A place we call home

I know there are some people out there that have not had the opportunity to see our place, so here is your chance! I will explain every picture and room. Moving into a new home can create some controversy for you and your spouse. For Ryan and I that is exactly what happened sometimes. See below...
When you walk in the front door and you turn around this is what you see. You walk in and the door to the garage is right there. It is a split level home, meaning you walk in and you go up or down the stairs. The rugs are complementary of my mother. We love them!

You choose to go down the stairs here is the first thing you see. All the stuff is hand-me-downs or wedding gifts. We want to thank so many of our caring friends and family for our furnishings in our home. The couches are Todd and Kate's old ones, but brand new for us. The end tables my mothers, the TV Ryan's, and the ark (as Ryan calls it) my mom's at one time. We are torn on what to do with all the wall space, but we figure we will find something to fill it with time. Someday we hope to get a bigger TV.

You are in the basement and turn to your left. This is what you see. One of Emily's favorite parts of the house! Fireplace and built in shelving and cabinets. We decorated the fireplace shelves with some of our loved ones and finished off the room with a sofa table against the far wall. There is a patio door, but not a patio yet. We plan to put a patio on in the next couple summers.

Bathroom #1: All of the painting in the house was done before we moved in. We love it! We didn't have the really, really white walls that people are afraid to touch because they may stain them. It was/is really nice. The people who owned the house before us were so kind to leave some of the bathroom things behind.

This is the purple room. A little bare, but workable. We installed the shades yesterday and let me tell you. That was a chore! It's not as easy as you think. The dresser in this room is also Ryan's old dresser. As we were moving in Emily advised everybody that was helping them move to put his dresser downstairs. The next morning without him knowing the truth. Ryan asked, "where are my clothes?" Emily replied, "well the dresser doesn't match our furniture, so I put your clothes downstairs." That was a five minute argument for us. How are we going to compromise? We emptied half of Emily's dresser and she let him hang all of his hanging clothes in their closet. (You will see the upstairs where our bedroom is later on). No matter how many arguments we had, we were able to come to some sort of compromise.

Office: Here is the room that Emily dislikes the most! It is all our miss-matchy furniture. Emily loves the paintings in the room, but the light wood file cabinet, white plastic drawers, and black desk don't really go-together. We bought the light wood coffee table at our church's garage sale. It was a great deal at the time and thought it would go great by our couches downstairs, but it looked funny. We compromised, once again, and put in the office to cover up all the ugly cords that were against the wall for our Internet. It works well now. Mickey and Minny complete the room.

This is the other side of the office. This is a look at Ryan's favorite part of the house, his Gator football helmet. He loves that thing! Emily tried to pack it away in her box full of knick knacks, but that didn't seem to work. Once again, compromise.
This is the preview of our basement. We have yet to come to the upstairs. Since we like to keep everybody on the edge of their seat, the upstairs will have to come later.