Slowly But Surely

Unpacking boxes at the house has been a painfully slow process. It is frustrating in the way getting stuck on a two-lane road behind a tractor or an old lady who's driving 27 mph is frustrating. It seems like no matter how much time I spend unpacking boxes, the house is still impossibly full of them. I suspect that they are secretly reproducing while I sleep at night. What this means is that I am not yet ready to share photos with you of the current state of affairs around here. Frankly all you would see are photographs of someone else's clutter. OH THE GLORIOUS CLUTTER. So instead of interesting photos of beautifully decorated rooms, I will share these.

While the master bedroom is still in the most basic form of updatedness (i.e., no curtains, nothing hung on the walls), it does look quite different than it did when I moved in. Here are before-and-after shots of the master bedroom.

Here's the before:

And here's the after (so far).

One of the best things about having a house is the fact that I now have a nice yard for my dogs to run around in. Murphy and Oliver have been having a blast out there; they wander aimlessly, sniffing everything, and Murphy has begun to chase crickets, which is more comical than I can express with words. Here are a few random shots I got recently.

Here's a look at the back of the house from about 3/4 of the way back in the yard. And also a photo of the neighbor's yard (a fence will be going up between my house and his) and his canoe. There's a spectacular view of the canoe from the back porch.

Here are Murph and Ollie "on the hunt" and then taking a break with Christi's dog Shiloh:

And here are my handsome boys enjoying their yard (Oliver on the left, Murphy on the right)!

I'll have more progress photos as soon as I can. I hope I'll have something good to show you soon!

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Basement "Befores"

Well, I moved into the new house this past weekend, so that means: a) I haven't gotten to do much work on the house lately, because I was trying to get everything packed and ready for the move, and b) now there are boxes all over the place. I had to send out a text message to a bunch of people who helped me pack and move, asking if anyone knew where my hair dryer was. I was kind of annoyed when shortly after I got out of the shower, I realized that I had no idea where any of my stuff was. I mean, I had the basics, like my toothbrush and contact lenses, but ask me to find a hairbrush or some moisturizer and I was stumped. Luckily all the blinds were closed, so my nude sprint around the house didn't inadvertently catch the attention of some neighborhood kid who was innocently walking by to get to his friend's house.

Anyhoo, I thought I'd share some "before" pictures of the basement. I'm not quite ready to post any "after" pictures, but at least you'll get to see what I started off with.

It's a big basement, but certainly not the most attractive. The paneling is pretty tacky, though the zig-zag floor is kind of fun. Kind of.






The tops of the benches in this area fold up to allow for tons of storage. If I find myself involved in a cut-throat game of hide-and-seek in the near future, I'm hiding in there. (Don't tell anybody.)






Much cleaning and painting has happened since these photos were taken. I can't wait to get everything finished so I can share the "after" pictures with you all.

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