100,000 Views! Thank you Barbies!

I can't begin to tell you all how much it means to me that the BDH blog has just crossed the 100,000 view mark! Your love, support and interest in our house journey is so incredibly moving & humbling. <3

I never fancied myself a blogger, especially since this site was really just initially intended for keeping our out-of-state loved ones updated on the house progress, so the fact that it has found such a wide audience has been a wonderful surprise.

THANK YOU BARBIES!!

I really wish I had done something fabulous for you all to honor this fun milestone, but I've been incredibly busy at work and also have been swamped by our lender flooding us with last minute requests since our loan is in underwriting (they want an arm, a leg, your first born son and tax documentation for all of the above to give you a loan these days). I'll keep thinking of the proper way to honor the occasion, but until then I hope you'll enjoy these photos of the BDH from the past week. Now that we're THIRTEEN DAYS from moving in/closing, the BDH is now just undergoing a few finishing touches.

Here's our doorbell that we ordered online. The house came with one, believe it or not, but it was small and whitish/clear and definitely didn't fit the outside decor, so we ordered this one! We love how big and vintage it looks (I wish I had a picture of it outside the plastic).

The media room has finally been painted red!

The master closets have been painted pink! I really hoped it would be a lighter, more subdued pink than this, but this is how it came out. We're toying with the idea of putting a thin coat of paint over it down the road to calm it down a little.

Our pantry got shelves!

Nothing has really changed much with the kitchen, but we did finally order our island chandelier (see below). We had been stalking this one for literally almost a year, but finally bit the bullet last weekend (all this money we've had to save up to buy light fixtures for our brand new home really frustrates me about Toll Brothers... I can't believe they don't give you electricity and fixtures in every room). Thankfully we were able to get a great deal on it through Amazon because the box is reportedly damaged, but the chandelier is supposed to be fine. We'll see when it gets here. Hopefully we're good!

Our LG cranberry washer and dryer showed up!

Our fabulous neighbors invited us over last weekend and we snapped this photo of the house. Love a new angle!

 I love the stain color!

The inside of our new refrigerator that showed up this week! It's pretty normal/standard, but still exciting!

 The fridge again.

 Landscaping!!

Here's the lot graded, with a big pile of mulch ready to go for cool landscapey stuff. :)

Thanks again for all of your love and support barbies! It means so much. xox!

Our Kitchen Inspiration

Hello barbies! I hope you all had fabulous Valentine's Days. Hubby and I spent the holiday in Chicago, which was FREEZING COLD but fabulous. Here we are at the legendary Gino's East, eating famous Chicago deep dish pizza. :)

Today marks THREE WEEKS until we move into the BDH (aghhh! pinch me!) and one of the most notable pieces of recent progress is our kitchen. Our oven hood is getting finalized, our backsplash was just completed, appliances (except for the refrigerator for whatever reason) are in place and the builder even took the protective plastic off the granite. As we begin to see it take it's final shape, I thought it would be fun to share some of the kitchen inspiration pictures that got us here in the first place. I always knew I wanted antique white cabinets and creamy granite in my barbie dream kitchen, but these pictures helped fill out the rest. They especially helped confirm our decision to do a dark center island, which we really think helps anchor the otherwise light room.

I love the appliques and all the detail in this one. Also loving the giant island.

  

I hate this chandelier, but the backsplash, granite and cabinet combo are gorgeous.

Love the display section at the end of the island. We ultimately decided on a similar upgrade through our builder. I also like the granite edge profile.

Our paint color is very similar to this, which I think compliments the slightly lighter cabinets well.

I love EVERYTHING about this, except for the absence of a giant island chandelier. We're decorating with the same cream and black checkered pattern. I've already bought a few pieces in that pattern for our glass cabinets at the end of the island.

Although those images are certainly a tough act to follow, thanks to all of their fabulous inspiration, we now have this almost-complete kitchen!

 Our new backsplash and our Colonial Gold granite.

 

 

I know you're all probably noticing that the most important item - the island chandelier - is missing. This is because we didn't buy it through the builder and we haven't bought it on our own yet. For months we've been stalking this one and we'll probably break down and buy it this week or next. We probably would have bought it sooner but we've had SO many house expenses lately that we're kinda having to stagger them.  This is the one that I'm 95% sure will ultimately be perched above the island though.

For context, here's our casual china pattern that will be going in the BDH kitchen. We got 8 place settings of this Lenox Butler's Pantry for our wedding in 2010 and are still absolutely in love with it.

 

And it certainly wouldn't be a good BDH blog post without some pictures of the latest treasures I've picked up for the house.

I bought these two black Williams Sonoma pot holders with a gift card I got for Christmas. Loving them.

Candle holders for the island that I bought in December in Texas, but forgot to post.

As always, thanks for reading barbies! 21 DAYS UNTIL MOVE-IN DAY!! :)

The BDH is positively glowing :)

As the BDH is coming into her own [and possibly also due in part to her new found electricity] she's positively glowing! Hubby and I went out to visit twice this weekend - once in the day and once at night - and we were just marveled at how far everything has come over the past few weeks. I'm not usually a night person, and maybe this sounds cheesy, but it just felt so special to be in the house at night with all of the lights on... as if it's finally a real house. Enough of the girly mush, here are some pictures of the BDH from this weekend.

I had been visualizing this chandelier shining through that window for MONTHS (and it was even prettier than I'd imagined).

 

Brand new shutters! The other windows are anxiously awaiting theirs.

 

This is our back staircase banister... in all it's weirdness. I'm thinking the banister guy may have been drunk or feeling especially artistic on this one. It adds character I guess? lol

 

Probably my favorite view in the house.

 

The arches are in the process of getting molding. Loving it so far. Ross says its his favorite part of the house.

 

Looking into the master bath. I wish the cardboard wasn't covering the checkered tile work.

 

A hubby & Whitney selfie in our master bath mirror! :)

 

Master bath again. Clothes closet on the left. Shoe closet on the right.

 

Upstairs hallway.

 

Kitchen at night!

 

Brand new (as of Saturday) cooktop backsplash (sans grout at this point)

 

The kitchen! We ordered our island chandelier outside the builder, so it won't be there until we move in.

 

Ross's truck in the driveway!! NOW it feels like home. :)

 

Even the garages are glowing :)

 

Looking up at the upstairs hall at night

 

Looking in through the front door :) :) :)

 

Oh, and hubby and I got a TON done for the BDH this weekend too. We bought two chandeliers, one fan and lots of miscellaneous other house stuff we needed this weekend. Since not every room came with lighting we've had to purchase some of our own outside Toll. Finding the right fixtures is kinda urgent though, since we don't want to move in and have black spaces. Since we have SO many expenses in this last month before we close, we've put all of our usual splurges on hold. We're not really going out to dinner, buying clothes (which is hard for me) or doing any extras. We have furniture, light fixtures and a fence to buy!

Here is Ross with our new chandelier. We picked it up in Garner from an electrician who pulled it out of another house where the owner had him install a $5,000 Swarovski chandelier in it's place! We got it for a steal and it was just what I was looking for! Oh, and hubby is so good to me that he offered to bring it inside and hold it up in the formal living room so that I could see what it would look like. <3

 

We also bought this guy. He wanted a fan above the master bed, I wanted a chandelier, so we decided we would need to find a compromise... a "fandelier" if you will. Despite several people telling me they didn't exist, we found this! This fab fandelier is marital compromise symbolism at its finest. Oh, and it was on sale! Apparently the fandelier demand is low right now. I'm toying with the idea of hanging a few crystals from it in the future.

 

We also FINALLY found the right chairs for our hearth room, which up until this point was on track to be one big empty space when we move in. We had been looking forevvvverrrrr for these and finally found some we could agree on. Ross wanted big, comfy and tall and I wanted linen and wingback. You could imagine how hard it would be to find that crazy combo. We're very happy with these and are relieved to have one more room of furniture checked off. We didn't buy the table pictured here, because we have something else in mind for that spot, although it did go pretty well.

Oh, and last but SO not least, we bought a chair for my clothes closet! I had a gift card to Homegoods and had been trolling for the right closet chair for awhile, to no avail. This guy was perfect though! I'm so excited! PS - Doesn't hubby look thrilled? He's such a trooper. Every barbie needs a man confident enough in his masculinity to carry a pink damask chair across a parking lot for his wife. 

On that note, thanks for reading barbies. You're the best readers a girl could ever ask for! xox