A Little Cottage Inspiration

With fall swiftly approaching, we’re back in nesting mode around here. We’ve been living among piles of clothes, boxes, tools and drywall dust for six months officially as of today and while we’ve made a lot of progress, the summer largely halted any major renovation projects. We have a lot of rooms that are painted, but a lot of doors still waiting to be rehung, a room still wanting for flooring, a kitchen still desperately in need of gutting….you get the picture. At any rate, we’re now itching to get back at it and can’t wait to knock out a ton of projects this fall. To that end, I figured it was time to start rounding up some inspiration again.

I spied this cute cottage on Apartment Therapy last night and I just love the look and feel of these spaces. Warm, neutral and inviting with pops of interesting color and accessories and a great mix of old and new. While I think our final look will be slightly different, I want our home to feel like this one does when we’re all finished.

I am loving the layered neutrals, natural materials and bright little spot of aqua on the chair cushions. This is a room I could curl up and read a book in any day of the week.

Is that a teal lacquer desk that I spy? And I love the look of crisp black frames against the bright, neutral walls. A striped area rug that avoids being matchy-matchy? Love and love.

Crisp aqua and white paired with blonde wood floors and funky galvanized chairs make this little dining space as cute as it is simple. I love how a little color and a few well placed accesories can go a long way.

I’m rounding up my favorite places to search for inspiration, too. Any suggestions? I’d love to know what sites you turn to for decor ideas!

{Photos from Apartment Therapy.}

Expanding Our Family

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a dog lover of epic proportions. My five year old black lab Nina and I are the bestest of BFFs. She meets me at the door every night when I come home and she stares after me longingly when I leave for work in the morning. We play, we swim, we take long walks every night and I come home from every trip away loaded down with new toys and treats. Lately, Mike and I have been talking a lot about getting a second dog. And by “lately” I mean for the last year or so. And by “a lot” I mean nearly daily. Last week we found out about some golden retriever pups, one of whom has a minor “defect” and was having a little trouble finding a good home. We decided to go visit. I fell in love. She’s nine weeks old and about 15lbs right now. Oh, and it should be noted, she’s hopelessly adorable.

Now begins the great doggie debate in earnest. Should we add a second dog to our family? Nina loves dogs and I think she’d genuinely grow to love a companion. But it’s a lot of extra work, a lot of extra hair to clean up, and potentially a lot of extra money if any health issues should arise. Plus, I don’t want Nina to feel like we needed a replacement doggie because she wasn’t good enough. And who am I kidding? I also worry that Nina will love the new pup more than me and my little buddy will be preoccupied. Does anyone have any experience with adding a second dog to the family? I’d love to hear your advice!

Soul Searching

After a long absence it feels like time to finally show my face around these parts once again. Life is moving and changing in new and unexpected ways and after period of quiet, I once again find myself in need of this outlet as a place to reflect, to share, to be inspired and to dream big. For a long while I couldn’t be here writing about my life when for so many weeks, and now months in fact, life has just felt so heavy. Finally though, it seems like the load is lifting a bit and I’m at long last feeling ready to dive back into our projects as new homeowners, the adventures we have planned, and along the way to do a bit of soul searching and life planning.

I have to say, I’m not yet sure that I’m 100% comfortable sharing the details of all that has transpired with all of the world. I suppose in some way that makes it real in a way that ignoring it publicly does not. With that said, 2010 has been a trial unlike any I’ve ever experienced and I feel a bit like the only way to really move on is to confront it…so I’ve made the gut-wrenching decision to do so. We spent the first few months of 2010 battling an attypically stressful home-buying process that blissfully concluded on March 1 when we closed on our first house. After a couple of long years of grasping to pull all the loose threads of our lives together, we finally felt like the pieces were falling into place. Sadly, our bliss was short lived. On March 6, a dear friend and her fiancé were involved in a tragic car accident. He died later that evening. On March 10, as she fought for her life in a hospital, we paid our final respects to the man who was the father of her little boy and one of the kindest souls I’ve ever known. That same day, as if the universe was playing a cruel joke, Mike and I learned he had been laid off for the upcoming school year, just nine days after we had committed to what felt like a lifetime of mortgage payments. My world seemed to be filled with unspeakable grief. The following week, on Saint Patrick’s Day, the last of our hopes were dashed as we in turn said goodbye to my friend. She was 33. Her fiancé was 34. They left behind a four year old boy who was the light of their lives.

The spring and early summer were a whirlwind of emotions. Mike spent it job hunting, I spent it soul searching. I cried. Perhaps more than I ever knew possible at that point. I struggled every day just to make myself believe that what I had to do that day mattered. And as grief has a tendency of doing, finally the clouds seemed to part. After months of anxiety, fear, anger, and anguish, Mike finally secured a job for this upcoming school year. I gradually seemed to come to grips with all that had transpired and we moved forward.

I remember June 30 with great clarity. Mike and I had both received good news on the professional front that day and, once again, we thought the pieces were coming together. We celebrated by releasing ourselves of our evening duties (blogging, curriculum writing, house chores) and spent the evening floating in the pool. We went to bed that night abuzz with excitement and positivity. I remember it just felt so good. But 2010 wasn’t done with us yet.

In the middle of the night, I heard my phone vibrating. Now, it has to be noted that my phone used to always be on vibrate at bedtime so I wouldn’t hear the choir of Blackberry dings and dongs as text messages, BBMs and emails hit my phone while I slept. Prior to that night, I had never woken up to the vibrations because I keep my phone across the room and these days I’m so exhausted when my head hits the pillow that it takes a lot more than a little buzzing to wake me up. But that night, it woke me up. And from across the room I thought to myself, “That’s buzzing too much to be an email. Someone is calling.” I should have assumed it was one of my crazy friends or family members (all far hipper than I and known to be out during the week) drunk dialing me. I should have assumed that and ordinarily I would have been right. Some boyfriend dumped someone or someone had a fight with their husband. But, of course. It was not going to be that simple.

That phone call changed my life, likely irreparably, and I know that middle of the night conversation is one I’ll always remember. It’s the kind of call you never forget. My 21 year old cousin had been involved in accident, hit by a car at 60 miles per hour while crossing the road. My entire family had just gotten to the hospital where they were sitting vigil. The doctors were warning them that he was showing no signs of brain activity. My heart stopped. My lungs stopped. My legs gave out. And, just like that, my life and the lives of the people I love most were changed forever. Somehow I managed to put on a hoodie, wake Mike up, get us into the car and then ride in the passenger seat clutching my heart for the next hour as we drove to my hometown. Two weeks of sitting in a hospital, crying until my insides hurt, planning a funeral and saying goodbyes that felt bitterly premature followed. It was, hands down, the most traumatizing experience of my life. Had you told me in March that I was going to turn around four months later and experience a grief that hurt ten times as bad, I’d have called you a liar. Now I know better.

As if things couldn’t get more stressful, my father has spent the last month in and out of various emergency rooms battling complications associated with gall stones that went ignored for far too long. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t now jump with dread every time my phone rings. I am completely and utterly convinced that anything that can happen will happen. Above all, I now believe with every fiber of my being that life is simply too damn short to be anything other than blissfully happy. And so the soul searching has commenced yet again as I struggle to ask of myself any number of questions. If I die tomorrow, will I have done enough for the world? If I only have today or this month or this year, am I happy every day the way I should be? Am I grateful enough? Am I making an impact? Am I giving enough to others? Am I putting my best foot forward as often as I can? I’m not sure I have any of those answers yet, but I think I can promise unequivocally that life is going to change for us. Hopefully in new, better, more positive ways, because I feel in my heart that all of life’s road blocks this year have been set before me as a test. To get over them, to surpass them, to survive them, to be better because of them. And to hopefully be able to look back and say “yes” to all of those questions. Yes. I am happy enough, grateful enough, doing enough, making an impact, giving enough and being the best me I can every day I’m lucky enough to be here.

101 in 1001 – An Update

Since publicly announcing my intention to get motivated with a 101 in 1001 list, it has been a busy six months! It seemed time for an update. Below I’ve updated my list and highlighted the completed items. How are you doing with your goals this year?

Start Date: January 1, 2010
Current Date: June 17, 2010

1. Reach my goal weight (a work in progress since 1/16/2006 – currently down 110 lbs)
2. Take a photography course
3. Transition to being completely vegetarian (currently meat-free since February 1)
4. Run a 5k (no walking allowed)
5. Learn how to knit
6. See Trans-Siberian Orchestra live
7. Visit NYC for pleasure (business trips, which I take regularly, do not count)
8. Take a floral design workshop
9. Travel to California for the first time
10. Buy a house (We closed March 1)
11. Adopt another doggie
12. Increase The Sweetest Occasion blog traffic by at least 10x (Growing and growing and growing!)
13. Write my first book
14. Get all of my belongings in one house (currently strewn between our rental and my parents’ homes)
15. Spend a week in a cabin in the Adirondacks
16. Start and complete Project 365
17. Finally meet Darcy Miller (First met Darcy in February and again in May)
18. Renovate a kitchen
19. Build a brick fire pit
20. Buy a pair of Christian Louboutin pumps
21. Take my husband to Lake Placid for a weekend
22. Pay off my last credit card (a hangover from my grad school days when Citibank occasionally had to buy the groceries)
23. Establish a regular yoga practice
24. Clean up my potty mouth
25. Take a weekend trip with my mom
26. Quit chewing my fingers
27. Ice skate at least once per winter
28. Go snowshoeing
29. Buy a pair of kayaks
30. Take another trip to Maine
31. Successfully cook lobster (must be not only edible, but also tasty)
32. Go Christmas caroling
33. See my brother and his family at least twice a year
34. Book 15+ weddings between the 2010 and 2011 seasons (not sure I could handle more with everything else going on…but it’d be fun to try!)
35. See a musical at my high school alma mater for the first time in years
36. Feel and look hot at my 10 year high school reunion
37. Fly to visit Cheyanne and Eric in Washington
38. Submit weight loss before/after photos to People’s Half Their Size issue
39. Get a blog mention in a major print publication
40. Write a business plan
41. Block out a five year plan
42. Take an Adobe Illustrator class
43. Volunteer at the SPCA
44. Have a wedding album made
45. Establish an LLC (Done! In April, Sweet Occasions Studio LLC became registered in the state of New York.)
46. Watch Mike coach a game (sadly I’m always too busy to make this a priority)
47. Play golf with my dad
48. Babysit for little Madelyn
49. Plant flowers in memory of my grandmother
50. Host a Thanksgiving dinner
51. Go to a taping of Martha Stewart
52. Go the the NYS Fair
53. Successfully get Bella Figura and/or Smock featured in Martha Stewart Weddings
54. Establish a meaningful freelance career
55. Develop better flossing habits
56. Write all of my best friends a random letter for no good reason and mail it
57. Eat vegan for a month
58. Watch a Syracuse basketball game at the dome
59. Foster a greyhound
60. Learn how to make a margarita as good as my  mom’s
61. Print our wedding photos; hang them in our house
62. Get anniversary photos taken with Mike
63. Blog about my true feelings regarding children and marriage (Check out my post on Elizabeth Anne Designs Living.)
64. Work another wedding with Megan Dailor (because it’s always the shit)
65. Spend time in the print shop learning how to print on a windmill
66. Blog for Elizabeth Anne Designs Living weekly for a year
67. Build a snowman
68. Eat at a Bobby Flay restaurant
69. Install a toilet (nothing sounds quite as independent as installing a toilet, don’t you agree?)
70. Buy and keep a Five Year Diary
71. Get a buyer to pick up Smock for a major national chain (Official as of this past Friday – stay tuned for the scoop!
72. Donate blood (my first and only experience was years ago and it sucked so I’ve been avoiding it ever since)
73. Start an IRA
74. Hike Whiteface Mountain
75. Go to the ballet
76. Host a board game party
77. Buy crayons and a coloring book; spend an afternoon doing nothing but coloring
78. Take a sewing class
79. Organize a family photo with entire family for my grandmother’s birthday
80. Take a cooking class with Mike
81. Have a yard sale
82. Start sending birthday cards to all close friends and all family
83. Get life insurance
84. Cancel all extraneous credit accounts that are inactive but show up on credit report
85. Go to a taping of Oprah
86. Buy a good lens (or two) for my DSLR
87. Style a photo shoot (I’ve now done two professional shoots! See them here and here.)
88. Prepare a Barefoot Contessa recipe without feeling guilty for how bad it is for me
89. Stop using paper towels (undoubtedly my worst earth-unfriendly habit)
90. Cut out 100% of processed sugar and artificial sweeteners from my diet
91. Teach a workshop
92. Improve my credit; achieve a FICO score of 760+
93. Update my voter registration (As of May 1 I am now registered to vote at our new address.)
94. Visit Christina in Kansas
95. Submit photos of renovated house to design*sponge
96. Complete “All About Us” with Mike
97. Make a meaningful charitable donation
98. Watch the sunrise over the ocean
99. Make The Sweetest Occasion a profitable blog
100. Get my husband to take me to see a musical
101. Put $5 in savings for every completed goal

A Perfect Pink Peony

Behold, a perfect hot pink peony from my garden. It may, in fact, be the only nice thing the former owners left for us, but I’m so so glad that they did.

{Photo by Cyd Converse for A Year of Marriage.}

Identifying My Personal Style

After years of being obsessed with interiors and architecture (and far too many architecture and interior design courses to count) I’m pretty secure in my personal style. I’ve kept scrapbooks of magazine cut outs since I was about 11. Literally. And recently I started a flickr photostream to help track photos I find and love. However, just for fun the other night I decided to take a few style quizzes I saw mentioned on Young House Love. All of these quizzes operate on the same basic premise – you look at a bunch of photos of interiors showing different styles and colors and select the photos that you find most appealing. At the end of the quiz you read all about your personal style. Pretty easy, right?

According to Sproost, my style is Cottage Chic -

I love this answer. It’s so me! “You love the carefree spirit that the cottage interior inspires, but you are also serious about your appreciation for modern art and hip treasures. You love old and new alike, and love to highlight them all to expose the uniqueness of each.” All true. I also love the bit about, “Your true inspiration (whether you know it or not) is the sea… the colors found at your favorite beach: white and light beige of the sand, a variety of blues for the ocean and sky, and greens and pale grays of the sea glass…” Yes, yes and yes. Affirmative. If I have my way, when our house is all finished it will feel like waking up in a New England beach house every morning.

Ethan Allen calls my style Loft -

“Energetic. Fashion-driven. Practical. Materials borrowed from industry, architecture, and nature. Clean shapes. Punches of color. Spontaneous and fresh. Kids and pets? Bring them on.” Again, all true. This is getting fun!

The last quiz I took is the one from HomeGoods, where they deemed my look Country Casual -

According to HomeGoods, “You love unique finds, and can turn a few mismatched garden chairs or floral teacups into a charming arrangement. You appreciate a pretty mix of relaxed pieces, like painted wood or weathered furniture, lovely florals and other patterns, lots of throws and pillows, mementos and bunches of fresh flowers that give your home a unique sense of breeziness and charm.” Also true.

All in all, these quizzes are all pretty accurate. (Or at least they were for me!) I think they’d be a great tool if you aren’t really sure where to start when thinking about how to decorate your home. Knowing what colors, shapes and styles appeal to you will allow you to pick and choose elements that you can use throughout your space for a cohesive look that you’ll love. For more ways to identify your personal style, check out these tips from John and Sherry over at Young House Love.

Let the Gardening Games Begin!

When we first looked at our house, the yard captivated me. I didn’t love love the house. It was ok. It had potential. But I love loved the backyard. It’s fenced, it’s private, it has an inground pool and it looked perfect for letting the dog run and play. Along the side of the house there is a little stretch that is largely unused and it just screamed “vegetable garden” to me.

I wasn’t necessarily planning to plant a garden this year with everything else we’re doing, but Katy Elliott, Bethany of b*spoke and Maggie of Freckled Citizen inspired me with all of their garden chatter and it became apparent that a garden had to be built. My mom made the trip down to help me out, making the adventure all the more fun. I knew I wanted raised bed box gardens – I just think they are so cute. And if I’m going to do something, it has to be cute. (Sadly, I really do think this way.) I decided on two 4′x4′ box gardens and enlisted Mike’s help measuring the area where they would go. He then got to work removing the existing sod.

It was blazing hot that day and our black lab, Nina, was feeling the heat. She decided to “help” Dad out by digging around in the newly dug up dirt and curling up in it to cool off.

Here she is in all of her dirt-covered glory, while Mike breaks his back ripping up the yard so I can realize my dream of adorable little box gardens in our side yard. She is such a good helper!

After the sod was removed, my mom and I built the box gardens while Mike went back to painting inside. (We like to multi-task around here.) We used 2×10 pine, which I purchased in 16′ lengths at Home Depot where they kindly cut each piece into four 4′ sections, free of charge. (Remember if you build a garden that pressure treated lumber is a no no. No one wants nasty chemicals in their food!) Using 2-1/2″ exterior screws, we attached the boards  together with three screws at each corner. We set them in place, leveled them up and then filled them with a combination of Scott’s Miracle-Gro Garden Soil and peat moss at a ratio of about 3:1

When thinking about what plant, I decided to keep it simple this first year and focus on things I love. In the end I went for lots of tomatoes, tons of herbs, a couple of bell peppers (one orange, one red) and a lone zucchini plant.

I went with six tomato plants in four different varieties – roma, yellow cherry, striped heirloom and 4th of July tomatoes. (Whatever those are – I admit to picking it because the photo looked good.) For herbs I went with two basil plants (I have a serious basil addiction), oregano, dill, curly parsley, flat leaf parsley, and cilantro.

So there you have them! My very first vegetable garden(s). I’m so excited to see everything grow and can’t wait to get my hands dirty this year learning the ropes. We are also members of a local CSA so my main goal is to supplement our CSA share and learn more about tending to a garden. I’ll share the progress as the summer goes on! Anyone else planning a garden this year?

Adventures in Pool Ownership

It has been a regrettably long time since I last showed my face ’round these parts, but after a few crazy months I hope to have much more frequent updates moving forward. We have spent the spring dealing with a lot of unexpected personal issues, plus juggling baseball season (Mike) and traveling a lot for business-related matters (me) so we’re looking forward to getting things moving again around the house. We have a whole summer of honey-do lists in the making!

The first step toward making progress was writing a bunch of emails in response to a number of Craigslist ads after a local pool company stood us up not once, but twice, when they were scheduled to come open our pool for us. It’s hot (pushing 90 several days this past week) and in Upstate NY, hot = disgustingly humid. It’s pool season! Not having the slightest clue how to tackle this ourselves, bringing in a professional was clearly in order. (Thus the previously scheduled appointments with the no-show company, but I digress.) So last Sunday I emailed a bunch of people and then waited to hear back. After taking a number of calls, I ended up on the phone with a woman who seemed really helpful and asked a lot of good questions. She offered to come by and get started the next day and I excitedly agreed.

When the process started, our pool looked tame enough. She was nestled neatly under a blue safety cover, which attaches to the concrete patio with grommets and big springs resembling those on a trampoline. When I left for work last Tuesday morning, I had no clue what would await me. Kelly came over, removed the cover, got the shock of her life by all accounts, dumped in a bunch of chemicals and said she’d be back in a couple of days to see where we were at. Little had we known, below that cover had awaited Swampthing. The water was black, thick and full of rotting leaves and debris, all of which the previous owner had failed to tend to before closing the pool up last time.

So I get home, innocently enough, not quite prepared for what awaits me. When you buy a house, especially in winter, you’re basically taking a gamble on a lot of things, the condition of the pool being one of those. It was hard to tell what the condition of the pool looked like beneath all the sludge and we weren’t even yet able to run the filter until we had some of the leaves cleared out so we still didn’t know the condition of the filter, pump and water lines. I panicked. I think I tweeted something crazy about wanting to sue the listing agent for telling us the pool was in great shape. Kelly came back the next day, got the fitler running, added more chemicals which made the surface all foamy and things went from looking crazy to looking even crazier. (Although we breathed a huge sigh of relief to learn all the mechanical bits of the pool are in good working order.)

Over the next few days we emptied the filter basket at least 100 times. Kelly came by at least 100 more times to scoop leaves off the surface, check chemical balances and reassure me that the pool was going to be fine. Finally, the water started to clear up, the leaves stopped bobbing to the surface from the depths of the deep end, and slooowly the money pit in our backyard began to resemble a pool instead of a swamp. We then left for the long holiday weekend, not quite sure what’d we come home to. Low and behold, as of today our pool is leaf-free and a nearly pretty jewel green color.

Kelly assures me we should be swimming by the weekend. We’re officially in the vacuuming stage, which might take a couple of more days and then we should be good to go! We can hardly wait to float around in the pool and I’m looking forward to making morning laps a part of my regular workout routine through the summer months. In the meantime, if anyone is in Central New York and needs a great pool pro to tame a Swampthing of your very own, let me know and I’d be happy to share Kelly’s info.

Master Bedroom – Before

Since closing on our new home just shy of three weeks ago, we’ve been incredibly busy tackling our seemingly endless list of things to do. We put the master bedroom at the top of our priority list knowing that we’ll feel more comfortable living in a construction zone over the next several months if we have a safe haven to retreat to at the end of the day. In the last couple of weeks we’ve ripped out the existing carpet, vertical blinds, closet doors, closet shelving and hanging bars. We painted the walls Benjamin Moore Stonington Gray, had new flooring installed, painted the doors and trim bright white, patched the closet walls and painted, and rehung the doors after installing new door hardware. We have a number of small things to do to finish it up so while waiting on the official after photos, here are the official before photos…

While we waited on flooring to be installed we slept on our mattress downstairs in the family room amidst huge piles of our belongings for more than a week. It was entertaining for about a night and then it just got to be annoying. I’m a light sleeper so camping out within hearing range of the sump pump in the basement (which seemed to run nonstop as the timing coincided with the snow melting) and the other household appliances that go bump in the night left me exhausted almost immediately.

And a good look of our little camp site in the context of most all of our earthly possessions stacked all around us…

Here’s a little sneak peek of the renovation so far – a glimpse of our new paint color, newly painted doors and trim and my first ever solo installation of a door knob. (Yes, it’s true. I hung a door and installed new hardware all by my lonesome today.)

Anyone else finding their weekends consumed by home improvement projects? I can’t remember the last time we just sat around and did something normal like veg out all weekend. I have a feeling that won’t be happening for a long time to come!

Home Ownership – The First Week

So it’s official! As of last Monday we are finally homeowners. The last week has been a whirlwind of painting, scraping, packing and moving so I thought I’d get you up to speed. If I’m honest, we’re both completely exhausted, but we’re starting to see signs of improvement around here already so we know the effort will pay off.

Day 1 – Monday

Our appointment for our closing was at 4:00. By 5:30 we were leaving the lawyer’s office. We stopped off to grab takeout for dinner and then headed over to the house. By 7:30 we had all of the flooring in the three bedrooms, the hallway and the stairs ripped up and piled up in a heap in the garage. I’m here to tell you, this was the nastiest carpet you’ve ever seen. (Don’t worry. I have plenty of photos I’ll share later.)

Day 2 – Tuesday

I took the next day off from work so I could get a jump start on getting the house cleaned up. Only, when I got to the house in the morning I realized that the keys I had gotten at closing were the wrong keys. So much for that idea. Instead I spent the morning researching flooring with my buddy Carolynn. (We also stopped for coffee. This was crucial.) At lunchtime I drove up, met Mike at school to grab keys from him, and then headed back to the house to clean. We then spent the entire night pulling staples and tack strips up from the old carpet. I pulled a muscle in my neck and discovered muscles in my forearms I never even knew existed.

Day 3 – Wednesday

Painting commenced. The master bedroom got the first coat of paint, the dramatic results of which were not lost on me. I took about 87,592 photos. (Again, I promise more photos than you can handle in the very near future.) We then decided all of the existing closet doors needed to be ripped out immediately and decided to demo six bifold mirrored closet doors. They met their end in the ever-growing pile of debris in the garage.

Day 4 – Thursday

Thursday brought a lot more painting. The master bedroom got a second coat of Benjamin Moore Stonington Gray and the living room got the first coat of Edgecomb Gray. It then dawned on us that the living room shares a wall with the entry hall and the stairway/upstairs hall so we realized those would need to be Edgecomb Gray, too. So then the entry hall got painted.

Day 5 – Friday

After work I picked up pizza, declared myself completely sick of takeout dinner and met Mike at the new house where he was already slaving away putting the second coat of paint on the living room. We finished that up and then ripped out the old carpet in the dining room, which will soon become our office. We pulled out all the tack strips and staples, spackled a bunch of crazy dents and dings on the wall and then sanded down the spackle until our shoulders burned. Then we ran out of steam and dragged ourselves back to our rental to pass out.

Day 6 – Saturday

Saturday was moving day. I woke up early, made another run to the paint store to grab more paint and by 11:00 we were loading up trucks and cars. It took six people roughly 6 hours to get us from House A into House B, where all of our stuff is now piled into the family room (literally stacked almost to the ceiling) while we wait for new flooring upstairs. We then went back to our rental to crash on the pull out sofa and to continue packing some of our smaller items to move the next day.

Day 7 – Sunday

More packing. More moving. More cleaning. More painting. Lather, rinse and repeat. I finished moving out the last of our personal belongings from our rental while Mike continued painting at the new house. We spent our first night in our new house, camped out on the floor of our family room.

Day 8 – Monday

Yesterday was all about cable/internet installation, scoring more super affordable Craigslist furniture (this time a new bureau that will hold our flat screen television in the living room) and painting the ceiling in the living room. We painted until about 9:30 and crawled completely exhausted into bed about an hour later. Turns out, ceiling paint that goes on pale pink and dries bright white completely amuses me. And it made a huge difference on our previously smoke-stained living room ceiling. Score!

Day 9 – Tuesday

After work today I headed over to our old house for a final walk-through and to clean up after us a bit more. Mike met me there with takeout for dinner (yet again) and we cleaned until about 8:30. By the time we handed off our keys to a neighborhood friend for our landlords and got home it was nearly 9:00. Tomorrow we’ll wake up (from our current “bedroom” on the floor of the family room) and start all over again.

Did I mention that we’re tired? Completely and utterly exhausted.