The Weekend

today i'm linking up with 

and

we had a really crazy week and weekend and there are quite a few exciting things i have to share today... and no, im not pregnant haha. in september we decided that we were ready to move back to granbury. it just made sense to us. we were both commuting there to work from our home in fort worth, both sets of our parents are there, our church is here, and we grew up there. we decided we were ready to take the plunge. we put our house on the market and we waited. we got tons of traffic and tons of great feedback. and by tons i mean we had over 50 showings. we had a couple of offers but none that we really loved. after 2.5 months, we decided to take it off the market. things at griffin's work were changing and we thought there could potentially be a move to arlington, which if we lived in granbury would put him commuting with traffic an hour each way.  

fast forward to last monday. we decided to list our house again. it had been on our hearts for a while that moving to granbury really was the right thing so we decided we'd give it a try again. our house was listed on mls monday afternoon and by tuesday afternoon we had 2 offers. we were able to use the two buyers against each other jack up the price and we went under contract wednesday morning for only $2000 less than our asking price, which is pretty amazing considering we were prepared to come down about $10,000. quite a few people have asked if we listed it lower this time than we did the first time and the answer amazingly enough is no. i think it is a testament to the market improving, the time of year, and most importantly god's timing, which is always perfect. a

fter going under contract with a closing date of June 1st, we started looking at houses very quickly. we looked at three houses that we liked but did not love for different reasons. one was a good investment that had a lot of potential, the other had beautiful updates but the price per square foot made us nervous for resale. after discussing it for a couple of days we decided that we wanted to build. we spent literally all day thursday, friday, saturday, and sunday scouring the internet for a house plan that we like. we decided to save money by purchasing our house plan, blueprints, etc, offline instead of hiring an architect. i will tell you that choosing one house plan out of millions was extremely difficult, especially since we are both kind of picky. 

here was the main criteria:

1. square footage ranging from 2400-2600
2. 2 floors - this wasn't a deal breaker but we both liked the idea of 2 stories
3. 4 bedroom or 3 + bonus area
4. master bedroom down and the majority of the other bedrooms upstairs
5. 2 car garage
6. open concept living space - i did NOT want a formal dining room that was separate from the rest of the house. i wanted the kitchen, living, dining to be all one open space.
7. a large open kitchen with a BIG bar to fit plenty of barstools
8. at least 2.5 baths if not more
9. a foyer - not necessarily something grand but i didn't want to walk right into the living room
10. a space for an office or a big enough master for a mini-office
11. plenty of outdoor space - front porch/back porch, etc.

i had a board on pinterest where i was pinning every single possibility. we eventually narrowed our choices down to three, and then on sunday we decided on one. it wasn't originally my first choice but the more and more i looked at it the more in love with it i fell. for those who are wondering, my first choice had to be eliminated because it was 100% siding, which is against the restrictions in our city. most cities have a required amount of masonry and my favorite didn't make the cut. the house

we chose has everything we were looking for and more. we are meeting with our builder tomorrow to go over the plans we chose and to determine which of the two lots we like will work best for the house. to say we are excited is a bit of an understatement. of course we still have to close on our house so we are praying everything works out there as well.

so without further adieu... here is the house... obviously our choice of colors and stone will be different than this but you get the general idea...

it is hard to see the floor plans on here so here is a link to the floor plans as well.

we found the floor plans on southernliving.com, but we also checked out a lot of other great websites including coastalliving.com, coolhouseplans.com, and ehouseplans.com. southern living really had the most houses that fit our particular style. i've been going crazy pinning new ideas for the house on pinterest and am having so much fun. starting from scratch is so overwhelming but also so exciting. tomorrow we are meeting with our builder so be expecting a post all about that and about our vision for what the house is going to be like. 

happy monday everyone! 

love, 

maggie