The Jolly James: January 2013

Monday, January 21, 2013

The Big Reveal

I’ve been looking forward to writing this blog for a long time now. And the time has finally come that I get to share pictures of our brand spankin’ new home!

God is so good!

I can’t wait to see the house evolve into our home. I know it won’t happen overnight, and that’s okay. Half the fun is the journey. However we are well on our way! So here she is as of now, with lots of room to make her “ours”. Enjoy and welcome to our home!

Get ready for more pictures than you’ll ever want to see of my house. Sorry there are so many of the same spaces. I couldn’t pick favorites!

We’ll start with the Exterior.

Before

After

Before

The front is fabulous and clean. We’re lacking landscaping, but it’s on the to-do list.

The back porch is a dumping ground right now. 5-7 estimated business days waiting on a trash can calls for a massive pile up elsewhere. Just pretend you don’t see it Winking smile And the garage is a mess too so there was no room for it in there.

Love, love, love our backyard. The pooches do too!

Let’s head inside. Listen to my voice, “Welcome to my crib”.

View from the front door.

This is seriously the kitchen of my dreams. Barstools are on my “want” list so I can return these temps back to the dining room table.

View towards living room.

View towards laundry room. Stairs to the bonus room are to the right of the door and the Master is on the right before the stairs.

Obsessed with my plate wall!

The TV will be mounted shortly. We’ve got it, just gotta hang it!

Update: My Dad and Cole got our TVs mounted today!! I can’t wait to decorate the mantle now!

Pretend you don’t see the trash out yonder piled against the window, the stuff I hid under the table that’s still clearly visible, and the TV that’s on for pictures…a design no-no. Ha!

To the bonus room…

Back down to the Laundry Room.

Here’s where I blogged about fancying up the WASH letters.

Okay let’s head to the Master, er where the magic happens.

So plain in here. Ready to get some art on these walls!

This TV will be mounted too.

Update: My Dad and Cole got our TVs mounted today!! I can’t wait to decorate around it now.

Big blank wall…my wheels are turning as to what I’m gonna do with you. I would love to have an upholstered bench here too for puttin’ on kicks.

His and hers. So glad to have this again. Need ruggage.

Funny story – The first night we were in the house I got a splinter. I was standing at the countertop digging it out of my finger and it was getting to be dusk so it was easy to see in from the outside (we didn’t have blinds yet). I stood there for oh, I dunno maybe 3-5 minutes? And once I got that sucker out I looked up and saw I had an audience. The little girl across the street (I’m guessing she’s about 7) waved to me. I waved back. Good times, and I told David we needed blinds ASAP. Ha!

We’re slowing getting window treatments and blinds for the other rooms. Those jokers are not cheap!

End tangent.

Okay let’s slide on over to the other side of the house.

First up, my favorite room in the house. Not to be confused with favorite space, i.e. kitchen.

My craft room. Where the magic really happens. Love the view from the living room!

That back right corner needs help. A lot of it. We’re making progress here people, focus on the pretties!

Help. What do I do to hide the computer hard drive? I’m thinking of hanging fabric on that side of the desk. Brainstorming that one.

Those curtains are more BB&B table cloths. They are 120” but need to be hemmed.

The natural lighting is awesome in this house. A hobby-photographer’s dream!

Alright, down the hall we go…

First stop on the right is the future Nursery. Which will hopefully be occupied (and not with junk!) sooner rather than later!

But for now, it’s a catch-all room. Including Moosey Goosey. She’s almost ready to be left out during the day, but she’s proven us wrong every time we trusted her. Turd.

At the end of the hall is the guest bath.

I am so in love with the way this room came together. I ordered the extra long (96”) shower curtain off of Amazon. You can find it here.

Here I am demonstrating the monstrosity of this thing. I’m 5’5” for reference. (Don’t mind the PJs) It makes the already 9’ ceiling look sky high. Love!

And last but certainly not least, is our guest bedroom.

This bed seriously rocks my socks off. I’m jealous of my guests!

I’m also super in love with the dresser we picked up on the same Ikea trip that we got the bed. It was like Christmas this weekend getting to see everything that had been in boxes in storage!

Couldn’t not include the cuteness!

Okay, over and out. I hope this long awaited house tour was everything you’d hoped it would be!

Thanks for being awesome! Smile

If you want to read about our Moving Day adventures, keep scrolling down or click here!

Sunday, January 20, 2013

I Like to Move It, Move It

Well, we’re a little over one week in at our new house, and boy was it a busy past week! Looking around this morning though we realized we got a lot of stuff done in that short amount of time. There’ve been late nights and early mornings but it’s all been worth it. I’m loving it!

Let’s back up to Friday the 11th, closing day.

We were both off work and hit the pavement by 8:30. There was a lot to do that day. We setup cable, trash services, picked up the budget truck, got the electricity taken care of, went by the house to make sure everything was getting done for closing, and then closed at 4:00!

Picking up the beast!

The closing process went smoothly and then she was ours! Happy Homeowners!

Ain’t she pretty on a gloomy day?

I wish I could share our pretty house numbers! I went ahead and bleeped them out for (in the words of Bon Qui Qui) “sacurity” purposes.

After we finished up at the title company, I dropped Remi off at the in-laws so he’d be out of the way and not be tempted to escape through any open doors the next day (thank you guys again SO much for keeping him!) and then headed to Bunko. I know, shouldn’t I be packing to move the next day? Well, David took the big truck and packed up the storage unit all by himself Friday night. Then I got home around 10:30 and packed up the closet and the bathroom. Fun fun.

Then we were up and at ‘em 6:00 Saturday morning. David and I loaded up all the big stuff and as much else as we could fit in the 24’ truck. We thought one load would be enough…it wasn’t. We still had a crap load of odds and ends stuff left at the house. Long story short we had to rent a 16’ truck to get the rest of the junk later that afternoon.

We met my Mom, Cole & Logan at the house with the full load around 9 ish. Can I just take a minute to say how much harder Saturday would have been without those 3 people? In fact, we’d probably still be moving if it hadn’t been for them. My Mom also was a tremendous help Sunday. She helped us clean the rental from top to bottom. It was sparkling clean when we left. THANK YOU GUYS SOOOO MUCH!!

Somebody’s excited to ~~get the truck back before he owes another night on it~~ unload!

Brother looks thrilled. He’s helped me move so many times now. Bless his heart! What a good brother!

Bunny cage unload. And Momma as a happy camper with a cleaning supply basket and her beer!

Truck #2. All done! Love that we can drive back there.

Also, I’d like to take a moment of silence to recognize my beloved DIY Starburst Mirror. It broke a few legs during the move, and while I planned to fix her, the mirror ended up splitting Sad smile She will be greatly missed! I was so bummed!

So, moving day commenced. It was long, tiring, and I cried a couple times when it was just David and I loading up the truck that morning. Stuff was heavy, it was hard, and I was completely and utterly overwhelmed. We have entirely too much stuff. He stayed calm though and tried to make light of everything. Thanks babe. We made it!

Me and Mom got right to hanging stuff on night one. Lint rolling my sign. Dogs shed a lot. Just FYI. It gets everywhere!

First chalkboard going up…

She found a carpet “island”.

And she wasn’t sure about coming down the stairs.

I can’t keep her off of them now!

Everyone was exhausted. Mom stayed the night in the guest room on her cot! David has since put the new Ikea bed together and we bought a brand new mattress set this weekend. We’re all ready for guests!

My Dad was out of town Saturday so he came over Sunday for a little bit to help hang some big stuff.

The ginormo mirror is from Kirkland’s!

Oh and I’ve got to mention, we’ve been welcomed so warmly to the neighborhood. First we got chocolate chip cookies from the neighbors a few doors down. They were so nice and the cookies were amazing! Then our friends Brett, Lynn and baby Trent came by for a visit from across the neighborhood and they brought us Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread. It was YUM-O too! My bestie Renee came by today and delivered a frozen hot chocolate. I love that we live in the same neighborhood again! We lived next door in elementary school and it’s seriously awesome that we are so close by! We’ve had company stopping by all week. I love it! We are so thankful for people going out of their way for us. It makes us feel all warm and fuzzy!