By the Hair of Our Chinny-Chin-Chin...

Well, by now you know that we made it in time for the judging, just barely.  I mean, seriously, the stucco guys had to carry their pieces of scaffolding to an empty lot across the street when the judges were spotted in the neighborhood.  Apparently, Thursday morning there was a lot of "hurry, hurry" being spouted around the house, in more languages than just English.

Yesterday, before the Parade began, there was a professional photographer at the house.  She takes pictures of Dana & Dale's houses for publication uses and she's putting together a CD of her images for us, as well.  She showed me some of the pics and it occured to me that I hadn't really posted any "final" images of the house.

This morning, we went over and planted some veggies in the garden.  Even though the landscaper had told us how awful the soil was, I had no idea until I started digging with my little hand shovel.  I was wishing for one of those "garden claws" that you see on TV...Now I completely understand why they worked so hard to remove a layer of clay and replace it with soil so the sod would have a better chance to survive.  After the storm we had last night, I thought it would be easy planting, but the holes we dug were in solid clay.  We had purchased a bag of soil, so we tried to dig holes larger than necessary and fill it with the good soil, but I will be surprised if our veggies are able to take root at all.  Our long term plan is to turn this into a raised bed and fill it with good gardening soil, but we'll worry about that next spring.  Right now, our garden is full of Big Boy, Better Boy, and Cherry tomatoes; red, orange and green bell peppers; Mammoth jalapenos, cucumbers & onions.

 After digging in this incredibly dense clay, I realized how lucky I've been the last several years to have my little raised bed in our old backyard.  Thanks, Shane.

The bed outside the harvest room has these Pink Double Knockout Roses, our neighbor told me that at their house they have some "knockout" roses...I have no idea what makes them are different...maybe ours are double the trouble to take care of?

We went by the house yesterday afternoon to turn on the music and TV's.  We didn't intend to stay as long as we did, but I must admit that it was fun to give tours of the house and hear all the comments! 

The backsplash was a huge hit, and everyone wanted to touch it.

We also spent a huge part of the day trying to help Dale bake cookies in the micro/oven thingy.  There is a "auto-bake-cookie" function, which sounds simple, right?  There were at least three people with college degrees trying to figure it out, and it was certainly a day of trial and error science experiments!  I think that this afternoon Dale figured out the exact formula (good thing all the experimenting was with his cookie dough, or Shane would have just thought it was my cooking!)

Here's the kitchen and the island with barstools I really like.  I wish they had a price tag on them...I hope they are priced just right so that they can just leave them in the house.

A close-up of the sink and granite.  We received many compliments on this granite so I'm totally bummed that they don't have another piece and we have to go make another selection.

The corbels that support the island...

...and here are the lights over the island.  By the way, now that the house is furnished, they seem just the right size.

The harvest room....

The chandelier above the table...

Here's the living room, with the TV & fireplace. 

Here's a view of the ceiling beams...

The beams in the wine room ceiling were made to mimic the living room beams.

Here's how the wine room began, with Shane mapping out the dimensions in our old living room with some of my knitting yarn and a couple of bottles of wine.

Some more recent views of the wine room...

Here's the powder bath vanity and chandelier...

The downstairs bathroom details...

The laundry room...

We have this light in the laundry room & the master closet...

Some images of the master bath...

The office doors and stairway...

The upstairs ironwork...

Game room doors...

Bar...

Balcony railing...

We have about three weeks until we move in, and we are both so excited.  We have been dreaming and planning this house for years and are thrilled that all of the decisions we've made in the last six months have come together so nicely and resulted in a house that we certainly love and look forward to spending many, many years in.  celebrating many birthdays, Thanksgivings & Christmases in (just as soon as we find a dining table that we love as much as the house).

Today, we spent most of the afternoon looking at other Parade houses, mainly on a hunt for furniture.   However, we really only found a pair of red leather chairs that I thought we couldn't live without, but that we certainly don't need!

Judging results will be announced at a luncheon on Tuesday.  We know the house lost some points because the flower beds were all speckled with white flecks from the stucco crew's frantic last minute work.  Award or not, we completely love the house and can't wait to share many birthdays, Thanksgivings & Christmases in it with our family and friends.

To all of you, thanks for listening to our concerns and panics (well, mine).  Hopefully now we will have something else to talk about and you won't have to listen to us worry over our choices anymore.

We've come a long way, baby!

Now that this build is almost behind us, I wonder what our next adventure will be?