What I Look Forward To...

I know it's weird, but every year, I look forward to the Parade of Homes. I love looking at homes, seeing the floor plans, looking at the beautiful decor, and dreaming of owning a fancy house in the future (probably in at least ten years, but maybe we'll be surprised and it'll be sooner). This is the first year that Lance and I have actually bought tickets to the Parade of Homes. Two years ago, my parents bought tickets, but went out of town before they could finish looking at the homes, so they gave the tickets to us. We went to less than half of them, but we LOVED it!!! Last year, we didn't get tickets because we just simply didn't have enough time with all of our celebrations and with Lance starting school.

So, this year is our first time going to every single house. You may think that we're nerds because we love to look at houses when we just bought a house almost two years ago, but it's something we enjoy doing together. I've always wanted to be an interior designer and Lance loves dreaming about the future in our dream home.

So far we've only gone to half of the homes, but they were all lovely! Even the small homes are nice! There are all types of homes included in the Parade of Homes list.

It's fun to see how the professionals decorate, too. It's way too fancy for our budget, but I got a lot of ideas that I can mimic if I want to. One of the houses had a chalk wall in the kitchen! I've seen a lot of ideas on chalk walls. You paint the wall with chalkboard paint, and it's like a chalkboard in your home! I think it's a cute idea for a house, especially if you have kids. They'll say, "I'm bored," and you can tell them to put their artistic skills to work. Then erase it all and start over the next day!

I've also noticed that cabinet styles are changing. There isn't just simply the wooden look any more. There's the rustic wooden look (which I'm not too fond of, but a lot of people are), there's clean white (which is great, because the cabinets in my house are white, and it's good to know that I'm in style for being in such an old home), there's the distressed look (this look is used in white, black, or any other color you want), and you can also mix and match. There were a few kitchens I saw that had two different colors of cabinets. It worked well, surprisingly enough.

I also noticed that wallpaper is coming back. Don't immediately cringe! It looks nice! It's mostly used in bathrooms or laundry rooms, and the wallpaper patterns are very classy looking. I'm so glad we haven't torn down the wallpaper in our laundry room yet! It's a little dirty, but I think with a little tender loving care (and a few cover-up pictures) it will look great!

I didn't want to post pictures of the homes in Parade of Homes because they worked so hard on them that you should get tickets and go see them yourself. But here is a home that was by one of the homes in the parade. It amazed us! It's pretty much a palace. Lance called it "Belvedere," which is a palace in Vienna, Austria (he went to Germany and Austria on his mission, so that's why he chose that name). It has Greek-like statues in the front, and there's also a golf course! There are two places to tee off across the ravine on the way to the house. Lance was especially excited about that. So here is a picture of that.



Another thing that I look forward to every year is flowers! I know, I post a lot about flowers, but I love them so much! And they're all so different! Here are a few pictures of recent blooms in my yard.

You gotta love June! It's rose time! I love this fuchsia color!

Here is a red wild rose. You get wild roses by trimming the rose bush too low. They grew that way last year, so it wasn't us who did it. But they're still beautiful, and they smell as good as regular roses!

I'm not exactly sure what this bush is. It is abundant in my flower bed. I thought about pulling it out, but I think it's too cute. Don't you love the white flowers where the petals seem to hyper extend? I think it's in the nightshade family, but I'm not 100% sure. Last year we had these and some with purple flowers instead of white. Maybe we'll get some purple ones later.

These are California Poppies. They're so cute! I had some poppies last year come up, but they're more lush this year!

The best for last! Have you ever seen a red lily that wasn't in a fancy, exotic bouquet? I haven't before this year! And I have two bushes of them growing in my flower bed! I planted them a year ago in spring, but they didn't flourish last year. This year, they did! They're gorgeous!

What do you look forward to?