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I just realized I forgot to tell you the rest of the reasons why we chose our house.  I got all excited with the before and after pictures because I couldn't wait to show you that dining room!  


The house is a five minute drive to Drew's office and a ten-minute WALK.  There is a jogging trail behind his office that passes right by our neighborhood.  And it's a legit jogging trail, not all wooded and scary.  He could come home for lunch and hang out with Sofia when she's not in school!  And when she is in school....um...ahem...well, YOU KNOW.  I'm just sayin.


It's also ten minutes from everything - Target, the main street with all the cute shops and the farmer's market.  I love the farmer's market in Reading - it is so serious!  I'm talking fresh everything and everyone shops there instead of the grocery stores.  It's totally the hang-out spot and I have such daydreams of us going there every Saturday to get our fruits and veggies and buying milk in the glass bottles directly from the farmers.  That part actually isn't a daydream.  We bought milk for the baby while we were there this past weekend and it totally came in glass bottles!  How cool is that!


So once the papers were signed and the house was officially tentatively sorta kinda but for the most part off the market, I got busy brainstorming design ideas.


After I got over my initial fear of a small house, it became a challenge:  how to live in a smaller space without feeling cramped or cluttered.  And honestly, if you count the basement it's actually a little bigger than our current house.  It's just the small main floor that has me thrown, but only for a moment because I'm going to make this work!


The name of this game is STORAGE.  When you have a small house, you have to find a place for your stuff and that means two words:  BUILT INS.  Like this:

Having stairs isn't all bad because you can do this.

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Or this

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One of the first things we want to do when we move in is finish the basement.  It's almost 1000 square feet which is plenty of room for another bedroom, another full bath, a playroom for Sofia, room for hanging out and maybe even a crafting zone for me!  So you know I was all over the basement makeover pages.

Now that's my kind of basement!  Not at all dark and scary!

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How cute is this playroom!  Granted, our basement doesn't have windows this big, but lots of lights would fix that, no problem.  Plus, I love the built-ins to hide all the clutter.

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The living room is going to get a wood accent wall and some built ins where the old

"built in" is now.

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The current closet is a hole in the wall covered with two sliding doors and that is not going to cut it, not even a little bit.  Mama needs a place for her shoes and I like the way this looks.  Some variation on this will happen in our closet.

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Seriously, I'm nervous about that teeny bedroom so we'll probably need one of these storage beds.  Our current bed frame will go downstairs in the guest bedroom part of the basement.

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And here's the fun part of DIY - maybe I'll get crazy and BUILD our storage bed!

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 I love the idea of something like this for Sofia's big girl room.  Her room actually is about the same size as her current one, so we won't need to do anything to it for several years.

It's just fun to daydream.

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I'd also love to change the kitchen countertops and maybe even the sink and floors, but like I said before, I can stand the kitchen the way it is.  Again, it's just fun to daydream.

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As you can see, I've got a lot of ideas for our new house and I'm getting more and more excited to get up there and get started already!  In the meantime, I'm pinning ALL the things and you should follow me on the great and mighty Pinterest so I can follow you and repin your home ideas!

With that, I'm out because I'm going to watch a documentary about people who live in small houses.  This guy lives in a 78 square foot apartment and makes it look cool!