We've arrived!

Actually, we arrived at our new home on Monday, but it has been pure chaos around here up until now. Scratch that -- it is still utter chaos, but I'm exhausted and taking a break from the cleaning/sorting/painting to post a bit.

The first thing I want to say is this: I LOVE IT HERE! I was really nervous as we drove here on Monday, because this is a big change and not one easily reversed. We've been welcomed so warmly, though, and this house already feels like home (even if it is a disorganized, dirty mess of a home). One of our new neighbors brought us dinner on Tuesday (THANK YOU) and I was delighted to find that she has a daughter about Lucy's age (and the first thing out of the little girls mouth when she walked up to the house was, "where is Lucy?"). I'm really looking forward to the neighborhood fireworks for the 4th of July. And we are close to EVERYTHING, which is great after having lived in (what felt like) the middle of no-where for 5 years.

We did have our first round of bad luck with the gate. We went out for dinner on Monday and couldn't get back in. I guess that is the price for keeping the Kirby salesmen out, though.

I do have a lot done -- the kitchen cabinets are clean and ready to accept our items (when the truck arrives next Monday), as are the cabinets in the master bath. I've sealed the grout and caulked in two of the baths and the laundry room, too. Ross's room is almost finished...one more coat of paint and then I (hope) we'll be ready to re-assemble his room. And we've almost finished a window seat for Lucy.

So, I have lots of pictures, but they will have to wait until later. Off to do some more painting...

First impressions!

Tonight I've been sitting here surfing Etsy (one of my favorite things to do). I'm on the hunt for front door and front porch decor. I'm always so impressed when I go to homes and the decorating extends to the outside. I'm absolutely determined to have a lovely, enchanting entrance to our home this time around. First impressions are the most important, right?

I have this vision in my head of having a seasonal and ever changing front porch vignette. I've told Jeremy that I want to get a rocking chair (possibly two) and a small table to put on the porch. I'm planning on getting an outdoor pillow for the chair and making seasonal covers to swap out on it -- red, white & blue for the 4th of July & Memorial Day, Holiday prints during Christmas, pastel florals for Easter, etc. And I want to have a coordinating wreath for the door, as well as sign for the wall (there is already a nail drilled into the masonry, for heaven knows what reason, so I might as well use it!). Does that sound a little crazy? Yeah, I kind of think so, too, but I can't help myself!

So, this is the front porch as it stands now:

The picture isn't very good, but that is basically the extent of it -- I only cut off about a foot. Eventually we want to put a wrought-iron hand rail up, too.

It is a good thing that we will have a massive amount of storage in this house -- we're going to need it for all those wreaths I'm planning on collecting!

Quilts!

So, I am almost finished with the quilts for the girls. They are both tied (or tufted -- in lieu of quilting), but I need to finish the bindings for them. I have the bindings machine sewed on one of the quilts(I'm sewing one side of the binding on by machine and then hand stitching the other side). The other quilt is on the machine right now. And both quilts are getting packed up to go with us on our trip to Ohio next week, where I intend to finish the hand stitching.

I was surprised to find that my least favorite (and by that, I mean I absolutely detested the process) part of making these was layering the quilt parts together and pinning them. It was a royal pain in the patootie. The layers all stuck together, so if I need to reposition the top layer, I would actually have to pick it up and reposition the entire thing, because it would just drag the bottom layers with it. It took FOREVER to get them positioned correctly.

Here is a little peak at one of the quilts:


The tufting of the quilt wasn't hard, but it was dangerous. I used a rather large, and very sharp, darning needle for said task. Check out this monstrosity:


I have several deep puncture wounds as a result of the quilt making. I'm pretty happy with them so far, but I'm thinking I'll stick to simpler (and smaller) sewing projects from now on!

Moving Part 1: Complete!

So, today we sold our house here in North Carolina. It is really weird to be living down the street through this process. I really wish we weren't -- I'm having an overwhelming urge to get as far away from here as possible. That isn't because I didn't love our house here, but because it is just too weird to think about someone living in my house (let alone watching them move in). I never met the person buying our house, at my choice -- again, I just didn't want to be able to picture some weirdo in my home. I'd rather remember it with us living in it and not have our memories tainted with impressions of the new owner. I wonder how soon until my lovely annuals are dead and the perennials over grown. Every once in a while I still get the urge to drive by our old house in Columbus and I'm always saddened to see just how much the new owner has let the yard get run down. I know neither one of those houses are ours anymore, but I have an irrational, emotional attachment to them (especially to the things like the plants that I spent hours and hours of hard labor planting and caring for).

We did have a little bit of a hick-up yesterday. The buyer's agent came two hours early for the final walk through. This meant I didn't get a chance to do the last few things on my to-do list, which included removing the spare key from the counter. Guess what she took? Yep, she took both the house keys and the pool key, which is NOT GOOD. We didn't close until today, so neither she nor her client had any right to our keys. We should have called the police. I'll settle with complaining to her employer and the state board of realtors. The woman is just plain crazy and has absolutely no business having access to the realtor's lock box that hang on the door of thousands of homes in this city.

Whew...what a week!

So, for good reason, I haven't been able to post this week. We moved out of our house here in North Carolina. We spent Monday & Tuesday clearing the last of the stuff out that either couldn't be moved by the movers or that we needed to keep with us. The packers came on Wednesday & Thursday and the movers came & picked up our items on Friday. Whew...what a busy (and stressful and bittersweet) week!!!

I have the house about 1/2 cleaned and I need to finish that this weekend, as we close on Tuesday. I'll be glad to have this leg of the transition finished!!!

And, if you are wondering, we're now crashing at my in-laws. I feel like I've turned their house into a zoo (and am ever grateful that they'll let us do so)!

Last week we also celebrated Reid's 6th birthday. How did I forget to post about that? Hmmm...perhaps the 30 million things running through my head. Anyway, we had a small gathering and I made cupcakes for him. We were supposed to have home-made bon-bons (which he was super excited about), but they did not turn out. I rolled out the scoops of ice cream on Thursday night and awoke (expecting to have them frozen into hard little balls) to a sheet of gooey ice cream on my cookie sheet. He was bummed, but what is there to do about it? I suppose I owe the kid a grand party next year, to make up for the fact that we've now moved on his birthday twice.

Here are some of his official 6th birthday shots and one of him with his cupcakes:

Our new house!

Things are clipping along with our new house. We had the home inspection yesterday, which went pretty well. There are a few items that they need to address -- the only major one being that one of the A/C units didn't work (which isn't surprising considering how long the house has been vacant). The home inspector said the house looked to be well built, so we are happy on the whole with the inspection.

Both of us are happy to find ourselves liking the house more and more each time we go there. It really will be a great place for us. I also was pleasantly surprised by some of the features that had previously missed my attention. The kitchen cabinets have built in slide out shelves in several places (yay!) and there is under cabinet lighting in the kitchen as well.

On the other hand, there is a LOT of work to do yet. The backyard will need a major overhaul at some point (we think we'll need/want to add more substantial retaining walls to prevent erosion), which is the only major project. However, every wall in the house needs painted, including the ceilings. The paint is builder grade and the walls are un-primed. We knew to expect this, after having lived in a new house once already. I know it will eventually all get done, but I'm a perfectionist and want the house in tip-top shape when we move in.

Here are a few pictures of the new place:

My Newest Project

For a while now I've been contemplating what to do about furniture for Lucy & Hannah's room. I knew I wanted twin beds whether they shared a room or not, because I liked the idea of having a few spare beds in the house for when company stays. With the boys, we got basic metal beds and sturdy, but not top of the line, wood furniture. The boys have done a pretty good job dinging up the wooden stuff, so I'm loath to spend that much on furniture again (even though we really didn't spend much in the big scheme of things). After scouring design blogs for ideas, I decided to look for used solid wood beds that could be painted. I wanted something sturdy that could be spruced up with a little elbow grease.

Last weekend I found some on Craigslist and we picked them up. They looked awful!!! However, after 5 days of intensive work, they are looking much better. I sanded them, primed them (twice) and have one coat of paint on them. I went with a black paint, because we'll be doing a "board and batten" treatment on the bottom half of the walls, which means the backdrop to the beds will be white. I wanted something neutral, but something that would stand out. My inspiration for the room is very much driven by this blog post:

http://emilyaclark.blogspot.com/2011/03/paneled-headboard-project.html

The girls room will have sloped ceilings with short walls on two sides. So, I have decided to paint the ceiling (and top portion of the walls) PINK. Lucy will love it! Hannah probably won't love it so much, but the girl already has a room completely to herself at her dad's house, so I'm thinking this is pretty fair (and she's ackowledged that herself).

I had intended to show pictures of the beds, but my crappy little camera (the point and shoot I picked up for our Disney trip) isn't cooperating...the pictures are REFUSING to be removed from the darn thing. So, the pictures will have to wait until later!