A Deer, A Pistol and The Footers.

Strange blog name huh?  Well it's all true.  The reason these footer photos are so dark is because I had an incident with a deer and a pistol before I could get to take these photos!

 On my way, a young doe was in the middle of my lane and had just been hit by a car.  It's hoof was almost all the way torn off of its body and it was blowing blood bubbles.  Poor thing.

 So, I stopped, helped it out of the road....well as much as I could.  It couldn't walk on it's missing hoof.  I started to contemplate what to do next because I didn't want the poor thing to suffer.
Then, a van pulled up, a girl with a mini skirt got out with a pretty nice hair do and said: "Do you want me to slit its throat?"  

The Morning Room!

So....I said yes.  I didn't want it so suffer and if we called the Game Commission then I knew it was just going to be shot but it would have suffered longer while we waited.  Then her Dad happened to be coming by and he happened to have a pistol.  And there it was.   A small pop and the poor deer was out of her misery.  Then I was on my way.

 Crazy story huh?

I hope you like the footer photos!  I do!  It took enough of an adventure to get them!

Blog List | Ryan Homes Blog

Blog List | Ryan Homes Blog

I just found out that Ryan Homes has their own blog.  There is some pretty neat stuff to check out, like how to make your own headboard.  Great ideas!

The Hole.

Here it is.  I love it so much.  Can't stop thinking about it.  The first hole I've ever loved.

This is the view with my back towards the back of our property looking towards the front.  See the Giant hill?  Those are going to be the last lots sold.....they include the Giant hill (Worthy of at least one capital letter because it's huge!).  I'm so glad that we got our lot now. :)

The dirt I love.  :)  It's pretty cool, there is a layer of shale with a little bit of coal!  I'm tempted to look for fossils. 

The view I will see every morning and night (minus the black tarp).  How pretty!  I love the woods. It's a little sparse right now because the green up just started but I'm sure it will be awesome. I can't wait to see what it will look like this fall and winter.

Pre-Construction Meeting and The DIG!

 This is Mike, our project manager.  He was very professional and nice enough to smile for my camera!  :)  Nice guy!

Here is a close up of the sold sign.   We wrote "For our Daughter" and "For Kaylee' on it.  I almost forgot about it!

YES!  Action shot!

It looks so tiny! 

I am SOOOO excited!  We met our project manager, and he smiled for the camera!  I love smiley people.  Anyways...we had our pre-construction meeting today and while that was going on the hole for the foundation was started!  We went over all of the selections and discussed the grading of our lot.  We are going to have an AWESOME two tiered yard.  The front yard will be mostly flat then slope towards the back and then the back will be fairly flat. It should be exciting!  I let Dustin do all the talking about the yard (well..mostly) because all I really care about is that there is at least one space that is big and flat so that Kaylee's swing set will fit and we will have enough space to play some ball or something.  Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!   I can't wait for it all to be done!  I'm so excited.  Who knew a hole would be so exciting?  

Browns Valley Brick choice?

So I went to the model home this weekend and I almost had a panick attack.  They changed all their brick samples.  They are still the same brick but something looked different to me.  I was showing my girlfriend the brick we choose and I looked for the name "Browns Valley".  Well Browns Valley was not the brick I thought it was.  Ahh!  I freaked out. Browns Valley is a really dark brick.  I know I don't want dark red and I wanted as close to the brick they had on other houses called Verona.....but Verona is no longer available. (darn!)  Verona is beautiful.  The closest thing I could find was apparently called Craggy Mountain.   Craggy Mountain is what I thought was called Browns Valley.  I'm sure I scared the crap out of my Sales Rep.  We figure either the label was changed or someone wrote it down wrong.  Who knows.  Since they had just changed the samples and had taken the old ones away, there was no way we could compare what I had actually choosen.  So....I spent the weekend pondering brick color again. I wish I had taken a picture of our choice when we chose it so I didn't have to think about it all again.  The problem with Craggy Mountain is that I guess it's too orange for the Stone Mountain Clay. My husband likes the actual Browns Valley which is a dark brown with some almost wine colored dark lights in it. I don't know.  I really really dislike dark brick but there is only a limited amount of brick to chose from.  I almost wish we would have chosen stone but I don't want to pay the cost when I know it's something I can do later for much cheaper.  Browns Valley almost makes me think that my home is too mature for me....too refined.  I like more playful colors of brick but I certainly don't want it to clash.  So after everything was said and done....we stuck with Browns Valley (dark and all).  I'm hoping I don't hate it.  I really wish they had houses you could see these things on.  They've made it so you cant' even take the brick samples outside now.....dumb idea.  Recessed lighting is NOTHING like sunlight.  When you chose colors...ALWAYS go outside to see what it looks like in real life.  If your building a new home with Ryan, INSIST that they allow you to take the colors outside.  It's amazing how different they look.  You choose outside colors...OUTSIDE. Period!

What I think it will look like...

So I used the Sherwin Williams color designer and about an hour later....I came up with this.  I am VERY VISUAL.  I have to know what my house is going to look like.  This is as close as I could come up with.  Not too bad.  I'm not a huge brick fan so I envision tearing the brick in the front down one day and adding stone...but we will see.  :) The photo on the right is a picture of a house that I found the browns valley on.  I matched it to the venice model on the left with as close of the same color I could fine.

Our Pre-Construction Meeting is scheduled!

Our Pre-Construction meeting is scheduled now so we will finally get to meet the guy in charge of building the house! They are actually going to dig exactly 7 days from now.  We meet them 8 days from now.  The hole will already be dug before our meeting.  I'm glad we checked out the stakes and asked about the house placement already otherwise I might be a bit nervous about the pre construction meeting being after the official start of construction.  My only complaint about the meeting is that they are not very flexible with the hours that we can have the meeting. We both work full time so, of course, we are not available during the day.  On top of that, our loan officer wants us to have a large sum of money in the bank at closing...so that means we can't afford to not work.  The Project Manager is only available 7am-5pm weekdays and not weekends.  Uhmm...inconvenient and I'm spending a LOT of money...so why can't they accomodate me?  Anyways...we worked it out and Dustin will have to get out of work early on the day of the meeting.  Fortunately, I already had the day off.  But still.....when you spend that much money....you would think there would be flexibility for meetings.  I hope that is my only complaint with the house building process.  It's not too huge of a deal but still worth mentioning.  If you are building a home...expect to rearrange your schedule to fit their needs at some point.

Loan Approved!

Well it's officially official!  Our loan was approved and they will start building!  Whoo hoo!  I think we are scheduled to start digging next week.  How exciting!  I hope I catch some photos of the action.

My family and my photography.

This is the post where I tell you about two of my loves in life.  The first is Kaylee, my daughter, and Dustin, my husband.  They are both one and the same for me so they both are #1.   The second love of my life is photography.  In 2009 I started a very small company, small meaning just me, so that I could do photography more often. Aside from my full time job as a teacher, I take photos as much as I can of people in love during all aspects of their lives.  I love weddings and newborns especially.  One day I dream of becoming a full-time photographer.  There is something so special about being able to live a moment with others during their special moment in time.  So...here are two of my most recent loves in live. The first is love #1 utilizing love #2 and the second is love #2 exploring the beauty of weeds.

  I'm trying to prove that the things we hate so much can also be the things we love so much too. I like the irony of a beautiful weed.  This weed is called garlic mustard. I hope to share some other moments in my life later.  Things explaining why we are moving to a new home from the one we basically built with our own hands....it's a sad but true story the will end happily ever after in our new Venice...ha ha.

All staked out!

They staked us out!
Here are some photos of our lot and the stake out....

We wrote "For Kaylee" in the "o" of the sold sign.

   This is our neighbors house.  I'm standing at the edge where the house will be and looking at our future yard!  It's just big enough!

 Here is Dustin standing in his workshop. :)

 This is the view from the neighbors yard.  Our yard starts just before the green snake (the things that help prevent run off while they are building) and goes all the way to the small green utility boxes that you can see on the left.

 And here I am.....Standing in the garage!  Ha ha.  The view behind me is what I will see out of my morning room every morning and night!  :)  Hooray!

No more Decisions!

Ok!  We have signed our promise to not make any more changes!  I am so happy to not have any more meetings to go to.   On top of that, we cleared my husband's credit report of a fraud account.  Thank Goodness.  His score is much higher now which means a much better interest rate.  Yay!  I was driving around the development, which I do often now because it's less than 5 minutes away, and I saw that they have our plot staked out!  Whoo hoo!  I was a little concerned when I saw how far left that they placed the stakes on our plot so I asked our fabulous sales manager to check into the reason why.  She told me that it was because it help the grading of our lot.  If we had it further to the right then they would have to increase the swale.  Swale?  A swale is lower area of land that is made to help control water run off.  So, to avoid a deep swale the project manager has planned to build our house 10 feet off the left side of our lot.  This is ok because we will get a bigger side yard and still have more room on the left because of the Common area that goes to the retention pond that we HOPE no one will ever want to hang out in.  We've got our fingers crossed. :)

Venice Layout

The Layout of the Venice.  Here are some photos of the layout.  My favorite thing about this model is that the stairs are unobtrusive. I also love the morning room.  Every inch of this house is used and I think that's awesome!  These photos  are taken of a drawing that is property of Ryan Homes.

So this morning I heard back from my Sales Rep about my concerns.  She is so good at what she does.  I feel much better now.  I was having a panic attack because I was sorting through our purchase agreement (lots and lots of paperwork!) and noticed that there was no mentioning of an air conditioner on the master selection sheet AND my appliances were still marked "white" which I had asked to change.  Since we are past the Change Order date I was really worried.   I was worried for no reason. :)  The air conditioner is not specifically listed as it is a standard feature...but it is still confusing if you ask me.  I think it should be itemized in the paperwork.   The change of the appliances from white to black is no biggie either.  THANK GOODNESS! 

I've decided to post a picture from the Lowe's website that I found for inspiration.  I would just die if I could get my patio to look like this.  I like the idea because our patio will be underneath our deck...so I think this could be a good possibility.  Dustin is already sprouting some wisteria and says that we could do this!  Whoo hoo!  Of course it may be 15 years or so before the vines are that big but it's something to look forward to when I'm all old and crinkly.