Hello friends!

I’ve had several (okay, a lot) of people ask about life in our new home and how much we’re loving being home owners. I realized it was about time that I wrote out a proper update – both for those asking, and for our future selves (because this will be fun to read back on).

First things first, WE LOVE OUR HOME! It’s still pretty surreal that we have a house. And a beautiful house. And such a big house! I mean, I’m constantly floored at the abundance God has given us. That’s why I love this quote so much:

“If you are blessed with more than you need, don’t build a bigger pantry to store it. Build a bigger table to share in the abundance.”

That’s how we feel about this house… It’s an abundance. And our hope and prayer for this home is that through it, we can share in our blessings with others. Love others well. I’m not exactly sure what this will look like, but I know that if I come before the Lord with arms wide open, He always provides.

So if you haven’t yet seen a photo of our pretty house, this is what it looks like:

It’s technically a two story house? It’s actually called a split-level home. Here’s wikipedia’s explanation of a split-level home:

“A split-level home (also called a tri-level home) is a style of house in which the floor levels are staggered. There are typically two short sets of stairs, one running upward to a bedroom level, and one going downward toward a basement area.”

So when you walk into that cute little blue door, you’re immediately on a landing pad and have to choose whether to take a few steps up, or a few steps down. Then, like the description, all our bedrooms, kitchen and main living are on the “top” story. The “basement” is what holds my studio, an extra bathroom, the laundry room and our garage.

Georgia has a lot of hills, so this layout is pretty common for homes here. Many homes have a garage in the basement, but often you walk into the home on a higher level. It’s kinda quirky, but I feel like it makes space very efficient.

Anyways, that’s a brief explanation of the house. I do have a few videos of us walking through the home – so if that’s something you’d like to see (basically a before home-tour) then just leave a comment and let me know!

So we moved into our home on May 19th, 2018. You can read about our first 24 hours in our home and the craziness that ensued, but God’s hand was still so evident even amongst less than idea circumstances. And if you haven’t yet read our home-shopping journey, which was definitely challenging, taught us patience and was faith-stretching, you can read that story here!

The last (nearly) two months have gone by in a flash! In all honesty, when we moved in I had a short list of updates I wanted to do on the house… Simple things (well, in my head they were simple) like add a few windows to my studio, paint nearly all the bedrooms and closet, remodel the guest bathroom, and add some backsplash to the kitchen.

I say simple things, because most of the homes Daniel and I were looking at were total flip jobs. So when we ended up buying a house that was move in ready, the list of things we wanted to do seemed simple (even though I realize reading back through all of this… window installation is far from simple).

Nevertheless, as anything in life, and especially with home projects… Things take a lot longer than you think they will. Like probably quadruple the time we estimated.

I forget how much time is spent running to the Home Depot and Lowe’s 20 minutes away, wandering around the store, figuring out what to purchase, then heading home. Then you forget one important piece you need, and have to go back… You know the cycle!

So things have taken a lot longer than we thought they would. Then there’s been things that weren’t an immediate priority (like installing a water heater), that ended up taking precedence. Plus a lot of these things we have never done before – so there’s a learning curve and time spent trying to figure out how to do these things! But it’s been fun. It’s super rewarding seeing things slowly come together.

Keyword: slowly. If we’ve ever had a heart to heart, you’ll probably know that “Be still & Know that I am God.” is one of my favorite scriptures. It’s my favorite, and one of the verses I am most challenged by. I’ve never been good at sitting still. I’ve never considered myself a very patient person, nor have I ever been fond of activities that can’t be accomplished at a relatively quick place.

But if anything in this entire home shopping and owning journey, God has been teaching me to embrace this slowness. To enjoy the slow-pace that things are happening. To not try and rush through it all and have something “complete.” To embrace these moments where the house is still a mess, where the house is still a work in progress, where we still have boxes everywhere… and enjoy this season God has put us in.

All this being said… We’re really just embracing and loving this season. Getting familiar with our home, figuring out what our styles are (read this post to see my juxtaposition of farmhouse meets mid-century modern. So if Magnolia and West Elm had a baby… That would be our home style).

Again, it’s been fun! We’re still kind of learning what it means to be home owners, how we want to set up our home, etc. It honestly, in a way, almost feels like being newly weds again! Everything is so new and exciting, and it’s fun getting to figure it all out with your spouse.

In these last two months, we’ve learned that Daniel really is amazing at home projects. What he tackles, he conquers! I’ve been so amazed and proud to watch him do things he’s never done before: plumbing, window installation, dry wall, mud + taping, etc. We’ve had my dads help on some of the larger projects, but Daniel has also done a lot on his own, and I’m so proud!

As for me, I’ve really really reaaaaaaally embraced being a plant lady! Our home is full of plants, and I still have a desire for more. If you follow on Instagram, you know I have a pumpkin patch (the photos above are some of the flowers from it) and we have a growing compost pile that’s actually sprouting watermelon seeds! Along with all the plants, I’ve really grown a love for cooking and trying new meals with Daniel every evening.

For both of us, it’s been fun to see new passions come out. I think mutually our favorite thing to do is spend time outside! We’ve both really gotten into composting, and are excited to have raised beds next spring full of veggies, herbs and fruit! We have plants early this fall to get some goats, chickens and bees (in late January) and want to grow a backyard homestead!

Okay, so this post is growing in length, and I wanted to share some more pictures of what we have been able to pull together in our beautiful, new home!

My favorite room in the house, and the first one we completed, is our living room! We made the decision to paint the main wall black in this room, and it’s seriously my favorite thing! The black sounds extreme, but it works so well in this space. There’s a ton of natural light, and I don’t know, but it somehow just makes our style super cohesive and helps pull things all together.

Plus, it’s just fun to see people’s faces when I tell them we have black wall 😉 

We have intentions of painting the other walls white (they are currently the gray that the house come with) but due to the tall walls/ceilings, we haven’t gotten there yet. And honestly, we’ve had the gray for so long, that it’s starting to grow on us! haha.

We have this blue couch that Daniel’s grandparents gave us – they bought it before he was born! It’s 28 years old, but I absolutely love it. I sit in that corner every morning, hear the birds chirping through the morning light in the window, sip on my coffee and do my quiet time. It’s truly my favorite thing.

I didn’t get really any pictures, but we have plants all over the house! One of the things I have is some new propagated plants and my cacti sitting in the window sill, so they can get lots of sunshine! It’s been such a rewarding journey watching my plants grow, flourish, and honest, stay alive (I’ve been known to kill succulents… so my green thumb is a work in progress). 

Really, the living room is probably the one that’s most pulled together. Pretty much everything else is a work-in progress, as we’re still about halfway through a ton of projects we started.

We realized we got so excited to start ALL THE THINGS, that we did start a ton of projects, but haven’t completed hardly any of them… So the rest of summer and our free time is going to be dedicated to finishing some projects! One of them is figuring out what to do with Daniel’s office (photo below).

We did paint it an olive/forrest green color, and we like it! This is his office/man cave for now, but whenever we start a family, this will more than likely become the future kid’s room. We’re already planning on having a “Mountains/Wooded Creatures” theme for all our kids, so it’s easy to have a “theme” that can fit any gender, and will be pretty timeless.

Anyways, this room is still in-boxes phase. We have a desk, a desk chair, and a DVD case… But that’s about it. The TV was in there because I really didn’t want a TV in the main living area, but it’s since moved because it’s the easiest place to watch movies as a group.

Below are some photos of the messy desk (my fault for piling stuff on it – Daniel is the clean one out of us) and then a photo of some cute things Daniel got from Chick-fil-A when he became full-time staff 🙂

Ohh! And the white/paneling was already there! Quite frankly, we didn’t feel like removing it, so we just left it. Now we think it’s a nice touch to the room, so I am glad we didn’t mess with it!

Daniel’s family came to visit a few weeks ago, so that gave us motivation to pull the guest room together! It was already a light-gray color which we liked, so we left it and didn’t repaint the room.

We had a bed frame, be bought a mattress on amazon (that had great reviews, and his parents said it slept wonderfully), and I picked up some beautiful side tables from Home Goods. This room is small and simple, but it does the trick for whenever we have company!

If we move downstairs, then we’re blessed to have two beautiful windows that my sweet dad and hubby put in my studio! I love having a room to run my business out of (still pinching myself that I have an indoor studio) but one of the biggest problems was the lack of natural light! There was a full sized window and a small basement window, but for the length of the room and with al the trees and bushes we have covering them, I really hoped we could have a little more.

Well, they were able to get in the two windows, and y’all – it makes ALL the difference!!!! You walk in and it’s naturally so much brighter, which makes me happy. I’m really excited for Daniel to finish mudding + sanding it, then we’ll paint it white (so it can reflect even more light) and then I’ll get to start moving in!

It’s going to be fun to decorate the office, unpack all my stuff from the product shop (there are soooo many boxes and it has been such a challenge trying to fill orders out of half packed/unpacked boxes in a chaos of a room) so I’m really looking forward to this!

Plus, there’s a ledge where the ground outside is… And I’m totally going to use that as an excuse to have display a lot of my books and have plants surrounding the studio! I know the living room is my current favorite, mostly due to the large window and plants, but I have a feeling once my studio gets set up, it will become my new favorite!

This photo shows some of the mug boxes that I currently have crammed into the downstairs bathroom. This is so I can fill orders easier (if you can say that). It’s still a challenge, and trying to step over large boxes has meant that I’ve knocked over boxes and broken mugs… Always sad. So I’m ready to have actual room to place these and easily access them!

Well guys, those are the major updates that have happened! I didn’t get a photo, but we do have a new water heater in the garage thanks to the first 24 hour explosion, and Daniel also installed a utility sink while the drywall was open, too. We were both so proud that he did this, and didn’t have any leaks! Again, this was his first time doing any plumbing on his own (something neither of us would normally recommend… it’s definitely for the pros), so when we turned the water on and there were no leaks, we both did a happy dance! 

By the way… Is that officially adulting? Dancing over the fact that there are no links in the sink you installed? Or maybe that just means we’re official home owners. Or mortgage owners, as my dad keeps reminding me, since we don’t yet own our home (thanks to Dave Ramsey, we hope to sooner than later).

Anyways, thanks for reading along! Hope you enjoyed our home update, and if you have any questions, just leave a comment below!

And if y’all are interested in seeing a video home tour, just let me know and I’ll see what I can pull together.

Happy Thursday, darlings! xo