Back 2 School/New House

I am beginning my final year as a law student! Its exciting and scary at the same time. Its exciting because (hopefully) I will finally get to be an adult and not have to go to school anymore. Its scary because the economy is bad and I don't have any job prospects.

Hopefully once I'm out of school I will be able to pick up my old hobbies again. Like knitting, I used to knit all the time in undergrad. My friend/former roommate taught herself how to knit then taught our group of friends how to knit as well. I have a bin full of yarn that is waiting for me to tackle it!

I also really want our own house. We are renting DH's parents' old house so at least we have the space. I'm hoping not to have to move until we buy something. I'd rather not buy something until we both have real jobs, so we will know how much we can really afford. I'd rather not buy a house thinking we will be able to afford it or not buy enough house and have to move in a few years. We are hoping to stay in our first house for about 10 years. I'd like to stay in it until our kids are school age or until we outgrow it. With how much stuff we have, I doubt it will be hard to outgrow it. Our rental house is 1650 sq feet and I already feel like we need another bedroom! Probably because we made one room our puppy Charles' room. Heres a picture of the outside.


We have only lived in the house a little over a week and I already know things that we need in a house of our own.

1) An inside laundry room! The washer and dryer are in the garage. I'm not liking that. I've never lived somewhere where the laundry was in the garage. This means I have to put my dirty clothes inside the house (I'm planning to have them in Charles' room) because I'm scared of bugs in the garage. This also means that I have to put shoes on to do the laundry - as a barefoot girl this is aggravating!

2) A living room that is bigger than the dining room. The front room of this house is huge, but it is essentially wasted space. It has the dining table and is currently housing the stuff that we have moved here but haven't put in their proper places. I'm hoping to put some more bookshelves so it will not be so wasted. The living room is an awkward shape and small. I considered putting the living room where the dining room is, but the front room has bamboo floors and would get scratched up easily.

3) Four bedrooms, or a bonus room so charles' kennel won't be an eyesore, but we will still have enough room for a guest room and an office. Or if the spare bedrooms would just be bigger so we could have the desk and printer in the guest room, that would work too. Or the 4th bedroom so DH can have his fooze ball table in the house. We don't have room right now bc FIL doesn't want the table in the front room bc he says it will scratch the floors.

4) A nice sized backyard. This house has a great sized backyard. I hope we can find some place where we can let charles out and have a place for the kids to run around.

5) More small drawers in the kitchen. The kitchen in this house has a lot of huge storage drawers, but not enough drawers to put utensils and dish towels in. Maybe we just got a lot of dish towels and utensils, but two drawers isn't cutting it!

6) A kitchen without the built in trash can. I think this takes up way too much cabinet space! I much rather have cabinet space than a trash can holder. We got a nice Simple Human trash can for the wedding, so I'd rather be using that!

7) More and wider upper cabinets for dishes and glasses. Our casual dinner plates are too wide for the cabinet. The cabinet doesn't shut all the way! It is very slight, but still annoys me!

8) More counter space. We got a lot of pretty appliances and we have to put them in the cabinets or drawers because counterspace is at a premium.

9) An oven that is built in the wall at around eye level instead of the ones underneath the range. They have a built in oven and though I haven't used it yet, I love that I won't have to bend down to pull out my baked goods! They also have a gas range which is nice.

10) No carpet. I didn't realize how great this really was until I moved in here. The other place we lived had terrazo floors which I hated. This place is mostly tile and I love it! It doesn't look dirty, it doesn't get scratched, when Charles druels on it you can't tell! Its amazing!