Long Time, No Post..

Well, it has been a whirlwind 1 1/2 weeks in our life. Thursday, July 28th, we became homeowners! All of the work and worry came to a head and we took possession of our house. It has been so much hard work and fun. We are finally starting to feel settled and have made the house our own.

Here's a rundown of what we've done thus far:
1.) Painted the living room...twice. We started painting right after we closed on the house. Stayed up until 1 a.m. painting, only to wake up HATING the color we painted it. What was supposed to be a soft gold was really a canary yellow. So, after an early morning trip to Home Depot, we painted the living room and dining room a lovely brown. We hired the professional painter to paint the formal living room and kitchen. They turned out quite nice. We still have the upstairs to paint, hopefully sooner rather than later.

2.) Installed two ceiling fans. Way to go Steve! The instructions on these puppies are not very helpful. No one was electrocuted and the ceiling fans look great!

3.) Moved most of the apartment. Thanks to Randy, Ron, Andrew and Kenji for taking a Saturday morning to move all the stuff from our apartment. We let the professional movers get all of the super heavy stuff, but we got all of the small stuff. A feast at Chili's followed the moving party to thank the guys for their help.

4.) Spent lots and lots and lots and lots of money. Home Depot, Target and Wal-Mart have mucho of our money. I hope they are enjoying it!

5.) Got our deck plans approved! We'll start preparations for our deck this weekend hopefully, with a hole digging party. Steve's mom is already visiting us and his dad will join in a couple weeks. My parents will come out the last weekend in August to help build the deck. Fingers crossed that it goes well. Once the deck is built, we'll start the landscaping on the backyard.

Here are some pictures for you to enjoy! We still have to hang pictures downstairs, but we're getting close to having the first floor done. I need to paint the powder bathroom and Steve needs to clean the garage. After that, we'll move upstairs and begin work (in between doing the deck and backyard--ack!)

Life has been very busy, but good. Homeownership is definitley time consuming, but very fufilling. Oh, and even though the new house is further away from my work, because of the commute directions, I actually save 1 hour a day in my commute. I have to pay $3.50 a day in tolls, but it's worth it save my time and frusturation. Yay!