ATG&D Dream Home | Best Idea Ever

Happy 2016! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and are kicking your new year off with a bang!

Ready to return to house talk?

For the record, G and I never stopped. It’s pretty much all we talked about in 2015 and will likely dominate our 2016 as well, so if you see us at any parties this year consider yourself warned.

Speaking of parties, G and I thought it’d be the Best Idea Ever to host a housewarming open house three weeks after we moved in. It seemed like a really great motivator to get all those essentials unpacked and at least the main things set up and organized.

We were anticipating maybe 20 guests total, and our vision of the day was to give each visitor a personal tour, chit-chat, and catch up – I even had a hot cocoa bar all set up and was planing to personally make each guest a delicious cup of hot chocolatey goodness.

The reality?

We ended up having close to 100 people arrive!

It was impossible to give tours – we were lucky to even say hello and grab each person a drink! I had to stick a Post-It note with scribbled instructions at the hot cocoa bar, and shout at new people walking in the door to “feel free to walk around and check the place out – just don’t open any closet doors, haha” as I ran around like a crazy person.

(Seriously: Worst. Hostess. Ever.)

The good news? Our plan worked in that we made a dent in our unpacking and getting organized. The bad news? It was insane, and we’re still recovering.

I’d love to show you photos of the fun and festivities (and my hot cocoa bar!) but sadly, this is the only picture I took the entire day:

I snapped it at the end of the day from our upstair loft area, looking down to our entryway. G kept saying, “You’ve got to get a picture of all the shoes in the entryway!” because it was so insane, but I wasn’t able to get around to it until the end of the party when most of our guests had left. (Womp, womp, womp…) I still took it though, because G and I had a good laugh over that little scrap of leftover carpet we decided to lay down prior to the party for peoples’ shoes. We would’ve never anticipated that this entire square of our entryway would end up piled with so many shoes that you’d barely be able to see the hardwood floor underneath!

As hectic as it was, it was equally amazing to host so many of our good friends and family members in our new home. G and I kept saying it felt like our wedding day, being surrounded by so many loved ones. If the goal of a housewarming party is to “break in” your house and make it feel like a home then we are very happy to say it worked.

I’ll be back later this week to pick up on posts about our construction process. Next up? Siding and stone! (These are important things, people. Andplusalso, the second thing we ended up going over budget on…but like a good little consumerist, I’ll tell you why it was worth it.)

New to the ATG&D Dream Home series? Catch up here: