Hi!

Happy Sunday!

I created this blog because I do a LOT of house updates - at any given time I have at least one project going on - and it can be tedious to explain things on Facebook, through pictures and comments and stuff. So I just thought this would be easier and that way if friends see my pictures and happen to want to know more about what I did, they can look here for a more well-written, methodical explanation. And a lot of people scroll through FB comments and don't care to hear about it, and some do. So this is for the ones who do. :)

Little about me: Sophie. 31. Stay at home mom and group fitness instructor (kia kaha tr1be! Les Mills BodyPump, RPM and CXWorx!).

Little about my family: Clayton. 32. Spouse. Mechanical engineer at an amazing company here in KC. Collins. 5 1/2. Beautiful, spitfire kindergartener. Troy. 2 1/2. All boy. My boyfriend.

Little about my house and community: Leawood, KS. Our house was built in the early 1990's. Wonderful town, beautiful street with lots of huge trees and families that tend to live here for many years - meaning very low house turnover in our neighborhood. I love that, because it tells me that people love living here, they love having roots, they love watching their kids grow up with the other neighbor kids, etc. That is my uneducated interpretation anyway :)

When we were house hunting, we were predominately looking at styles of homes that had polar opposite features. The old, old, old Cape Cod styles we loved in Prairie Village were entirely too small for our family and our personal-space needs. The old, old, old Colonial styles in Brookside were amazing but with the instability of KC public schools, we worried about resale value, and about the cost of sending our kids to private school. The new or brand-new homes we were interested had a lot of the architectural features we liked (enormous closets, butlers' pantries, three-car garages, etc) but they were all really far from Clayton's office and a long commute was exactly what we wanted to avoid. Coming from Iowa, where he had a 45 minute commute each way to the town he was working in, it just really wore on him, and that time adds up. He was spending roughly 7.5 hours per week in the car. Time he could have spent catching up on sleep, or playing with his kids, or going on the long runs he so loves. A new home way out west or south wasn't worth the 45-minute commute each way.

Then we came across this house and it was love at first sight. The block was filled with huge, mature trees. It had enough space for us to grow into, and if we really truly felt like we were "running out of space," it likely would mean that we actually just had too much crap. Neither of us is big into the "bigger is always better" mantra of living. I think we both kind of think that when we get to the head space where we feel like we are running out of space, what we really need to do is edit our stuff. Get rid of stuff that hasn't been looked at in over a year, ya know? If I haven't needed it in a full year's time, do I really need it? Not usually.

Anyway, so when we moved in, in March 2015, we knew that over time and as available time and available money aligned, we would make some changes. Our house is NOT a fixer-upper. We've never looked at it that way. There is nothing about our home that had to be done. I'm just the kind of person who wants things to be just-so, and I'll do what it takes to make it the exact way I want it to be. I'm just a brat like that, I guess. The first change was in the office and dining room.