Come on in!

Since we live quite a distance from so many of our friends and family, I have had multiple requests to post pictures of our new home. OK- so we've been here for almost 5 months now, but it still feels like new to us! We really love our new home. Keep in mind how small our other house was- if we ordered a large pizza, we had to go outside to eat it! OK, so that's a bit of an exaggeration. But our new home is almost 3x the size, not even including the basement. We can actually move around in this house without running into each other- what a concept! :) I kind of got carried away with taking pics, so this post is kind of long...

"Before" picture of the entry way

"After" picture of the entry way. Check out our demon robot laser cats! They protect us from all intruders. :)



Here is a picture of our living room before we moved in. Lots of white walls!

And here is a picture of the living room now, looking down from the staircase. What a difference a little paint can do!

Another picture of the living room. Rob and Nancy- that is the painting I got in Rome when I visited you in Italy a few years ago.

One of the things we loved most about this house was the high ceilings. We quickly changed our opinion when we started painting! That's why we decided to have someone else paint the living room and entry way. We did the rest of the painting ourselves, though.

Here is a picture of the kitchen before we moved in. This was one of two rooms that the builders had already painted.

Here is our kitchen now. I plan to eventually change the wall color in here by doing some faux finishes, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

Here is our dining room area. The house has a formal dining room, but, as you'll see below, we decided to use it for other purposes. The eat-in area in the kitchen was large enough to accommodate our full dining room set, so it worked out well. As you can see from the before picture, Scot switched the light fixture in this room with the one that was originally in the formal dining room.

Here is the sexy 1/2 bath off the kitchen.

Here is the before picture of the formal dining room. Very stuffy.

We decided to turn the room into an entertaining area with a bar. We had a lot of fun decorating this room, although we still haven't been able to find the right curtains for the area.

Another view of the bar room.

Here is our Master Bedroom. I don't have any "before" pictures, so just imagine a big, white box. We haven't finished decorating this room yet, so the walls are still pretty bare. Those spots are from the camera, not on the walls.

The walls look pretty red in these pictures, but they're actually more of a terra cotta. I like bold colors!

Another thing that we really loved about the house was the size of the Master Bathroom. No kidding- our bathroom is bigger than our bedroom was in the old house! This was the other room that the builders had already painted before we looked at the house. I plan to change the color in here and paint the whole room at some point. Here is our jacuzzi tub that we rarely take the time to use.

Here is the shower area. A little note- behind that half wall is the "throne." When we bought the house, that wall was not there. They seriously had this little toilet sitting by itself on that wall out in the open in this big room. It was the first thing you saw when you walked in and it looked ridiculous! I would never have been able to go to the bathroom in there! So we had the builders turn the toilet 90 degrees to face the shower and build us a half wall. I now feel like I have a little more privacy. :) I have issues, I know...

Vanity area

I'm not posting any pictures from the upstairs because we haven't gotten around to much up there. There is the boys' room, the guest room, the game room, and another bathroom. Those are all on our "to-do" list for the fall/winter months. Also, not much going on in the basement either as it is unfinished. We plan to finish it at some point, but we are in NO hurry for that. Right now we have one corner utilized for Scot's weight room. I take that back, OUR weight room. Scot got me started lifting weights almost three months ago, and I'm still sticking with it! Yay, me!

Well, that is our home in Peoria. We welcome visitors at any time, so come see us!