Parade of Homes

Exactly one week ago I walked out my front door turning everything in our house, including the house, over to the builders. They made me feel really good about our home when they had decorators come in to make it all presentable for the show and all they ended up doing was hanging 4 paintings, hanging new towels in the bathrooms and adding 6 fake trees/plants around the house. They had originally talked about bringing in furniture, bedding and kitchen stuff. when the 'professional' decorator looked at the kitchen he said "your decorating is phenomenal, we won't change a thing". That made me feel great and he would probably be surprised to know that everything came from either DI, 50% off coupons or clearance sales.

The homeshow was very successful for our builder. The awards don't really have much to do with us but are a reflection of the builder and he did great. Our home, and builder, won:

Best Kitchen
Best Exterior
Best Floorplan
Best Technology

I wasn't too surprised about the kitchen - that was what the builder was working for all along. After looking at a couple of the other homes our kitchen definitely had more room than any of the others and I personally liked the design best.

The Best Exterior award really shocks me because the other houses in the homeshow were all done in the newest styles (dark colors, stucco, pillars, dormer windows) and ours is just a typical country style with siding and rock. Nothing spectacular or in 'keeping up with the Jones' style - just like we like it.

Best Technology really goes to LeRoy, not the builder, because LeRoy designed and installed all of it. Personally, I think he went a little overboard but he sure had a good time wiring his own house. The extra's that he put in were dimmers in all bedrooms, a full intercom system with music features in each bedroom/upstairs/downstairs/office, surround sound for the downstairs 'great' room and wiring for a wall mount flat screen tv.

Best Floorplan actually goes to . . . me. Silly actually. A couple of women asked the builder and the architect if they could have them do the same house and the architect had to contact us to get permission because I was the one who cut, pasted and rearranged 4 different floorplans together and came up with my own. It looks like we might even get paid for it.

When we got home Saturday night (around 10:45pm) we got the kids all put to bed, left everything in the Yukon and hung 2 pictures. It was kind of a 'marking our territory' effort to make the house seem a little ours. We have had trouble feeling like we have been living in someone else's house. Now, after only 4 days of being home without the homeshow looming in our future, we seem to be settling in rather comfortably.

I can't believe it is all (finally) over and we are on to the next summer activities.