THE HOUSE

So, if my long absense was not already a hint, we did find THE HOUSE. We have been there for almost 3 weeks and discovered the true joys (and downsides) of owning your own home. But the joys truly outweigh any negative aspects and we are both elated and overwhelmed with the amount of items on our growing to do list. Despite the fact that the house was in great condition (overlooking the plumbing issue of last weekend) compared to some of the other homes we considered, it very much had a specific look upon moving in. I'll share pictures below, but as a preview let's just say that the home decor/color scheme made me feel as though I just stepped into a New Mexico timeshare. Ry & I being ultimate optimists, like to say that the previous owners "had a theme, and they did really great with that theme". That theme, however, sure was not ours. With a wedding quickly approaching in July, of which we have done very little planning, A LOT needs to be done to get the house to really feel like us.
SOOOO, without much further ado, here is our big project list in no particular order:

• Build back perimeter fence
• Reinforce side fencing/build new side fences
• Paint ALL the rooms
• Remove fabric wallpaper in family room, formal living room ceiling, bedroom, and guest bath
• Recarpet stairs, man cave, master bedroom, and guest bedroom
• Strip & repaint kitchen cabinets
• Remove southwestern decor left behind in formal living room
• Paint house exterior
• Paint doors
• Add crown molding to formal living room & family room
• Build studio in garage
• Stain terracotta tile floor & countertops in kitchen  (well, only I want this one)
• Fix kitchen disposal (just found out this one was acting up last night)

*Everything highlighted is in progress currently in some capacity. Those crossed off have been completed.
As you can see, we have quite the busy 5 months ahead of us. I probably should add find caterer and wedding photographer to that list. I can almost hear brides across the country gasping in disbelief that these particularly important details have not been completed.

But anyway, now for the long overdue HOUSE PICTURES. I caution that these are pictures taken before we moved in so all decor, furniture, and boxes do not belong to us:

MAYBE THE ONE

So the house hunt has been going on for a couple months now, with the serious business taking place in the last month. We have looked at countless homes with our central location in Valencia, CA. After toying around with the idea of a few other cities, we decided that the Santa Clarita area was the best long term investment for us:
1. In our price range
2. Great school system
3. Suburban feel
4. Close to family

Having lived a minimum of 2 hours from my parents since graduating high school (the majority of that time being more like several states away), I never thought I would be a person that would consider the proximity to family a deciding factor. But looking at the amount of time we already spend driving up to Valencia to visit Ry's parents it just makes sense. As we all continue to get older, I think we will appreciate the saved traveling time and availability we have to each other.
As the search went on we realized that everything we wanted to put offers on were short sales (basically we want more than we can afford). This led us to opening our minds to a previously dismissed city called Castaic. Its a little north of Valencia, but only a couple of freeway exits. Here we found two homes that we both would be happy to call our own, and they weren't short sales! And that is where we are now....waiting to hear back from these offers. Per our realtor, the first standard sale was meeting their realtor today to review our offer. She expected we would hear something back around 2 PM today, but alas, it is 3:30 and we are still anxiously awaiting.
Could this be our new home?

*non-distorted pictures to come if we actually get the house.

WEDDING.....OR HOUSE

I was never one of those girls who had a vision for her wedding. In all honesty, the thought of weddings never crossed my mind. And though I knew Ryan would be the person I would spend the rest of my life with, I figured it would be another few years before he was ready to take the plunge. The only aspect I knew must be part of my future wedding would be walking down the aisle to "Samba Pa Ti" by Santana, but then I have to go ahead and get engaged to a musician and that gets thrown right out the window.
Apparently there's something about having that ring on your finger, because the day, no morning, after our engagement I was at the store buying my weight in wedding magazines.  For the next month, I immersed myself in wedding, if there was a wedding cereal I probably would have bought it. It was all about finding the venue, places were already filling for next summer making me frantic to secure our location & date. But every so often, through this craze of wedding-ness, Ry & I would take a step back and contemplate how insane it was that we would essentially be spending what could be a down payment on a house for a one day event <gasp>. Now I know that our wedding would be one of the most important events in our lives, topped only by the birth of our future children and perhaps another Saints Superbowl win for Ryan, but it really was one day compared to the lifetime investment we could be foregoing with a house. So after much thought and the both figurative and literal (money) blessing of our parents, our wedding project shifted to finding our first home.
The wedding will still take place, but instead will be in our future backyard. We both fell in love with the romantic idea of getting married in the first home we will own together. And though the new goal is one we could not be happier with, it does throw some "unknowns" into the equation. But now it doesn't matter because soon we will be starting our lives together in some ways that we originally had thought would take us many years to get to.