Hope

I've hoped for many thing through the years.  Many hopes have been realized and some haven't.

 My greatest hope and desire at present is that this hole will become

this home by Christmas.  Those lovely trees at the back of the lot will stay and our neighbor is a llama named Holly.  How fun is that?  Originally, the main part of the exterior was going to board and batten but I think we've changed our minds and will go with horizontal siding.  We both really like board and batten but the more we look at homes, the more we think it's better used as an accent material rather the the main material.  We will have siding shingles as the accent material.  I love these and would do a whole home with them if they weren't so expensive.  The color will be a slate blue-grey.  The windows on the front of the garage won't quite look like the rendering above.  We aren't totally sure what we will do there.

What I do know is I should NOT look through magazines.  I start planning based on the pictures... then I look at how much, for example, the pictured kitchen costs (70K) and I almost croak.  I had no idea cabinets and appliances could be so expensive.  I had no idea my taste was so expensive.  I've developed a strange obsession with stoves like this one and this one.  I'm also enamored with window and ceiling treatments.  While my hope that the home will be done by Christmas is (THANKFULLY) realistic, my hope that someone will donate one of those stoves to me or a carpenter/cabinet maker will want to work for free isn't.  We are so eager to be in our own place and not live out of suitcases or all sleep in one room.  I feel like we've been temporary for years now. Because we were, to some degree, the whole time we were in Singapore and for a good six months before we moved there.  It will truly be like Christmas to go through our storage shed.  We really have no idea what's in most of those boxes.  We definitely won't need presents for the girls because we can just wrap the old toys that have been packed away.

My sister-in-law introduced me to houzz.com.  I could spend all day and night on that site.  You can save pictures you like into ideabooks.  I was gathering pictures for a wish list.  The only problem is you can't drag the photos off or save them.  However, you can get the html coding for a website so I made a house blog.  It's jumbled but I wanted a place to show the contractor, carpenter, etc. ideas in HOPE that some of them will turn into reality.  Since several of you have asked about the house, check it out if you are keen.