The Things We Love

  

A very wise woman told me, as I prepared to go through this time of transition from one season to the next, to take time to write about my feelings in very specific ways. She urged me to name every feeling and emotion and to take particular note of everything, because all of it mattered. I took this to heart in all the ways, and that included setting aside time to name and be grateful for all the things about our new home that we especially love. 

As we've slowly leaked this news to those around us, almost everyone has asked about the house and what it's like. I thought you might like to know, too. The list below isn't exhaustive, nor is it in any particular order. But it includes some of our most favorite things. 

* We have a garage! Though I want to be clear that we've not been dissatisfied with our accommodations at WillowBridge, both of us dearly missed having a garage. Ryan loved our garage in Kokomo, and if you've been reading here for the last several years, you know that we fixed up that space to use it as an extension of our actual home, too. It was absolutely one of the hardest things for us to leave behind. Ryan missed his work space and both of us missed being able to just hop out of the car and run inside in inclement weather. So we are absolutely beyond grateful to get our garage back, and we are excited that it is fully insulated and drywalled, so if we decide we want to use it similarly to our Kokomo days, it won't take long to completely spruce it up! (This is not a project for our immediate future. Just an option for someday.) 

* We have bountiful indoor storage. This was actually one area where our Kokomo house lacked. We had that magnificent walk-in closet in our master bedroom, but beyond that, there wasn't an abundance of storage throughout the house. This home was well-designed in the storage realm. We have several closets that are lined with shelves and will allow us to easily access things we might not need every day. (Though please also let the record show that we are about to undergo a fairly serious purge. Again.)

* We have a laundry room! In our Marion house, our laundry was in the bathroom, which wasn't a bad thing. But we loved upgrading to hallway laundry in our Kokomo house. And then here at WillowBridge, we've had a whole separate laundry room, and it has been our favorite laundry setup so far. We were excited to find that our new house has a dedicated laundry room also. It's small, but that's totally fine with us. It'll be sufficient for our needs, and I'm as excited to decorate it as I am to decorate the rest of the house!

* We have an open concept living space. After doing a little demo work in Kokomo, we had a fairly open flow from our kitchen to the living room, and we loved it. We know that isn't for everyone, but it's our favorite, and we were thrilled when we had it (even) more so here at WillowBridge. Also here at WillowBridge, we've had a kitchen peninsula, which has given us a breakfast bar for the first time ever, and we fell in love with that. We declared we definitely wanted that again in a future home. Goodness. Did the Lord ever nudge the builders to  make all these dreams come true, or what?! We have the full open floor plan, a nook eating, and an island with a breakfast bar. It's beautiful in every way. And the kitchen even has the same espresso cabinets that we transformed our Kokomo cabinets into...only this time we don't have to put in the extra work! 

* We have beautiful windows. One of the things I miss the most from our Kokomo house is all the natural light we enjoyed there. Since WillowBridge was renovated from an office building, all the windows are office windows. I am so excited to get back to a home with so much natural light. Maybe I can become a crazy plant lady yet! 

* We love the master bedroom. In Kokomo, our master bedroom was actually a little bit TOO big. We always said we would have chosen to make the living room bigger (to allow for dining space at the back) and make the master smaller, since all we needed was to sleep. Our new master is smaller than the Kokomo one, but bigger than our room at WillowBridge, which basically only has room for our bed. We are excited to have carpet under our toes on cold winter mornings and space to move around more freely. And since the closet is actually in the bathroom, we have more uninterrupted wall space, which I also love! This tends to be where Braeya chooses to spend most of her time, so we think she will really love it, too! 

* The master bathroom has all our favorite things. We've never had a large master bathroom in any home we've lived in. (Here at WillowBridge, our secondary bath is actually bigger than the master bath!) This one has a walk-in shower, which we are super excited about. And rather than having a double sink, it has one sink with extra large counterspace on either side, which means we can get ready at the same time and have all the space we need for our stuff! It's perfect. And we have a walk-in closet again - but it's way smaller than our one in Kokomo, which makes it perfect for us!

* The other bedrooms and bathroom are perfectly sized, too. We have a bedroom we can dedicate to office space and one for guests/Lexi's bed, and both are a perfect size. We have a second bathroom with a tub, which will be great for giving Lexi her baths. 

* We have a patio space! WillowBridge has a deck, but it doesn't have any natural or artificial shade, so we never used it. We've missed evening coffee on a porch, but we do have a little patio on the back that fits our furniture perfectly. We are so excited to use it! 

In terms of square footage, our new home is very similar to our Kokomo home and probably WillowBridge, too. (We have never known how many square feet this apartment has.) We love the layout and are excited to make it ours.