before & after

Just a little comparison of how it looked when the previous owner lived here vs. how we have decorated since we've lived here...

before:

after:


I'm pretty satisfied :)

house tour....

I realized I haven't posted any pictures of what our house looks like lately...and since I cleaned up, I decided to take some pictures! Enjoy this little tour! :)

This is the view of the dining, kitchen & living room from the door to the garage...


Another view of the dining room *and Scout*


Breakfast nook *and Scout*


Standing at the kitchen bar, looking at our "guest hall" with the bathroom, laundry room, linen closet and 2 guest rooms...


The guest bath. I really want to paint the cabinet white.


The finished guest room (looks about the same as before)...



The former "junk room"... now the "empty room" or Queso's room...
Will someday be the nursery.



View from the breakfast nook...


Just bought these new kitchen rugs to spice things up.


View of the living room from the dining room.


I forgot to take pictures of our bedroom, but it looks exactly the same as before anyway :)
I WISH I took a picture of our garage because we TOTALLY cleaned it out! So much more space now!

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this little tour... This will be good for when we do major work around the house, so we can look back and see how far we've come. We feel so blessed to have this home though. Sometimes I just stand around looking at it, and I feel so thankful.

halleluyah!!!!

I feel like that person who says "NO MORE WIRE HANGERS!!!!" but instead its...

no more bamboo blinds!!!

That's right... yesterday I finally bit the bullet and ordered faux-wood blinds to put in our living room and dining room! Say goodbye to our ugly bamboo vertical panels!!!!!!!

The new ones will be delivered in 2 weeks, and then we get to install them!
Wish us luck! :)

christmas time!

We are all decorated for Christmas!!!





...and we had our first snow!!!


We are so blessed to have this home.

P.S. Coming soon: Pictures of our new bedroom furniture that arrived!

the fall porch.

I just want to say that I love having a house with a porch. Remember this post from last year where I was lamenting the fact that our little apartment didn't have a porch and those with porches shouldn't take it for granted??? Well I just want y'all to know that I DON'T take it for granted.

I am so happy to have a porch.

help the mccradys: the foyer.

Hello, and welcome to our foyer. The first impression of our home.

Stylish huh? Can't you just feeeel the look we were going for?

To the left is the garage. To the right is the hallway leading to the 2 bedrooms, guest bath and utility room.

It doesn't look like it from the pictures, but it is a rather large foyer. And I literally don't have ONE thing that looks good there.

Here's what it looked like before we bought the house:

I've tried to find a cool console table or mirror or something, but I'm not having any luck.
Any ideas?

connected!

We're finally all moved into our house! We had our first night sleeping here last night, and we got our cable/internet set up just now! I'm so glad to be connected to the world again! The big move yesterday went off without a hitch...thank goodness! We were just in awe of how blessed we are to have amazing family that help us in our time of need :) Now, we'll be unpacking, setting things up and decorating. I'll be sure to post lots and lots of pictures!!

the plan.

Well we have a plan now which makes me feel better :) We are officially closing on Thursday at 3pm. Which is only a day's delay so that's not too bad now that I've heard about some of you being delayed for weeks!! So that means we'll get the keys to our home on Thursday evening!!! I've said it a thousand times already but it remains true: I'M SO READY FOR THIS TO BE OVER. To take a breath, relax, and focus on moving rather than all this legal junk. Now it just looks like we have to wait for about 48 hours more until this home is ours! Hooray!!!

help the mccradys: volume 3

So, our seller is taking her formal dining room light fixture with her when she leaves...which is fine with us because it is an antique Japanese-inspired glass fixture which is obviously not our taste, and it obviously means a lot to her anyway. SO, that will be one of the very first purchases we'll be making because we can't have a dining room without a light fixture! :)

This is actually proving to be one of the harder decisions for us because whatever finish this fixture is, we'll want to make all the other ones in the kitchen and living room match. (Remember, they're all brass so we're going to be spray painting them for a more modern and unified look.) We can't decide between brushed nickel (an opaque silver) or oil rubbed bronze (a dark brown) look. I think we're both leaning toward the latter, but who knows.

Here are some that I like...
And, just for kicks, since we're closing in 2 days, here's a glimpse of what our dining room looks like. Remember that basically everything in this picture will be different :) We're changing the window to have blinds and pretty, long draperies, we're probably painting the walls, we'll have a long dark brown dining room table and chairs, and we'll most likely have a matching cabinet to go with it. Oh, and eventually hardwood floors and a pretty rug. Just to name a few...

Thoughts?

the walk through

Last night's walk through went really well! We didn't find any issues at all, and it was really fun to walk around and imagine what our furniture will look like! The seller was there, and she graciously showed us all of the landscaping, hot tub, sprinkler system, etc. so we'd know how to do everything. She is this really cute little old lady, and she said that she knows "the house will love us" and she was so excited that we'd be starting our lives together in that home. She said that the house has seen a lot of love and she hopes we can continue that tradition. :)

She told us all about the neighbors (there is a young couple with 2 very young children living next door!), and she left us a ton of information about the house. It was really great to talk with her, and I'm so thankful we have such a nice and welcoming seller to deal with. I know most people don't even meet the seller when they're buying a home, but I'm glad we did!

We were so encouraged after the walk through, and it made everything we've been going through totally worth it! I had forgotten how much I loved the house, so it was good to get a reminder! :)

Now I just have to finish packing... woohoo! :)

the breakfast nook

I'm really excited about our breakfast nook. It's connected to the kitchen, and it's surrounded by a bay window that looks out on to the backyard. Ever since we started thinking about this house, I've been daydreaming about enjoying my coffee and laptop in this room :) I'm thinking I'd like to paint this area (as well as the kitchen) a light yellow to cheer it up... Here are some inspirations!

This one isn't yellow, but I'm loving the Roman shades!

P.S. Just so you can picture it... here's the picture of our actual breakfast nook. Yes, those are Japanese decals on the wall. Don't worry--they aren't there anymore! :) Basically the whole house is currently decorated with a tropical/asian/bungalow look....which will soon be turned into our Pottery Barn-esque look. What do you think about yellow in this room?

help the mccradys: volume 1

Okay, we need a little help. I'm listing out some questions and hopefully a few of y'all can give us your never-ending wisdom!

1.) We'll have a month of being in both the apartment and the house, paying only the apartment rent because our first month's house payment isn't until August 1st! So, how would y'all recommend moving?
Should we:
a) do it all at once in one day so it's over (we can clean the apt. later) or
b) just move the stuff we need first to the house and then slowly go through the stuff we dont' need later at the apartment and get rid of stuff

2.) Our main living room which goes into the dining room has carpet. We'd like to eventually get hardwood floors in that area, but we also need a dining room table, patio furniture, ceiling fan, light fixture, window treatments...the list goes on.
Should we:
a) get hardwood floors down before moving and get furniture later or
b) just move everything in and focus on the furniture for right now (worry about wood floors later)

3.) We close on Thursday June 25th. I'm taking the Thursday, Friday and Monday off to get our house all of our utilities set up. I'd really like to get in the house and clean before we move anything in. Just to give it one good clean (especially in the bathrooms, kitchen, etc.) before we start living there. I'd also really like to paint our living room/dining room walls before we move our furniture in, but Ryan thinks we could wait.
Should we:
a) clean, paint, and get everything settled before moving our furniture in or
b) just clean, move all of our stuff in and then worry about painting later

4.) This is just a personal taste thing, but Ryan and I are disagreeing on what our kitchen should look like. First of all, this kitchen is a dream. It's so large, there are tons of windows looking out to the backyard, and there's SO much counter space and cabinets. However, Ryan and I are not satisfied with the cabinets. Ryan wants to stain them much darker for a rich look, and I want to paint them white for a fresh and open look. Check out the picture below for a good look. This is the only picture of the house's interior we'll show until we can move in.

P.S. That's linoleum that we'll change to ceramic tile eventually. It's just not super high on the list of priorities at the moment. And we'll get new appliances someday, too. And granite. And a new light fixture. And paint. What color paint? That's another question entirely. :)

Should we:
a) stain them darker for a rich look or
b) paint them white for a fresh and open look

Okay, that's all for today. Help! Thanks!

hummingbirds & butterflies.

We're in the process of getting the seller to give us instructions on how to keep her gorgeous landscaping looking beautiful. Yesterday at the inspection, I got the chance to take more pictures of the front and back yards. The seller showed me her hummingbird feeder that she's leaving with the house, and there were actual hummingbirds buzzing around it! Gorgeous! Also, she had some plants that attract butterflies, so I literally felt like Snow White in the pretty meadow with butterflies and hummingbirds! :)
I can't wait to sit in our breakfast nook with the bay window and drink coffee while looking out at the gorgeous backyard... ahhhh can't WAIT!

P.S. I know y'all are wanting to see pictures of the inside, but we're waiting until we can get before & after pictures because the seller's decor and ours is WAY different! All in due time. Until then, I'll be posting about design inspiration and decor ideas. Yay!

HOORAY!!!

The seller agreed to pay for that one issue we had from the inspection, and it's now fixed!!!!

We had signed in our contract that if she'd fix what we requested, then we'd waive the rest of the 10-day option period so she wouldn't be worrying that we're going to back out and she can stop showing her house to other people...

So that means that we're officially getting this house! AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

Until we close on June 25th, we'll be getting everything in order to move! We'll get to do one final walk through on the day before just to make sure everything was taken care of, and then it's a done deal! I can't even believe it!!!!!!!

Thank you Lord for making this part easy!

good news for now!

The inspection went great. The guy said "our" house is in GREAT shape. Excellent, in fact. All of the big expensive issues like foundation, heating/AC, and roof were fabulous so that's great to hear.

There was one issue that we're asking the seller to fix, and hopefully she does so she can get this wrapped up! But even if she doesn't, the inspector said we shouldn't be out too much money to fix it.

Anyway, that's exciting! I'm thrilled that it's such a great house and in really great shape. :) :) :) I'm ready for this 10 day option period to be over with so we can start planning!

home inspection today!

Please pray for our home inspection this morning! Ryan can't be there because he has to work but my sweet Dad will be joining me!

Please pray that the stupid Texas foundation doesn't rear it's ugly head in our home!
Please pray that there's nothing super seriously wrong because I really don't want to walk away from this lovely home.
Please pray that if there's anything to be fixed that our seller would graciously pay for the expense (and not think about all those other offers waiting behind us)!

After this last hurdle is over, we can finally start getting REALLY excited and REALLY know that this is our home. And then the greatness of packing, utility set-up, etc. can start! :)

things i'm really excited about:

Just a few things I'm looking SO forward to with our new house:

1. a yard so that Scout can run and play...and we won't have to walk him every few hours!
2. a fireplace for cold nights and to hang our Christmas stockings on!
3. a huge master bedroom so we'll have more than 2 feet on each side of our bed!
4. 2 extra bedrooms to have an office and guests over!
5. a garage so we won't have to scrape ice off our cars during the winter!
6. an attic to store all of our junk!
7. walk-in closets in every room!
8. a patio so we can finally grill out!
9. double our square footage!
10. a place to finally call our OWN!
    

our soon-to-be house!

Long story short, we put down an offer on this house last night, and the seller accepted it today! There were SIX other offers RIGHT after ours, but we were the first so we made the deal! It is PERFECT for us, and we're thrilled!

I'll tell y'all the whole story as soon as I can stop shaking from excitement!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(P.S. Y'all were so right. House #1 was totally the one for us!)