a lot on my mind

some of you already know that we are in the process of buying a new house. something we have never done before. always been renters, you see. we spent the entire day driving around with our agent looking at houses. (the reason for no monday color combo, sorry) an exhausting task. we saw 11 homes. most of them sucked. while this one below isn't much to look it in terms of style (not mine AT all) it is our favorite. why? first and foremost it is in one of THE best school districts in the southeast. it is within our budget. it is inside the perimeter (if you live in the A.T.L. you know what that means and how important it is). it has new windows throughout, a new roof and has been very, very well taken care of. OH! and it has a nice deck and a large, private yard. when you live in a big, expensive city like atlanta you don't exactly get much for your money. this one offers much for the money. it is not our dream house but i don't think it is realistic to imagine your first home as your dream home. right? so that said, we are looking at a few more houses this week but this one so far is a strong contender. ok..so on to the critiques and ideas..first of all i am not a fan of brick houses especially on el rancho el sucko's. can you get anymore grandma than iron railings? i am either going to have to replace or grow some serious vines all up and down them. the previous owners have some morning glory growing already, but i am thinking grape or something that grows hardy and fast and aplenty. any ideas??? this is a nice sized family room with great light...


the kitchen is...umm...odd. it is very small but offers good cabinet storage. but i am not at all a fan of how they built up these cabinet "walls" on both sides of this little area when they could have gone farther left (towards you) and made it more galley style.

at least they under mounted the sink! hate the tiles but it is such a small area i think i could get something pretty fancy! and painting the cabinets are a definite.
nice backyard.

nice deck and that is a cute little storage shed/outbuilding. i am envisioning something like this.
not too many pictures of the bathrooms or bedrooms, but the bedrooms (3) are a great size for a house this old and small. the bathrooms on the other hand are terribly small. the master is the size of your average hall bath and the hall bath is your average hall bath. it will be cramped, especially coming from our 2 bathrooms that are huge! so any thoughts? comments? advice? again, this is not our new house, yet...but it might be.
i have loads of ideas and feel stressed about them all, in fact i was up all night thinking about paint colors and how our now furniture will do in there..
but i will say that i pulled off fiona's new bed and wall configuration based on her new zig zag pillow cases from lulu and nat in about 10 minutes (that includes the bedding, the daybed style, hanging the wall art and changing the whole room around).

my skillz know no bounds!