New home blog coming soon

I have received a lot of questions via email about how the home is holding up for the past 2.5 years. I plan to do a detailed update on our home, as well as the recent projects and upgrades. So, if you've been dying for an update... I am FINALLY going to do one! Here's one preview for a recently started project:

Master Bedroom Update

Well, this is quite the detour from my normal blog posts.. We have been working on small projects around the house, like parts of the garden, steps up to our yard from the road, and some minor interior projects.. but you SHOULD see our double barn doors from Artisan Hardware. They are beautiful and function to separate the master bedroom from the exercise room.

Things I wish I would have known before building a semi-custom home

So, I did a lot of reading online before deciding to build a home. I looked at blogs, I read home website and magazines, but now that I'm done building... I don't feel like I was adequately informed, and I was naive enough to think we were ready.

Newsflash: we were NOT ready to build a home. Here's what I wish we knew (or did)..

Save Money

1) Save more money. Don't just think you have just enough for the down payment and monthly loan payments. You need more money for unexpected items along the way. If you can, budget in more money in the contingency fund section for your construction loan. Don't ask how much to save--just keep saving until you think you have too much money.

Price Increases

2) There will be price increases even if you're using a general contractor or a well-known on-your-lot builder. The price of lumber increased, there are tariffs on some foreign home building products that recently increased, and sometimes your builder may charge you a fee if your home isn't ready to build within a certain time frame (check your contract carefully prior to signing!).

Nothing is Cheap

3) Everything is expensive and will add up. We decided to get some crawl space vent covers for our home, which were over $75 each! We paid someone to build our stairs, and while the lumber wasn't too expensive, labor is not cheap. A $3 bag of mulch sounds cheap, but it's NOT when you have to buy over 100 bags.

Landscaping

4) Put money in your budget for landscaping. If you're lucky, maybe you don't have to do a thing to your dirt prior to moving in. But, if you're like us, you may have to do SOMETHING and cover all disturbed soils, so we HAD to hydroseed, we HAD to mulch, and we HAD to put bark on our sloped hill.

Make Compromises

5) Cut costs where you can if your budget goes over. We had to get rid of our concrete driveway pad and walkways. We now just have gravel, pavers, and rocks, which isn't my ideal in our PNW wet winters. We bought cheaper floor tile for our laundry room and the kids' bathroom. We bought and installed our own utility sink. We went with chrome bathroom and kitchen fixtures because the upgrade cost was ridiculous for brushed nickel. If we want to upgrade faucets later on, we can replace them easily.

Be Realistic

6) Be realistic about your abilities for DIY projects. We initially were going to get vinyl flooring in the laundry room, and put in tile ourselves later. Tile installation is not too tough right? But when we carefully considered our plans, that would mean we would have to rip out the flooring, remove our mudroom shelves along with the utility sink, and take out the washer and dryer. Was that realistic for us with 2 kids and 2 full-time jobs? No way. We found some cheap but nice-looking tile at Home Depot and nixed the vinyl.

DIY

7) DIY when/if you can. We did our own dining room nook cabinets, tile backsplash, and butcher block countertop. Ask for help if you need it. My husband struggled with installing cabinets by himself and some ended up a tiny bit crooked. A neighbor helped us cut our countertop down to size. My father-in-law helped my husband install the pantry shelves. Watch YouTube videos if you're really unsure of yourself, but like I said.. be realistic about your skills.

Mistakes

8) Errors will be made--by you, your builder, the tradesmen, the county, the draftsmen, etc. Everybody is human and you cannot expect perfection. However, the most important thing to know is to catch the mistakes early. Ask questions. Verify the dimensions, the angles, the plans. Don't be afraid to confront someone and demand mistakes to be corrected. It's much easier to get things fixed before it gets too far. Look closely at everything done in your house. We realized after we moved in that our tile guy installed our master bathroom's tile floor with two different grout colors.

Estimates

9) Get things in writing, whether it's the work to be performed or the estimated price. Sometimes a contractor will increase the price after the job has been started. This happened to us, and our guy nearly doubled our tile installation cost after the first day in our master bathroom. (He said it was because we were using specialty limestone tile, but really--double the cost??) We also wanted a specialty subway tile design in our kitchen and master bathroom. We thought it would be cheaper to get subway tile and get a cool design rather than buying fancy geometric or mosaic tile... but it wasn't. Because we didn't know we would receive a significant upgrade cost for installation of a subway tile design prior to choosing it, we went over our tile budget.

Builder

10) Research your builder. Contact others who have built with them (I've received at least 10 e-mails from people looking to build that have found my blog). Find other people on social media to see their experiences. Meet with them multiple times prior to signing a contract. Ask them questions about their timelines. Ask them about their standard features. Ask them about their subcontractors. See if they will provide resources from satisfied customers. We have neighbors that have built with other similar builders and ALL of them had major issues. My husband has a co-worker that was building a house with a solo General Contractor who could not get subcontractors to work for him because everyone has been so busy. This co-worker's house is still under construction... 2 years later.

Details

11) Really get into the details of the build. Find out what is your builder's preferences for insulation, HVAC, plumbing, foundation type, cabinet materials, etc. Ask your builder before you do or buy anything. We knew nothing about a ductless heat pump HVAC system. And yet, I bought an Ecobee thermostat so I could make our home a smart home with heating/cooling and save on energy costs. Little did I know, our house doesn't even have a thermostat. Yes--that's right--no ordinary wall thermostat. The temperature is monitored by the heat pump and a remote, but no--you can't just see the house's temperature on the wall. We expected something totally different than what we got. Research your materials--are you buying something that requires specialty maintenance or installation (like limestone tile)? Make informed decisions.

Expectations

12) Lastly, adjust your expectations, then re-adjust them again. Your house will take more time to build than they tell you. Take their timeline and add 2-3 more months. Your house will cost more money than they tell you. Take your budget and add $10-20K. There will be delays, mistakes, and this will be the most incredibly stress-filled time of your life. It's exciting, yes, but OMGoodness the stress was unbearable. My husband and I both agree that if we had to do it all over again, we would totally do it. It is awesome to have this amazing house exactly where want to live. However, we keep saying, if only we had known this or that.. so we both recommend building your own home as long  you review this list and change your expectations of how your build will go.

And to answer all of your question, YES, we would build with Lexar of Tacoma again knowing all that we do now. We just wouldn't expect our semi-custom home to be done in eight months during a building boom in the Seattle/Tacoma, Washington area. To all of you potential home builders out there, good luck and best wishes for your future build!

After Move-In Update

Well, it's been a month since our official move-in date, and I have to say.. I freaking love our house. It was worth all of the pain and stress we have been through. So, to all of you building out there.. it will be over, and it will be worth it.

Things I love most about the new house:

• The location. Yeah, we could've bought a similar size house in a neighborhood for a bit more than we paid for the house... BUT we would be looking into our neighbors' houses every time we looked outside. Now, I see grass, trees, and the Puget Sound out the doors and windows. Plus, we have neighborhood friends with kids of similar ages! My kid can ride his bike down the dirt road to a friend's house. My kids can play outside without worry. We even had a small neighborly bonfire and s'mores last week.
• The private master bedroom. It's tucked into the back corner, and I have to keep my door open to hear the kids at night.
• The kitchen cabinets. Oh my goodness. There is so much storage that the cabinets look almost bare in some instances. I can put pots and pans in separate cabinets, and Tupperware lids and containers on separate shelves. It's magical.
• Space. So much space. We don't have to squish behind another person behind the dining room table anymore. We had 5 additional adults and 3 children over at our house and we still had plenty of room. However, I find I misplace things all the time because now I have too much space.
• The closet. Again, I have more space and organization possibilities than I've ever had. I have my shirts and cardigans organized by sleeve length, shoes by heel height, and even exercise clothes have their own drawers. 
• The heat pump. The summer heat in the Pacific Northwest is only unbearable for a few weeks, but man.. I love having air conditioning at home.
• The feeling of being HOME. We have moved 7 times since we have been married (almost 9-10 times if you include when we were dating). We thought we were settled into our first house, but no, I got the crazy idea of building a new house. Despite the craziness, we have been involved with this house from the get-go, and it instantly felt like home. We still have a ton of projects waiting to be done, stuff waiting to be bought, and family/friends to invite over... but we are finally HOME.

Oh, and the crazy thing is, my husband has to travel for work, so he was only able to enjoy the house for 10 days before being shipped off. However, he is working so much overtime that it's helping us pay off the extra expenses for the new house.

Next up... and possibly one of the last home building blogs I'll do before I move on back to real life... Things I wish I would've known before building a home.

We are IN!

Although it felt like it would never be done, we are DONE (mostly).

Our inspection was delayed until July 31st due to some technicalities with the electrician, the appliances, doorbell, kick plate heaters, etc... But, we passed the final county inspection after the inspector spent maybe 10 minutes at the house. Crazy and kind of anti-climactic after 12+ months of stress.

We also had our home re-appraised to get rid of PMI on our mortgage.. And this is why we built and didn't buy... We have over $100K in equity in our home just starting out. It's crazy! The one thing that sucks about it is that the rates are slightly higher than when we started.. and over 0.5% higher than when we bought our first home in 2015.

Anyways, there are still some to-do items for Lexar, such as the missing doors, fixing the drywall dings and scratches on the wall, and some transition pieces between the floor and cabinets. There are a few painting touch-ups needed, but we can do that. Oh, and we are missing our 6 USB outlets. Anyways, they aren't urgent things, so we are moving in this weekend.

We had a major "what do we do??" moment last week during our move when our moving truck that we planned to rent all week couldn't even hold all of our furniture and boxes. So, we made 2 trips with the truck, our friends and church friends packed up some of our stuff in their trucks, and we moved it all into the garage. The major moving mistake of booking a small truck saved us money and time.

Anyways, I'll post more pictures when we are done.. But we did book a cleaning service that specializes in post-construction cleaning, and they did an amazing job. There was not a speck of dust left, and they cleaned the windows inside and out! Thank you Victory Cleaning Services in Yelm, WA!

Here are some finished house pictures until I start taking some new ones with my nice camera and in a furnished house..

All lit up at night. We definitely need some walkway lighting because it's quite dark in the middle front of the house.

My favorite thing: my painted navy blue door.

Our accent tile wall on our kitchen island. We still need to adjust those globe pendants down a bit.

Our rain wall stencil from Cutting Edge Stencils. Paint is Sherwin Williams Mindful Gray with silver metallic acrylic paint on top.

My baby: round wood mirrors with patterned subway tile wall.

Cool Things Our New House Will Do (AKA the Smartest Smart Home Ever)

Current state of the home.

To stay positive about our home building experience, Graham and I have been compiling a list of things that our new house will do that will improve our lives:

• It will help us lose 10 pounds automatically. Dubious claim, you say? No way!
• Our house will alert us when our kids' nails need to be trimmed, and it will clean up the little tiny nail clippings that are so hard to clean up!
• Our new house will not only do our laundry, but will also put the clothes away too!
• The house will cook healthy meals on weeknights!
• Our house will keep our toddler from getting into everything and destroying our stuff!
• Our new house will keep our food from spoiling prematurely.
• The new house will make us happy for ever and ever.
• The house will save us thousands of dollars!!
• Our new house will help us make BFF's.

Ok, so this is an obvious exaggeration of the benefits to our new house. However, we did notice that we kept saying to each other, well, once we're in the new house.. or, this wouldn't happen in the new house.. Which is kind of a dangerous way of thinking, like life all of a sudden will be amazing and perfect once we live somewhere new. Spoiler alert: it won't. We will still be the same people with the same lives.

But let me tell you the things that will actually make our lives better in the new house...

• While the house won't make us lose 10 pounds, we will definitely be less stressed with lower levels of cortisol. Also, the workout room means more concentrated workout times and a specific place. I'm excited for more cardio because our current townhouse might tumble to the ground if I start doing TurboFire HIIT workouts again.
• I wish the kids' nails would no longer require trimming in the new house, but our robot vacuum will definitely help clean up the mess!
• Laundry = the neverending story. The worst. The one thing our new house will do is allow us to put all of our clothes away in the house! Our old house had small closets, so we had to keep some clothes and shoes in the garage.
• I can't even emphasize how much our current kitchen stresses me out. It's unbelievably small. The new kitchen will hold ALLLLL of my stuff and have a pantry. It's going to be so amazing. Plus, the double oven means I'll be baking more fresh bread!
• Having a new house that is 100% ours will allow us to put toddler locks on our stuff. We have been in our rental townhouse for a year, and Sadie gets into our stuff DAILY, like my makeup, Graham's shaving cream, and Carter's toothpaste. I'm so excited to put toddler locks on the cabinets!
• The MINIature fridge we have right now is one of my current pet peeves. It is so small that when you put one thing on a shelf, another thing falls out of the fridge. Without fail. Plus, the cooling mechanism is so spotty that it half freezes anything in the back or side of the fridge. We are throwing away soooooo much food! I am incredibly excited for a new Samsung fridge with water and an ice maker! I haven't had one since I moved out of my parents' house in 2001.
• Ok, we are not guaranteed to have eternal happiness in our house.. But, we will be able to host out-of-town family (and we both have big families!) for family get togethers, and that will make us truly happy.
• The new house is currently costing us thousands of dollars, but it will pay off in the end. The energy efficiency is key, as well as the increasing cost of homes in the area (thank you HGTV for featuring a home in our area!). We couldn't afford to buy what we are building, so this will all be worth it when we get our home appraised when it's completed.
• Lastly, we have friends and family that have been our friends for a long time, but we will have new neighbors that will be awesome friends now and in the future.

One thing to remember: we are beyond blessed to have this opportunity to build a family home.

Update: Curious about our progress? Click on this link to see all of our home building updates, or check out my Instagram account for continuous updates.

One DECADE

We have officially been married for 10 full years. I really can't believe it. I can't believe I am 35, ahem, 29 years old! These years have been the happiest, most stressful, most miserable, and yet most joyful in my life. I wish I could tell you how good things are. I wish I could tell you that we are riding on unicorns across rainbows in the sky. I wish I could say that our love is unconditional and unwavering. I wish I could report how amazing our life is.



Unfortunately, it's not any of those things. Life is hard. Marriage is tough. Raising kids isn't always fun. Building a home (as you all know now) is not a walk in the park.



I can say that Graham is my best friend. There is nobody else that I'd rather be with. He makes me laugh, he frustrates me, he calms me, and he has literally made me crazy at times. Our marriage isn't perfect, but it's been full of laughter and tears.



I wish I could share more about what's going on in our private lives, but I can't. It's not the right time. When we went through hard times ~5 years ago, I was pretty open about our experiences. Now, I'm a bit more hesitant to share.. especially considering how much more jaded I've become. I've been pretty sad--actually sad doesn't even scratch the surface of what I've been feeling--and I've had a few friends help lift me up. It's sad when you realize how little support you have left outside of your marriage. It can be kind of isolating at times. I've been on this crazy roller coaster, feeling like my life was spiraling out of control... with nobody to confide in.. mostly because I don't want anyone to judge me or Graham.



Anyways, I'll share our story sometime, somehow, in some way.



Right now, we are continuing on in holy matrimony.. bound together by our commitments to each other, to God, our family, and this gosh-dang house. We are committed to making this work, for better or for worse.



Maybe next time I'll share some of my favorite moments over the past 10 years..

Until then, I leave you with one wedding photo.

Selling our Home

Well, in order for us to finance our new home, our old house had to go. I don't think all housing markets are like the Puget Sound right now, but it is 100% crazy all around Seattle and surrounding areas. We are about 45 driving miles from Seattle (25 miles away "as the crow flies"), and still, it's insane even all the way here. It is totally a seller's market out here.. which is how we were able to get a good chunk of cash to put down on our next home. Within a year of buying our home, it went up over $30K in value. So yeah, we bought at the right time, and now we're selling at the right time.

So, when we decided to prepare to sell our home, we enlisted the help of an agent to figure out things that we needed to do to the house prior to putting it on the market. This involved lots of fun things, such as roof/gutter cleaning, raking up the millions of leaves from our neighbor's trees, fixing up our crappy garden, etc. I did more of the fun stuff, like taking down all of our family pictures, taking down anything personalized that made it look like our family lived there.. making our home a house, I guess. Having nothing personalized on the wall (other than art canvases) makes me feel sad in a way, because it doesn't make the house feel lived in.

So, I staged the home, took everything off the counters, everything out of the nightstands, toys packed up, put some fruit in the glass trifle bowl. I was preparing the home for pictures up until the moment the photographer arrived. I don't know if you all saw the pictures I posted on Facebook from Redfin, but dang.. the photographer did a great job. He made our questionably-colored green painted walls look good, and made my home look very put together.

So, a little over a week later.. we put our house on the market on a Monday afternoon. We were under the impression that it wouldn't be listed until 5 PM, so there was no way we would have a showing on the first night, right?

WRONG. It posted on Redfin around 1 PM, and we had 3 viewings scheduled for the first night already by 3 PM that afternoon. Holy cow.. wasn't expecting that crazy of a response. So, I left work early, and I busted my butt to get home and get the house completely ready for showing (i.e. taking care of the dishes in the sink, makeup on the counter, and un-made beds). I was seriously sweating by the time I was done, which was 5 minutes before the first showing. I guess we totally underestimated our house and the response to a seller's market.

Anyways, long story short.. We had 7 showings (maybe more?) within the first 3-4 days, and two solid offers within the first 4 days.. and we accepted the offer.. which was more than the asking price. The one thing was that they wanted to close on the loan by March 31st.. 3 weeks to the day from accepting the offer. We were not expecting that soon of a closing date, but luckily, we were semi-prepared as a good amount of stuff was put into storage the previous month to prepare the house for selling.

But again, we underestimated the power of a seller's market.. even with rentals. Every good rental listing was being snatched up within days of being posted. So, panicking, we quickly applied to a local townhouse that is $100 less than our mortgage.. More than we wanted to spend, but hey.. we can't be homeless with a kid in school and a baby. We are set to hear back soon.. which is necessary as we need to move out in 12 days. So please, pray for us that we get this place and that we'll have a place to live!

Buying Land and Building a House..

We have been MIA in real life for a couple of reasons:

1) Graham has been working 60+ hours per week
2) Apparently, two kids are more work than one.
3) We've been in the process of buying land to build a house.

Yes, I know.. insane. Let me explain. Several months ago, we started saving money for some house improvements. We were thinking about replacing the siding on our house and installing a portico above the front porch. The work would be estimated between $10-15K, depending on the quality of the siding we chose. I started making plans for this big project, when I noticed that a lot was for sale on Redfin for $59K in a gated neighborhood near our house. It made me think. Hmmm.. why spend this much money on our current house when we wouldn't recoup the cost, and we can afford to build a home in a nicer neighborhood? Our current home doesn't meet all of our needs--my brother cannot stay with us due to the stairs, there is no master bath or big closet, and no extra room for the kids' toys. Building a home with everything we need sounded like a great option compared to big renovations and projects on our current house. This got us started on a roller coaster to actively looking for land and building our home.

I got super excited thinking about the process of building our own home. Growing up in California, I felt like only the super rich people had enough money to build their own house. In fact, I looked up the cost of a lot in my hometown of Folsom, California, and a small lot was $240K.. which obviously doesn't even cover the cost of the house. Yeah, we could never afford to do that in CA. But, here in the sticks, land is much more affordable, and building your own home is more obtainable. I started going on Pinterest again (I've been on a 3-year hiatus), pinning floor plans, design ideas, etc.. I was seriously dreaming about specific floor plans with decks, covered patios, and a daylight basement. I was hooked on the prospect of building my own home, and we hadn't even started yet.

We had some pretty strict guidelines on where we could buy land. Without saying exactly where we live, we live on a sub-peninsula, which is basically a peninsula on a peninsula. It's hard to describe without a map, but we'll just say it's by the Puget Sound. We like our current area because it's more rural, but it's still only 10 minutes away from Costco and Target. We could buy land cheaper if we went out further on the peninsula, but no thanks. As my doctor described that area, it's far enough out that you can hear the banjos playing. Plus, we want to stay in our ward at church, and avoid the sketchy middle school farther out in the sticks. So, the land mass we were considering is fairly small. The first lot we considered was a 1/2 acre sloped lot in a gated neighborhood that also bordered on a small stream. It looked like a great lot for a great price, especially since the septic design was already paid for, the land was already cleared, and a lot of work had been done on the lot, but we had to decline. The house footprint on the lot was only 48 by 34 feet, which is TINY considering you had to have a 3-car garage  and 2400+ sqaure feet for the neighborhood (the minimum for the neighborhood). We would've had to build a 3-story house in order to meet the community guidelines, and that wasn't our idea of a "forever home", so we moved on.

Then, a 3/4 acre lot in a different neighborhood went back on the market (it was previously pending). I got super excited when I found out that the lot already had water and electricity (two big cost items). So, we put in an offer, pending a feasibility study. Since many of you may not have had experience with building a home, let me talk about this.. A feasibility study is a specified time frame in which the buyer can investigate a particular lot to see if it's cost effective to build on that lot. If it's not, the buyer can back out of the deal without penalty prior to closing. A feasibility study includes the following: water, electricity, fire prevention, septic design availability, legal easements on the lot, possible site plans, and building capabilities. I'd already done most of the work for this lot, such as verifying the water and electricity, but we had yet to contact a septic designer to do a soil test (to see if it's amenable to a septic tank) and pick a particular builder.. So, I contacted a surveying/engineering firm to get the soil test done, and I got in touch with several builders (that's a different story altogether--stay tuned). The geologist I spoke with was amazing and super helpful. He looked up the soil info for the lot, the contours of the land, and put together a site plan that included a scale drawing of the house, driveway, storm drains, and septic tank within literally 45 minutes from the time we started talking. It made the process so much less scary to have someone so helpful in the initial process.

Anyways, the only snag we found in the feasibility study was the need for a fire hydrant, which would be $8K(!!!) for the planning and installation. The seller was not willing to budge on the price of the lot despite the fact that the seller owns all of the other lots in the area that would benefit from the hydrant. The other lots close by are not inhabited or currently for sale, so guess who gets to pay for the full hydrant? WE do. Not happy about it. Graham wants to put the hydrant in a place on the street where none of the other lots can benefit from the presence of the fire hydrant. According to county code, even putting in fire sprinklers wouldn't make us immune from having to install the hydrant. Argh. We've considered many alternatives, but it's NOT an option to go without a freaking hydrant. If our lot was over an acre, it wouldn't even be an issue.

Anyways.. financing. This is where buying land or a lot gets complicated. It's not as easy to get a loan for just land/lot, so we had to go to local banks and credit unions. Plus, the interest rates are way higher because of the greater risk to the bank with a land-only loan. I've read practically every article on land loans there is, and we finally found a local credit union through a builder that had our best deal: 20% down, 7.5% interest rate, 20 year term, with a balloon payment at 5 years. Do you know what a balloon payment is? $48,000 due at Year 5.Yikes. That definitely put a strict timeline on us to have our home built within 5 years to avoid paying that giant payment. There were other options, such as 30% down, 20 years, with a lower interest rate, but we didn't have the cash. Another option was 20% down, 8-9% interest rate for 15 years. That monthly payment would've been a little higher than what we wanted due to the shorter term. So yeah, we found the right loan, the right credit union.. and now we just had to wait for the appraisal.

If the appraisal came back as being less than what we wanted to finance it for, we would've had to put more money down, or get the seller to decrease the price. We've never had land appraised before, so it really made us nervous. Plus, the time line was 4-6 weeks out, so it put our closing date out to late January, as opposed to late December. Luckily, the appraisal came back as being $100 more than the selling price, so we were good. Getting the title was another headache, as the communication wasn't great between our lender and the title company. I was completely stressed out a few days prior to closing because the time was passing by so quickly and everything wasn't set yet. However, everything came together at the last moment, and we closed on the land on January 31st.

All in all, it was a stressful experience because it was something completely foreign to me, but it all worked out. But, the stress is just beginning.. We have to sell our house, and move into a temporary place while our new house is being built. I will be blogging along the way, so check my blog if you want to follow along in our process.

Update: Curious about our progress? Click on this link to see all of our home building updates, or check out my Instagram account.

Whelp...

I just realized it's almost been four months since I've last blogged. I have plenty of excuses. I also know that not many actually keep on reading this blog.. but I pretend people do. Anyways, let me elaborate what we've been up to lately and why I've been too busy to blog.

--I alluded to this a couple of times, but Graham started a new job/career in January that required six months of training in Virginia. We knew this from the get-go (they mentioned it in the initial interview), so we were prepared.. but we weren't prepared for him to leave almost immediately. We moved into our house at the end of January and he left at the end of February. We've been apart many times during our marriage, but never for six months straight. Anyways, I had to be somewhat discreet about it because he works for the Department of Defense and they're particular about security. That's all I will say about it. He got back five days late on August 23rd, thank goodness. There's a good chance he will have to travel more for his job, but it will depend on which department he ends up working in. We hope he gets sent to Hawaii or San Diego next summer! We did visit Graham for two weeks in Virginia, where we made a trip to Philadelphia and Washington DC. We also went to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. We don't have any future plans to return to those areas, except for NC. Those beaches were amazing--and Graham went like every weekend when we weren't there. He came home with kind of an amazing tan. But yeah, we did not like Southern Virginia, especially the area where Graham lived. Not a fan of the humidity or the culture.

--We have done some work on the house. We painted most of the rooms in our house, which took wayyyy longer and more money than we thought. (Turned out that Graham was buying premium paint at Home Depot.) We picked a green color we weren't totally sold on, and still, we're not in love with it. But, we didn't hate it enough to paint over it. I asked Graham to do another stenciled wall for our downstairs hallway and photo gallery wall. We bought a big couch like grown-ups. Graham did some landscaping in the backyard to get rid of a trash pile the previous owners left. Pictures of our projects are on my Instagram account.

--We had our housewarming party in September, a few weeks after Graham got back. We had to get all of our painting around the house done and get our house clean. We kind of felt like we were scrambling to get everything done. It was nice to see some friends and make good food. However, Graham cooked ALL of the hot dogs at the beginning, without regard to how many people were there. Needless to say, we were eating hot dogs for a week straight, meeting my hot dog quota for the next few years. Gross.

--We celebrated Carter's fifth birthday (can you even believe it??) in Disneyland with my parents, brother Mike, and my sister practically on Carter's birthday. We were there for Mickey's Halloween party, which wasn't really that cool for kids, honestly. However, the decorations and treats were super cute and delicious. It was so much fun to see Carter's reaction and his face to everything. He went on all of the "big kid" rides that he was tall enough for, like Thunder Mountain Railroad, Space Mountain, and Tower of Terror. He did really well on the rides, but he didn't ask for repeat rides.. Haha. I think his favorite ride was the new Cars ride (Radiator Springs Racers), but he went on the carousels a couple of time. He's intent on returning to California Adventure to ride the "big kid" roller coaster when he's older.

--I'm taking an exam next month to become a Certified Diabetes Educator. I already have a certification as a Certified Nutrition Support Clinician, but that certification requires me to take an exam every five years. With the CDE credential, you can renew your certification every five years by just keeping up in Continuing Education credits. Score! Plus, the CDE credential makes $1.50 more an hour, so if I'm doing the work already, might as well get paid more to do the same work. I'm taking the exam the week of Christmas, which is one of the dumbest things I've ever done. I'm feeling pretty ready for this test, so hopefully it doesn't blow me out of the water. Ask me any question about diabetes medications. I'll know it. I've been studying pretty hard for the past three months, which has been taking a lot of my time and energy.

--Oh, and I'm lazy. Oh yeah, and pregnant.

Finally.. making our house a home

Sorry for the long absence, guys. It has been really busy around here lately.. and let's face it, in our downtime, we've been watching the second season of Bates Motel on Netflix. I can't give many details, but Graham has to go out of town for training for his new job. So, we've been trying to maximize our family time as much as possible.

Anyways, as a continuing part of the "Starter Stories" by Compass, I'm blogging about how we started to personalize our home when first starting out. There were a couple of things I wanted before we moved in: a new dining set that would seat more than four people, counter stools for our kitchen's breakfast bar, and a painted, stenciled wall in our master bedroom. We couldn't afford to do all of the things we wanted to do, so we had to prioritize what was most important to us.

First, the stencil we got was the Sophia Trellis Moroccan stencil from Cutting Edge Stencils. It looked relatively simple and a better alternative to wallpaper or a plain accent wall. So, we did two different colors in our bedroom with a varying color for the accented stencil. Our walls were a horrible yellowish beige from the builder, so we needed a more cool-toned color scheme to match our current espresso furniture and bedding. Here are the photos:

 Graham was our master painter.

 Here's the accent wall. We ended up painting the ceiling as well.

Finished stencil. It actually looks better in photos than in person because you don't see all of the small mistakes. But, it still looks fabulous. I will have to post another picture with our furniture and bedding in front of it.

So, the furniture we picked was from Target, Cost Plus World Market, and Pier 1. Since we had a breakfast bar, dining stools were a must. We needed a new dining room table because Graham and I both have large families that visit often, so we needed a big table to seat 8+ people. I have an older modern, espresso-colored buffet from West Elm that also needed to match the table set. I thought about getting the matching dining set from them, but it would have been too matchy matchy for the look I was going for. I had my heart set on a dining bench for the kiddos, too, so that was on my list. We also have a unique feature in our dining room--an electric fireplace--so we needed to have furniture that would work around this.

 Here are my Avington counter height stools from Target. Excuse the lime green color of the place mats. They are a little bright, but look great with the navy blue Fiesta dinnerware we own.

 Here's our Francine dining bench from World Market with the Garner extendable table from World Market. The bench and table don't match exactly but you can't really tell.

Here are the accent dining chairs from Pier 1. You can also see our beautiful Moroccan style rug we got at Costco ($80-90 for an 8x10 rug!!).

So, this is how we started to make our house our own! We couldn't afford to do much all at once, so it's definitely still a work in progress. I have some other projects that I'll share later as well. Our next big items are a fire pit in our backyard (currently in progress), a new sectional for our TV room, and paint in our dining room and downstairs family room.

We didn't mean to buy a house...

So, ours may not be the typical first-time home buyer story.. The story where the couple has scraped and saved for years for a down payment, or where the couple is newly married, or the one where the married couple is expecting a child and want to move into a house before the baby is born. I wanted to blog about our process to help others along the way and give you a personal insight into first-time home buying. I was also contacted by a company called Compass that is starting a project called "Starter Stories" to feature stories about real people who are starting in their new first places, whether they be apartments or homes.

First of all, I'm 32 years-old, my husband is almost 30.. We have been married for 7 years. We have a 4 year-old kid. I have been in my career for over 6 years, and my husband is just starting his. We have LOTS of student loans to pay back.. Enough to choke on. And, we have consumer debt that we've been slowly but surely paying off with some major setbacks (remember, we also had to buy a car earlier this year too?).. So yeah, we were not exactly the best candidates to buy a house either..

So anyways, since we decided to move on from Graham's schooling and start looking for a career that didn't require a bachelor's degree, we had to adjust our expectations for a house. First of all, we wouldn't be able to afford as much as we thought we could. Second, I couldn't get everything I wanted in a house (i.e. a great big kitchen, big master suite, and lots of space for guests). Third, we had to decide which house features were the most important to us. Our list of wants included the following:

• an affordable house in general, 
• a big backyard (Graham's request--not mine), 
• a spot outside where Graham could put a basketball hoop, 
• a kitchen with enough space for more than one person to cook in, 
• good schools nearby, 
• a room where we could exercise without restraint. 

Finally, we had to re-think about where we could actually buy a house that met our requests. The different areas in our county vary widely in price, depending on the proximity to the ferries to Seattle, or waterfront properties. The first thing we did was finding a geographic region in the Puget Sound area that has affordable houses yet is in a good school district. Certain areas were out, because the high schools were awful (yes, we are thinking that far ahead), or the neighborhoods were spotty. So, we finally settled on an area right outside the county lines. Oddly enough, we are moving to the same town my ancestors settled in after moving from Iceland and Canada. It is a beautiful area of land, on a peninsula on a peninsula (you'd have to look at a map to know what I'm truly saying--Puget Sound is kind of complicated). You have to cross a land-bridge to get there, so it feels like you're going on a vacation when you cross it just to get home.

Anyways, after semi-deciding which area we wanted to look for houses, I signed up on the Redfin app, and saved some of my favorites. Of course, the website/app is smart enough to send you reminders when new houses in your desired area and price range are put on the market. In November, I noticed a house that was newly remodeled and had an open house that weekend. I showed it to Graham, and casually mentioned the open house. We went after church and fell in love with this house. Of course, it's not perfect (who can afford a perfect house the first time around anyways?), but we started asking the real estate agent what to do if we were interested in the house. She recommended contacting a lender she works with that is located north of Seattle. So, from there.. we got started.

We were almost positive we wouldn't qualify for anything as we thought our debt to income ratio would be too high. So we said to the lender, "We're not sure we can qualify for anything, but we want to run some numbers just to see if we can.." I don't know how many of you are familiar with USDA home loans.. I for sure wasn't before moving up here. Much of the land up where we live is considered to be "rural" and qualifies for USDA home loans. First of all, there are income limits for family sizes (which luckily, we meet), and most importantly, you can put 0% down on a house with no PMI. That's the biggest thing. If you cannot save up 20% of your home purchase price, you need to pay PMI (mortgage insurance), which jacks up your monthly payment a couple hundred dollars. So, USDA loans are amazing if you qualify for one! It would've taken us forever to finish paying off our debts and save up 20% for a down payment at the same time.

So, the loan process was the worst part. Daily, we got e-mails like, we need this paperwork filled out, we need an explanation of why your income isn't at high as it should have been, what are your daycare expenses and why don't you have any, etc. We also had to explain old collections from like 2008, like when Graham had an unpaid speeding ticket that we didn't remember and an old lost library book. I was like I have no clue what this $108 collection bill in 2009 was. Plus, since Graham didn't have a job for a bit while he was in school, we actually had to obtain his transcripts to prove that he was in school and to provide somewhat of a "work history" during that time frame. It was form after form after form. Luckily, the mortgage company people were very helpful and had timely communication with us.

Then, the appraisal came in slightly lower than what we had offered for the house. USDA loans won't pay for much more than what the home is appraised at, so that was a problem. Thankfully, the seller came down to the appraisal price, which was pretty fair in my opinion. Then, the USDA loan paperwork had to be processed during the holidays (it was put in on the day after Christmas), which set it back a couple of days. Now, we are approved, and ready to close on January 20th. I know we have a lot more papers to sign with escrow and all that, but other than that, everything is set to go. The entire process has been exhausting, crazy, mind-blowing, and full of anxiety. The crazy thing is that everything has all been working out for us, and our mortgage will only be ~$50 more than our current rent payment (yeah, I know there are extra expenses like taxes and insurance, but still).

I am still in shock that we are going to be homeowners after what seems like forever. I see all these young 20-somethings buying houses and I'm all like, really? You're ready for that?? This has been our dream for a long time, and we are getting most of the things we want. Plus, there's room to grow and improve. Our life is finally moving along its course. Finally. We are set to close today!

FYI, I did not receive any compensation from Compass to blog about my story. I just wanted to be a part of their project!