House About That

We've been working hard getting our house in perfect order to get ready to move. I got this idea in my head that everything needed to look brand new, so I have literally been painting every inch of our house over the past month. Now the house is finally exactly as I've always wanted it just in time for us to say goodbye. Tear. 

We had someone come look at our house for the very first time. While everything was exactly in place and picture perfect, Dallas took the opportunity to come over and practice his real estate photography. I know I'm going to be so grateful for these pictures down the road when we want to reminisce about our first home. I love the way they turned out. 

I finally broke down and ordered the boys real bedding for the first time in their lives. They had been using quilts we got from our wedding, but the pink blanket Eli wrapped himself up in every night didn't quite seem to suit him. The new bedding arrived the afternoon of house picture day and the boys were jumping off my freshly painted walls over them. They insisted Dallas start in their room because they were dying to show off their robot beds. 

Here's me and Jeff's room. I have loved the color scheme in here, but the white bedspread is hitting the landfill as soon as we move because, as my mom warned me when I bought it, it is not compatible with children. Especially children with pens. Named Carson.

The master bathroom.

Easily my favorite room in the house -- the nursery. I love the wall color. I love the whole color scheme in here right now. By the third kid I finally nailed decorating a nursery. This room makes me so happy.

The boys' bathroom. Complete with a splash of pink because there comes a time when there's just too much blue in one house and extreme measures must be taken to restore some sort of balance.

Here we have a great shot of the light that despite our best, repetitive efforts, we never could get to hang straight. But looking beyond that, I really like this angle of our main living quarters.

Here are some stairs because stairs deserve a little face time too. Plus maybe one day I'll want to remember how many steps I walked up and down every time I wanted to do laundry. I didn't get this buff for free.

Dear living room. You were so ugly for so long but you finally came together. I had the hardest time figuring out a good color scheme for our living room. Then we painted that wall blue and it brought the whole place to life. 

My blue kitchen with white cabinets. I've loved this color combo and the bright, clean feel of it. I mean, it's not usually THIS clean -- as my mom was eager to exclaim as soon as she saw this picture. But look how cute it is when there's not homework sprawled on the counter, curtains spilling over the refrigerator and food smeared across the fridge!

And then there's our backyard. I love. Our backyard. It's the perfect size. It's nice and shady in the evenings. It's got little dirt sections for the boys to go digging around in. It suits a trampoline perfectly. It suits teaching your kid how to throw a baseball perfectly. It's just the best. We spend half our lives out here.

Here's the Grandma and Grandpa Excell Hotel. Though it did have a bed in it when they would stay with us.

But it DIDN'T have a bathroom when they stayed with us. Jeff's been working hard to get this bathroom finished.

There's a shower to the right that we won't have enough time to finish, but I love the color scheme in this room as well. And the floors! In our next house, I want all the floors to be this kind of tile. It looks like wood, but it's tile. It's so pretty and we love the way it turned out.

The least glamorous room, but hey, let's document it for memory's sake anyway.

Here's our basement living room. My fondest memory down here is when we first moved in, every morning after Eli would wake up, I would go get him a bottle and we'd come down here. I'd watch the news while he drank his bottle and then we'd play down here for a little bit. It's a fun little toy area for the kids that they kind of overtook as they got older. Jeff built those shelves to the right and the little shelf for a computer on the left which I think turned out really nice.

We'll have to get some better shots of the outside of our house once our grass greens up a bit more and the leaves appear on the bigger bushes out front.

It's still a bit surreal that we're leaving. I remember the first day Jeff and I walked into this house after it was officially ours. We had about 15 minutes before the load of all our stuff was coming with everyone to help us move in and we just jumped around inside it screaming for the full 15 minutes. It was such a good house to us. We love the neighborhood. Love the location. Love the ward. Love this sweet little place that holds a lot of dear memories for us.