New Home!

We are buying a brand new home, yay! Here it is:



The only problem...

It's a real estate company's model home & we can't have possession of it until the new model home is finished, probably a couple of more months.

What's a girl with too much time on her hands to be excited, who also has a bachelors in Interior Design to do? Why, plan and shop of course!

As any Interior Designer will tell you, the key to successful design doesn't just happen. It takes lots of planning!

Am I sad that we have to wait so long before we can move into our new house? I'm not gonna lie, I am a little sad. BUT having lots of time to plan has really been a blessing - and so does not having to move in the middle of winter!

I am, by nature forgetful, a procrastinator & I also have a love hate relationship with sugar but this is about our new house and not therapy so moving on...

The first thing I did was spent too much time online researching and looking for the perfect furnishing, taking inventory in my head as to what I already have, what is staying and what is going, the colors I wanted for each room & the type of "theme" I was going for (Every room will have a theme, maybe not one particular "theme" such as birds or Disney, even if it is just a color scheme, it will be something).
A lot of sites now have "wish lists". These have become my best friend throughout this process! I love them!
I have especially become addicted to Pinterest, Amazon, Overstock, Etsy and Target.  I also love IKEA but the closest store is 4 hours away and the items they sell online are very limited. If I find something I like from IKEA, sometimes I can find it on Amazon or ebay.

After going over my wish lists countless times, I took the things I loved the most, right clicked on the picture & saved it to my computer in a file I named with the address of our new house. You can go a step further if you want and make folders for every room of your house.

Let's revisit my forgetful nature. Ah yes, as we all were wondering - how am I going to remember what I have bought and what I haven't? Well it's time to bring out one of my favorite items - the good ole trusty binder! I have a 1 1/2" thick binder which I emptied out from a previous project but if you want to buy one that is all cutesie, go for it! Don't forget to include tabbed dividers.

I printed out some of my favorite items from my wish lists and put them in my binder, labeled with where I found them and how much they are.

 If you are lucky enough to buy everything all at once, that's great! I am on a budget. Every week or 2 I pick a few things to purchase either online or if I find something while out running errands.

 I decided to take pictures with my digital camera of everything that I bought, since I did not buy everything online I did not have pictures of everything saved on my computer. I then transferred the pictures to my computer and printer & printed out 2"x3" pictures of everything. I used the smallest size because I am frugal and did not want to use all of my ink! Then cut out all of the pictures, printed out an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper with the title of the room. Pasted all of my cut out pictures onto the appropriately labeled paper, hole punched the paper and stuck it in my binder.

This serves 2 purposes:
1. So that I don't forget what I have bought and
2. I can bring it shopping with me.

I would love to show you the labors of my hard work but sadly as I have mentioned above, we have not closed yet. To be continued...