Description:JOURNALING:
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I bought this house in 1997 when I came back from working OkBomb. I had saved up overtime money for a down payment. I bought it for $149,995. At first, I felt guilty that money from working such a horrible case was used for my own benefit. But, Mom convinced me that I had taken three years out of my life to see justice done, and I deserved the house.
This was the house of healing. Javier proposed to me in this house, I conceived our daughters here, brought our two babies home from the hospital to this home, and began our new lives here.
Eventually we outgrew the house. It was hard to sell it, for we had so many beautiful memories here.
The room I put the most work into was the backyard. Don’t let the picture fool you, it usually had about 200 sprigs of grass. We had just put seed down and it was Spring, so the yard looked gorgeous. But, by the time we moved out, it was nearly all dirt again.
Newsletter Page 1:
Can you guess:
Which room was our favorite.
Which room had the most work done to it.
Which room Sandi and Misha spent the most time in as babies.
Statistics:
Bought for $149,999
Sold for 449,999
# Bedrooms - 3
# Bathrooms - 2.5
Located on a Cul-De-Sac
Wooded Lot
Built in 1972
Our House
LIVING ROOM IS THE CENTER OF THE FAMILY
If there was one room in this house that was the center of the house while the girls were babies, it would be the living room.
There was only a very small path from the living room to the kitchen to the dining room. Outside of the path was the infant swing, the play yard, toy boxes (yes, that is plural), the changing table, the bouncy swing, the infant bouncer, the car seats, diapers, wipes, and a multitude of other baby paraphernalia.
I signed the contract on the house and immediately went shopping.
I picked the furniture out in less than two days, from multiple stores. When Mom asked me if the living room couch was comfy, I laughed and said I didn’t know because I never sat on it. It just was exactly the style I was looking for. I was not even sure the furniture would match, but it could not have matched more perfectly. The couch, by the way, was horribly uncomfortable!
Some of my fondest memories of this room were decorating the room with Mom right after I bought the house. She made it look like something out of House Beautiful!
She incorporated our symbol - sun, moon, and stars, into several parts of the room. When I was growing up, we started saying I love you more than.
There was almost always the sun, moon, and stars in there. That has become 'our thing'. I have passed that down to the girls too.
Newsletter Page 2:
Fun Fact:
There was an extra bedroom downstairs which Mom, Dad, Javier and I converted to my 'Stained Glass Room'. After the girls were born and I could not work with the lead solder anymore, it became a Scrapbook Room. We affectionately called it the Sanitarium. Because I would go there when I needed to grab on to my sanity.
Mom and I had planned on installing some plywood type of table and some shelves. Dad got down to the house and it ended up having a real countertop and cabinets. He had an awesome vision for making the room really work for me! But, what we estimated to cost $100, ended up costing hundreds of dollars, but it was worth it!
I COULD NOT HAVE ASKED FOR A BETTER KITCHEN
Yes, the kitchen was to die for! It is what sold Mom on the house to begin with. It had been totally ripped out and redone about two years before I bought the house. The cabinets were top grade. There was a pull out pantry. The kitchen island had tons of storage, all looking out over the beautiful back yard. I loved sitting in the kitchen first thing in the morning, having a cup of coffee and watching the birds and squirrels play.
The kitchen had all the amenities, except space. There could not have been more cabinet storage, but if you got more than two people in the kitchen, you were having to squeeze by each other.
Javier and I painted the kitchen green about one year before we sold the house. I loved the color of the green next to the cabinets. The green really made the cabinets pop!
LOVE THIS ROOM
The family room was long and white when I bought the house. The room was lacking in character.
My brother, Bill, came to visit one time and I went and bought tile to put a surround around the fireplace. He was terrified that we would cut the tile wrong. I finally convinced him that I bought plenty of extra tile in case we messed up. It didn’t help that the salesperson at the tile store told us that we should leave that job to a pro, since it was tiling brick and that was difficult. The final results were astounding. Bill still talks about how proud he was of how well it came out.
Mom and Dad bought me the mantle one year for Christmas. It added more character the to fireplace wall. Now, the room just lacked color.
I had asked Javier for more than three years for us to paint it, but he did the usual procrastinating.
Finally, in November 2005, he agreed to paint the room. I wanted a buttery yellow with burgundy accents. Javier convinced me to do two walls in burgundy and one wall in a light gold color. We put in some white curtains and black wrought-iron tie backs. The room came to life and I was completely happy with it.
About four months later, Javier jokingly asked if he could hang his Washington Redskins garb up on the wall. I looked around and started laughing, 'I can’t believe you did that!', I said. 'What?', he replied. 'You made me paint it Redskins colors!', I remarked. 'You just now noticed that!', he laughed. Ok, he finally got his Redskins room. But, we sold the house less than ½ year later. Thank God, the new house already had a Redskins Family Room downstairs.
WOW! I think this is terrific. I missed it when you first put it up, but I finally stumbled across it now. This is an amazing layout, you did a top notch professional job putting it together and I can't remember the last time I read (and loved) the journaling on a layout so much. Excellent, awesome job and congrats on winning the Featured Theme for June. TOTALLY, 100% deserved.
Heidi
Such a cool layout! Wish I had thought to do something like this when my house was "new". Now 3 kids later, it doesn't look quite so perfect & pretty! LOL! Great job! -Lorna
What? Are the other users BLIND? I can't believe you have no comments on this. It's AMAZING!!!!!!
I enjoyed poring over your journaling and your pictures. So much info...just like reading a magazine.
This is definitely going into my favs.
