We've Moved & We Have a New Blog!

We're all moved...now what??? Check out our new blog to see what we've been up to! http://discoveryln.blogspot.com/

It's Official!

The closing!

We have the keys!

The first item in the house!

The Big Day Has Arrived!

We've reached the finishing line! This morning brings the same emotions we felt on our wedding day! We are so lucky & blessed. However, for those of you who know how much Josh would rather invest money than spend it...he's having a little bit of hard time letting go of the check we're about to hand over! Michelle will help with prying his fingers off of it & loves him more than words for taking this journey! Pictures to come...of course! ;)

Boxes, Boxes Everywhere!

Our house is filled with moving boxes!

Sod!

Our backyard.

Our Finished Fireplace!

Red vs. Brown

When we were selecting our paint color for the front door Josh wanted brown & Michelle wanted red. Josh won the color battle, but Michelle was determined to have a red door somewhere in the house. So...there will be red door in the garage. The door painting has begun!

Spring at Augusta National & Autumn in Maine Inspired

Josh loves Augusta National in the spring, Michelle loves autumn in Maine...so we tried to get the best of both worlds in our landscaping. Bring on the Sod!

Sold!

We officially sold 15851 Fleet Trail today! Lots of fun memories were made in this house. We will miss her, but look forward to our new journey on Discovery Lane!

Carpet!

They installed our carpet today! We just had to get our favorite light fixture in the picture as well! It's all coming together.

Fun Birthday Gifts!

Check out my super fun birthday gifts!
My mom painted this beautiful canvass for our guest bedroom.

Josh's mom gave me these fun, funky letters for hanging our keys in the mudroom
LOVE these personal gifts!!!

Wet Paint

We apologize for the lack of blog posts recently. Sometimes there is a ton of stuff happening at the house & sometimes it's a little more quiet. The painters are currently working their magic on the interior of our home. We simply can't believe we'll be moving in 22 days. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel!

Star Light, Star Bright!

It's Electric!

Our lighting fixtures, dishwasher & microwave are installed and the island is complete. Our kitchen vision is all coming together!

It's Red, It's Glossy...

It's the perfect pop of color!
LOVE IT!
For the top photo imagine the microwave on top and the stove on the bottom.

Flush!

Our toilets were installed today. Exciting stuff!
Mason visited the house again & like all 5-year-old boys was more excited about playing in the dirt then looking at the house! We're thinking they might paint the house tomorrow....fingers crossed!

Is That Really the Color of Your Home?

Nope! We're anxiously awaiting the arrival of the painters to work their magic on our home...maybe this week after the rain??? Stay tuned!

Another House Guest!

Josh's mom came to visit our home today! We took her on a tour of our new neighborhood, community center (the barn), swimming pool and of course our cute little cottage home. We also took a stroll through Bachmanns to show her the types of trees, shrubs, grasses and perennials we're going to have in our landscaping. So much fun! In all the excitement, we forgot to take her picture in front of our address stone. :( So...we thought we'd take a trip down memory lane and post this picture of us, Josh's mom and Josh's grandma from our wedding rehearsal dinner.

Counter tops!

Our kitchen counter tops are starting to be installed. They are a little dusty so it's hard to get a photo showing how gorgeous they are! Guess what's coming next week....the long awaited back splash!!!

House Guests!

Our neighbors Ashley & James visited our home this week. We will definitely miss living across the street from them!
They are expecting their first child in 10 days! Can you believe it? Doesn't she look beautiful? We can't wait for sweet little Carson to arrive!

Boxes!

Our moving boxes arrived yesterday.
We think we may have ordered a few too many!
We're planning to box things up a little at a time so we're not rushed at the end. Wish us luck!
PS...doesn't our living room look bare? We've sold our big chair, coffee table and side tables! All that's left to sell is our TV console. Come on Craig's List...find us a buyer!

Are You Feelin' Hot Hot Hot?

They started installing our fireplace today and it's everything we had envisioned. We can see ourselves cuddled up on the sofa on a cold winter day...Josh reading about investments, Michelle reading about decorating tips and Lucky wagging his big ole' tail around. O, and our Christmas tree is going to look fabulous in here...we can't wait!

Our New Address Labels!

It's the little things that make us smile!

Our Best T.J. Maxx Find So Far!

We've been searching for the perfect canvass for above our fireplace in the gathering room.
The vision: it needed to pull in all the colors of our first floor...warm browns, red and black. We also wanted it to have fun circles & numbers on it. Impossible??? No way! Here's our T.J. Maxx find and the best part..it was less than $50.00!
Bliss!

Our Tile Makes Us Smile!

They started installing our kitchen tile today. We can imagine our future golden retriever (Lucky) sliding all over the floor. He's going to love this place!

Shower Power!

Here's a sneak peak at the tile in Josh's snail shower...so cool! We can't wait for it to dry so we can walk in and see how it looks around the corner!

We Have Kitchen Cabinets!

We can't wait to unpack all our Crate and Barrel wedding gift boxes filled with glassware that we could never fit in to our current kitchen cabinets. And we love our pantry. We'll be buying the economy packs of mac and cheese to fill it up! The square markings on the floor make us think our tile might be coming soon...

It's glossy, it's bright...

it's our red tile for the kitchen backsplash!

We've got wood!

Our doors and cabinets arrived today. Our living room and kitchen are filled with boxes of cabinets and doors. The stain color is just what we envisioned and we love the look of the grain. We can't wait to see everything installed! Here's a sneak peak at our doors!

When You Wish Upon a Star

Hi Everyone! This is Michelle/Missy. There are a couple places/items in our home that speak to one of us more than the other. I'm sure Josh will blog about his office...aka Butler Cabin...someday soon. But I just had to share with you the meaning behind this star light. A long time ago I saw this light in a Pottery Barn catalog. Whenever I see something I love in a catalog, I tear out the page and place it in my inspiration binder. Ever since we started our home building journey, I've been waiting for this light to go on sale and it finally did! The Pottery Barn package arrived on our doorstep this week. The light will hang in our mudroom. Every time I enter our home and look up at this light it will remind me of how I thank my lucky stars I met Josh...how the stars aligned on Feb. 14, 2010 allowing us to start building our fun little home and how much I loved my childhood dog...a golden retriever named Star Dog. Once Josh and I get settled we will be welcoming a golden retriever into our lives. We plan to name him Lucky Star Hill!

Little Whirl Wind

Our nephew, Mason, visited our home tonight. He ran around the entire time! Where do they get all that energy? Love him!

TJ Maxx Finds!

Another fun part of our building experience has been purchasing items for our new home. We've spent a lot of time envisioning our future home & how we want it to feel. We believe having a mixture of sentimental, colorful, unique & fun decorative items will make our quaint little house OUR home!
We both love to find bargains...so Michelle spends a lot of her time these days @ TJ Maxx. Her most recent find was this super cute oven mit. Yes, we get excited over oven mits! :) We're not the best cooks...so this oven mit will be more of a decorative feature in our kitchen & will be perfect for taking Papa Murphy's pizzas out of the oven!
Our kitchen colors are going to be black, silver & a big splash of red!

Everything's White!

The sheetrock is in!
This is a picture taken from inside our living room... looking in to the kitchen & dining room.
We love the open feel of this area!

Our New Address Is...

We LOVE our new address!

All the address stones in our current neighborhood only list the street numbers.
Since we're so fond of our new street name, we decided to include it on our stone as well...LOVE IT!

So, our full address will be: 16875 Discovery Lane, Lakeville, MN 55044.

Insulation

They blew the insulation in today. It looks like the pink panther invaded our home! Next comes the sheetrock & siding.

Furniture Shopping

We just returned from a fun-filled day of furniture shopping. We found the perfect master bedroom set, a dining room table & chairs that we love & a hip accent chair for the living room! The American Express card was on fire today! :) Here we are after purchasing our new bedroom set.

We Have a Garage Floor

They poured our garage floor and are installing all the plumbing in the house. We anxiously await the arrival of our master tub!

Electrical...Check!

We had our final electrical walk through yesterday. One more meeting checked off the list!

Our current neighbors, Ashley and James, visited our new home this weekend! We're really going to miss living across the street from them and hope they will visit us often with their little man, Carson!!!

We just had to post this picture of Josh from a couple weeks ago. For those of you who know how much of a "handy man" Josh is...we hope this makes you laugh! We definitely giggle every time we see it!

The Back of the House

Here's a picture of the back of our home. The two windows at the top are in Michelle's office. On the bottom...the window on the left is in the garage, the three windows in the middle are in the living room and the window on the right is above the kitchen sink. We LOVE our large back patio. We wanted a patio where our future golden retriever (Lucky) can run out the back door and jump off the patio on to the lawn. Thus no railings on the back patio. So cool! Right now the patio looks really high off the ground, but they will be bringing in dirt to make it no more than 30 inches above the lawn. Happy jumping Lucky!

Josh Hearts HVAC

What a week!

We now have a roof, shingles, windows, the back patio is in and the front porch is underway!

Bathroom Fun

Our home is moving right along. All the walls are roughed in, the basement floor is poured and the roof is almost complete. We love our master bath tub & Josh can't wait to wash his hair in our walk-in snail shower (as you can see)! Tomorrow we officially sign off on all our interior selections. Then it's on to landscaping!

The First Floor is Underway!

We simply can't believe how fast our home is being built! The first floor walls went up today. This is a picture of the back of our home. Josh is standing in our back patio door. The large window on the left is in our living room and the smaller window on the right is above our kitchen sink.

Interior Selections

We are coming to the grand finale of our interior selections process. This has been a long, but fun road. We can definitely see our design visions coming together and can't wait to see the finished product. As you can see, Josh was a little overwhelmed by all the lighting options and this was only a very small section at the lighting store. We have our final sign off on April 3rd, so we still have some time for last minute tweaking to make everything perfect.

The house is on the fast track for our June 30th move in date. The footings have been poured, our basement walls are in and the lumber will start to go up on Tuesday. We visit the site almost every day and realize we're one more day closer to moving in! We can't wait!

There's No Turning Back Now!

It's official, they began digging for our new home today. As Josh so eloquently said, "that's the best looking hole in the ground I've ever seen!"

Whirlwind!

The last two weeks have been a complete whirlwind! Our cute little town home hit the market this weekend and we already had someone walk through it today. We've selected the exterior colors (warm brown tones) for our new home, signed off on all the electrical aspects and started selecting our interior elements. We breezed through our exterior selections. The interior selections are requiring much more time. The majority of the lower level of our new home as well as all the bathrooms will be ceramic tile. So...we've spent a lot of time over the past week with our designer and at our local tile shops. We found the perfect floor tile colors today and breathed a huge sigh of relief! Another place where we will be installing tile is our kitchen backsplash. We wanted the backsplash to have a pop of color, so we've selected deep red tiles! Most people think we're crazy for picking this color. We plan to prove them wrong! Josh's favorite part of the interior selection process was having this BIG beer after a marathon meeting with our fabulous designer Julie! We promise to update our blog more frequently in the days to come. Cheers!

Fun Weekend

Today we will be reviewing the final floor plan for our home! We'll also be meeting with our design professional (Julie) to select exterior colors & fixtures. We have a three-ring binder filled with design/color ideas, so we're excited to see our design vision become reality!

The only downside to our move is we currently live across the street from the BEST neighbors/friends, James & Ashley. We will definitely miss being able to simply walk across the street for our weekend get-togethers. The good news is we're only moving a mile or two away so we'll still be close! Last night they came over for dinner and brought us a bottle of wine with a tag that said, "get in to the SPIRIT of home building" (so creative) and a plate filled with homemade sugar cookies (so yummy). Ashley is in her 3rd trimester of pregnancy and we have a little joke about baby monitors. They're going to have a baby monitor in their home so they can hear when Carson is crying and we were going to have a monitor in our home so we could run across the street to help if THEY were crying! :) The search is on for long-distance baby monitors!