First Floor

Hello all!  We hit the Mall of America today.  OH MY!!!!!  That place is humongous!!!  We only hit the bottom floor and Jemma said, "Let's go.  I am exhausted!"  We will never have to go anywhere else again!  Especially as the Ikea is right across the street!  Wooo hoooo!!!  My only complaint is that there is no Pottery Barn in the mall.  Seriously???  How can you NOT be in the Mall of America!  Oh well, there is one close!  What a neat place!

We went back to the house today and I will take you on a tour of the main floor.

 This first shot is of the view when you enter the front door.   Pay no attention to the six year old in the floor!

  

This is the large living area to the right of the front door.  I am thinking about breaking all rules and making this my formal dining room as it is larger.  I don't know.  What are your thoughts? 

 

This is the dining room to the left side.  My dining set would be tight. 

 It would fit, but it would be snug.  I just think this would make a cozy sitting area.  

 

When you come down the foyer, you come into the kitchen on the right! 

 I fell in love with the painted island immediately!  It is a unique shape and I just love it!

 I love the oil rubbed bronze fixtures especially the pendant lights

The white door is the pantry.  It is quite a bit larger than my old one so I am geeked!

 

Another shot of the kitchen with a super cute husband!  I love how there is a regular oven and then the microwave/convection oven is on the top and then second oven is on the bottom.   

 This is my new stove.  I have never cooked on gas,

 and I am praying it is easy clean up when I boil stuff over!!

  This is looking back toward the front door from the kitchen.  The doorway to the right is the mudroom.  

We are going to put a door on it so you can't see it when you are eating dinner!

This is the mudroom.  On the left is a long closet that will be awesome for winter coats, supplies, brooms, mops, vacuums and the works!  I love the boot bench with the shelf above it. 

 It has three divisions.  How perfect is that!!!

Across from the kitchen is the family room.  I am not used to stained wood so that is going to be an adjustment.  Another interesting thing is that all the trim work is painted cream.  It is definitely warm looking but I am so used to the white!  It is all different and will be interesting as I decorate! 

The hall on the left leads to the office and the 3/4 bath.  

Jemma is enjoying a hot chocolate by the fire!  Gotta love a fireplace with a remote switch!

   

All winter long in Charleston, she has asked to have a hot chocolate by a "roaring fire"!  Ha!  We never built a fire in our fireplace in Charleston so the minute we had our new  house she asked for a hot chocolate.  

We obliged!

 The office

The 3/4 bath

A shot of the family room and kitchen area from the hall.  I love my island!  Have I mentioned that??  :-)

Tomorrow we will go to Jemma's new school to see about enrolling her for first grade.  We drove by today and it is a big school.  She was so excited or as she still says, "essited"!  It is right out of our neighborhood and literally a 4 minute drive.  If we get our tails in gear, we could walk to school!

I will be back soon with the top floor!  Have a great night y'all!

We Found One!

Greetings from Minnesota!  I hope everyone has had a great weekend.  We have been very busy since arriving here on Thursday.  We looked at houses on Friday and Saturday and found a great home for our family of three!  We kept going back and forth between this house and a custom built neighborhood and something just felt really right about this house.  The best part is that it is a finished home that we can move into with a few weeks of arriving.  They are going to finish the basement for us so that will take a bit of time, but the home is done and ready to go!

It has so many great features and the quality is very impressive.  It isn't my dream kitchen with white cabinets and dark floors, but my island is unique and painted so I can deal!!!  It is way more home than we could possibly use, but we got such a great deal that we couldn't pass it up.  The thing that sold it for us was looking out the windows while in the house and watching kids going up and down the street and running through the backyards.  Wrap it up... we are home!  We signed the papers Saturday night.

Today we visited the house and neighbors came out from all over to say "hello".  Jemma started playing with the 5 year old girl and 7 year old boy next door immediately.  While we were in the house, a gaggle of girls ranging in age from 5 to 8 or 9 were running through the backyard.  It just felt so right!  God is good and has answered our prayers to find the right spot to raise our daughter for however long we are here.

Without further ado... our new house!

It is blue which reminded me so much of my beloved Charleston homes and for the first time ever... I have a FRONT PORCH!!!!   I can't tell you how much this excites me!  I see a swing and rocking chairs in my future!

I will share more pictures soon.  I took a ton today, but they were all blurry!  When I try to get fancy with my husband's point and shoot, it just never works!

We hit Ikea today.  Oh how I love it and it is 19 minutes from my new house!  The hubs may be in trouble!  Not to mention we went in the Mall of America to eat only as the mall was closed, but OH MY STARS!!!!  There are no words!!!!  

Thank you all for your sweet comments while we go through this crazy business.  I can't tell you how much your words have encouraged me and let me know that this is all going to be o.k.  It means so much and I know that no matter where I go, I will have my blogging buddies!

SOLD!!!!

Well, friends... it is done and SOLD!!!  11 days on the market and we had an offer!  Offer negotiated and accepted and sold on day 13!  I am still in shock.  The biggest kicker is they want to close in the middle of April!  We are moving out much sooner than I expected.  It is all happening so fast, but I am so grateful that it happened.  We are so blessed!

I am so behind on my blog reading and hope to catch up with all of you very soon!  We are going to Minnesota for a look/see visit in the next few weeks.  I will keep you posted!

We also had our best friends come for their annual spring break visit and had a blast!  We love them and just enjoy being with them.  They stayed a full week and could have stayed longer!  Our favorite day was the boat ride out to Morris Island Lighthouse.  It is a gorgeous ride out and the best part is that we always see dolphins.  I love dolphins!  I always wanted to be a marine biologist and work with dolphins, but the whole don't-live-near-any-ocean thing always played a roll!  To watch these gorgeous creatures swim back and forth under the boat is such an amazing experience!  They were riding the wake created under the boat.    Our boat captain said they love to do it!  At one point, they all wanted to get by us and they came as a pack speeding by.  I swear they were going about 35 miles an hour!  It was incredible!

My water baby

Fiddler crab

Horseshoe crabs that were getting a little busy!  They were so caught up they missed the whole tide thing and were too far inland.  We had to move them so they wouldn't die!  The female is the large one in the front and the male is the smaller one.  This female was huge!!!

They were not letting go!  This is to show you how darn big they were!

This is the Morris Island Lighthouse.  It was originally a brick tower with a light constructed by the Colony of South Carolina in 1767.  In 1861 the Confederates blew up the lighthouse so the northern troops could not use it.   After the Civil War, Congress approved a new lighthouse and it was completed in 1876.  Due to jetties being built to protect Charleston Harbor, the tidal currents have changed and it has caused severe erosion to the island.  Today the lighthouse stands alone and is completely surrounded by water.  Hurricane Irene that came through last year caused a huge amount of erosion from even our trip there last year.  The change was amazing.  In 1962, the lighthouse was decommissioned but local residents fought to save the structure.  It is now privately owned and efforts are made to preserve this beautiful lighthouse.  

The slight tilt to the left happened as the foundation shifted after the earthquake of 1886.  Charleston sits on a fault line that is larger than the San Andreas Fault!

He popped up and looked right at us!

Then came right over to say hi!

Just a perfect day in the Lowcountry!

My Blue Hour Shot

Hi everyone!  You know how I love to take pictures and so I convinced the realtor that I could do my own pictures of the house.  He is our neighbor and was all for it.  We talked about what we wanted and we agreed that a blue hour shot would be really cool and different.  I was able to capture it and it looks awesome on the MLS.  It really stands out and makes you take notice.

We had a showing on Sunday and it went well.  We know the people so it is a bit tricky, but I know we will find the right buyer who will love this house.  It is now spotless (for the most part) and show ready at all times.  I am reading essays again, and I feel like I have washed 700 loads of laundry.  We have company coming next week then going to Minnesota to search for a house for a week.  Then I have company coming that weekend we get back, a Founders Day event that I am planning, and company coming that week to visit.  I think I may have bit off more than I can chew!!!  Oh well, I am so excited to have my friends come and enjoy our last bit of Charleston!  

Have a great week everyone!

Hello all!!!

I have been MIA for a while now!!!  Wow did February fly by!  We had company come from the 19th through the 22nd.  I will post some of our adventures soon!  My MIL came on the 22nd and I headed to Disney for my 3rd annual girls trip/race!  We had so much fun and let me tell you... I didn't even take a camera!!  My girlfriend is sending me some pictures so I will share that soon too!

The house is on the market and I am going into cleaning purging mode!  I thought I would share a few more shots of the house.  Isn't it sad that I haven't done anything to the house?  I am a three year kind of gal.  I live in it for about three years, get a feel and then make my decorating moves!  I had so many plans but now I will just use them in a new place!

Our Living Room

We had the cabinets and mantle custom made to make the room more user friendly!  

A Second Guest Bedroom a.ka. another playroom for Jemma

Jemma's Playroom

I want to go on record as saying this room has been staged!!  It is not normally this neat by any stretch of the imagination!

Downstairs Bath

This is where I have many of my prints that I collected throughout Europe.  I know the bathroom is a weird place for them, but we see them in there all the time and enjoy them!  :-)  

Our Master Bedroom

This poor bedroom is always the last one to be decorated!  I was going to work on it this year in the whites and blues.   I wanted white bedding with a blue duvet at the end of the bed.  Light walls and white drapes. I am going to still do it in our new home.  

We will have the beachiest bedroom in Minnesota!

Our Master Bathroom

I was going to paint it the blue color from the Master Bedroom.  Now I am glad it is very neutral!

I am off to clean so wish us luck!  We leave in a few weeks for Minnesota to look around and find a house.  Say a prayer that we sell ours quickly and can find what we love there!

Happy Valentine's Day!

I hope you all have a wonderful day filled with love!   Not only is this Valentine's Day, but this is the day that 18 years ago my sweet husband asked me to marry him.  He had worked at the bowling alley all night, and I was in a nightgown with a cow on it that said Love Me Tender watching an I Love Lucy marathon.  He came by to bring me my present.  He told me to close my eyes and when I opened them he was on one knee with the ring box opened in his hand.  He said, "I didn't even get you a card, but if I did, it would say, "I love you Kathryn Anne.  Will you marry me?"  I was so shocked I couldn't speak!  He looked at me and said, "Are you going to say "yes"?"  I then said yes about 1,000 times!  I have never regretted saying YES.  I love you BHW with all my heart.  Thank you for everything!  Happy Valentine's Day!

This was Jemma's Valentine to pass out at school.  Beth from Home Stories A2Z did these last year and I knew I wanted to do them!  They turned out so cute and all the other moms were very impressed!  Thank you Beth!

I hope you all have a wonderful day!!!

Cleaning up

I have been going through the house and just starting the process of cleaning out and straightening everything up.  I had so many ideas that I was going to do this year and now we will be moving!  We have lived here for almost three years and I have said that it seems at three years is when I feel like I "know" my house and know what I want to do.  Oh well, I already have lots of ideas for a new house!  I thought I would show you a few pictures of our house now as I am cleaning and photographing for our sale!  Yes, I am taking my own pictures of my house!! 

Want to know what is crazy?  Now that I am about to leave, I am getting calls about my photography.  I was asked by my realtor to do photos for other realtors of their homes for a set price.   Then I was contacted by a children's clothing boutique to shoot their clothes on kids for their advertising!   Of all the luck... well, it just makes me more determined to start of on the right foot in Minnesota!  Hello, my name is Kathryn and I am a photographer.  Thank you very much!

To kick of the house tour, we will start at the front door.  I haven't edited anything so beware!

I love the C shape to our staircase.  The office is to the right.  I refuse to show it.  We have a lot of furniture in there that is too big for the room.  We just aren't ready to give it up so in my office it went!  I will be rearranging and cleaning out this room next week!

To the left of the foyer is the dining room.  This set is very special to me.  My mom passed away in 1997 and she didn't really have much of anything in the sense of "hand it down".  When she passed, she had a small life insurance policy that was mine and her husband's to split.  I decided I wanted to buy my dining room set with the money so I would have some to give to my children from their grandmother.  Every time I look at it, I think of my mama and it makes me happy to know that Jemma will have this little bit of her too.  

I love my big fancy schmancy picture!  At first glance, I was like "that is a big ol' picture of fruit!", but the more I looked at it, the more I liked it.  It was from a store that was going out of business.  It was priced at $975 but I got it for $300!  I know that is still a lot, but I figured I couldn't even frame something that big (and this baby is big!) for that price.  It was one of those pieces that I knew I would regret if I didn't get it and I just love it!

Through the dining room is our kitchen.  I thought I would love the cooktop on the island so I could talk to the family and all that jazz... I hate it.  I hate that it interferes with my space on my island which is where everyone congregates.  I feel compelled to clean and scrape the sucker all the time because I can't stand for any spots or marks on it.  I definitely won't have an island cooktop next house.  That is for sure!

This picture is for all my rooster loving ladies!  Do you spy him?  He is nestled in the fake (gasp and egad!!!) greenery.  The greenery was on top of the cabinets which didn't look as bad, but I moved it for Christmas and never put it back!  I hope my next house has double ovens.  I love those bad boys!!!  

I am out of here for now and going to bed!  I will share the rest as I take pictures for the realtor!  

I still can't believe I am moving!!!!  Thank you for all your sweet comments and words of encouragement.  It really means a lot to me!  Just know that I am dragging all of you through this with me so get ready!