Ultimate Blog Party 2012

I was visiting Stacey over at embracing change, and I saw that she was joining the 2012 Ultimate Blog Party. Her blog is one of my new favorites, so I figured I would take a minute to check this whole thing out. It's a huge linky party for all kinds of Mom bloggers to encourage meeting other bloggers, and hopefully making some new bloggy friends. Sounds good to me!
For more information on the Ultimate Blog Party go here, and check it out for yourself.

So, a little bit about me! I have been married to my awesome husband Mike for almost five years and we have an amazing little girl named Olivia. I am a home blogger, my blog tells the story of how we are taking this little worn out house, and turning it into our dream home, one project at a time. I also have an addiction to design, and I hope it's starting to show.

We bought our first home last November, and we are loving every minute of it. I have been blogging since we started our hunt for the perfect home, which was almost a year ago. (Our one year blogiversary is coming up in a month and a half) 

These are Some of our most popular/ my favorite posts.

The made over with DIY chalk paint table in our entry.

 Our Chevron Stripe Tutorial & Reveal

Our 30 Minute Back Splash

Bay Window Cornice Box Tutorial

That's just a quick peek at what we've been up to over the past couple months, there's much more if you have a look around, and I hope you'll check back in with us, to see all that is too come. There is a lot! We have a handful of projects in the works right now!

So that's a little background on me, and what goes on around here, and I can't wait to have a look at everyone else who's joining the Ultimate Blog Party. Are you?

What have we been up to?

I have been working on a timeline over the past couple of days to see just how much progress we have achieved since purchasing our house two months ago. It's interesting to me how differently my brain processes data when it's presented in another way. Before we actually owned the home we put together a timeline of what we thought we would be able to get down in the first two weeks. WOW! those two weeks went by fast, and we still haven't gotten everything done that we thought we would right off the bat. I think that is a prime example of what HGTV has done to my mind as well as the minds of other innocent viewers. You see these dramatic transformations completed over a few days, and it makes it hard to be realistic when scheduling work on your own home. I suppose it would be possible if I had a staff of 30 plus people and some of that TV "magic" but alas I do not. We are just two average homeowners putting all we've got into our poor beat up house trying to love it back into a home. So far, so good. I am quite happy with what we've accomplished.

If you want to have a look at what we've been up to just check out our timeline and you'll be up to speed in no time. (hint: it'll be much easier to read if you click on  it and open it in a new window)

I hope you enjoyed checking out our progress. We have sure enjoyed the process. We still have a to do list that is 3 pages long, and always growing so check back soon to see what we're up to!

Lots of Love,

The Barkanics

Meant to Be!

So... life around here has been pretty much insane for the last week or two. We have gone back and forth about a million times with whether or not we would be getting the house. We are now on the other side of it, and I am 99% sure that a month or so from now we will be bonafide home owners! Yippee-Ky-Yi-Yay! It seems as though this is the house that we are just meant to be in. We were petrified after our inspection last weekend, but after calling in an electrician and talking to some contractor friends we feel very confident about buying this house as-is.

All I have to say is WOW! When we started our hunt for a home in March we never could have imagined the journey that we have taken. I knew going into it all that it would take some effort and time, but WOW! The past few months have been so full of anticipation, excitement and disappointments that I had not planned on.

I am very happy to report that all we've been through was totally worth it, and a month from now when we are holding the keys to our new home it will be even better!

I am more than convinced that things went the way the did for a reason. A reason that's much bigger than Mike and I. This is the house we were meant to be in, had things gone differently we never would've found our home. We were originally looking for a single family home in a very specific location (a desired school district). When we found the ranch in our second highest school district we figured that was where we were supposed to be, so we waited, and waited, and waited some more. After we hit the four month mark we were both getting rather antsy, not to mention the fact that Hurricane Irene was not friendly to that poor little house. So we figured it wouldn't hurt to look and see if there was anything interesting on the market. I'm not quite sure why we decided to look into townhouses, but I am really glad that we did. I can't wait to turn this place into our home!

our trip to Cape May - In Pictures

So, we had an absolutely amazing time in Cape May, the weather was beautiful for 95% of the trip, and for some reason it didn't seem as crowded as it normally does. This was our third trip there as a family, and probably my 20th trip (we went every summer when I was a child). I chose a few of my favorite pictures, they are pretty random, but I think there is beauty to be found in most of them! If you are interested in visiting this charming little town check out this website - http://www.capemaymac.org/

a beautiful estate that we passed on our walk to "the mall"

an adorable shot of Daddy and Daughter holding hands!

The Elward House - I love the coloring of this place, and I also appreciate the fact that they didn't leave the ceilings out of the equation. They are such an awesome light teal.

The red and white umbrellas scattered across the beach. (I think this one is just simply gorgeous, and will probably end up in our "hall of frames."

Love the Pink Hammock! All the Sign says is "the Cape May House"

more umbrellas on the beach, it could be possible that I like this one even more than the red and white umbrellas. Or maybe it's just that bench. I love the rich blue color.

My Little Sweet Pea, with Smokey the Bear. She gets SO excited every time she sees a picture of him. I don't know why, but I do know that it's adorable!



A Barkanic History Lesson

So! I have decided that as part of our new life in our new/ first home that we will be blogging about the whole experience, and rather than starting on Move-In Day (who knows when that will be with a short sale) I am going to give y'all the low down on what we went through on the way there.
OK, so first things first. Mike and I have been married for almost four years and we have yet to own a home or even rent one [at least not in the typical sense], but I guess that not much of what we do is very typical.
Here's a little History of our Moving/ Living situations since we got Married!
[note: we both lived with our parents before we got married]

On September 7, 2007 I was blessed enough to be able to marry the most amazing, hardworking and studly man that I had ever met.

His awesome mom was moving into a new humongous house at that time which happened to have a 2 bedroom 1 bath basement with a kitchenette the whole space was about 1,000SF. So, we moved there as we got ourselves settled and figured out what our next move was. We were in there until the end of December of 2007 when the lease on Mike's grandmother's apartment was up, and she had to move in. So, we slept with my mother-in-law and her husband for a couple months ummm, upstairs in the spare bedrooms for a month or two.

We knew that wasn't going to be permanent, and we started to look for somewhere to be on our own and get moving on developing "US".

We just weren't quite there yet.
My Super Amazing, Beautiful and Intelligent Mother had been sick for about a year at this point and in a nursing home for about six months, my brother was still at home, but the bills were heavy, and weren't getting paid, so we loaded up our cars and back to my Mama's we went. We split the bills with my brother, but after a few months we were coming to realize that even with both of us sharing the bills it was to much for us to carry, and we started looking at our options.
I went to view some houses, and get an idea of what we could get for our money, needless to say in Fall of 2007 the house we are currently in the process of buying would have cost about $ixty Thousand more than the current price! Yes you read that correctly, and looking back we are very glad that we did wait. We probably would have gotten a two bed, one bath, 850SF townhouse for our money back then. Big difference! Also, we have a little bit more money now than we did then, after all we have been living with Mike's father the whole time, and that has allowed us to have some nice change in the bank account. Saving money can be tough with just one modest income.
So here we are - getting our things together and preparing to pack. As you can see we have moved quite a bit over the past 4 years, and are hoping that we will be in this house for at least 5- 7 years. I am ecstatic, thrilled, overjoyed and more to finally be on our own, and I'm pretty sure all of the people we've shacked up with over the last four years feel the same way! I can't wait to walk around in my skivvies! WOO-HOO!
Watch out blog world here we come!
This is the story of us starting out on our own, finding our way as we make a house our home, and finally being alone!