Snaps from the New House

In some ways I feel like we have settled right in to life in the new house.  In other ways I feel like we have a long way to go.  Here's a brief tour...

I need something to hang over this chest in the entrance and a new lampshade, but my Easter bunnies are out!

The living room is coming along...

There are these little messes still leftover in a couple of places, the dining room and kids' den to name a couple:

Normal life (never-ending laundry!) goes on in the kitchen:

My closet is one place that's pretty well organized...at least there's one place, right?!?!

We'll get there...eventually.

Final Sneak Peeks!

Here are some final pictures before the house is all finished and we are all moved in...

Living room:

Kitchen:

Butler's Pantry:

 Laundry room:

Powder room:

(vanity before it went in the powder):

Moving starts tomorrow!

Movin' On Up!

(sing that title to the tune of The Jeffersons' theme song)

So, looks like we are moving soon.  I am crawling out from under boxes to write this post because we are now in the packing stage!!

Brad and I spent all weekend unloading everything out of our attic, and we ended up throwing a ton of stuff out and sending six huge trash bags full of stuff to Goodwill on Sunday and three bags today.  We have moved on to the kids' rooms and are trying to go through all of their stuff to organize it into what to throw out, donate, and keep.  It amazes me to think of the junk we had hanging around in this house...

This is what our living room looks like right now (this is our "goes to the new house" pile):

It kind of makes my blood pressure rise every time I look at it, but I know the mess will just get bigger before it gets better, so I am trying to be okay with it.  This is the hard part for me, also, because this is the packing up of the smaller stuff, and even though we seem to have a bazillion boxes stacked up everywhere, we still have most of the house left to pack.  It is a bit depressing.

We plan to spend Thursday through Sunday doing our actual move if all goes as planned...wish us luck!

Random

I am getting ready to hit the sack for the evening, but I wanted to stop in and bore you with some randomness...

1. We thought we might get to move into the house this weekend (yay!!!), but those dreams were dashed this evening by the carpet people and the inspector (boo!!!).  Our carpet is at the store, but they won't install it until Monday, which means that the inspector won't come until after that to do our final inspection and give us our CO.  I believe we ordered this carpet at least a month ago, so we have been waiting on it for quite a while, and the fact that it is the last thing holding us up is irritating me.

2. Most of our furniture is in and will be delivered Saturday!  Unfortunately, they can't deliver it to our house, but rather, they will have to deliver it to Brad's packing house.  At least our living room won't be bare when we can move in...

3. My blonde roots are growing in big time, and the other day I had a panic attack that I was getting gray hair.  Thankfully it isn't gray, but I can't be going around with roots that are lighter than the rest of my hair, or other people might think it's gray, too -- not cool.  I may have to do like Gibson wants me to do, and go back to "yellow."

4. I decided today that my kids eat too many of the same things for breakfast and lunch, so I wanted to change it up a bit.  I made a batch of egg salad for sandwiches for tomorrow, and I was planning to make this Baked Oatmeal with Blueberries and Bananas from skinnytaste for their breakfast for tomorrow.  I got all of the ingredients out and started chopping up the bananas when I realized that I didn't actually buy the dang oatmeal at the grocery store today.  It is pretty hard to make oatmeal without the actual oats.  So, instead, I made these Baked Bananas.  If you like bananas, I would recommend these -- they taste like dessert but are skinny!

5. Brad didn't know what to do since I was doing all of this extra cooking.  He asked me if I was stressed out about something.  I guess that shows that I am usually pretty lazy with the kids' school lunches; he usually takes care of breakfast!

Y'all have a great night!

What About the House?!?!?

Well, I am glad you asked!!

Okay, so you didn't, actually, but I am going to tell you anyway...

We obviously didn't make our goal of being in the new house by Christmas.  And we still aren't in the new house a week after Christmas.  In fact, I have told some friends that I am beginning to think of it as this nice house in the woods that we visit daily.  We nod our heads at things that we like and correct things that we think should be fixed.  We discuss how much it costs and where we could cut costs.  We plan where furniture will go.  We measure things and remeasure things.  We ooh and ahh and love the house, but it isn't our house.  It doesn't feel like we will actually ever live there.

But it is our house and we will actually live there if we can ever finish the durn thing.  And the end is maybe-kinda-sorta in sight.  It should hopefully be just a few more weeks, but here is what we are working on now:

-- Re-painting the kitchen and laundry room cabinets.  Yes, I said re-painting.  I had a discussion with my cabinet builder about the fact that I wanted a white white kitchen, and I even had a white picked out for my cabinet color.  He had painted everything his white without discussing it with me, and he assured me that his white was plenty white enough.  It wasn't -- especially when we got the cabinets installed in the house and compared them to the trim in the kitchen, which is the color that I wanted the cabinets.  So we are re-painting.

-- Vanity tops are being installed in the bathrooms tomorrow.  Once they are finished, they should be able to start on the countertops in the kitchen and butler's pantry because the cabinet paint should be dry!  Marble for those tops is ordered and in the hands of the countertop people.

-- Once the countertops are in in the kitchen, subway tile has to be installed.

-- Stairs to the bonus room and our mantel got a coat of poly yesterday.  All hardwood floors need one more coat of poly.

-- Carpet should have been ordered today and will hopefully be here in the next week.

-- The plumber has to come to install all toilets, sinks, and faucets, but they are all on site.

-- My front door is waiting for its coat of turquoise paint.  The original color I was planning on was looking like more of a gray-green, so I picked out another shade that is definitely turquoise.  I cannot wait to see it up.

-- All doors need doorknobs and doorstops installed.

-- All exterior doors and shutters need a coat of Urbane Bronze.

-- Appliances must be installed.

-- My chandelier needs to be installed.

-- The decking on the porches needs to be stained.

-- Knobs and pulls need to be installed on all cabinets.

-- Cabinets in my office need to be finished and installed (will probably be finished after we move in).

-- Vanity needs to be installed in powder room.

-- Brick on the fireplace needs to be painted.

-- Power should have been turned on today!

-- Phone is in the works.  The phone company came out last week and freaked out that our house is so far from the road, so they sent our order to engineering.  Engineering has since okayed the order, so now we are waiting on installation - again.

Um, off the top of my head, I think that's it...as you can see, it's mostly piddly stuff.  I hope it won't take too long to get it all finished because I am SO ready to get in the house.  I really can't wait to enjoy that place-in-the-woods-that-doesn't-really-seem-like-ours!

To Me From Me

As I have been doing my Christmas shopping, I have also bought myself a little something...

Two new books for my coffee table!  I have only skimmed through these, but I love both so far!

House Progress: Lights!

Tonight I'm just going to give you some pictures and not many words because I am tired...

I will be back with words later!  Peace out...

House Progress!!!

First, I am going to have to apologize (for the millionth time) for the poor quality photos....these were all taken on my phone.  Second, these were all taken at least a week and a half ago, some over two weeks ago, so they need to be updated even now!  But...here they are...progress!

Brad's closet:

My closet:

Our shower (don't pay attention to the floor...it is getting fixed.  It is a little too gray on one side and white on the other in this photo):

Standing at the front door looking back toward the living room, kitchen, and master bedroom:

 Cabinets going in in the kitchen!!!!

The bar side of the butler's pantry:

The beginning of the cabinets in the laundry room:

My vanity on the left and Brad's on the right:

Girls' vanity on the left and Bubbie's on the right:

 They have started putting up lighting and have done some work on the mantel since I took this pictures, so I will post more soon.  I feel like the ball is really rolling now!  However, Brad and I made the decision the other day (forgive me if I am repeating myself -- I can't remember if I already posted about this...) that we are not going to try to move in before Christmas if they finish the house.  It would be too stressful in an already-stressful and busy time of year, and that is the last thing that Christmas is supposed to be!  The kids did ask for Santa to maybe bring their presents to the new house...it just depends on where things stand on Christmas Day, I guess.  And if the big guy can find our new place!

More pictures soon!

Some (Really Bad) House Photos

There is a lot going on in our house these days!  Our builder has another project waiting in the wings that he will lose if he doesn't finish our house in a timely fashion, so he finally has gotten a fire lit under him to get this house going.  I think Christmas in our new home just may be a possibility!


One of these days I am going to remember to take off my 50mm lens when I head out to the house to take pictures...but you can get the gist from these.  Here is what is happening these days...


The shiplap is going up on the fireplace wall and in the foyer: 

The trim is going up on all of the windows and doors:

The painters have at least one coat on almost the entire house.  I had a bit of a problem deciding on the master bedroom and bathroom, but I got that all figured out yesterday.  This is the dining room on the left (this picture does not do the color justice!) and kids' den on the right:

 Tile is in all of the bathrooms (except the master -- it has hardwoods -- yes, we are crazy) and the laundry room.  This is the girls' bathroom:

Just for kicks...another view of the living room looking down the hall from the kids' den:

It's getting exciting around here!!!