Hunting Houses: The Wish List

This past weekend Chris and I met our realtor Iris for our first house hunting experience!  The excitement kept me awake Saturday morning as I pulled out my phone and went through the listing pictures again at 3 in the morning.  Let's just say Saturday at 4pm couldn't come soon enough! (Chris had to work, so our showings were scheduled for the early evening).

But before I get to the fun, let's start at the beginning - the wish list.

As first time home buyers, our wish list included everything that we could think of for our future house: 

- 4 Bedrooms

- 2.5 Baths

- 2 story

- 2,000+ square feet

- Garage in front 

- Master down

- Master bath with dual sinks & walk in closet

- Decent sized kitchen

- Breakfast nook

- Open layout

- Dining room

- Game Room

- Space for Office (either a Study or a Formal Living room or 5th bedroom that could be used as home office)

- Decent sized back yard

- Mainly Brick house (which is the norm here in Texas)

- Open Stairs

- Vaulted ceiling in living room

- Good school district

- Nice neighborhood

- Good curb appeal

Whew, what a list! Knowing what our budget was, we knew we would not be able to get everything and we were ok with that.  We did have some must haves (mainly the first 7 listed above) that set up the basic criteria for Iris.  The garage in front was one of the interesting ones.  When interviewing realtors, they always asked why we wanted the garage in front.  The answer was simple:

Chris' extended cab F150 (which is about 19.5 feet long) is not the easiest thing to maneuver in tight alleyways.  For those readers that are not familiar with alleyways (I wasn't until we moved to Texas), some builders plan neighborhoods with alleys/garages in the back of the house.    

So with open minds, and a negotiable wish list in our heads, we were off to check out our first set of houses!!

What are some aspects of a home that are or were on your wish list?

Let The House Hunt Begin!

Hooked on Houses

This time last year we were dealing with the hard news that our dreams of home ownership would be delayed.  

After months of paying off credit card and student loan debt, then months of saving back up - we have finally reached our goal!  

We interviewed and selected our Realtor last week and have secured our pre-approval letter.  I finally let myself really look at what is available and can't wait to go and check out some houses!

Any house hunting tips?

Pretzel Bread

And we're back in the kitchen!

I'm not sure when Chris' love for pretzel bread started, but he has always been one to enjoy it whenever it appears on a menu.  His recent addiction to the pretzel bread version of hot pockets lead to our baking venture to create our own.

We used the Fleischmann's sponsored recipe found on All Recipes and pretty much stuck to the directions.

Chris measuring out the brown sugar

As you can see, Chris did the majority of the prep while I took pictures and assisted with the boiling solution and egg wash.

One of the interesting parts, I found, was boiling the dough for 2 minutes prior to baking the bread.

About 30 minutes worth of baking and we were left with some delicious pretzel bread.

We have actually tried this recipe twice.  The first time Chris followed it to a T and came out with two great loaves.  The second time around, we attempted to double the recipe and honestly the results were not as great as the first time.  We have one package of rapid rise yeast left, so we'll give it one more go...sticking to the measurements as it.

Have you tried any fun recipes lately?

Cotton Anniversary

The traditional gift for the 2nd wedding anniversary is Cotton.  While Chris and I didn't gift each other anything tangible this year, we do have a wonderful reminder of our cotton year!

How perfect is this?  Earlier this year the Texas A&M Aggies (where I went to college) participated in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, TX.  I wasn't lucky enough to score any tickets but did watch the awesome game on TV.  My parents surprised us with this lovely framed picture as a belated anniversary gift.  One of my mother's co-workers took the picture which my mom had framed at Michaels. So thoughtful!!

In other news, Chris finished his busy spring semester and has begun his last (better be advisors or we're going to have some words) 4 electives for the summer.  As a break in between sessions, we took the day off and signed up for the lunch wine tour over in Grapevine (similar to the night one that we took back in 2011).

It was a great break from our regular routine and has us even more excited about our trip to San Francisco and Napa in a couple of months!  Should be a lot to celebrate in August!

If you're married, do you stick to the traditional anniversary gifts?  We did for the first year, but I'm not so sure that we'll stick to it in the years to come.

Baby Quilt

After finishing my first quilt last year I wasn't planning on making another any time soon.  I think it was the sheer size of the first quilt that had me overwhelmed and scared to do it again.

But I decided to give it another go, this time in a baby size that would be much more doable!

My best friend Kristen (who I threw the overseas baby shower for last time) is expecting her second son, and we all know how much I love the colors blue and green!

I wandered through JoAnn's for a while until I happened upon these fun and more importantly soft fabrics.  The chevron pattern was very easy, using the same half square triangle units that I used on my patchwork pillow.

I used the same instructions for piecing it together and the binding from my last quilt.  There is one change I would do next time around.  I used more batting with this quilt to make it thicker, but still used the same 2.5 inch wide strips for the binding.  Unlike my last (thinner) quilt, the 2.5 inch width wasn't quite big enough for the binding.  Next time around I'll go for 3 or 3.5 inch.

I will probably go just a little bit bigger with the next baby quilt.  I really wanted to use my leftover light blue fabric on the back, so I cut my front piece down to match those measurments.  

For only my second quilt, I don't think it's half bad.  Best part is that Kristen loved it!

Two Years

Our second married year is now in the books!  Our anniversary was on Tuesday, but with Chris out of the house at 5:30am for work and not back until 9pm from class we didn't really celebrate until Saturday.  I couldn't let Tuesday go by without doing a little something so that night I picked up some creme brulee from Brio that we enjoyed after his class ended.

Hey Brio - Where's the caramelized sugar??

We didn't exchange gifts this year as the theme was "cotton" and we still have new bedding and bath towels from the wedding that we have not even opened (I can't wait to get them out of storage once we finally, knock on wood, start the house hunt this summer!).  Instead we gifted ourselves a couples massage Saturday morning (under cotton towels, so that's close - right?)

 and then headed out to the Melting Pot for dinner.

Our favorite drinks

Where we finally got our caramelized sugar fix with our dessert fondue!

I have a feeling that our next year is going to be a memorable one, so I can't wait to see what we have accomplished by the time year 3 is complete.

Alphabet Wall

Babies, babies, everywhere!  It seems like all of my friends are having babies, more than a couple are actually on baby number two right now.  In fact 2 of my closest friends Colby & Kristen (BM Cali and MOH Navy from back in my Bee days) are both due with baby #2 within a week of each other.

While I was able to make the shower for Colby's little boy one week after our wedding, I will miss out on the sprinkle for her daughter :(  Although I won't be there in person, I am happy to take part in her alphabet collage.

On the back of the shower invite every guest was assigned a letter with no rules on shape, size or style.  The host only asked that the letter coordinate with one or more of the colors on the invite.  I think this is the cutest idea and after a quick stop to Michael's I was ready to get started on my letter "Y".

I wanted to do a little more than just paint the letter, so I opted to cut Frog tape into circles for the polka dot effect.

Once all those little circles were placed it was time for a little Martha Stewart Glitter paint. 

And by a little, I really mean a lot.  It took a good 6 or 7 coats to get to the shade of pink that I was going for (or, you know the color on the store plaque in front of the bottle).

As you can guess, I finished this last night so the glare of the light doesn't do the glitter justice.

A close up to really get the glitter effect

I hope Colby and her daughter enjoy this "Y" and I can't wait to see a picture of the whole collage put together!

Have you seen or taken a part of any cute baby shower ideas?