Parade of homes and wood vs. white!

Ok in this with HGTV and now Chip and JoAnna obsession that is going everywhere- have you caught the "must have all fun home ideas" bug yet?

Well the good news here, I'm not about to tell you anything fun and new, but what I will show you is some amazing pictures of houses on the Kansas City Spring 2016 homes parade that I went to over the last few weeks.   

Do you have something of the sorts in your area?  If you do - I highly suggest you take an afternoon, whole day or even a couple of days to go through all the homes.  I LOVE it.  My mom, sister and I have literally been going through the model homes on the homes tour my whole life.  I love those memories so much - and I'm guessing much of that had to do with the fact that I was bound and determined to become an architect when I set off to college (that all changed REALLY fast, as that is not my personality....).  But my love for walking through all the models, looking at the different floor plans and especially all the fun furniture and staging that has been done.  Hands down one of my favorite "me time" pastimes.  So when the time came around this year - I made sure Jimmy knew I needed some mama  only time and took advantage. 

What's nice is that we had 7 within my neighborhood - only 5 were done/furnished - so that was a quite get away.  The other few I was able to visit (including a $2.8MM dollar home that one of my friend's from high school's fiance builder built and designed - it was amazing) I actually went on my day off last Friday as I was running other errands around town.  While I love going with my mom and sister more, we just weren't able to get all our schedules to sync at the same time - I mean, it's not like my sister is getting married in 3 weeks or anything :)  

Here are some of my favorite pictures I felt like I needed to share - so if you like this kind of stuff, enjoy.  If not, so sorry!

I LOVE the stone on the front porch so much and the big beams had me swooning.

Anyone else absolutely just love the "loft" space in a lot of the 1.5 story homes?  I do - so much.  We have one at my parents house and while for sure not as fancy as this one, my sister and I spent a lot of time up there playing school, playing nintendo, and doing all things that little kids do.  That was even the housing spot of some of our rodent pets before my mom and dad let us get a dog (just an FYI - I'll just stick with dogs - no rodents here hopefully!).  

But this loft was to die for and the staging was on point.  It made me want to move right in...especially as our kiddos get bigger...and have a fun family space on the upstairs.

And these doors?  No caption needed.  Except Jimmy HATES them, so we won't be getting them in our house any time soon :)

And of course what was going to make a splash in the homes this year??  Shiplap!  I loved this shiplap wall going down to the basement in one of the reverse 1.5 models in my neighborhood.  I snapped this for Vanessa actually because I know her deep love!  Told her she must see this house!

Ok and this also seemed to be a trend - of course in the fancier houses I expected it (you know the +$700K ones), but this was in a pantry of one of the models in my neighborhood.  I loved the little sink and built in coffee bar/appliance bar within the pantry - so nice to be able to have a mess in there and close the door.  But the warming oven in there totally threw me for a loop - so fancy!!  Some of the bigger houses had a whole separate prep kitchen in the pantry which was amazing!

So our basement is not finished and won't be for a long time, but I love love love looking at finished basements and I thought this was one was so awesome and just made you want to throw a party in it or have a family movie night.  I loved the bar area and there was a separate wine cellar for you fancy wine people too.

One of the coolest things (that you probably cannot see) is that the windows from the inside bar opened up and went right to the outside bar.  So if you were having a party and serving your drinks from the inside bar, you could just open up the windows and serve your guests.  I loved that!!

To finish off the houses in my neighborhood, I visited one literally down the street from me that my neighbor girls and I call the "space ship" because it was HUGE and had a big atrium ceiling.  Well I went inside and it was very woodsy feeling - the bummer part is that it backs up to a semi-busy street - it would be even more perfect it was nuzzled up in the woods.  It was open - more wood than I would have liked - but my favorite part was the hidden little attic half door in one of the kids rooms.  That was me and my sister's favorite thing in houses we would go into when we were younger - finding those little hidden rooms or built in playhouses that some of the builders would make.  We would both sprint upstairs and pick "our room" and be so excited to find one of those hidden gems.

The following Friday, I took the day off and made my way a little further away to visit the most expensive home on the KC Spring homes parade - it was AMAZING.  It was right by our old house, so it was fun to be back in that area but oh.my.goodness.  I literally don't think you would ever have the need to leave this house.  Ever.  It had everything. An exercise room, sauna, movie theater, pool, pool house, garage attic, elevator, pool table/bar, outside seating, prep kitchen, home office.  What more do you need, right?

And this view wasn't too shabby either!

Randomly I snapped a picture of one of the what seemed like 20 mud room areas.  I'm positive even with all the coats and items we have we could not come close to filling any of those.

Sorry to let you down - but that was all I snapped at that house because I think I was just in awe.

And then I made my way to far south KC and went to some amazing homes out there.

I especially loved this kitchen set up.  Amazing!!

I already mentioned my love for finished basement and someday we will have one when our kiddos get a bit older and we don't love the unfinished space for bounce houses and indoor race tracks - but this bar was amazing.  Jimmy would have died!

And this view?  Seriously.  I want this in my backyard.

There were so many amazing ideas and I just love seeing all the different plans that the builders come up with some much, they are so creative and some of the uses of space within the house are just brilliant while others I wasn't a huge fan of, but I love the variety.  I dream of having half the decorating talent of the people that stage the homes too - while my house will never look that picked up and perfect (nor do I want it to), I love to picture our family in each of those houses with kids running everywhere and everything well kept - but like I said, it's a mind picture!

Ok - so enough with that.  And onto a question.  Wood vs. white kitchen cabinets (well really off-white in our case).  We have gotten the bids and are moving forward.  I've asked our realtor to come over this weekend to help give me advice (because she flips houses and they are amazing).  But do you LOVE an awesome wood finish or the classic white?  I'm leaning towards biting the bullet and having them paint them all.  We have  a TON of cabinets so it's not a fast and easy task, but the guy we hired we've heard is great and is up to the challenge. 

This is what our kitchen looks like now:

And this is what I'm thinking it will look like come mid-June:

anyone else obsessed with @whimsygirldesign on instagram?  These are her kitchen!  I love her and it's our same granite and what will be what I'm thinking for our new wall color....

Thoughts?  I've been researching, pinning, dreaming about it and trying to make the ultimate decision.  Let's just say regardless - somehow our lower level is going to get a complete makeover and I'm so excited we saved our money to do this.  Because while we won't be taking any big vacations this year due to baby #3, Jimmy and I love ourselves a nice little house project  - especially one we don't have to do the work ourselves!!!

Let me know what you think!!!