A little peak!

I am really excited about how the girls room is turning out!!! I'm not completely done (they have no furniture except beds at this point), but I wanted to share a peak. You can see the used (very ugly) beds that I painted, the quilts (not perfect, but done) and a glimpse of the board and batten.

Busy, busy!

Actually, busy doesn't even begin to describe how the last two weeks have been for us. And, in my defence, I did try to update on here a LONG time ago. Blogger wasn't working for me the night I tried to update and after spending a lot of time (that I didn't really have to spare), I got mad and ignored my blog. So, I'm back now that blogger is behaving for me.

We have gotten a lot done around here in the two weeks since we closed, however we have about 10 times as much left to go. And, unfortunately, we're back to real life, so everything else has to happen around our daily life.

Ross is now the proud owner of a perfectly green room, which I love (and he is now complaining about and telling me that red is what he wanted). The girls' room is almost finished...the board and batten is up and painted, the ceiling is painted and the window seat is built. We have to shorten the blinds (and by we, I mean Jeremy), I need to caulk the top of the battens and I need to finish painting the window seat. It will all get done...eventually. I would like to have the paint and such supplies packed up by the end of the weekend, but we'll see. Everything seems to take 4 times as long to finish as I plan for.

Luckily, last weekend my parents and in-laws swooped in and did a ton of work around here! The board and batten would not be painted if it weren't for my in-laws. My dad painted our large storage closet in the basement and my mom kept the kids out of my hair and sorted through the kids clothes (all of which needed laundered after the handling they got during the move). And while they were all busy, I actually switched gears from house maintenance to unpacking. So, we now have a place to sit in our living room -- yay!!!

Today I took the day off from working and took the kids to the local children's museum. They all enjoyed it thoroughly (even Hannah) and were dead asleep in the van within minutes of leaving. I was completely tickled to find that we had more options of things to do today than we've had since leaving Columbus. I don't think we'll run out of things to do around here (both in our time off and when we're busy working) for a long time!

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: