And the winner is...

I numbered my blog posters from last post and put them on a princess plate cuz that's how we roll and ....

 Adie picked...

Number two!  Which is awesome because we love bathroom humor around here. =)

Tara!

I'll just need your address, Tara and I'll send you the heart banner! Shoot me an email at darcyholsopple@gmail.com.  Thanks so much for reading. =) It's fun to "meet" the people that keep hitting my blog! I keep wondering who they are!

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And I got a few questions to answer too. I'll take a few blog posts to answer them. I got two questions about our house from sisters. And these aren't just any sisters, these are an ex boyfriend's two sisters. Cracks me up! Lindsey and Kels.. here are my answers...

   First question:  i was wondering if your girls share a room (i don't think they do) and some decorating tips....like....what does your house look like. i love those posts, because they are inspiring! and i'm going to have to do some room changing/decorating soon. :) 

No, my girlies do not yet share a room. We tried for a few nights in the midst of Adie's 6 month long sleeping issues. We thought she might want to be a "amazing big sister" and stay in her bed all night long to be an example to Joya. It was actually the most horrible idea we could have had.  Adie just kept coming out of her bed even MORE to tattle on Joya for throwing everything in her bed at Adie.  So yeah, not going to merge them unless there is a baby #3 in our future. 

And I'm so honored that you like my decorating style!  It's so funny because I think my sister is the most amazing decorator too.. and a few of my mom's friends have said, "I have no clue where you guys got your style from! No offense to Linda.. but you didn't get it from her!"  We had a garage sale a few years ago for dad to get rid of some of mom's things we all didn't want and I'm pretty sure we sold 14 wooden heart decorations.  Shelves, candle holders.. and my fave was the hair dryer heart holder.  

Barf.  

Anyway, I LOVE to decorate.  All of the rooms in our house are complete now and so we just have little finishing things to do.  I know I'd posted on Facebook about wanting to do a back splash in our kitchen but not being able to decide on glass tiles. Well, we found it. And it's not glass tile. It's slate!  Here's a picture of the squares...

and here's the subway tile slate:

Love them both!  Not sure which one I like more. You guys can tell me which ones you like, tho!

The next thing on our project list is to finish off the stair well going down into our basement.  It's not quite finished yet and it's driving me batty.  We've decided to do a "board and battan" effect down the stairs.  It will be cherry finished and I'm SO looking forward to it!  This is an example of what board and battan is 

(the hallway and laundry room wall effect in this blog post)

So yeah, we have a few things on our list to do yet.  We LOVE remodeling our home and I did do a before and after post awhile back.  I'll post it here but the house has changed quite a bit since then (2009).  Next time I clean the house I'll take more pictures, including our master bedroom addition that is complete. =)

Here is the before and after post from 2009 

And that leads into the next question...

question 2: do you think you'll be there long term?? what characteristics would your "dream house" have (or is this your dream house)? you may have already answered that before, but i just love what you guys have done with your home (it's beautiful!) and would be interested in what you think!

Thanks for liking my house, Lindsay!  I really do love it too. =)  Darin and I were totally meant to be together because the moment we walked into our gross home we both were in love.  And as you saw in the before pictures.. it was DISGUSTING!  It had been smoked in and not remodeled for over 40 years.  I definitely know what I want and between showing Darin inspiration pictures or different web sites or blogs with my ideas, he can build it. And he 99% of the time trusts my judgment on decorating things.  It's 3 bedroom, 2 bath and has a big open kitchen/living room, has a full finished basement and completely suites all our needs.  I believe we'll be here for another few 5+ years.  I think our remodeling days are over unless we find a dream fixer-upper.  (At least a fixer for us to live in.. we're always open to flipping a house for income!)  With always lived in our homes when they weren't finished and I can't imagine doing that now with kids.  We did just miss a fixer home to "flip".  We don't look at realty sites at the moment because we become obsessed with them if we let it!  We were looking at the homes for sale because our good friends are in the market and we stumbled across a 1,300 square foot fixer here in our town. No holes in the wall or anything!  Just needed our love. =)  But by the time we called our realtor the sale was pending.  Come to find out the buyers got it for $27,000.  We were about sick!  Wasn't meant to be, I guess!

Back to the question, is this my dream house? No. =)  We love to remodel homes but we have a dream to build one as well. One that we will stay in forever.  Darin and I both grew up in homes that I parents were in for over 30 years. His mom recently sold their childhood home and my dad is about ready too. (Boo)  We'd like that for our girls too. But you know us, we don't do anything retail!  As you guys know Darin's a high school teacher and at our high school they have a building trades program.  Juniors and seniors  in this class work 1/2 day's on building a home from the ground up over a school year.  The teacher keeps bugging us to get on the list. But you need to have land before you can get on the list.  There's a piece of land that we love but it's just not for sale yet.. ha!  In our county you have to purchase at least 3 acres to build a house on unless it's in a subdivision.  We're not really sub-division people so we'll go the 3 acre route.  Building a house with the building trades is incredibly less expensive than a builder and it's kinda our personalities.. we love supporting kids. And getting quality things cheap. =)

I already have a book of floor plans and have a few I love.  =) My dream house would include an open concept floor plan, full basement, studio for my photography with it's own door so I don't have to clean my house every time I have an appointment, open staircase, hard wood floors, a jack-n-jill bathroom for the girls to share, 2 1/2 baths, vaulted ceilings and a laundry/mudd room so I can have 3-4 cubbies like the one Darin just made me. =) Is that specific enough?  Oh, and a pimped out wood shop to make my hubby happy.  And my goal is for the new house not to look like a new build. I want all the new things in it but want build-ins and Darin to make my kitchen cabinets and custom things that really show "us".  I can't imagine not having Darin's handy work all over our new home!  So yeah, it's a total dream and I know we'll get there eventually but it's nice to be in a house that suites our needs now and will into the future for quite some time.

Good things come to those who wait.  =)  And we're big on not going into mega debt either.  We have a tiny mortgage now and would love to keep it that way when we'd build a home.

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Thanks for the questions.  I"ll post more of my answers in my next few posts including my exercise habits  and if/when we'll have a baby #3.  =)