Good morning from the land of 'I'm only half an iced coffe in and I'm still a little grumpy'!!

This weekend my husband decided to gift me a sunday doing what I wanted to do because we went to the gun show for him... and spent a good 2 hours there (one of which was just waiting in line) So what did I pick to do?! FURNITURE SHOPPING! Yes when we went we didnt know the full size of the room but I am ready to get ideas and see some couches and such now so I can whip it out as soon as we move in!

This pretty baby is from Ashley Furniture. We found it a few weeks ago when we went shopping out of town. This is when we figured out that each couch needs to go through the test... 

((Step 1. Remove all unnecessary pillows. Step 2 Have The Hubs lay down. Step 3 lay down next to The Hubs and close eyes.)) Yes, we do get some strange looks but who really cares! If you invest money into something like furniture you need to know if it will be what you really want! 

This couch is a top contender! 

We found this one this weekend. Sorry for the sucks picture but after searching 45 pages of couches I never found it on the website and just took a picture of a picture. I love this couch its great and even has  my decorative nail heads in it but I think the color is too light. Its also double the price of the couch above. It did pass the test though! As much as I want something with the decorative nail heads in it I think we are going to pass on this one. Sad to say its out since its the only thing so far The Hubs has liked with this detail but oh well! 

Found this little table as well. The sides fold up into it so its a perfect table to have behind a couch. Once you open it up that means you are having a cocktail party... or this is how I feel it would work. :) 

We are IN LOVE with this Ethan Allen coffee table... but as you all know that store most of it starts at like a million dollars... so we will wait on this guy. But the wood and metal together is a beautiful look!

This Chandelier. Oh. M. G. yea! So I originally found this same exact one online months ago and fell in love. I have actually been looking for a table to go under it for our dining room I love it that much. Well The Hubs got to see it first hand and he loved it as well. Of course we didnt even look at that price since we were still at EA but online its about $600 or so. It makes a huge statement and I am in lovvvveeee

We also dabbled in entertainment centers. This we liked (in a dark color) its the tallest and widest we have seen so far. We might have to make a custom piece later on. 

We decided to not make a ton of furniture choices until we are actually in the house for now... maybe its because the shock of using a tape measurer to see things is really hard. ha! A 22ft wall doesnt seem super huge.... till you use a tape measurer in a small-ish room. 

Celebration time!

The compound has an address folks! Praise the lord! Woo! The same day we filed for a building permit we found out that we needed to request an address before hand... oops... anywho our man Todd got. shit. done. I probably could have found a more eloquent way of saying that but hey... we are in construction mode now I'm going to talk like a construction worker!

We live off of a 'Place' WOOO I am super excited! Had a dark moment where we thought we were going to have an address off of a main road... and I was going to have to walk around the whole property to get my mail :(

The Tree Warden (yes, its a real title) signed off on us taking down the trees and clearing the property! Double WOOO! I wish they would start work tomorrow but hey... I guess Monday works too! Maybe if I mention to them that I am wasting so much water in the shower from the lack of pressure they will move a little faster... probably not so I think I will just make them cupcakes. My Michigan Brother, Sister, and kids got me a cupcake carrier for my birthday! Since it came to the house its not packed away and I can get to work on my sugary bribery!

We are headed downtown later tonight for a few drinks and we are starting a Fancy Friday tradition... dress to the 9s and we will see you there!

Impact fees

Oooh Gurl let me talk to you about a little thing we like to call Impact fees...

"Impact and capacity fees are charges on new development and increases in development intensity for the local government's cost associated with providing infrastructure to serve the new development.

The following impact and capacity fees are imposed by Sarasota County on new development in unincorporated areas of the county: potable water, wastewater, roads, park, library, fire/rescue, EMS, law enforcement, justice, general government, and education.

Municipalities charge some county impact fees, and municipalities and special districts may have their own fee systems for certain types of infrastructure."

So I pulled that right off the county website... a month or so ago we decided to run through every single article and section on that website and came up with a total $6429.00 not including potable water, road, and waste water. GROSS! Well I got a call back from someone in that department today who told me that my impact fees are going to be around 9 thousand. Yes. I pushed the right number. 9. I just threw up a little in my mouth. Let me be crystal clear when I tell you that we will be on septic and well for about 2 years max before we have to pay AGAIN to be hooked up to county... the septic and well is a cool 6k as well that we will get maybe 20% back from the county over a possible 20 years or so in our bill. What a joke! The county is also letting everyone know (who couldnt make it to the secret county hearing) that these fees are a deep discounted rates so that it will entice more people to build. 

Oh Sarasota County you are so silly! With your silly angry office employees and your silly impact fees! 

The only good news about the fees is that you dont have to pay them until you have your 'Certificate of occupancy' sooo.... we will part with this money when we move in. Bummer deal. Oh lawd. 

Guess this is the price you pay to live in paradise! 

Land Clearing Time

Well its time for us to start clearing the land! After finding out that we have 15 more feet on the side of the property its just that much more for us to clear! yuck! Just kidding! We are actually super excited about this revelation! Since we are fencing off the whole property and adding a gate up front I have been super worried about looking out of the windows on the sides of the house and seeing... fence. Ew. Nope, not anymore we get to have actual plants and such now! Everything with a pink flag around it is set to be removed... this is a total of 20 trees. Todd told us that this was going to cost us anywhere from $12,000 to $2,000 and we needed to keep our fingers crossed. Who knew that cutting down trees was so expensive!? Not only do they need to cut down these trees but they need to grind and remove the stumps as well... needless to say we will be selling firewood for the next few years to make some of this money back! haha! Kinda joking... kinda not...

Again, dont worry we will be more than compensating down the road with new plants, trees, flowers, and other misc landscaping. Thanks to my father I learned a lot over the years and cant wait to hit up the local growers and get to planting! I also have plans for a garden... my lovely garden box that The Hubs made for me when we first started dating is sadly sitting empty in the garage. :( 

Back to what I was saying, we did get quite a few quotes for the land clearing and all I can say is thankfully we did not hit the 12k mark! Woo! Mini celebration! 

With a construction mortgage you have to come out of pocket on about 25% of what you would like to get a loan on... this can include: Land clearing, Contractors fees, Architect fees, Survey Fees, Sewage survey, and so on and so forth. Just posting this so that if you decide to build on your own land... you should just know that the land itself probably isnt down payment enough for a bank anymore. Ew and more Ew to this one. Sucks that we have to come out of pocket this much before hand but glad we are prepared. 

On a lighter note! I dropped off the final check to Jason our Architect yesterday! Do you know what this means?! Do you?! THIS MEANS WE GET TO FILE FOR OUR BUILDING PERMITS! <insert happy dance> 

Yes Ladies and Gents, if all goes as planned we will be breaking ground very soon! This puts a swarm of little butterflies in my stomach! This isnt like your normal cookie cutter builders special house that you found in some neighborhood... this is our dream! This is excitement kept me from tearing my neighbors head off with my bare hands after he took a leaf blower to his "yard" and covered my white dog in dirt and leaves while he was peeing. Let me be clear that the word yard is used very loosely... he  has a busted driveway and stupid oak trees. The landlord cut all the branches off before we moved in so we wouldnt have to deal with his leaves... but thankfully he blew them all into our yard! They just drove away so I'm about to bust out the blower myself and give them back to my very giving neighbor. If I knew where his hose hook up was I'd use that and wash my little white dog with his water too! 

6 more months. 6 more months. 6 more months. 

I think the dogs will soon join us in this chant too... they are hating being in this house... 

well dont look at them right now... you couldnt tell. 

Have I mentioned yet how much this oven sucks? I'm sure that my baby chicken that I am cooking right now will take a good 2 1/2 hours... waaaay more than its used to. grr. time to go baste it again.... talk to you soon! 

Kitchen Table

I just can't get past this table! I have tried to find this style in a darker color but not happening! This lovely table seats six when it is folded up and then expands to ten when its needed. All the parts are kept internally and only come out when the 'Pie' is slid out. Its so impressive! Damn you expensive table! We are looking for a round one that can be expanded but not the traditional round to oval expansion and this fits what we need! I know I could always paint it the color that I want but at its current price I want it finished already! 

In other news we are almost completely moved in to the new rental... its... a rental. Just counting my blessings that we didn't have a ton of turn downs because the amount of dogs we have :) 

Had some help from friends and it was complete the same day we trucked over here. The dogs love the fenced in yard, since we have a smaller sqft for them to play and run inside it really helps out! So far I havent gone completely nuts with them in the house. 

Today I had my first 'gate open' scare... oh my so we are outside playing the '3 huskies run as fast as you can' game when they stop and look at the driveway. The garage is still packed so I cant park inside yet, and I noticed a bike tire and the far gate open... then guess who comes from around the corner of the house... the landlord. 

Yep. He biked over and started his creeping. Since I caught him early I gave him the death stare till he claimed to be getting our recycle bin back from the neighbor. I knew this man was a creeper! We had been using the garage opener to get in and out of the house for a few days and when I finally used the key I noticed that he gave us one real one fake... seems odd. I'll be re-programming the openers and we will be getting locks for the doors and gates. Thankfully we hung the blinds the other night. We have nothing to hide but we sure dont want someone all up in our bizznass! 

I have that dirty grimy someone is watching me feeling now that I just cant shake. yuck. 

I did cook in the house for the first time tonight! That was refreshing and I am starting to really feel a little more comfortable, we did eat out of paper bowls. Let me make it clear... I will NOT be unpacking just to pack again in a few months! No way! I will only OCD label these boxes once! 

Time for sleep its 3:36... am.

MOVING!

Tonights joyous episode will go through the in's and out's of how to pack like you have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder :) Swear not making fun of anyone because I am an admitted control freak and once thought that I liked to be super organized but it got a little out of hand!

Here we have our wonderful 26 foot Uhaul we rented tonight! Not sure if we needed one this big but hey it was the same price as the smaller one and we just might be able to fit everything in it at once!

Got all my cleaning supplies packed up and ready to go first trip over to the rental. Sure it may look clean but you never can be too sure, this will make easy storage under the sink and a quick grab to the new home too! 

Yup this house we are moving out of is about 3700sq ft but having all these boxes out in the living room for days is just irritating and doesnt look so clean... so here we have jam packed a spare bedroom closest to the garage. You may notice the pink and blue tags on top of 90% of the boxes and this would be the contents of each box. Too much? Possibly. But keep in mind we will be moving to the new house in less than a year. I packed each box knowing that I was either going to use this stuff or it could sit together for a few months and I make due with what I have used. Yes I bubble wrapped my mermaid statue. Dont judge me! :) 

Okay. So I admit it I dont always make the wisest box content choices, but they sure are interesting. No you are not seeing things... this box is lopsided, has a metal horn sticking out, and contains one of many of my animal heads inside. I havent even taken down or wrapped my huge Eagle head and wings hanging above my bed. Crap. The bed. It's 12:30 at night and I have just put up my swollen feet and we havent even taken apart our king size bed. :( The Hubs....is sleeping. 

Note to self on this one: when Target has a clothes hanger on wheels on sale for $8 it will look like this.  Not wise, go for the $40 one next time I think this is precariously perched on the Christmas boxes stacked behind it. Yes, it does have wheels but they forgot to say: "Will only roll when filled with infant clothing."

This Gem of a photo is something I am super excited about. My older sister taught me that if you use garbage bags and rubberbands you will have makeshift garment bags! Hold the phone, I am not waisting garbage bags... I'm not sure if any of you have used the forceflex bags lately but every time I pull the bag out these jerks have been ripped. I filled a bag with pillows and it ripped! PILLOWS! 

Bye bye small walk-in closet! They are excited for the new house and a bigger closet.... I havent told them yet that they must go to a smaller closet for a few months. :( 

Back guest Bathroom

Here we have the floor plan for the back bath and bedroom from here on out we will call this the pool bath. (eventually we will decide if we are putting in a pool first thing or if we are waiting for the initial build) Since this wont be a main guest bath till after we have a child it will only have a shower and not the shower tub combo.

sketched out a few ideas here. I really love the look of a simple pedestal sink for the pool bath. Add some high polished chrome fixtures and it really jazzes the room up. The colors below are what I have in mind for now. I will possibly go with the darker of the blues but then I dont think I would be able to have black towels. (yes I did notice the strange arm chair in that bathroom)  

I would love to have this light fixture... but I dont want to steal my cousins bathroom style. Yes Nicci I am in love with your powder room. 

We might end up with something a little more traditonal bath like... since color really scares The Hubs. (he pretends it doesnt but I know it does... till he sees it then he loves it) 

I found this picture of this shelving over the sink and I think its genius! When you have a smaller since space my worry is always where the soap is going to be located... problem solved. I hate everything else in that bathroom though. 

This guy is most likely going to be my go to for the mirror. He is sleek and sexy ya? 

Master bath

Here is our master bath floor plan. We dont have a ton of ideas for this yet when it comes to colors, but here are a few: 

We love the look of the river rock floor for the shower, its a pretty nice sized and will be glass on the outsides of it so it will have a real clean look. We will be going with 2 shower heads and a bench seat in the corner. There will be shampoo and soap cut outs in the wall so you wont have to look at the ugly metal things that eventually rust anyways. Looking for suggestions for brands of good shower heads. We arent into the massagers with cords or anything like that. Maybe a rain shower head? 

Aunt Patty, The house we are in right now has a roman shower... at first I loved it, its open and brighter than most showers but then I spent 2 years using it. First it has glass blocks for the partition the grout between them is thicker than most tile and has been a bear to keep clean. I think somewhere along the line it also cracked and is leaking next to the tub. (this just could be poor builder quality) I also noticed that I am using much more hot water to keep the temp up while I am showering.  I love the open feeling to it but I think I will pass on it this build. 

We will have separate sinks... This is working for us so far... I need my space in the bathroom. Sure I may not ever use my faucet (because I dont right now) but it will give me my quality make-up/ hair product space that is needed. I did find these above counter shelving that I am in love with, or I think I am in love with them right now... :/ I have never been great at decisions. (except for my husband choice)

This is my side, this sketch was also done before the vanity was moved to the other side. The sinks will end up directly across from each other and I will not be putting on my makeup next to the toilet room. Gross. yea. No built-in Medicine Cabs I really dont like the look of them. (your home pharmacy should not be exposed to the moisture of a bathroom)   

This sketch I was asking for built-ins where the tub is going to be but I would lose my corner units if we did this so I passed on them and will end up doing some sort of shelving here. The bath will also be completely covered on top so it ends up being a flat surface. See photo on bottom. 

Love the look of the marble on top and black mosaic tile on the bottom. Sure the tub is not going to be set in the middle of the room (thats the next house we build) but the tub we have now has this yuck bland tile around it in 4x4 squares. Try washing a dirty dog who tries to escape... yea that grout isnt so white anymore. Wiping down a solid slab will be so much easier! Yes... it will be a soaking tub, I have one now and I love it... I will miss it when we move to our 8 month house. 

We recently went to a home show (never again because we entered to win a home depot gift card and were signed up to win a "free" disney vacation, jerks) anywho... we did find this company called Cambria. Its a natural quartz company who had some very beautiful slabs to look at, its a little less porous than granite so we might be using it here in the bathroom.  click this link to see some of the collection: Cambria Website

We really loved the jewel collection but we will revisit that when we get a little closer to that point. Also Cambria quartz has a lower carbon footprint when compared other companies. It is also American  made so that makes it a huge plus to us!

I have some sad news... 

My dreams of soaking in my lovely tub filled with bubbles while eating oreos and sipping on a glass of wine and leaning back to look at a glorious chandelier have been dashed by The Hubs. He doesnt want this look: 

He hates the look of the light fixture. :( this makes me sad. I will not feel like a queen while I decompress in the tub... This also goes for over the dining room table but I will show you what I found for that fixture soon! 

I found this guy up here tonight that I will spring on The Hubs next time he comes out of the room! Maybe he will fall in love with this... just kidding. He makes fun of me for looking at this stuff for hours on end but I make fun of him for yelling at the video gamers like a fool ;) The silly man would probably be okay with pot lights all over the house if it were up to him. 

Kidding again! He's a good man for letting this huge project of this home be my baby for a while! He trusts my decisions (for the most part, we all know I can get a little sparkle crazy sometimes). 

Finishes

Look at this beautiful door! 

Looks beastly right?! well you are correct. Got the first quote on this bad boy right before christmas only to be told by Jason that it needs to be a bigger size for the front door we already have planned. Blah! 

Driving to Georgia will save us a little over $600 on shipping but isnt so bad if we get to see our favorite newlyweds Nick & Chels. We found a door maker here locally in Florida but my numerous voicemails and calls have gone unanswered and so we will continue our business with this company. 

How did I find this glorious artwork most would call a door?

Well I found this app called Houzz you can also go to their website and browse there too. I am in love and from here on out you might recognize when I post things from that site. From time to time I get into discussions with other members on how to decorate and its quite fun! 

Its like house porn.  

This is Carrera Marble... I am in LOVE with it.. reading a lot about it and it may not work with my cook messy lifestyle so we will explore our options once we get closer. But do you realize how amazing this will look with my black cabinets?! oooooohhhhhh! 

MMMMM sexy right?! 

Every cooks dream

This is my kitchen... she will have a double oven, huge island, and according to my architect more cabinets than a million dollar home. :/ oops! Let me just tell you this house we are leaving has a "big" kitchen but I ran out of cabinet space a long time ago and when I finished using a new goodie I got as a wedding gift I had to put it back in a box and into a spare bedroom. This is no way to treat such lovely things so when we were designing my house I said that the only thing I was worried about was my kitchen and pantry... welp I will also start to build up my food supply since my lovely pantry will be a great size of 6x7 (last time I checked) eep! 

Lets talk Mortgage

Since the day I got my first job I knew one day I wanted to own my own home, its every Americans dream! I have watched my spending and paid my bills on time in prep for this moment in life! Thankfully I found a man who had these same ideas and kept his finances in check as well. We paid for our wedding on our own and took a lovely honeymoon and then came back to tackle the big M word! In prep for it we pulled our own credit scores and decided that we were very happy with what we saw not to brag or anything but we are both in the top percentile :) BOOM!

We set up some appointments to begin finding a bank who will love us... (haha I know, bank and love should not be said in the same breath) first bank we set out to was our own, they didnt call us back before our appointment and so we saw the wrong person in the wrong department... swing and a miss! Our paperwork was sent over to someone in the 'right' department, but we moved on anyways to a credit union who we made an appointment with. This man decided to not even acknowledge I was even sitting in the office with my husband and for our whole meeting he never once looked my way. As soon as he told us that they didnt do construction loans I packed up my angry little self and tried to leave... but my level headed Hubs got some info from him about how we were looking if they were able to give us money (since the last bank was a miss) turns out if we were just buying a house outright we would be in great shape. Finally we left and we will count that as strike two! There just happened to be another bank right next door who had a wonderful branch manager who pointed us in the right direction and by the end of the day we had our first approval! We walked out of the bank with papers in hand that we actually could build our glorious home!
A few days later while we were in Georgia for my best friends wedding we got a call from our own bank, she left a snarky little message letting us know that there was "No way we would even qualify for that amount of money" while she rambled on with her hateful message it finally cut her off. We had no way to respond to her that day since it was 5 min to 5 on Friday while we were at wedding rehearsal. So we got to stew about it till we had a nice glass of wine with a bunch of lovely people... we picked back up on our stewing on our 8 hour drive back home sunday.

Monday afternoon I called this angry little elf back and she proceeded to make me so angry I was literally shaking. Working in Banking world for almost 6 years I had picked up a thing or five from my MLOs I casually shared lunch with. She told me that we could get not even half of what we were asking for. She also told me that our income was too low... this is clearly laughable! She never even ran our credit to see what our DTI ratio was, and she was assuming that we had outstanding bills that needed to be paid. This woman was just spewing ignorance and hate. Finally when I told her that we had been pre-approved at another bank for what we were asking she decided that the right thing to reply with would be "well tell me who that is so I can just send ALL my clients over there!" well Mrs. Dripping with Honey we can just take our money and business elsewhere. To make a long story shorter we got in contact with her boss and our branch manager and got a different lender who is more than happy to loan us all the money in the world... well... not all. :)
BOOM second pre-approval!

Floor Plan

After about 22 floor plans our wonderful Contractor suffered though we finally settled on one! We have had a few changes still along the way but nothing that was too big for these guys to handle! 

Todd (our builder) introduced us to Jason (our architect) who has seen some of our challenges and found ways to make things work for us! Since Todd told him how many times we went through the floor plan process he has kept us in the loop and made it super easy for us to talk to him and throw ideas his way even if they are super crazy... 

We picked up our surveys for the land yesterday and will be heading out to the lots to see how everything is flagged out, this company has been dragging its feet and has put us about a week behind where we wanted to be with it, but we cant complain now that the paper work is in our hands! 

Since we have 3 lots we decided to build on 2 of them... monday we have to go downtown and get the property re-deeded correctly. This is because we cant finalize a construction loan on the house if it sits on two separate lots, following? Yea I'm learning a lot in this whole process! Did you know that when you file for a building permit, if the land needs clearing that you have to have a tree survey?! Yep learned that too! Todd gets to go out and flag the trees that need to be removed to build and then they come out and tell us what we need to re-plant to make up for the big boys that gotta go! 

Dear tree huggers, I love plants. I love the shade they give and the fruits they may bear so dont hate me for wanting to have a home, I promise that I will do whatever it takes to make up for the tress loss of life... wait a few of them are dead already and are currently home to some raccoons that the creepy neighbor is feeding... we will have someone re-locate them as well. 

Packing!

So I might be a little bit of an OCD packer I admit it! If you think about it though I will be moving two times in one year and I am not about to go digging through these boxes to look for something that might  not even be in there... so I am taking my time and actually labeling everything. Yuck. What a gross thing to do but hey I figure I will thank myself later for it! 

Packing away my artwork is much more of a challenge than I originally thought it was going to be. Why do I hoard my artwork? Maybe its time I hit up a farmers market and get rid of these bad boys!

Lets not even talk about the "Wall of Mirrors" Sure it's a girls dream to have that many fun-tional mirrors in one place but bubble wrapping them and trying to find a box big enough for all of them is proving to be a bitch. 

Forgot to mention that The Hubs gave me a wonderful 32" TV for my craft room just days before we found out we needed to go... BUT I SAVED THE BOX!

New Beginnings

Hello! Finally I have a chance and the right mind set to begin writing in this blog!

As most of you know (hello to anyone who doesn't  My Husband and I got married on November 11th of 2012 ((yep we picked the 11-11 date!)) We have been planning to build our own house as soon as we started looking to buy a home. We found a few homes that we liked but we weren't in love with and then we decided that since we own some property we might as well just build our dream home and get what we want the first time.

This is our realistic dream home... not your 3 story 13 bedroom 17 bathroom house that we all actually dream about.

I hope to keep everyone updated on the whole process, including all the ups, downs, freak-outs, stressful sleepless nights, and even a few exciting details.

I'll bring you up to speed on things so far:
We are currently living in our second rental of our relationship, our first one was foreclosed on and we moved to this big beautiful home just a few turns away from the Hubs parents house. This 3700 sqft home is in a gated community with nosey neighbors, 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, an office and an open floor plan, it also has 'Dennis' who sun bathes in a speedo on nice days... (and lets be honest its Florida we dont have many "bad" days) we have the mini dog on the other side that sneaks into our yard and poops and runs while its owner pretends not to see it, but we figured out since we have 3 beautiful huskies we let the 'land mines' hide in our 'taller' grass and just let them come get the mini dog whenever they want... hopefully they have a shoe wash haha!
But all good things come to an end and this house too is being lost to the bank and we have till March to get out. We decided to not wait it out like we did last rental and just get out now. Finding another home to rent for about 8 months was proving to be quite a task. No one wants to rent to a young couple with 3 big dogs who wont be signing at least a year lease. :( But we found a house close to downtown and a nice man who owns it who understands our situation and is willing to take a chance on us! So with the 'lease' signed and money handed over we move this weekend. YAY!