Appreciate the Small Things..

Remember in my post here, where I talked about how my husband & I had come to the decision to eliminate the bottom level which included 1420 additional sf with a 2-car garage, storage & future sauna room (that one hurt the most), in order to cut costs and hopefully have our home ready sooner? We did end up going back and forth on it before we made the final decision- we both agreed (again) to stick with the one story- it basically came down to cutting the cost by 1/3 or more and not having to worry about working ourselves to death to pay a huge mortgage. Now that the brick piers/open beach style area is eliminated- our house will look like the pictures below-less beach style and more of a cottage design, which I love as well. We will be building a garage as well, so my husband will have a storage area for all of his tools.

We will be meeting with a potential builder next week to get the updated quote for the one-story design- I am praying that this time it will be a much lower quote. It looks like we will be starting the foundation and framing by Christmas-I keep picturing all of the fun dinners & parties that we will have in our new home. 

This is a little off of the subject, but my husband and I were talking the other day, about how we have literally been nomads for almost 3 years- we haven't had a place that we could call home & have been constantly moving, never unpacking or decorating a place of our own. It will be amazing to be able to finally relax and settle in a place of our own and have meals in a dining room, sitting at an actual table, instead of in front of a television (our apartment dining room is currently full of unpacked boxes). I'm also really looking forward to finally having a walk in closet- the one here at the apartment is really cramped- so it will nice to have things more organized. I also miss having our own parking, right now we have to walk a long way, just to bring up our groceries, especially when we have to make two trips! When we had our own home before, I never really thought about all of the little conveniences that we had until we no longer had them- so now, moving back into a home, we will be able to appreciate everything in a much different light. I have learned, that sometimes in life, we go through hard & difficult times in order to force us to appreciate the very things that we were not able to appreciate before...

What are some things that you may take for granted?