… or something like that. 

We moved in to our new house on Saturday!  We still have a few boxes to unpack, but our stuff is mostly where it should be.  Home-ownership is already a little overwhelming.  I need a ladder to clean out my gutters; put more insulation in the attic; get a hose, weed whacker, and lawn mower; and the list goes on and on. 

Highlights so far -

1.  I made my dad kill a spider the size of my face in our living room.  You don’t have bug problems when you live in a condo on the 11th floor.  This is new to us.  Related, we had brown recluse in the house I grew up in.  They particularly loved Bea’s room and the bathroom.  Talk about a fright when you’re on the toilet and one walks by your foot or when you grab the Suave and there’s one lurking behind the bottle. 

2.  I mowed the lawn yesterday like a champ.  Our front yard is pretty steep, and I’m sure the neighbors loved my performance.  It’s a real SOB, but I did take a little pride in the final cut.

3.  Ummm, the stairs to our upstairs bedroom are too steep to fit a box spring through the door.  That was a unpleasant surprise. 

4.  We found a fire pit thing on the rafters in the garage.  Score. 

5.  Our next door neighbors brought over a card and homemade chocolate chip cookies. 

6.  Our parents and siblings were super helpful this weekend helping us move and unpack. 

7.  Dad, I found the switches for the outside lights.  I was so proud of myself for this discovery.  I felt like I had fixed something.  The level of pride I experienced was probably unwarranted. 

Here are a few pictures of the house I promised.  Daniel and I painted the dining room last night.  A pic to come when it’s finished.

I must say, it feels very exciting to have our own place. 

Dining Room.

Living Room.

Daniel and I have bought a light gray (iron) couch for our new living room, and the following images are looks I’m channeling for the new room.  I don’t want to pick a color scheme for the room.  Instead I’m thinking we’ll make the walls a darker gray than the couch and have pops of colors around the room.  Mood board to come. 

Found via DesignforMankind.  Image featured in the new book, Design * Sponge at Home by Grace Bonney.

Found via desiretoinspire.  Image by Birgitta Wolfgang Drejer.

For the last week or two, I’ve been thinking about the living room in the house I grew up in a lot.  For most of our time in Aurora, the walls, fireplace, and carpet of our living room were seafoam.  Looking back, maybe it’s nostalgia, but I love the way it was.  When living there, nobody loved it.  My dad did all of the remodeling in our house, and it wasn’t until our last few years there that we had the chance to repaint the walls and fireplace and tear up the old carpet to expose the wood floors below.

Two things about this room:

1.  The other day, I asked Bea if she thought it strange that we never had any furniture in the living room.  She said she had never really considered it, just as I hadn’t until recently.  It was the largest room in the house and the first you saw when walking through the front door, and the only things in the room were an upright piano and reading chair, both at the far end near the fireplace.  This arrangement suited Bea and I nicely in our younger years.  Plenty of space for sleepovers and tumbling and forcing Bea to be the male in my couples figure-skating routine.

2.  Have you ever seen the movie Witches?  Based on the book by Roald Dahl, it’s about a boy who is turned into a mouse by Angelica Huston, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I think there’s a painting in the movie in which a person in the painting moves about.  Seriously, if this isn’t in the movie, let me know.  Anyway, in our living room, there was a large painting above the fireplace that came with the house.  In the painting, was a small child standing at the edge of a pond, and I convinced myself that the child would move.  The previous owners obviously left the painting behind because it was haunted.  I was informed yesterday that my parents still have the painting stowed away in their basement.  Just perfect.