolwork. Also, Mark's considering taking a few online classes. So it would be nice for him to have a space to do schoolwork, too. We'd also have an area to keep all of our files and whatnot. I hate having our files and stuff in our bedroom. I feel like it's invading our space. LOL. So having an office is going to be quite nice!

Our House: The Laundry Room

Oh, the laundry room. We finally have a laundry room! In base housing, our washer and dryer sat right next to the counter in the kitchen. In the townhouse, our washer and dryer were in a little closet in the kitchen. The only separation was the two bi-folding doors. In this house, our washer and dryer are in the garage. I am so happy that we actually have a laundry room!! Also, I really like that the laundry room is in between the garage and kitchen. It's going to be quite nice having that little separation between the garage and the kitchen.

Some people would probably not care what their laundry room looks like. I am not one of those people. I do care what my laundry room looks like! My laundry room is going to be a fun little space. Laundry can be a bit of drag, so by making the room interesting, I'm hoping that laundry won't suck as much. LOL.

The color I want to paint the laundry room is one of these two greens:

I am kind of feeling the green on the right because the one on the left is a bit too light for my liking. I feel that the green on the right will stand out more, too.

I want to replace the wire shelf with a wood shelf that is black. I think the green and black will go so well together. Not only do I want to put a black shelf in there, I want to get a black washer and black dryer. Mark and I have been talking about getting a new washer and dryer for a while, so why not get new ones now that we have a brand new home? I have already found what I want, too. I want to get the black, front loading washer and dryer. Of course, Energy Star rated is important!

I'm not sure if I really want to or not, but I have been thinking about maybe even painting the woodwork/baseboards in the laundry room black. I think it would look nicer if the woodwork/baseboards were black and not white. Hell, I'm even thinking about painting the doors black. LOL. I just think that white will look stupid and not allow the room to really stand out. I know, I know, I'm overthinking the laundry room; but I just don't want any room in my house to look stupid!

It may sound a bit odd, but I am really excited about the laundry room! I can't wait to paint it and get it all put together! It's going to be such a fun little room! I'm hoping that I enjoy doing laundry in there! LOL. I have a feeling I will enjoy it though.

Our House: The Kitchen

I love our kitchen! I love that we have an island, a pantry, and that it's open! Oh, we also have granite countertops! Love it! The appliances are stainless steel and Energy Star rated. The builder is also giving us a stainless steel refrigerator to match the rest of the appliances!! The refrigerator is Energy Star rated, too.

Mark and I are kind of going back and forth about the colors we want to paint the kitchen. We don't know if we should go with yellows or oranges. Mark wants the colors to be "in your face", but I don't want the walls to be "in your face". The color of the plant ledge can be "in your face", but not the walls. However, I don't want there to be an insanely dramatic difference between the walls and plant ledge. Then there's the part of me saying that yellows and oranges would not look right in the kitchen because of the countertops and the cabinets. I swear, it is going to be so difficult to figure out a color that Mark and I can agree on. It doesn't matter if I'm the one with a design major and if I've always been the artistic one [and Mark's complete lack of artistic abilities], Mark won't let me just pick out the colors on my own.

I can't wait to bake and cook in the kitchen! I love being in a nice kitchen because it makes me want to bake and cook often. I love to bake and cook as it is, but I love it even more when I'm in a nice kitchen.

All of the cabinets and the pantry will give me so much storage space for everything. I always feel like we never have enough room for all of my kitchen stuff, and that is why some of my stuff never even gets unpacked. When we moved into this house, I never unpacked about two large Rubbermaid boxes of kitchen stuff because we didn't have enough storage space in the kitchen. I couldn't even unpack some of our other kitchen stuff [coffee maker, George Foreman grill, etc.] because there wasn't enough counter space nor storage space in the cabinets. So all of the storage space in our new house is very nice!

I love our house! It's going to be so nice once I'm done decorating it! I hope that we have people over often because I feel like our house is just right for entertaining.

Our House: The Master Bathroom

Our master bathroom is going to be so much fun!! I can't wait to paint and decorate it! I am going to paint the room in a gumball red color and it will be in either a semi-gloss or hi-gloss finish!!!! Mark is all for it! I love it! So while the walls are red, the accents and such are going to be black. I am hoping to find two mirrors with black frames to use in place of the mirror that's on the wall. I feel that having individual mirrors will look better with what I am going for in the bathroom. I am going to use the same the shower curtain that we have in our main bathroom here [picture below].

The bathroom is going to have the Hollywood/movie theme. I love old Hollywood! It is so much fun and classy! Hollywood today is just dirty and fairly stupid, if you ask me.

Our bathroom has three closets. Yes, three closets! How awesome is that?! There are his and her walk-in closets, as well as a linens closet. I am going to take the shelves out of the closets and paint the walls the same color as the bathroom. I want to put nice shelves and stuff in the closets because I want the closets to look nice and not cheap. Also, I want the shelves and stuff to be black. I want them to match the accents in the bathroom.



The master bathroom is going to be amazing! I can't wait to work on it! This room is going to really stand out, and I am going to love every bit of it!

Our House: The Hallway & Family Room

When you first walk into out house, you will be in a hallway. If you take a few steps, on your left will be an "entrance" into another mini hallway where there are two bedrooms and the main bathroom. If you walk straight ahead, you will enter the family room, and to your right are the kitchen and dining area.

The family room is going to be neutral colors. Yes, you read that right, colors - plural. We are going to paint the walls in the family room and hallway a lighter brown, and the plant ledge that kind of separates the family room from the kitchen and dining area is going to be a bit darker because I want it to stand out. The plant ledge is such a major feature in the house, I don't want it to blend in with the rest of the room. I am also considering painting the plant ledge above the sliding glass doors the same color as the plant ledge that separates the rooms.

I am going to put vertical blinds and a raised valance above the sliding glass doors. Also, I am going to install a bar on the one side of the sliding glass doors so that the boys can't simply unlock the door and go outside whenever they want. We are going to eventually put a fence up around our yard, but I just don't want them going outside whenever they feel like it and I don't want anybody freely walking into our house that isn't supposed to.

I am probably going to put vertical blinds and a raised valance above the back window, too. The window and door are close to each other that I don't want them to look very different.

Mark and I want to put the TV on the outside wall, but we'll need to get a cable thing put on that wall. We are going to have our larger couch directly facing the TV, but there will be space behind the couch so that people can easily get to the back door without walking in front of people watching TV. Our other couch will be facing the kitchen, about a foot away from the back window. Our recliner will be opposite of the couch, but at an angle facing the TV. That's how our current furniture will be set up because we plan on getting new furniture at some point. I'd like to get furniture that's darker than the furniture we have now. Plus, the boys have slightly damaged the furniture we have now.

As for the decor, Mark and I haven't really talked much about it yet. I want the picture frames to have black frames though because I believe that black frames look so much better than anything else. Mark and I did find quite a few mighty large antique looking wall clocks when we were in Florida, and we are going to get one eventually. I have always wanted a large clock to hang on a wall.

I can't wait to move into our brand new house! I am beyond excited about it!! It is so perfect!

Back From Florida

Say hello to our brand new house!!


On Monday morning, Mark and I packed our stuff in the car and left for Florida. It took us about 12-13 hours to get there. [It takes us about 12 hours to get back home in Ohio from here.] The drive was alright, but I did sleep a little bit. Mark said the drive was really boring and that he hated it.

So we got there Monday night, and Tuesday morning started the hunt for a house. We met with our realtor, Lyle, around 10:00 AM. We looked at 5 or 6 houses [one of them being a model home] on Tuesday. After we were done looking, our realtor took us to lunch and we talked about expanding the search to different areas in town, the price range, and other stuff. We liked the houses we saw on Tuesday, but nothing really grabbed our attention like we needed. So our realtor expanded the search, sent us some new houses in a link Tuesday night, and we were back out looking at houses Wednesday morning at 9:15. On Wednesday, we covered more ground in town. I think we even went outside of town to check out a house or two. We looked at about 5 or 6 houses on Wednesday. Just about all of the houses we looked at while we were searching were built by Henry Company Homes. I love their style of architecture/building and their floorplans are spectacular! As we were going to look at another one of their houses in a development, we passed a house that was just a little bit out of the price range we had set, but we decided to go look at it anyway because it was still a price that we would be more than capable of being able to pay for. Mark and I go in, check it out, and we just love it!! While we did love it, we still wanted to look around at other houses and see if we could find something else we loved even more. So we leave that house and head around the corner to the house we were heading to before. We got to the house, and it was really nice! Mark really liked it, I just liked it. After looking at the house for a little bit and talking with each other and our realtor, we decided to give our mortgage broker a call. We call Pati and she figured out how much money we'd be paying each month for everything so that we would have a clearer idea of what we want to do. Mark and I talked for a few minutes after we got off the phone with Pati. We didn't know if we should continue looking, go back to the last house that we fell in love with, or what. We then talk to our realtor and he suggests that we go back to the last house and see if it still has the effect on us like it did when we first saw it. So off to the house we go. Yep, it still had that same effect on me! And it did on Mark, too! We looked around again, trying to see if there was just that one thing that would change our minds. There wasn't. The house was perfect! Our realtor asks us if we want to move forward immediately, or if we wanted to sleep on it. Mark said he wanted to sleep on it, but I said that there would be no sleeping on my end because I'd be too busy planning what I want to do to the house. I told Mark he could sleep on it if he wanted, but after a little while, he changed his mind and decided to move forward. Lyle, our realtor, called the realtor that is managing the development and property. It took him about 30 minutes to get to the house. Once he got to the house, he explained the property in detail to us. It turns out that that particular house has so many features that other houses with the same floorplan do not have. Nice! After talking some more with the development/property manager and his brother, we were pretty much sold on the house! It was just too perfect to not have it for ourselves! So we went over to the model house where the office was, and we got the ball rolling. Mark signed papers, I wrote a check, and we discussed the house and the house buying process even more. About 30 minutes after we left the office, we were told that there was a SOLD sign in the front yard and that the house is ours!!!!

On Thursday afternoon, we had to go back to the house for the first walk-through with one of the builders, our realtor, and the development/property manager. We walked through the house and knit-picked it. Every little, and major, cosmetic defect was marked on the inside and the outside of the house. People are going to go back to the house and fix everything that was marked. It was kind of "buzz kill" going through the house and picking it apart, but it makes me happy that those problems will be fixed before we move into the house - and for free!

After we did the walk-through, we went to the development/property manager's office and took care of some more paperwork. Once we were finished with that, we went to our mortgage broker's office. Mark had a lot of paperwork to do while we were there, and I had a lot of paperwork to give our mortgage broker, Pati. Any worries Mark and I may have had, Pati reassured us everything would be great and that we are way more than capable of being able to pay for every little thing.

So everything is done on our side for now. Pati said she was going to rush to get everything done immediately so that we can close on October 1. The written date on our contract is October 8, but everyone is working to get everything done by October 1. How exciting! I can't believe that we may just leave here on September 30, and move into our brand new house the very next afternoon/evening!!!! I love it! I can't wait!