Future kitchen ideas

Now that husband and I are on our way to becoming home owners, I feel absolutely horrible for anybody who follows me on Pinterest!  I am fairly certain I have pinned over 1000 things in the last week alone.  Having an accepted offer on a house gets me almost giddy with ideas of what I want to do to the place to make it more "us" and a little more updated.  Who loves the smell of paint and fresh cut wood?  That would be me.

The kitchen in our house isn't the largest and the appliances are a little bit outdated; but, I have high hopes for brightening up the kitchen and dinette.  Right now it has dark cabinets and black appliances that weigh down the room.  The dinette has a really funky paint job that makes you wonder if the bottom half of the wall is extremely dirty.  My goal is to brighten it way up.

I plan on painting our upper cabinets a bright white and the lower cabinets a bright teal.  Something surprising to me because two things I am not fond of are: painting wood and white.  In an older home though ('77) and with a smaller budget, I am totally okay with it.

And because the large black fridge will only keep weighing down the room, husband and I figure, "Why not try painting the fridge?".  I want to go with white or stainless steel; but, he likes the idea of a teal fridge.

I also plan on creating a coffee "bar" (sans chalkboard wall) for husband in our dinette.  My mom and dad are giving us a cabinet that used to be my grandmas and I got the okay to do whatever I want to it.  It will be painted to match the kitchen counters so there is fluidity between the two rooms.  The cabinet will gratefully provide extra kitchen storage for all of the gadgets I have acquired throughout the years to help me in baking.

The lighting also needs to be changed in the kitchen and dining room.  In the kitchen something simple that provides enough light in the room is really all that is needed.

And for the dining room, I have found this beautiful (and affordable) chandelier that I think will be perfect to make the room look a little more luxurious.  

I cannot wait to post actual before and afters of not only the kitchen but all of the rooms.

House Hunting

The hubs and I have known for a year and a half that we would be moving out of Illinois.  Funny thing is, just before we found out we were actually looking for a house in Ptown.  That all came to a stop though when hubs had different tentative offers coming to the table.

So, when we finally received a firm offer for Milwaukee (which took a lot of talk as to which place we should move to) we talked a lot about whether we should rent or buy right away.  After 6 years of apartment living, the answer was really clear for me: I wanted a house!  I NEED a house to call home.  Being a girl who loves to paint and fix things around the house (all thanks to my parents), living in an apartment has been rough.  I mean when something breaks the last thing I want to do is to call and wait for a day and time that is good for management to come check it out.

The week after the fourth of July we spent four days with our realtor to do one thing and one thing alone: find our home.  One house that I had fallen in love with since the beginning of researching was of course "sold" which led us to search for anything and nearly everything we could in four days time.  We ended up looking at 11 or 12 houses and didn't really have to persuade one another to get one house over another.  The third day, we found our house and put an offer in on it!  With many problems due to the listing agents being extremely old school (who doesn't have a cell phone, voicemail, e-mail, or actual hours of operation for a business?) our offer was only countered once before it got accepted.

Come the end of August we will officially be home owners*! *Pending the inspection and 30 years of payments of course ;)

Destination Milwaukee

it seems almost unreal and strange that in a few months husband and i are relocating to milwaukee, wi.  we had never been there before and really did not know much about the city itself which warranted a mini vacation to explore and visit where husband will be working.

driving there from illinois is almost unreal because you can pretty much tell just by the scenery you are in wisconsin.  trees on both sides of the roads almost as far as your eyes can see.  husband kept joking that we must be in a national park because there were so many trees (oh how i love him so).

we stayed in a suburb as we have big plans for our future there.  we have decided to drum roll.............. become homeowners!!! excited is only one way to explain it.  not knowing anything about buying a home and applying for loans we were on the phone a lot with family members trying to get as much information as possible.  during the days we would drive around to the different houses i had found on the web to look at the neighborhoods and types of homes in those neighborhoods.  we ended up contacting a realtor who hooked us up with a loan officer and are on track (from what we know) to become first time homeowners in the next few months.

Milwaukee Art Museum

Just part of the MKE skyline

Marina on Lake Michigan

Walking the shoreline

bentdog has never been near water or sand for that matter so we were curious what he would do.  his paws hit the sand and he was as happy as could be.  he was running and jumping like we had never seen.  he was also very curious about the shore and even walked in the water a little bit!  i think he is going to like milwaukee just fine.

the last thing we did before heading back to illinois is visit dereks new work.  surprisingly, they let me come with him and oh my gosh i am pretty jealous.  the view that he gets to see each day at work is a m a z i n g!!!  a full 360 view of milwaukee.  he gets to see the skyline of downtown mke, lake michigan, south mke which looks to be mostly trees, and even the freeway looks incredible.

only a few more months and our lives will have so much change in it.  change for the better. positive change that make us grow more than ever before.