My Kitchen for the One Room Spring Tour

I'm excited to be a part of the One Room Spring Tour blog hop today with Lindsay Hill Interiors! Every day this week, 5 bloggers are sharing one room in their homes, and how they've decorated for spring.

Today's featured room is kitchens -- if you're hopping over from Kelley Nan, welcome and thanks for stopping by!

On to my kitchen, which I think makes a great backdrop for spring decor in all its bright white glory.

Tulips are the ultimate spring flower to me -- they are just so peppy and inviting. I love this big planter box filled with yellow tulips. If only they'd last year round.

My kitchen hutch is fun to decorate for different holidays and seasons. For spring, I added a few pink plates to the white dishes and plants I always have on display. I love the splash of color.

Do you like how I dressed up all stylish and fancy for these photos? This can double as a home decor and a fashion post. This is my very nicest sweatshirt. For my fashion-forward readers, you can find it at a local boutique called Walmart.

Thanks for swinging by for my spring kitchen tour! Make sure to head over to Driven by Decor tomorrow morning as she kicks off the final day of the blog hop with her spring dining room!

Living Room Idea Board

We decided shortly before closing on our new house that our collection of mostly hand-me-down living room furniture was going to look a bit shabby in such a pretty new build.

I don't think our old furniture was bad by any means -- it was pretty neutral and in decent shape, but definitely starting to show its age, and not well suited for this new space. You can see our old living room setup in THIS post. (Bear in mind that everything always looks nicer in blog photos than in real life!)

With the new house being so open and light, we want to go for a new look. Here's our idea board that I very inexpertly pulled together just now. Thanks to my mom for always working for me for free :-)

- I've wanted a white couch FOREVER but have never felt like it was a practical choice with our little monsters. But after reading roughly 4000 reviews of the Ikea Ektorp, I think I'm ready to go for it.

- For some reason, light colored chairs don't sound half as terrifying to me as a light colored couch (maybe because my kids always, 100% of the time, opt for sitting on a couch instead of chairs). I already purchased THESE chairs from Joss & Main (which were at least $50 cheaper a few weeks ago!) and Scotch Guarded the crap out of them.

- The coffee table and sideboard on the right we already own (not those exact ones, but similar). My sideboard is a dark walnut color, and I want to do something to it -- paint? strip? I can't decide. It looks great in the room, but the color just isn't right, and I don't know what to do with it. Suggestions welcome.

- The sideboard on the left is just a dream at this point. We have one very large, very long, very empty living room wall that would look great with a long, impressive sideboard. And of course, I chose a very expensive one to set my heart upon. I actually couldn't find a picture of the exact one I want, but the one shown is the same maker and style, just a smaller version of the one I want. I'll need to save up my pennies for it.

New House Tour

I've got a few pictures to share with you today of our new house! I wish with all my heart that I had taken more/better pictures before we moved in, because I really want to show it to you empty before I start sharing any of our decor ideas. I saved the photos from the MLS listing, but I'm worried some psycho will reverse image search them, find the address, and come murder me in my bed.

So instead of that highly appealing option, I proudly present: cell phone snaps taken over a month ago!

Please don't come murder us, mmkay?

We didn't have anything to do with the building process, but this house is a new build. Kind of fun to have something fresh and new without having to make any of the tough decisions or deal with any stressful waiting. It's a rambler style with all the main living on one level, plus a large unfinished walkout basement.

We'll start with my favorite room in the house: the kitchen.

White cabinetry is my love language. I love how bright and fresh this space looks, and I'm crazy about the tongue and groove ceiling. 

Also: DOUBLE OVENS!!! I remember saying to Jeff when we looked at the house that they felt like a bit of a waste, and I thought I'd probably only need to use them on holidays. FALSE. I have used them quite a few times already in the (not even) two weeks we've been here, and they're amazing.

I don't think I really understand the framed accent tile over the stove top -- I can't say it's my favorite part of the house, but honestly, I'll probably never bother changing it. My plan is just to hang something in the middle of it and call it a day.

The doors on the right open onto a deck. The lot is sloped, so the front door is at ground level, but the back of the house here is the height of a second story. The deck overlooks a nice lake view, and I think we'll really enjoy it in the summer. The closer doorway on the left leads to a small mudroom area, the laundry room, a half bath, and the garage. The farther left door is the pantry.

Backing up a bit, this is the view from the entryway into the living room and kitchen area. Of course I bought the first house I could find that was constructed of more windows than walls. Love me some natural light. That stair rail you see at the left leads down into an unfinished basement -- we'll save up and tackle that project in a few years.

And from the other direction, you can see the entry, the stairs going to the basement, and a lovely board and batten wall. And also my little helper, measuring the living room for me.

Directly off the entry is a smaller room that I am extremely excited about. It's too small to be a family room, and I'm not sure what the builders meant it to be used as (probably an office, or small sitting room for visitors?). Whatever their plans were, I've been waiting forever to make a little reading nook in a house, and I'm finally getting it here. Welcome to my library room.

Nice big windows on one side, and we'll be adding built in bookshelves along the opposite wall (on the right in the picture below). I'll add a couple big cozy chairs and reading lamps, a few little side tables. I'M SO EXCITED. I made sure Jeff realized that building a library room will only encourage me to buy books much more frequently. We have an understanding that many new books will need to be purchased. #happydance

I don't have any pictures of bedrooms or bathrooms (which are down a hallway on the opposite side of the entry from this room), so those will have to wait until they're all set up and ready to share. So this is a brief and partial tour, but it's a start, at least! Thanks for visiting our new house with us :-)

Good news!

I didn't mean for this to be a big secret, but it kind of turned into one anyway.

If you remember from the sale of our house last year, I concluded that I'm not superstitious but I am a little stitious, and house sale/purchase stuff is jinxed if shared online. So I decided to just keep quiet about it this time around until everything was 100% finished.

But now that it's over and done, I can finally say without superstitious fear: we bought a house!

Truly stellar picture quality! Blogger of the year award goes to ME!

We're so excited about it, and plan for this to be a long term home for our little family. We despise moving with all our hearts and souls, so barring some unforeseen major change, we'll be here for many many many years to come, and I am really excited about that.

I'll share more pictures as things get settled!