Sunday, May 15, 2011

New House! (Post lots of TLC)

Here are a few pictures!

Kitchen - we didn't do much in here other than get new appliances and paint

Madelyn's room - we moved one of her walls to make her room a little bigger. The master bedroom was very large so we moved one of her walls into the master bedroom.

The dining room and kitchen

The living room

The master bedroom with the closet completed.

We welcome visitors anytime! We have an extra bedroom and plenty of space! Bring your fishing pole!

New House! (Prior to lots of TLC)

The primary thing, other than being pregnant, that has been slowing me down on keeping the blog up-to-date, is that we bought a house!

Shortly after we moved to Newton over a year ago, we found out about a farm that was going to go into foreclosure. Eric was very interested in this farm, as it's a beautiful place with several acres of timber, along with some good farm land. Very long story short, it finally went on the market in February (I think!) and we put in an offer. We took possession on March 23.

We feel so blessed to be able to have purchased this place. We definitely got a great deal, and really believe that the Lord had His hands in it. There are so many little details that occurred in this process that I could go into that are just far more than coincidence!

The house is a ranch with a beautiful 4 seasons porch and very large deck that overlooks the pond. There is also a barn on the property. Because it was a foreclosure, the house definitely needed a lot of love! We spent most every spare minute we had at the house from March 23 until April 30 when we were able to move in. We cleaned every square inch of this place, painted the entire main level, and moved around a couple of walls. We're still in the process of remodeling the master bathroom. We had lots of help from family and friends and we're so thankful for that! We've made lots of progress on the house, but definitely still have lots of work to do on the house as well as on the property. We're very excited though!

So, without further adieu, here are some before pictures....


Kitchen - the window looks out onto the four seasons porch

Four seasons porch

The deck overlooking the pond

The master bedroom. The double doors go out onto the deck (which runs the whole length of the house). The strange looking wall there was taken out (there was a spiral staircase there that went down to the middle of the family room downstairs and we took that out). We turned that little corner into a walk in closet.

Looking from the living room to the dining room and kitchen

The living room which looks out over the pond and to the four seasons porch

Fireplace in the living room

Front of the house

Big News

I am ridiculously behind with this blog! It's going to take me a few posts to catch up and maybe that will explain why I'm so behind!!

Madelyn had some big news to share right around the time of her birthday!


These aren't the best pictures of her, but we sure are excited about the news! Baby Van Zee is expected to arrive sometime around September 4! Being tired and pregnant is just a bit of the reason I'm so behind with this!