Guess what we did!

Yesterday Andy and I headed to Ikea to grab some stuff for the new house. We aren't in yet so we have to store it for now. We would have waited until we were in but they were having an awesome deal where they would give you a gift card worth 15% of the price of a couch. Since we needed a couch we decided to go for it, that way we could get some more stuff for free. Take a look:

Yeah those three carts are ours, plus that package that I'm standing next to had to get placed on a cart as well. Lucky for us we brought a little U-Haul trailer, otherwise we would have been in trouble. It feels kind of weird dropping a ton of money (for us) like that, but we have been saving for this couch since we started building, so we basically paid cash. Plus the gift card deal helped out tremendously, we got two chairs for free. I can't wait to get it in the new place and put it all together, it is going to be awesome. Only 2 more weeks y'all!

The only thing I'm seriously worried about is the house looking too Ikea. I mean I love Ikea, I'm a big fan of clean lines and a slightly modern feel, but I think too much of their stuff together can have that first apartment feel that I really want to avoid. We plan on having a nice mix of stuff that we are building ourselves and buying from other stores as well, it's just a concern that I have, but I'm not sure how do you furnish a house on a budget without a little bit of Ikea in there. Any ideas?

(I'm)patiently waiting

Except I'm not patient and really neither is Andy. We barely made it 8 months before we moved in together, we were engaged before we got the ring, and we talked multiple times about eloping before the wedding (but feared death by family). We are not patient people. We can wait, just not very long. So it seems a tad silly to me that we are building a house. I mean really, us building a house? I can barely wait for paint to dry on my DIY projects and we decided to wait 6+ months for a house. I think we are crazy.

This is only coming up now because there is nothing coming up house wise. We have made our structural decisions, picked a lot, and chosen the interior aspects. The only thing left to do is wait. We have to wait for the permits to come through before we can meet with our contractor and discuss our build. We have to wait for the build to start and once it does we have to wait months for it to be finished. Once it is finished we have to wait for inspections to pass and do the paper work. It's a big waiting game. It was all so exciting (and still is the majority of the time)  because we were constantly picking and discussing and going to the design studio and the model. Now that the selections are made the glitter and sparkle has settled and we I realized that the majority of this build will be spent waiting. Boo.

I do believe that waiting for the permits will be the most boring part of waiting because there is nothing to see. We go to the home site a couple times a week and the most exciting part so far is that they have paved our road and put our street sign up (I'm not saying that is boring at all, in fact I cheered when both of these things happened). Our plot is still just a little piece of dirt. Once the permits go through and they can start building I have a feeling it will be more exciting because we can stop by every day and see the progress (did I mention we get our own hard hats to wear when we visit the construction site?). So I'm impatiently waiting for the government to give our contractor the go ahead so we can get this party started and I can do something other than twiddle my thumbs.

Until next time folks.