Our Home-Before

It has been quite the year of transition for Mark and me: Moving into a new home, changing jobs (Jill), changing ministries at church, just to name a few. I've had a desire to get back to my blog and life finally seems to be settling back into a routine, so I thought this would be the perfect time to reenter the world of blogging.
People have asked me for pictures of our house and I didn't want to post anything till I had the official "After" pictures. But I'm learning to enjoy the house in this "in-between" stage as well. :) Below are some of the pictures from our first view of the house, before we made an offer on it (so NONE of these decorations are mine).

I still can't believe we've been in this house for over a year! It has been such an amazing blessing for our family and we have had so much fun setting it all up and decorating as our budget can afford it. We fell in love with the house during our first trip, but it was our FIRST home to tour and it was no where near where we were looking to settle down. After a couple weeks of looking at hundreds of homes online and dozens in person, we decided to take a second look at the first house....and then decided to make an offer.

One of the biggest things I was looking for in a house was an open floor plan and this house delivered nicely with an extra large living room open to the kitchen and dining room. 

The Master is a very spacious room, with lots of room for our Queen sized bed. 

The other two rooms are a little small, but still decently sized. We love having a guest bedroom now (or at least *I* love it!) and additional room to stage sorting and purging. We hope that some day we'll get to convert one of these bedrooms into a nursery, but for now they are both being put to good use. 

 

(Ignore Mark -- he had to test the bathtub and didn't realize he was in my picture)

The Master bath is wonderful! It has a nice sized soaker tub (which I use at least 2-3 times a month) and a separate shower. Double sinks weren't a must for us, but we've really enjoyed having them. 

A second full bathroom was on my list of musts. Growing up with 3 sisters, we always lived in homes with 2 full baths. I'm glad this home had the second bath, because I have waaay too many fun bathroom decorating ideas -- I could probably use about 4 more bathrooms to use up all the ideas! 

   

An indoor laundry room was another must for me. After a year and a half of having to carry a laundry basket outside to do laundry, I was ready to bring that whole chore back indoors. I have an absolutely beautiful laundry room, with plenty of room for all my equipment and tools indoors and right off the kitchen, but with a separate door so we can close it while the machines are running.
We also got a little office nook! This was a bonus room for us. We knew we wanted space to setup an office, but figured we'd have to share it with the guest room. Currently it is open to the front hallway, but we look forward to putting in some french doors so we can close off the room when needed. 

So there you have it, the before tour of our new wonderful home. I'll try to upload some of the current pictures some time later this week.