Our First Home + Thoughts on Stewardship

Hi! I didn't intend to take over two weeks off from the blog, but when everything is in boxes, you have an infant, and then no internet, things get a little tricky ;) I escaped the circus to one of my favorite coffee shops because I want to update you on our new home!

A couple of weeks ago we signed the papers to purchase our first home. It feels weird typing that because a lot has happened in our personal lives since then that has kind of obliterated the excitement of that step in our life. Even so, I see this house as a grace gift from God to us. A gift meant to be stewarded well for His glory. We truly believe that God gives us these things (houses, jobs, neighbors, kids, barista…) to steward and that is a weighty thought. Along with owning this home comes the privilege and burden not to waste it on ourselves. One thing I wrote in our letter to the seller when we submitted our offer was that we intended to use our new home as a place to welcome and gather others. I sincerely pray that this place would be a respite for many people – where they can come and rest, find peace, and a place to let their guard down.

I’ll be honest, Jordan and I both bawled our little eyes out when we said goodbye to our old home. It was the place we had lived in the longest of our marriage, where we brought both of our babies home to, where we developed community, and so much more. We made so many memories in that house, and Reaghan has made ALL her memories there! This got us the most, just thinking about her and how her little heart would process everything. I couldn’t believe how attached we’d gotten, but in the end it felt good and right to be so emotional about leaving – to me, it shows that we lived well and full – that something deep happened in our marriage and family while we lived there.

But now we’re here – and we hope to make many more memories in this home as we did in the last. Here are some pictures to show you a little bit of the progress we’ve made on it so far. We are not fixer upper people, so we thankfully found a house that was move in ready with the exception of some nasty wall colors!

Here are the bedrooms. The green and blue are the kids rooms. Dark yucky colors. And the bottom is the master.

I stopped by one day while Jordan was painting, and here is the progress before move in! SO much better! The rooms feel so much more open, which I love. I really wanted our bedroom to be soothing, and I think this color really did that. The room looks so much bigger to me and the light is just gorgeous coming in. Most of the blinds were broken when we bought the house and we will probably go without them for a while until we can save up for new ones.

Our master bedroom after, color is Sherwin Williams Passive Gray

Here's a small snapshot of Reaghan's room the morning after we moved in.

Admittedly, this is a terrible picture, and it doesn't really do it justice, but the color on the long wall was brownish tan. Now it's a pretty blueish gray!

Accent wall and kitchen are Sherwin Williams Comfort Gray

I don't know if you can tell in these pictures, but the long wall leading into the kitchen from the living room is a different color than the rest of the living room. You can see it a little better in the picture below.

Living room color is Sherwin Williams Mindful Gray

I know, another terrible picture, but I had to document the color of the entrance way before Jordan painted over it. Orange, y'all. No no no no.

Here it is now!

Here are just a couple pictures from the kitchen. In a dream world I'd switch these cabinets out for white and change the counter tops, but that will have to wait a while. Honestly, I still love the kitchen the way it is. When we first saw the place I was kind of excited about the island, but when we took a deeper look, we noticed that it wasn't bolted to the ground and was very unsturdy on one side.

I snapped the picture below right after Jordan had removed the marble top (also not secured) with a friend, but I could just see Reaghan slamming into it with one of her toys and the whole thing collapsing. Needless to say, the first thing we did was move it out, and I thought I'd be a lot more sad! Turns out it opened up a ton of space in the kitchen to just move, and after bringing in our kitchen table, there would have been no room for the island anyway.

Here's the kitchen now...

I'm pretty excited about the pantry/laundry room. These shelves make me so happy and I've already started organizing them with bins. I'll post next week about organizing the pantry.

And that's about it! I love that we are basically in the country, yet still in a neighborhood (with a park!!) and still only 10 minutes from Denton, our beloved home :) I might share a home tour once everything is settled in a couple months!