Curiosity killed the cat

They say that you should keep your curiosity in check, after all it did kill the cat. Well, in our house hunting endeavors I avoided looking at several communities knowing that the houses would be amazing and the prices way out of our budget. 

Let me give you a little backstory. We are trying to buy a house at the half amount of what we will be qualified for. We want to make sure that we stay about $100k to a $150k under what we qualify for. This is so that if we have to move within the next 5 years, and can’t sell the house we can still make payments on it and keep it as an investment.

Now… back to my dilemma… against my better judgment I clicked on one of the communities that I’d been avoiding for about a month now. I clicked… and it was LOVE at first sight.

The builder is the one that built the house we live in right now. They do a fantastic job, and we would love to own one of their homes. In fact, we are considering a smaller model that is within our price goal. However, let’s take a closer look at this, almost 4000 sq. ft., beauty.

Note the the HUGE walk in Pantry on the way to the kitchen. HOW amazing that?! Now if that doesn’t have you sold, look at the Butler’s Pantry connected to the dining room and the other HUGE walk in pantry. I’m so in love with them you’d think I store enough food to feed a small army. And you know what… if I had these pantries I would store enough food to feed TWO small armies.

Alright, enough drooling over the pantries. Let’s move on to the kitchen and that little thing called a morning room. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’d like to have my morning rooms, afternoon rooms and of course evening rooms. SO the fact that this house has a morning room and not a NOOK is awesome. Moving on… there is an outdoor room… which is phenomenal AND comes with a built in outdoor kitchen. That right!!!! OUTDOOR kitchen. Can you tell I’m a little obsessed with kitchens?! I mean, c’mon, who wouldn’t want two HUGE kitchens. I’m also loving the two sided fireplace and the mid-level library!

Now, if the kitchens didn’t have you sold, lets take a step into this large courtyard. WHAT IS THIS?! Built in fireplace and all, with the privacy provided by the garages, this is a dream come true. Hubs and I are in love.

As an added bonus… how perfect is this Master Suite?! HUGE bedroom with a private balcony. TWO…did ya get that?! TWO huge walk-in-closets. AND a five piece master bath.

The sad part is… that we could afford this house, but really, really, really shouldn’t. Really. TWO kitchens!!!!! TWO closets… BOOO.

Lesson to take away… stay away from things you know you don’t want to look at, because then you start trying to find excuses as to why you need 4000 sq. feet, two kitchens, and 5 bedrooms.

I think tomorrow… I might show you the other one… a little smaller but totally drool worthy!

What I’m loving Wednesday

This has become one of my favorite posts of the week… so once again I’m linking up with Jaime from this kind of love to share what I’ve been loving these past week.

I am loving these beautiful shoes. The chunky heels have me sold. I love a heel that is sexy and comfy, and the thick heels do just that. How beautiful are these shoes?!

 

Levity Nicolo Pump

Mojo Moxy Sophia Pump

Aldo Lewi

I’m loving these quotes… each one of them speaks in ways that cannot be explained.

I’m loving that things are changing. That things will always change. I’m not loving that it’s so hard to adjust that we will be all alone in a new place. I’m loving that we will be buying our first house, but hating how stressed I am about the whole thing. I’m not loving that I want everything, yet cannot have everything. And above all I am not loving that by accepting this promotion, Husband and I will not be able to live in Europe like we wanted to… we might never be able to do this due to the nature of his work. It breaks my heart, but I wouldn’t trade his happiness and success in his field with anything… yes even going back home for a few years.

I’m loving this little girl:

She’s everything I’d ever want in a daughter and more.

And as always, I’m loving my handsome Texan, who does nothing but work hard to keep me happy and cater to my stupid whines and needs.

I love you baby! I know I can be a pain in the tush, but at least I know how to cook.

A birthday weekend

… with our best friends.

A weekend filled with lots of laughs, great food, and even better friends. These are the days that make the boring, frustrating and discouraging days so worth it. These are our closest friends, who, over the years, have become our family. I’d literally take a bullet for every single person pictured above. <3

WTF…

 

Just wanted to share this. It’s been an interesting, busy and somewhat annoying day. Husband and I are at each other’s throats about decisions. We’re both frustrated, tired, and cannot agree on what needs to take place first. Sometimes. We just need a vacation from making decisions. I think this Sunday, we might just get a gallon of ice cream, and park our butts on the couch… yeah that sounds about right.

Lesson Learned

I have a bit of a funny story to tell y’all. Today, I had a hair appointment at 10 am, at the same time Husband decided that he wanted to walk over to our local farmers market with his mother and brother. As we were all leaving the house, I told him to grab a spare house key… however he said that he’d use the garage key pad to get in.

Well… around 11:30 I get a call, Husband can’t get the garage door to open, and has no key to get into the house. While most loving wives would rush home to save their hubs from sitting out in the 100 degree heat, I decided that I would take my time and get my hair done… While this seems mean, and my mother almost read me a lecture on how uncaring I was… I thought it was very fitting since I had suggested he take a key with him.

Fortunately, my father-in-law is fantastic and came to their rescue while I took my sweet time getting my hair done, and picking up a birthday cake from Costco. They ended up having lunch in the in the comfort of air conditioning and met me back at the house around 1:30.

I personally thought it was a lesson to be learned and would have/will do it again if need be. I bet next time there will be more than one spare key taken.

On the brighter side, I’ve become a Photoshop nerd and wanted to leave you with a before and after:

  

A few obsessions

 

I tend to get stuck on something I want… and then obsess over it until I get it. A good example is my new lens, the 50mm f/1.4… It was first recommended to me by my current boss when I took my first ever photography class. I obsessed over it since February, and eventually got one. I did all kinds of research and looked at several other lenses, and ended up at square one. I love the lens, but now I’m wanting a new camera… A full frame camera that will be able to utilize the lens the way it was meant to be.

This baby is currently my obsession. A Canon 5D Mark II. The price is a bit steep, and I’m not willing to pay it right now. However, I know that I’ll be obsessing over it for the next several months until I can get my hands on one.

Not only this, but I’ve also been obsessing over a new ring… I know that a lot of people out there think I’m an idiot and should be happy with the ring I have, and I AM. However, both Husband and I believe that if we had the means we would have bought a much more elaborate ring when we were getting married. My ring is not small by any means, but it is simple, and I want fancy. I’m a girl… can you blame me?!

I LOVE the halo settings. Husband and I both loved a simple halo setting when we originally started looking at rings, except the ring we both loved was $20k… for two students living off of a retail pay, and a new job that (for the hubs) we didn’t want to overdo it. But now, we’re making considerably more than what we were making back in the day. And when I went back to looking at rings, I figured I’d go all out, and get something a bit fancier then the simple halo I liked so much.

This is the ring that I wanted… but I’m kind of thinking that I like the round stone better… it is a bit fancier.

My final and possible most expensive obsession right now is a house. Since we decided to buy a home when we move to Arizona, I’ve been house shopping online. I’ve found several that we love the floor-plans of. Houses and decorating. Husband and I agreed that we’d get a new home, and have the builder do only the minimal work that we cannot do ourselves, like hardwood floors throughout and gourmet kitchen. Everything else we’ll be doing ourselves, just because we really enjoy the process of decorating and updating.

I am dying for a light kitchen. I love, the light cabinets that have that worn country look. And I defiantly want a gas stove and a double oven.

We will have an office/library in our home, since I’ll be working from home. I’m thinking the floor to ceiling bookshelves are a MUST.

HA! I just had to get these out of my system, because I have been driving myself mad thinking about all the things I want. My NOW monster is coming out again, and it really needs to find a corner and go sit quietly until we pay off all the things we need to.

For now, I’m going to keep pinning and lusting and paying off bills … so please forgive me if my posts are a little dreamy for the next few months.

Hey… It’s Okay

  It’s Thursday and I am so excited to be linking up with Neely over at A Complete Waste of Make Up  and Amber over at Brunch with Amber.  

It’s completely and totally okay that I squealed and raced to the door when my new lens arrived yesterday. I might have scared our UPS guy a little.

It’s also okay that I immediately put the lens on, and ran around the house taking random pictures of things. Here are some examples of the randomness I photographed to test out the lens.

 

These pictures are straight out of my camera with no editing. The colors and sharpness can be fixed and the pictures can really be enhanced through some Photoshop help. But hey… it’s okay to have raw pictures from the camera on the blog.

It’s okay to schedule a day, in the middle of the week to just go shopping, even though you don’t really need anything at all. Not only that but to end up buying not one, but two pairs of MEK jeans because they are on sale for $54.00.

It’s OKAY…

to not care what your hair looks like when you spent the day working at Barnes and Nobel

to hate when the phone rings, because it’s another customer with the same EXACT question

to hate the customer a little for being so lazy and not reading what is posted on the website

to crave a Mike’s even though it’s noon on a workday

to allow the husband to make a mess of the kitchen because he wanted to make beef jerky

and then to tell him that the beef jerky he spent 5 hours making was decent even though it was amazing, just to get him to like it even more when he got home

to leave the dishes in the sink overnight… especially when no one is coming over

to have a Skype dinner date with a good friend

to be ready for Fall and winter

to really be excited, sad and nervous about moving to a state where we don’t know anyone

and to talk entirely too much about moving.

Hope you all are having a great Thursday! Head on over to Neely’s and Ambers and link up with what you’re okay with this week.

Lots and lots of things to love

It’s Wednesday, and I don’t know where the week has gone. I’ve been so busy trying to finish up a last few things before I go back to school mid-September that I’ve lost my mind. Work’s also been super busy, and I missed blogging.

So today, I’m linking up with Jaime from this kind of love to share what I’ve been loving these past week.

First and foremost I am loving my amazing hubby, who has been everything and more to me. He’s the most hard working, dedicated and handsome man I know.

I am loving that I finally ordered my 50mm f/1.4 and it will be here TODAY. It is out for delivery and will be in my little hands by this evening. I’ve heard so many amazing things about this lens and cannot wait to get my hands on it. Especially since I’m helping a friend with a shoot on Sunday!

I am loving that today is the last day that I have to worry about the accounting freelance work I was doing, and in about 3 hours I will be done with it forever. No more accounting papers to write. This also calls for a celebration. So I may be heading up to Castle Rock to reward myself with a new Coach purse… well maybe not… since I just bought the above lens for a good chunk of change.

Love, love, loving our new bed. The latex mattress is really well worth the money. I’ve been sleeping like a baby lately, and waking up with no back issues. Thanks again to my amazing Husband who did all the research to make sure that we get the right matrass.

I’m also loving that it is now completely official that we will be moving to Tucson, and that the process of hiring the hubs for the new position has officially begun. We should know in a few weeks time when the approximate move date is. We’re both hoping that we’ll have until May of 2012 before we move, so that we can spend another ski season and Mammoth season here in Colorado.

Loving that we decided on buying a house in Arizona and spending a few years there before moving to Texas. And loving that in two months time we’ll be heading down to Lubbock for the wedding and then spending 10 days in Arizona to look for a home, check out ASU and the area in general. We’ll spend our second anniversary in Phoenix or Flagstaff, just the two of us.

I also wanted to let you all know that I am loving every single one of you, and appreciate you so much. I know I’ve been on and off here, but you have all stuck with me. I know I promised a whole bunch of new material on the blog… and it is coming, once I catch my breath which should be after today!

I hope you all are having a wonderful Wednesday!!!