Moving In

Moving into our new house has been amazing. It it so beautiful, and has that "new house" smell, and central air, and carpet. We love it. The hardwood hickory floor throughout the kitchen is gorgeous, even though I'm terrified to keep it up. (tips from fellow hardwood floor owners welcome here.) The laundry room is so big and the washer and dryer work so quickly! The master bedroom/bath is still something to get used to ... so much walking, just to brush my teeth, change my clothes, et. It's really wonderful to have our new home. We spent our first night here on July 30, right before our 4th anniversary. Here's our cosy front entry...
Our neighborhood is small and quiet, but seems very friendly so far. We're in a tiny subdivision with quite a few new builds and some empty lots around us. So, we assume most of our nearby neighbors are probably also new to the area. One funny thing, when we first moved in, I was very surprised to find that there is a new lot RIGHT next to us! None of the pictures ever showed that big barren spot of ground 5 ft from our house. One of the drawbacks to buying online. ha! Here it is, for those curious about the lay-of-the-land...

As for the actual details of "moving in" to our new house, I admit this has not been the streamlined process I imagined. My standard motto of "everything takes longer" applies perfectly to the house situation. Our air shipment was supposed to take up to ten days to arrive. It took nearly a month to come. Our sea shipment arrived last week, finally! (No dressers, cookie sheets, or books until it landed!) Buying furniture is tedious. We have a hard time making decisions, so we end up taking forever. I want things to match and have a good "flow" to the decor, but I really haven't got a good "vision" for what I'm after yet. So, little by little we're trying to get things we like, things that will go together, things that don't cost us a small fortune. This is difficult. Here's how the house looks right now...

The couch really is burnt orange. I love it. Brian loves it. The tricky part is finding things that go with burnt orange.

View from the back of the couch, below... As you will see, we are FAR from done on the decorating front. We still can't figure out what to put on that wall facing the couch. We don't want an entertainment center, but it's really hard to find something else that would work there. The small bookshelf is just temporary. hmm... Decorating suggestions welcome!!

And the dining room... the little hutch in the corner really is a dark lime green -- like the color of a lime peel. I love it. It was on a clearance sale and I was sooo excited to get it for our room. But now, am I tied to green for our kitchen? Problem: all our dishes from our wedding just four years ago are blue. hmm.

Our bed is a favorite. Costco pillow-top mattress set, same as we had in London. And we just discovered we bought the same bed that my brother Blaine and his wife Lisa have! They must have good taste, too.

Here's the comfy chair we bought for our bedroom. Great for reading and sprawling!
And here is Samantha in her bedroom, with her new IKEA furnishings. She is thrilled with her room, even though we've yet to decorate it.

And, the grand finale... that's right! It's a baby grand piano!!! I am sooooo very excited to have this lovely instrument in our home. I like to go look at it night before I go to bed.
I have always, always wanted a baby grand, and now we actually have one. It's gorgeous. Shiny black. Lovely tone quality. I try to play it every day that we are home. Brian plays it a lot too, and Samantha plays it with supervision. Mainly she just dances around the room while we play. The best part is that we got a great deal (we think?) at the piano sale from the university in town. Couldn't pass it up.

So, now we have a piano. And a piano room, since it takes up most of the little parlor room it's sitting in. Well, I guess we're moved in?