We finally did it!

We closed on our new home this evening!

The relief I feel right now is indescribable. Buying a home is stressful!!!

We will be moving next weekend. We would move this weekend but we'd like to enjoy the long weekend with family at Donner.

We are very grateful this all worked out like it did. God had His hand in all of this I'm sure!

Now onto more important things like decorating, blogging and other exciting things coming our way!!

Xoxo,

Home Sweet Home

Whew!

I'd just like to state for the record that the past three-and-a-half weeks have been the craziest of my life.

But, one thing at a time.

First, the week of July 16th we began house hunting. Looking for homes is so exhausting (I may have already said that in another post, but it's been so long since I've posted I'll just say it again). The driving from place to place, getting in and out of cars, looking at so many different homes, neighborhoods, kitchens and beyond is very tiring. Kevin and I definitely had our fair share of discussions arguing.

After a couple weeks of looking and probably 40 homes later we finally just narrowed it down to what we wanted; plain and simple. A home that's fairly updated and move-in-ready, in a nice neighborhood, near both of our jobs and big enough for our families to visit.

Lo and behold I found the perfect house on Wednesday, July 25th. I immediately fell in love with it. Unfortunately, Kevin wasn't able to see it with me that day, so he had to come the next day (Thursday). Since I had a feeling he'd like it too, I had our realtor make sure to bring the offer docs with her the next day when Kevin saw it.

As I suspected, he liked it so we made an offer on Thursday, July 26th. Waiting the next 24 hours was pure torture for me. Patient I am not!

On Friday, July 27th at about 4:40pm our realtor called me to deliver to good news that our offer was accepted! Probably the biggest relief ever. Apparently, there were four other offers on the table and some of them were even above our offer price (and we even offered over asking! - it's just the way the market is in this area right now) and the sellers still chose our offer. Yay! I called Kevin to give him the good news.

We are coming up on 15 days into escrow, so we're about halfway there. All the inspections have been cleared. There are a few things that we've requested to be done before we move in, but nothing major.

It's a four bedroom, two bath home on 1/4 acre lot in a good neighborhood that is located exactly halfway between my office and Kevin's office.

So without further ado, here is our future [dream] home!

The breakfast nook area off the kitchen

The family room area off the breakfast nook area

The formal living/dining/entrance area when you walk in the front door. I can't wait to put a Christmas tree in front of that big, corner window!

The incredibly large backyard (this is only a quarter of it) that will need a lot of TLC

Other view of the backyard

To be honest, this entire escrow process has stressed me out to no end. Today we're supposed to get the appraisal results back and I keep telling myself that once we have that I can relax. But I'm sure I'll find something else to worry about and stress over. Ha!

We're excited!

365 days later...

The weekend of our anniversary, Kevin and I went to Napa to celebrate our first year of marriage.

He surprised me with a hot air balloon ride - which was completely awesome! If you ever have the chance to do that, I highly recommend it. Apparently, there's a lot that has to do with weather and temperature so they're not available everywhere, but it's definitely something you should add to you bucket list.

I'm just going to let these pictures speak for themselves because they are just too amazing not to share.

Us! :)

Can I get an "Amen" for the beauty God created!? It was breathtaking.

For my gift to Kevin, I got him a private golf lesson on Sunday. He was a fan. :)

In between all that we did a lot of eating, napping and a little wine tasting.

It was great to get away for a weekend and spend some time together. On one hand it feels like we've been married for more than a year, and on the other hand it feels like our wedding day was just yesterday! It's been a year full of tears, stress, changes, laughter, surprises and love and I wouldn't want to spend all that with anyone other than my Kevo.

Flashback Friday - Wedding Edition

I haven't done one of these in a while, so I looked back to around this date last year and apparently we were one week from getting married!

Here's the post I did for that Friday.

It's funny how as your life goes by and you evolve, what you think was important then may not seem like it is so much now. For example, all that worrying I was doing in the week leading up to our wedding was not worth it. Everything turned out fine and our day was perfect.

I should give myself the same advice now for our home buying process. Ha!

I hope you all have a great weekend and you're able to soak up this last weekend of July. Time goes by way too fast!

Hugs,

M.I.A.

I'm still here!

We've starting our house hunting process and it is such a time-suck!

Who knew that house hunting would be so time-consuming and STRESSFUL!

I'll tell you what. Finding a house, making offers, waiting for offers to be accepted are not good on my anxious self. Ha!

So, I haven't had the time to focus on blogging; but I wanted to document the process somewhat.

There's so much you have to take into consideration when buying a home: location, distance from workplaces, neighborhood (which is high on our list), absolute must-haves, absolutely nots, and the list goes on and on.

And even though this is a "Buyers' Market" it's a tough "Buyers' Market." You have to just get in quickly and hope your offer is picked.

*sigh*

Like I said...stressful.

However, I'm very thankful we can afford to buy a home and I know that eventually we'll find one that we both love and that will be perfect for a future family of ours.

Thanks for listening to me vent.

Xoxo,

Five on Friday

#1. My hair is really long right now. I'm thinking the longest it's ever been. I'd like to grow it out even longer so I can do all those amazing hair tutorials I find on Pinterest (so I keep telling myself). I sometimes get an urge to chop it all off, though. That urge is right now seeing as it's been over 100 degrees this week and blow drying it is torture.

#2. Kevo's birthday is on Tuesday so I have a full day planned of fun stuff tomorrow. It's all a surprise so I can't share, but it should be a nice day.

#3. I love my job. I hardly ever do the same thing each day, it's fast-paced and the people here are generally really nice and really funny. However, if I were to have a baby I would still want to be a SAHM. What can I say? I like being home!

#4. I got my nails done last week and had them painted white. Worst. Decision. Ever! They're all dingy now and gross-looking. I plan to re-paint them this evening.

#5. We've decided we're going to Napa for our anniversary! I'm excited. Kevin has a surprise planned that he won't tell me about so I'm extra excited to find out what that ends up to be.

Have a great weekend!

Wordless Wednesday

Your eyes do not deceive you.
That is indeed an El Camino with beer spigots on the back.
There are no words.
Love it or hate it?