Dream Big and Setting the Standards High

Dan and I have been talking a lot about the house over the past year or so. We love this house. We bought it four years ago. We love our community. We love our school district.

The house, though, after bringing three babies home here, seems to be getting smaller by the day. We can't all eat dinner together because of the size of our kitchen, and the table isn't as big as it used to be either, lol! We added a fourth bedroom two summers ago.

So we've decided to (attempt) to add another bedroom, add onto the lower level family room that we cut in half to add the fourth bedroom , and turn our already existing three season sun porch into breakfast room. It's big thinking right now, but, if we want to stay in this community that we've grown to love so much, it's the only option. it will throw our house value over the norm, but we will be here for a while, so we figure it's a good long term investment.

This little project goes along also with the windows that are going to be replaced in the spring and the new carpet that will be going down soon (I found this awesome dark charcoal color that *I think* will hide a bit more dirt than the light tan we are dealing with now). We will also be replacing the kitchen cabinets at some point. I found cabinets online at Ikea that I am totally in love with, so Dan and I were thinking about driving to one of the Chicago Ikea's during spring break in March.

I've been thinking a lot about what I want to go back to school to do. Nursing, nursing, nursing. Well, I have been thinking of other things and it's exciting and nerve racking all at the same time. Getting my ducks in a row now, my time is coming!