Final Plans and Spec Meeting

Last week we received the final draft of our plans and we approved it! Yay! Our architect was able to finish them up by the end of the week and then we got to have our long spec meeting on Friday. We are one step closer! More about the spec meeting later but first looks at our pretty house!

It is an L shape so that front stone/brick area to the left is the garage sticking out towards you. It has a nice big front porch and a huge back porch/screen room. I can’t wait to sit out and relax on my porches! haha! I am not sharing the inside of the floor plan online for multiple reasons so if you are a friend or family member that wants to see it message me and I will e-mail it to you! Some awesome features include a huge kitchen island, over-sized pantry, stone fireplace with wood burning stove, tornado shelter/safe room, bonus room over the garage, and a big vaulted great room with wood beams. So we had our spec meeting on Friday which is where we basically sit down and pick out every detail of our house so we can get a ballpark budget. The nice thing is we are not locked in to any of our choices since we will be the ones actually ordering everything we can just change our orders as we go if needed. We picked everything from type of insulation, stone, siding, all the way to the floors and style of the cabinets. So exciting! Now we send all the options out to bid and when we get all the bids back we will make sure we are within our budget and submit it all to the bank to get the construction loan closed. Hopefully everything will come back good there and we won’t have to change anything with the plan. We will see! Since the planning stage took a little longer than expected we are looking at possible July for ground-breaking unless the bank just closes extra fast. The construction loan can take 30-60 days to close. It’s so awesome to be able to see our actual plans and be able to visualize it!

The Chickens are finally giving us EGGS!!

It felt like the longest wait ever but on Thursday when I got home I checked the coop and we had our first egg! I was so excited! I couldn’t believe it. The next day we had 3 more and then every day since then we have had 3-4 new eggs. It hasn’t even been week yet and we have already gotten 15 eggs! Crazy! I can’t believe just 4 chickens can lay that many! We are planning to get a bigger coop after our new house is built so we will really be in business then! The boys enjoy looking every day for the eggs and also giving the chickens special treats like mealworms and blueberries which seem to be their favorite so far. We let them out to free range a lot and they enjoy that!

We have had some beautiful weather to do lots of yard work and Shannon finally got a water system in place for the fruit and nut trees which he has been wanting to do for awhile. Here are a few pretty pictures:
The orchard:

One of my favorite spots… the back woods:
Pretty clouds during sunset

Spring Baseball

Baseball season has begun! Tristan is on a really great team with some awesome kids and great coaches. He is having a blast and looks so cute doing it! Go Tigers!

 

Easter Fun

Easter has turned in to one of my favorite holidays! We have so much fun having the Easter egg hunt at our land and next year we will have a big house to host even more people. The weather this year was so beautiful. We did Easter lunch at my mom’s house and then all came to the land to do the hunt. The boys had fun finding eggs, blowing bubbles, and breaking confetti eggs on everyone. Nanaw was even a great sport and suffered through three confetti eggs busting over her head! Tristan thought that was the best! LOL! Such great memories!

My poor mom had to work so that is why she is wearing scrubs! The next day the boys and I decorated some eggs. It was so much more fun this year because Logan is getting a lot more interested in doing this his own way. They had a blast!

Can’t wait for next Easter when we can host everyone in our brand new house!

First Draft of Plans

This week we got our first draft of our plans! We were trying to go with an open L layout for the house with the garage in the front but the plan ending up being too wide (since we want all the bedrooms on the first level). So the plans are back with the architect and he is working on a closed L design that hopefully will fit a lot better on the land. It is looking awesome so far though! I can’t wait to see the final draft! We can’t go forward with anything else until we have the plans finished so right now we are just waiting…

We did lots and lots of yard work this weekend! It crazy how long it takes to mow 5 acres =P. I might need to trade my riding lawnmower in for a tractor. haha! It looks so pretty mowed though! Here are a few pictures:

This was pre-mow. Look how pretty and green everything is! It’s so awesome when we are not in a drought.

This was after mowing the orchard area. Our fruit and nut trees are really taking off!

The trampoline area. Down the hill behind the trampoline is where the picnic table and fire pit are.

And here are a few pictures of the house site all mowed and pretty! Shannon was laughing at my stripes and said my type A personality really shows when I mow. LOL!

Architect Meeting

Last week we had our meeting with our architect, Roger, to come up with plans for our new home! We are so excited to be at this stage of the process. I had a really big binder full of ideas and pictures of what our dream house might look like. I feel like he got a really good idea of the look and style we are going for. We could have some rough drawings of our plans by the end of this week! I can’t wait to see them!!

Here are a few pictures that were in my binder:

Planning phase has officially started!

Well here we go… we are officially building a house now! Eeeek! The first step was to apply for the construction loan which turned out to be pretty easy. We had already paid off our land completely from when we sold our former house so we are using that as a down payment. When you build on your own land you usually have to put close to 20-25% down so that can be a big problem. We had our first meeting with UbuildIt on Friday to sign the contract and get our first binder. It is basically a big binder of all the steps we need to take care of in order to get to the construction phase. I can already tell the planning phase is going to be a beating but hopefully if we put the hard work in now the construction will go smoothly. So now that we are squared away there the next step is to get with the architect to design our plans! Our Ubuild It consultant is coming to our land tomorrow to do a Site Review where he will take a look at the house site and see what all needs to be done to get ready to build. We are excited and nervous about this journey. I think we will have a lot of fun along the way though!

We also designed our workshop which will get built at the same time as our house. Our Ubuild It consultant is already working on getting bids for the building. Shannon is more excited about the workshop then the house, lol!

I will try to keep the blog updated as much as possible while we are building. It will be fun to look back on the blog and see all the steps that we went through. If everything goes well we should have a completed house by the end of the year!

 

Who Wants Eggs?

We bought a chicken coop back in the fall but we were using it for our kittens. It has been empty for awhile and we finally got some chickens. This little coop holds 4 chickens and it is prefect for getting us started. We want to have a bigger one eventually but we are not exactly sure where we want to put the coop yet so we liked how this one can be moved around. We bought 4 six month old chickens so they wouldn’t need a heat lamp and will start laying eggs immediately. We can’t wait until we get our first egg!

Tristan worked hard getting the coop clean and filling up the chickens food and water.

Campfire with Family

We decided to have my parents and Nanaw over for a campfire a few weekends ago. The weather was perfect for it! We had so much fun roasting hot dogs and making smores. My mom brought glow sticks which are always a hit!

Logan spent hours that day before they came over collecting firewood with his tractor. He worked so hard!

Tristan got to help build and light the fire and he was so proud of it!

 

Enjoying Our Nice Mild Winter

This winter has been AMAZING. It has been 60-70 degrees most of the winter so far and we have been enjoying lots of time outside playing! Here are some highlights:

 

Lots of driving around in the jeep!

Tristan practicing with his new bow and arrow he got for Christmas.

 

The boys being adorable on the swing.

Watching Maggie take lots of swims in the creek. She loves the water!

Lots of trampoline time!

Working outside with Daddy and your nice neighbor brings you homemade blueberry muffins! Score!

Exploring in the creek…

The cats enjoying the sunshine too. They are getting so big!S

Swinging in the hammock with mommy!