580 Via Di Parione Ct.

A few years ago, when we were looking for homes (we'd been watching real-estate apps for years) I looked at this home, which wasn't on the market and told myself: If that home ever comes on the market, I'd like to buy it.  It's at the end of a cul-de-sac with a basketball court and parkway as it's neighbor.  The house only shares a wall with one neighbor as the side and back are the park.  It's  within walking distance of the community rec-center that has a large pool, gym, basketball court, raquetball/wallyball courts, dance rooms, etc.  Not to mention the playgrounds, the golf course and the guard gates.  In previous years, we never cared about all that stuff, but when you're family is mostly kids, these things become pretty valuable.   Well, it came on the Market in February 2015,  but at that time, we had different ideas of what we thought we wanted and the price was high for what we thought it was worth, so we didn't bite right away.  After another month, the price dropped a little and we thought, why don't we just go look at it.  All those community amenities would be awfully nice for our family.  After looking at it and some serious negotiating, the house was ours!  We immediately took over the entire neighborhood with our 5 kids (poor neighbors) and before long had even recruited our good friends to move down the street.  The other kids that already lived in the neighborhood seemed magnetized to either our large family, or the grass and trees next to our house. Now the neighborhood is a buzzing with kids during the day and especially after school.  It's such a different life than what we experienced in our old house with older, retired neighbors.

We were able to move in quickly as we were able to put a large percentage of the cost of the home down and get a smaller loan so within 2 weeks we were in our new home.  Right away we got to work on various projects.  Zach discovered a new talent-painting and had fun desiging different paint jobs for different rooms.  
It took me a while, but I also sewed curtains for our master bathroom since there were no doors.  Funny story:  my mom purchased some beautiful fabric 7 or so years ago to make curtains for our bedroom in the old house.  She never got around to it and eventually just gave me the fabric so I could do it myself.  I never got around to it and when we moved into the new home, the curtains in our master bedroom ironically matched the fabric she had purchased, perfectly. We painted the bathroom and bedroom to coordinate and when I set to sewing curtains, I realized they were already cut out almost exactly to what I needed.  What a convenient coincidence!

There are many more projects to do and that have been done, but I'll leave those for another post.

Boys' room

Gwen's room.  She picked the color-it's called "It's a Girl!"  So appropriate!

Dining room with subtle stripes of same color with one high-gloss and one egg-shell finish.
Hallway can be seen in background with textured paint-job.

chair rail, vertical stripes, soffet step painted.  Crown-moulding added

Bathroom vertical stripes with curtains I made since the builder didn't seem to believe in doors for the master bathroom.