Starting at the beginning

Well Hey All! Don't forget to participate in What's Cookin' Good Lookin'? I can't wait to see (and taste) what you all come up with!

It dawned on me that I've been showing you all of our home decorating, but I've never taken the time to show you the last year of house work. From tiling, to painting, to cutting down walls...we've been busy. Today, I will start with the story of our home, which is on my "Our House" page and follow up daily with a tour of each room in our home. Get ready!

Here she is- home sweet home! Built in 1959, our house is twice our age, but we treat her like our very high maintenance child. Over the last year, Paul and I have put everything we have into her and the work is still going. She is high maintenance but we love her nonetheless.

How our house came to be ours is actually pretty interesting. During our first year in Virginia we rented a home as we did not know if we would stay in the area once Paul completed flight training. In April of 2009, we got the word that we would be staying here for at least three more years. We were so tired of throwing money down the hole every month in rent so it was time to take the next step...purchasing a house. Yikes!

We started the home search in May and narrowed it down to two neighborhoods, though our hearts were truly set on one. Truth be told, the city in which we live has some pretty rough spots so location was key and we were determined to move into the neighborhood of our choice.

Throughout the search for our home, which brought us into over 100 homes (picky much?), Paul and I always liked one particular street. The houses were quaint, it was less than a 1/2 mile from my work, there was no traffic, and it was set back in the corner of our dream neighborhood. We also had the style of house picked out that we wanted: a smallish, brick cape cod with shutters. During our home search, a hobby of ours was to drive through our desired neighborhood and to look for new "for sale" signs. On one occasion, as we drove down our favorite street, I picked out a house and said, "I want a house just like that one." Too bad it wasn't for sale.

Fast forward two months. Our lease was about to run out, we'd looked at every home in our price range and came up with nothing. We were desperate to find a house or we would be forced to sign a new lease for another year. Another year of money down the hole. Knowing how desperate we were, our realtor sent out a letter to everyone in our desired neighborhood to see if they were willing to sell by the end of July. She had one response. One. A couple who had grown too old to care for their house. A house that was a brick cape cod with shutters. A house that was on our desired street. A house that was in our price range.

The house that I had picked out months before that made me say,

"I want a house just like that one."

You know the saying, "it's too good to be true," well, this time it wasn't. To make a long story short, that house is now our house and we could not be happier. Not many people hand pick their dream home when it's not even for sale and end up living in it. I loved our house before it was even ours and I still do.

Stay tuned tomorrow for kitchen before and afters!