Getting Settled

We finally have internet!  Yay!  In the end, after spending *hours* (literally) on the phone with Stupid Comcast, the solution was........

drum roll.

.........................................

We buy a new modem!  Yay!  NOT.

Anyways, so now that we have a shiny new (used) modem compliments of Amazon, I can finally share all of the pictures that have been sitting on my camera!  And yes, my dear techie nerds, amazon had the modem cheaper than newegg and tiger direct.  :)

So moving on, here are a couple of pictures from the last few days of apartment life.  What you see here is all of the drapes from the new house drying in my living room.  Looking back at this, I may now realize why I swear my couch smells like dog.  Interesting....  The drapes were already washed, but it still did not remove all of the animal hair.

Such a mess......and that clock may never have such a perfect spot again. :(

The next several pictures were taken our last night in the apartment right before we went to bed....our family was coming early the next morning to help us move....I was very concerned about how much stuff was still lying around!

But in the end, most of it was in a box.....I kept packing while the boys hauled stuff out :)

What a mess!  You see one cupboard there still full....but all the rest were empty!  I wasn't that behind!

Folding our last bit of laundry from the apartment.  I do the wash, Brandon folds it. :)  It's a wonderful thing!

How did I fit all of that in there???!!!

Goodbye bold green!

*tear  :'(

My parents, brother, friend, and Brandon's brothers all came to help us move!

It was so nice to have the Sprinter to move with....only 2 trips!

Very focused driver.  You have to be with your wife sitting next to you while all of her precious materials are being transported!  lol

My orchid got VIP service.  No it is not dead, it will bloom again next year.

And now, onto move in day at the house!

The kitchen is painted in a new deeper shade of red than it was previously.

The dining room is pretty much the same color.... :)

There's that pretty "Seascape Blue" I was telling you about!  I love this color!

Our bedroom.  The two walls you can't see are a deeper shade of green.  It's very nice!

It takes a crowd to move our SUPER heavy hide-a-bed couch.

You can do it!

Getting the pancake mattress in place ;)

Ahhh, finally in place.

Now you didn't think we got through this day completely without a hitch did you?  Oh no.  So, we had picked up our bed mid week.  On move in day the boys took it out of the box and began to see how they could put it together.  I walk in and am like, hmmmmm, that looks interesting.  That is NOT the bed I ordered.  The boys were clueless obviously.  So, I called the store and we worked it out that I would get a discount and we would return the bed and get ours pronto.  They would have delivered it and such, but I wanted to get it done.

Neil and Brandon putting together the correct bed! 

My gorgeous new bed!  I LOVE IT!

My birthday happened to be during the first week we were in our house.  My husband loves me :)

This picture is proof to my family that I am capable of outdoor work.  Sweeping the grass that I mowed. 

I hope you didn't actually fall for the idea that I MOWED the lawn....lol  That was definitely Brandon.

But I did sweep :)

Brandon's parents sent me a Cookie Creation for my birthday!!!!  So awesome!

YUM!

Maggie brought me flowers!  They are beautiful!  Shameless plug for Maggie's Flowers!

I had lots of wonderful birthday gifts!  Thank-you everyone!  

The house is still a mess.  I feel like if I clean one room it all ends up magically in another. :)  I wonder how that happens?  lol  Upstairs, our painter is not finished so we cannot fill closets or really unpack much up there yet....so it is pretty much a drop zone right now.

The blue room.  Yuck.

The newly yellow room :)  Future guest bedroom.

Another project I sort of took on this week was the bathroom.  Quite simply, it is tiny and I didn't like the looks of my stuff in it.  So, I went on a quest (using my birthday as an excuse) to make it prettier. :)  But I also had to stay in a budget.

Ok this picture does not really do my point justice....but just believe me that our shower curtain did NOT (in my opinion) match the walls.

I also hate these shelves and hate that my stuff has to sit out for everyone to see.  But I am learning to embrace them for the time being.

Ah Target, I knew you would not fail me. :)

Brandon was very involved with the shower curtain process while discussing fantasy football draft picks with his friend.  lol  He did eventually get off the phone to his credit.

Ah, so much better.  Crisp, clean white.  Love it!

Also a new mercury glass toothbrush holder!  :)

It's the small things that make me happy!  And a new bathroom look did the trick!  I was also pretty successful at finding places for all of our bathroom "crap" in cupboards and closets.  Only a few bigger things ended up on the dreaded shelves.  And I have to admit that the washcloths and hand towels don't look bad on them.  Brandon says it's because the cover up the ugliness.  Haha!  He may be right.

So anyways, the process continues.  I'll definitely be keeping you updated...  Can't wait to be done with this part, but I know it's a part of the journey!  :)

Ughhhh  :)

Home Sweet Home

As of Saturday we are all moved in!  We cleaned our apartment yesterday and turned in the keys.  Done.  I only cried a lit....okay a lot.  :)  Brandon and I were reminiscing about all of the things we had done in the one year we lived there.  He got ready for our wedding there, we left and returned from Europe there, my Grandma died while I was there, we spent time with many different friends there, I first decorated for all of the holidays there, in many ways, I learned to cook there, we took lots and LOTS of walks there.  *Sigh*  But we are moving on!

We discussed how we are into a new phase of our lives in the car.  I said, "Brandon, our next phase will be middle-aged."  But then we decided to shorten the phases a bit....next up would be "Parenthood".  Don't get any ideas, I think a golden retriever will be enough parenthood for me for awhile.  No, we don't have one yet...I'm just planning my future.  Haha!  Brandon likes Australian sheperds and now that I saw one at his mom's kennel, I want one of those too.  I'll take one of each please!  :)

Anyways, I'm sorry I don't have any pictures for you.  "Stupid Comcast" as I now refer to them, came to our new house to set up our internet and left me with no internet.  Don't even get me started.  Basically, my modem (which is on their approved modems list) doesn't work with their cable.  So, unless they can figure out a way to get it working....Brandon and I will have to purchase a new modem.  Oh Stupid Comcast.  I still prefer them over AT&T though.  Anyways, so no internet at the house means I cannot upload my pictures to my blog currently.  I do have them ready to go as soon as we fix this problem though! 

As for the house, we are all moved in but definitely not unpacked.  It took me a while to find all of the clothes I needed this morning so that I didn't go into work looking like a risque model!  Haha!  We have our new bed that looks SO nice in our bedroom!  Almost every room has been repainted already, but I found out this morning that our painter got in a severe car accident yesterday so one of our upstairs bedrooms and our back entry won't be finished for several weeks.  I'm just glad he's okay!  I love the colors so far.  Our living room is a "Seascape" blue and it looks wonderful with our dark wood!  I changed the color of one upstairs bedroom to light yellow.  I thought baby pink would look best with my guest bedding but I refused to have one baby blue and one baby pink room upstairs.  That's just too much!  lol

As for the rest of the house, boxes are everywhere!  Literally.  Brandon and I are so whooped that we are just ignoring them for the time being.  We want to enjoy upacking and setting up....not hate it, so we are pacing ourselves.  My parents have been super helpful, as well our brothers and friends.  Just remember, if you show up to see the house on moving day, you're going to get put to work (Alex and Anna)!  :P  I want to especially thank Anna and my mom for helping me get the kitchen unpacked.  That was so nice!

Our biggest dilemma so far has been closet space.  I have never had this tiny of a bedroom closet in my LIFE!  Soooo, sharing that tiny closet with Brandon is not ideal, but I'm a nice wife, so I gave him one rack.  :)  We decided to go to Target last night around 9 to look for a dresser that will fit in our room....but oh duh, it's Sunday and they closed at 8.  That's what happens when you skip church.  Oops!  So, that's for another day now.  We also seriously lack bathroom storage.  The hallway closet will essentially become our bathroom cupboard when we unpack.  But it would be so nice to get a mirror over the sink with a cabinet behind it.  If only I could find one that is not so UGLY.  I have been unsuccesful with that so far also.  If you see a cute one in white...let me know :)

So anyways, that is where we're at.  Hopefully "Stupid Comcast" will come through for me and I can get my pictures up soon!

The First Couple Days...

The day finally came!  We have the house!!!! 

Our house :)

We also still have the apartment!!!  Haha!  We purposefully overlapped our time for the next week so that we could fully clean and prep the house without the hassle of furniture and boxes.  The apartment has basically turned into box-land.  :)  This picture is older; it's gotten worse since then! 

The apartment is taking on a "warehouse" feel :)

So we actually got the house on Saturday night after spending the day with Brandon's family and his Aunt and cousin from the Netherlands.  Saturday was the sellers only moving day so they were cramped for time to get out, but they made it work.  We pulled up into the driveway of our new home around 9:00pm.  It was a wonderful feeling walking into "our" house.  Brandon's mom had not seen the house yet in person, so it was her first time walking through it.  We only stayed about an hour, enough time to bring in our cleaning gear, look around, and shut windows.  But we were so excited, I think we would have been happy to sleep on the floor had it not been for all the cat hair.  Haha!



Coming in for the first time :)  Sorry about the fuzziness.



The New Homeowners!

Sunday morning after church, my side of family (plus Joel) joined us for a day of "deep cleaning".  It was pretty intense and turned out to be an interesting day! 



My dear husband, getting some of that cat hair sucked up!




Our first meal in the house. :) 



Preparing to start tackling the kitchen.



It was absolutely disgusting behind the fridge :(



While my mom and I cleaned upstairs, the boys had a project in the basement.

Project Tear Down Disgusting Old Coal Room:

There it is.  It just added a musty smell to the basement, so why keep it?



Another angle of the room

Meanwhile, I was upstairs scrubbing the floor!  Doesn't that look like fun? :)

Making progress back in the basement.  It was nice that they could pass all the junk right out of the window and onto the driveway.

Don't worry, Brandon did leave this hallway :)

And then it hit.........our housewarming gift from the house.  Mom and I had been cleaning the fridge shelves and such in the sink all day.  When she drained the sink, we heard all the guys downstairs yelling "turn off the water!!!".  Great.  Well, the pipe behind our tiny dishwasher broke and was leaking the water into the basement.  GAHHH!  I was so upset.  But in retrospect, I'm glad it happened day one and not after we were all settled in.  Our inspector had warned about that pipe so I guess we shouldn't have been surprised.  It just blew my mind that it would happen on our FIRST day!  So anyways, that was the end of our kitchen cleaning for the day....the fridge.  lol.  My dad and brother managed to get the dishwasher out of its tight little space to look at the damage.  They decided we should call my uncle who used to be a plumber.  Luckily, Uncle Brian could come. 

Checking out the damage.

 Aunt Billi and the kids helped us out while Brian worked in the kitchen :)

Cleaning screens



Yuck.  I probably shouldn't have looked :)  At least it didn't ruin any cabinets.




THANK-YOU Uncle Brian and Dad for working so hard to fix our kitchen!



Meanwhile, the guys finished up tearing down the room in the basement.  Doesn't it look so much nicer? :)  (OK it will look nicer after we paint the floors and walls!)

And TAH-DAH, Uncle Brian FIXED the problem.  Here are our spankin' new pipes :)  Never have I cared so much about plumbing in my life....lol

Oooh pretty :)

Finally we finished up for the day and everyone went home.  The house smelled so much cleaner and everything was pretty much sparkling except the kitchen (which will be finished tonight!). 

~

My absolutely fantastic parents surprised us with a wonderful house-warming gift - hiring a painter to paint any rooms we wanted re-painted (which is pretty much every room)!!!!!  So we spent Monday night shopping for, get this, *13* gallons of paint.  Yes, we had to buy this, and yes I don't think I will ever buy a single thing again....okay we know that's not true.  But, we considered it a good investment. 

Ooh la la!

Hello Paint Department!



Oh my goodness!



Good-bye Lowe's...until we meet again.

This is going to be awesome!

Can't wait to keep you updated on our progress!  This has probably been one of the most exciting times of our lives!  I want to thank my family once again for all of their help and time they have been giving to make our home beautiful!