Throwback Thursday: Building our first home

I've decided to make Throwback Thursdays a regular thing on my blog.  I think it will keep me writing, and I can blog about things that have been going on the last 2 years.

Today's Throwback Thursday is about building our new house! We have lived here for 9 months now and absolutely love it.  But let's start at the beginning.

Around September of last year we started thinking about our next move.  We were living in an apartment, which was nice enough, but we knew it wasn't a permanent thing, and we knew that at some point we would live in a house.  We started looking around on Zillow, and did a few driving trips through the areas we were interested in, but nothing seriously caught our interest.  We didn't even really know what our budget was, we just had rough estimates based on what our chief financial advisor Dave Ramsey said we could afford. (We love Dave Ramsey and use his methods for all of our financials.  I'll blog about it one of these days). We really wanted to live in Zionsville, where I worked, and while the existing homes were beautiful, they were way out of our potential price range. One Sunday we did a "tour of homes".  I put that in quotes because I would not have called it that, basically it was a map of all the area model homes and builders.  We drove around to each one though, and I think that is when we started thinking about building a home.  Many of the builders we looked at seemed great, but we could tell quality wasn't there with all of them. (If you jump on the floor upstairs and the whole house moves--scratch that builder off the list).  We also noticed that most of the builders in neighborhoods had the same styles/floorplans. We went to a lot of places, and by the end they all ran together and I think we left feeling a little deflated about the choices, but liking the idea that there were choices.

We kept thinking about building for a few weeks, discussing it, pros and cons, etc., and then Ben remembered a builder that we had seen but not looked at.  I didn't even really remember this place, but I drove over on my lunch break one day, (it was 6 minutes from my job...huge plus!), and liked what I saw.  Later that week we went there, saw the model, saw the options, saw the land, and really really liked what we saw.  Then, Ben lost his job.  His race team cut most of their people, (I guess they couldn't afford the off season).  I thought all hope was lost on building a house, but we continued to stay in touch with the sales person, (who was awesome and I want to be her...), and when Ben got hired onto a new race team about 3 weeks later, for significantly more money than he was making before, we decided to go for it.

There were 2 floor plans that we really really liked, and we had kind of a hard time choosing. We definitely liked 1 more than the other though.  In the end, the deciding factor was the lot that we wanted.  According to the developer, there was only one floor plan that would fit on the lot,  and it was our second choice.  We knew this lot would be worth it though, so in early November last year we put down earnest money and signed a purchase agreement! That was a scary/really exciting day!

 This is one of my favorite pictures ever.

Our lot! 

It's so funny to look back on these pictures now, there are way more houses around these days!

On November 30, 2012, they broke ground on our new home.  I drove to the house on my lunch break nearly every day of the build, and I'm really glad I did that.  Sometimes things wouldn't happen for a few days or a week, and that got stressful, but when things did happen, it was super exciting!

 We had a bit of a pond for a while.

Then the basement walls went up!

I was standing at the end of the "driveway" when I took this picture.

We went to Florida for Christmas and while we were gone, they started putting up walls! This was amazing because there was a huge snowstorm, but those guys, they did not care!

Walls!

We went to the house on New Year's Day, assuming it was a holiday, it was snowing and about 20 degrees, surely there wouldn't be anyone working. We were wrong.

We watched them put up our bedroom walls in about 15 minutes. That was cool!

The day they put the roof on was a great day, it started looking like a house!

I have to say, I have a ton of respect for the men who worked on our house.  It didn't matter that there was a foot of snow on the ground, single digit wind chills, they were there and working all the time.  We were concerned about building in the winter, but our fears were unfounded, they finished right on time.  On February 28, 2013, we closed on our brand new home! (If you are keeping track that's less than 3 months. Amazing.)  We didn't have a yard when we closed, which was frustrating, but..it was still winter after all, and we lived.  Here's a few more pictures from the process.  

Windows and garage doors!

Then the siding went on!

This was a day or 2 before closed..

Ahh, the keys! What a great feeling!

Moving day was March 2nd, 2013. (2 days before my birthday!) My parents and sister, and Ben's parents all came to help out.  It was a great day other than the fact that it was FREEZING! (Are you seeing a trend here?) Morgan and I went to supervise the delivery of the refrigerator and the painters while everyone else loaded the truck.  Oh...and after the truck was completely loaded it wouldn't start..that was awesome..

Here's my dear sister, waiting for the refrigerator to be delivered.

Trying to figure out why the truck won't start...

We ended up calling a truck maintenance/towing company, and waited around for them for about an hour, praying we wouldn't have to unload it again..

About the time the tow truck was pulling up, my mother-in-law went to try the truck 1 more time, and surprise! It fired right up.  The rest of the move went off without a hitch. :)

We got a yard eventually, bad news is they just tore it up again! More on that later.  I'll end it with this picture of our finished house!

Ben's Birthday

Tuesday was Ben's birthday. We had a very quiet day, and while he was at work I cleaned the house and baked some yummies.  When he got home, this is what I had.

How's that for a birthday spread?

I made pumpkin spice cookies, (from a pre-made mix, for some reason I really struggle with from-scratch cookies), and a no-bake cheesecake, which he requested. (Again from a mix...I have never had success with cheesecake either....those are my 2 baking weaknesses...cookies and cheesecake. Sad. Maybe I just need more practice).  We went to Roselli's Pizza for dinner, which is a place we've been with friends one other time. It was yummy and we had lots of leftovers to take home.  That was pretty much it for the actual day.

This past weekend we had a cookout with his parents and a few friends.  It was a nice evening, Ben grilled hamburgers, hot dogs, and better cheddars (my new favorite grill item). If you don't know what they are, basically it's a sausage with cheese in it.  Extremely tasty, but not a very healthy choice, so we don't eat them very often. SO much sodium. Yikes.  Anyways, we had ice cream cake at the birthday boy's request, and the ladies who came over helped me make cheesy bacon potato bites (from this blog), mini carmel apples, (based on this recipe), and chips and salsa.  It was a very successful evening, and I think we all had fun.  Ben's parents spent the night with us, and the next morning I tried a quiche for the very first time. It was surprisingly successful.  I used this recipe from Savory Sweet Eats and it was awesome, although time consuming.  The night before I shredded the cheese, which took the longest, because I only have a small hand grater, not a box grater (I should put that on my Christmas list!). I had a block of cheddar and a block of swiss.  It took forever.  Luckily I didn't use all the already-cooked bacon from the potato bites the night before, so I was able to throw that in the morning of.  I also bought pre-cooked diced ham, and pre-cooked sausage crumbles from Jimmy Dean. (I was nervous about it, but the sausage was really good).  Thank goodness I had the pre-cooked meat, because in addition to mixing up the egg mixture, I had to brown my crust before putting in the filling.  I had never used a pre-made pie crust, but I think pre-made is a misnomer.  It's pre-mixed and ready for the oven. Not pre-made.  Anyways, I struggled to get the egg mixture in on top of the cheese and meat, it kept spilling out the sides.  However, when it was finally done cooking and ready to eat, it looked beautiful and tasted awesome too!

All in all I would say that Ben's birthday was a success!

The past...2 years?

It has been a LONG time since I have logged onto blogger and wrote something.  My life is a bit different than it was the last time I posted, which was in October of 2011/January 2012. I just read over what I wrote back then, and I can't believe those posts were nearly 2 years ago. As much as I want to think things are WAY different now, they really aren't that different. Is that sad? Or is that good? I'm not sure..
Things that are different in November 2013 than they were in October 2011:

December 2011: We had been married 2 months, and lived in a little apartment in Louisville. Our lives were getting ready to change big time.
VS:
November 2013: We have been married for 2 years and 3 months. But who's counting? =P We live in a suburb north of Indianapolis, in a house that we built. (!) We adore our house. Soon I will do an entire post about that. =) Our life is fairly consistent, no huge changes on the horizon. We'll see how long that lasts.

December 2011: I had an awesome job with Stretch n Grow of Kentucky.
VS:
November 2013: I have no job. Essentially by choice. It's a long and complicated situation. (Again, another post for another day). I am currently a full-time wife, and I actually really love it. I have to say it is a million and a half times better than what I was doing...

December 2011: I was running some. A few races here and there.
VS:
November 2013: I am still running some, and in May of this year I ran a half marathon. Absolutely my biggest personal accomplishment since graduating from college.  You guessed it, another post for another day.

There are a lot of things that are still the same as they were back then.  For example, I am still madly in love with my husband.  He makes me laugh every day, even if I don't want to laugh. He is there for me in my times of crisis, holding my hand and walking me through whatever my issue of the day is.  He is so smart, and keeps our life organized and flowing, especially financially.  Not just because he is the only money-maker currently, but because he is in charge of the budget, and he does a great job. Sometimes I don't like what he has to say, but he absolutely understands what is going on with every penny we have, and I appreciate that.  Oh, and today is his 26th birthday. 26! Who woulda thought we would be here, married, in Indy, at 26. Wow.

Okay world, hear me now. I WILL blog. I WANT to blog. My goal is to blog 1-3 times per week. There. A realistic, specific goal to reach for.  Ready, go!

Listening to: Defying Gravity, Glee Cast Version