I'm Excited About: Moving Again?!

Ok, so I'm actually not excited about moving again but I'm trying to at least not be completely depressed. The owner of the duplex is selling it at the end of our lease and as we're not in a position to make an offer, we're packing up and moving again.

There are good things and less than good things about this news. I'll start with the less than good things and end on the good things!

Less Than Good:

-We're either going to be moving the week of my due date, or one month after the due date. This is less than ideal because I could actually be in labor while we're in transition, OR we could have a 1 month old child during our move. Not ideal, but oh well!

-I'm tired of moving. I enjoy living in a 'home' environment and that takes time and energy to create, while we didn't ever really put our full efforts into our current place I'm not really excited to have to start over entirely somewhere else.

-We're going to be paying more rent and have less storage no matter where we go

-The potential new place doesn't have a fenced yard for the pups, so we're back to taking the dogs out when they have 'business'

-I won't get to 'nest' like I want to because we'll be in transition.

Good Things:

-The realtor who is selling our place is a sweet woman and is working really hard to help us make the transition as easy as possible. She even lobbied to have the owner let us out of our lease a month early so we wouldn't be stuck paying double rent - and so that she can show the house on the market BEFORE the baby comes! (Baby, please don't come more than 14 days early, though you are now welcome to come up to 9 days late)

-We already have a very strong lead on a new home! It is a 2.5 bedroom house that is about the same amount of square footage as our current place, but it is a free standing home - no neighbors through the walls! It is close to church, still in Arlington, an easy commute for me, etc etc.

-The landlord at this potential new place is a wonderful woman and we have it on good authority (our friends have lived there for 1.5 years now) that she is a fantastic landlord and appreciates good tenants. This is a perk that is priceless to me. I'm tired of distant owners, management companies, and corporations that really don't care about you and your family. This would not be the case at the house, quite the opposite really!

-We now have the reason and opportunity to cleanse our lives of more 'things.' You know, the stuff that accumulates because you have room for it and you 'might use it one day for something?' Yeah, we're getting rid of that before the move - if we've moved it 2 times and not used it or even thought about it, we're not moving it again.

-It looks like we'll be getting a dishwasher! new baby+bottles+dishwasher=yay!

-Walking the dogs twice daily will be good for them and for us. And with the potentially reasonable landlord, perhaps some sort of temporary dog-run can be installed over time.

-We're looking at signing a 2 year lease, which means we'd stay put for more than 12 months! Something we have yet to do since we got married. (When we move in March/April we will have been married for 3 years and we'll be settling into our 4th home.)

-I'm hoping that all of my 'nesting' instincts will make the packing, sorting, donating, life-cleansing an efficient process. When it hits, it is strong, so as long as I have somewhere to direct the energy I think I can get a lot accomplished before I'm too big to move around comfortably.

Goodness, what a life!

I hope that I'm not coming off as whiny, we really are trying to take all of this in stride knowing that God knows His plans for us and He won't give us things that we can't handle. It won't be easy, He never promised that, but it is possible and it will work out somehow!

Mostly for now this means that there won't be any more "look at this room" posts because starting this weekend it all starts coming down and getting boxed up. (Even though I did just hang three pictures upstairs, oh well) Just think, next time I have a "look what I did to decorate" post it will likely be a nursery in a new house! Isn't that exciting?!

A New Problem (Kind of a Bummer Post)

I grew up in the same neighborhood that my dad grew up in, went to the same schools, and even had some of the same teachers. We moved once when I was a kid, and it was a distance of about 3 miles, in the same neighborhood, the same school district, the same everything. That was when I was in kindergarden, and my parents still live in that house now.

I went to college in North Carolina when I was 18, and remained there for 4 years. After graduation I did a breif summer in Chapel Hill, followed by 3 months in Raleigh, and then I moved to the DC Metro area in January of 2006.

The thing is, something kind of big has changed over the last year. People that F and I have come to know and love have moved away. And more people that we know and love are planning to move away in the next year or so. It seems that this is going to become a very regular part of our lives as long as we live here. Kind of a bummer for someone like me who can name the 3 friends that ever moved away from preschool to high school. (John, Tracy, and Kylie)

Somehow, the people moving away from DC now seem different from the friends that graduated before me in high school or college. Those are 4 year adventures that everyone knows will last 4 years and somehow that makes it easier when everyone scatters to the wind.

Here, people can get orders, promotions, transfers, leave for grad school, law school, business school, or graduate from school. None of these things have the kinds of expected timelines that school always had for me, and that makes it harder. We've had some great friends move, mostly due to the military, and I know that that usually means good things for them (promotions, more training, bigger responsibilities) so I'm happy for them. But it isn't much fun being left behind.

The childrens' books are usually about the new kid in class, but what about that kid's old best friend that got left back in the old home town? I'm not trying to bum anyone out, or guilt any of our friends that have moved or are moving, it is just something that I've never experienced this frequently before and I'm not entirely sure what to do.

I guess we'll keep making new friends and pray real hard for some of the old friends to get transfered back!!

I promise to go back to blogging about puppies, furniture, weddings, and sunshine tomorrow :)

Before - main floor edition

Here is the "before" tour of the main floor of the house. Our living room, dining room, and kitchen make up this floor. I have not painted anything on this level and honestly, there is still some unpacking to be done.

This is the view from coming down the stairs. The front door is to the right and the dining room is to the left. We have the same sage-green couches from the last place and a great rug that matches them perfectly. The couches are comfy and somehow have managed to fit in all of our homes, what a lucky break for us!

This picture was taken from the spot between the couches, in front of the small bookshelf. You'll notice that the TV is sitting on the coffee table. I kind of like it that way, but Frank isn't sold on the 'no coffee table' thing yet so we may come up with some sort of solution for that later. In my mind's eye (which, coincidentally has no budget whatsoever) I see a couple of cube ottomans that can be foot rests, coffee tables, and blanket storage - you know the ones that have a tray on the underside of the lid? Those.

Well, Hamilton is obviously bored with the living room so we'll move to the dining room. I'm sure it says absolutely nothing about us that the only functional piece of furniture in the dining room is the bar, and that it has been functional since day 2. I'm going to say that it is because the contents are so fragile and I just couldn't stand to leave it in boxes on the floor for fear of breaking something. Yes, that is exactly what happened.

This bookshelf-turned-china-cabinet may be my favorite feature (after the chair rail that you can't see in this picture). It will hold all of our dishes and cook wear that we use on a regular basis but can't fit in the kitchen. Lucky for us, as Tina pointed out, our dishes are very pretty and make a lovely display. The not so pretty things that don't stack well will go in the portions with doors for my sanity's sake.

And here is the table and that lovely chair rail that I'm so excited about! Once there is paint on the wall the chair rail will be much more noticeable. Below the rail will be red and above will be cream. I'm hoping for some awesome fabric to fall from the heavens from which I will sew curtains. Right now I'm dreaming of toile, we'll see if someone has a toile sale that just happens to match my paint....don't hold your breath, but intercessory prayer might be nice!

The table will not always be in the corner like that, once I paint and put more things away (like all of the boxes you see) the table will come more toward the center of the room so that there is room to sit. I'm also hoping to find the perfect rug for this room, but I think I may need to decide on the lay out before I know what the "perfect rug" is going to look like. I could go huge and try to cover the entire floor, or I could keep the table pushed toward the back wall and use a smaller area rug underneath to help separate the space. Huh, we'll see.

Now the kitchen. It is tiny, it has no dishwasher, a tiny window over the door, and almost no counter space - but it works! I have no intention of painting the kitchen right now, though I can't make promises for later. Perhaps a fresh coat of paint in a year when I'm not tired of painting anymore.

Past the (gas!) stove top and the fridge are the basement stairs. Sometimes I hoped there was a tiny pantry hiding back there but my dreams were dashed when we moved in and spacial reasoning kicked in. Luckily amazon.com and Prime shipping came to the rescue and we have a lovely kitchen rack at the bottom of the basement stairs that holds our cooking supplies, pots, pans, and assorted kitchen gadgets (the coffee maker, for example, lives in the basement when not in immediate use). Some things have already changed! I put the microwave on top of the fridge yesterday, freeing up a little room on the table and inching us closer to unpacked.

And that is all for now folks, the basement will have to wait! Oh, I have the pictures, I just like making you wait. And I'm enjoying that I am getting so many good posts out of these pictures - an added bonus to having 3 floors in the new digs!

Getting There - Upstairs edition

So, there isn't much on the walls yet but the walls are painted so it is time for an update.

The office - the walls have been painted, the bookshelves are up, the books unloaded, and the desk is operational. Frank has hung his Tottenham scarf but most of the other details are still to come.

The bookshelves will be organized and then decorated with pictures and sports paraphernalia. I promised Frank that he could hang all of his Dartmouth Winter Carnival posters when he has an office...so hopefully those will go up soon too!

Some of the cooler items may end up in Frank's office in Fairfax, so I can't promise pictures of diploma's or J.D.s. And here is Frank, putting the office to good use! He was a good sport and agreed to downsize his desk - his former huge desk is now serving as my sewing/crafts/laundry folding/gift wrapping table in the basement. Thanks Frank!

This final feature is temporary and really comes and goes as it pleases. We didn't install it, it just shows up sometimes.

The bedroom - walls are painted a cool Newport Blue. My mirror is hung over the dresser, and is the only thing on the walls so far. We bought and constructed an armoire for Frank as there is only one small closet in the bedroom.

Wall decorations, a rug, and window treatments are still to come. I'm hoping to use the same curtains we had at the old place by cutting and sewing the two panels (four, really; two black, two patterned) to fit as one panel per window (there are three windows in our room now).

The headboard is the same from the last place, but it hasn't gone up yet. It is a two person job and so far this week Frank or I have been away during reasonable drilling hours. Did I mention that the duplex is pre-WWII construction? Well, it is and that means it is sturdy, and that you need a drill to hang a picture.

Finally, the bathroom. It is bright yellow! Again, Frank's choice and he did well. I pointed to the shower curtain and said "chose a color from that curtain for the walls," he took no time at all to chose yellow. Subsequently, I have about 96% of a gallon of yellow paint in case anyone is in need...

I'm trying to find the perfect cabinet to hang over the toilet. We're sadly low on storage space in the bathroom so I'm trying to find something that is 1. white 2. affordable 3. has doors/drawers that are not glass 4. has a towel rack on the bottom. I don't think this is too much to ask, but apparently Target, Home Depot, and CraigsList think it is.

We could also use something in the shower to hold our soap/shampoo/conditioner, but I'm picky - I hate the caddies that hang from the showerhead, they never stay up and I always hit them when I'm washing my hair. Still dreaming up a solution for this one, I'll get back to you.

Lastly, I'm also hoping to find an under-the-sink solution. Be it a cabinet, shelf, or cubby, we need more storage. The good news is that mirror is a medicine cabinet, I just need to get around to organizing it and helping it to reach its full functional potential.

All for now, Hamilton and I are worn out from the tour. We'll post more "before" pictures from the rest of the house later on - a couple more rooms to paint and more boxes to unpack, and we'll let you see it before it all gets going!

Before - upstairs edition

So we moved last weekend and spent this weekend snowed into our new home. I finally found a camera, but the battery died so I only got a few pictures.

We already painted over the lime green office/nursery (it was a nursery, now it is an office) with a grey-green/seafoam color. Frank chose the color for this room as it is mostly his office.

We aren't unpacked in there yet - we need to get the tools to anchor the bookshelves to the walls before loading them up with all of our books. Once that is finished we'll add stuff to the walls (art, diplomas, etc). Hopefully we'll find a rug for the room before loading up the bookshelves, too. The "after" pictures will have all of the final touches in place.

Next is our bedroom. The blue is called "newport blue" and is a grey-blue, a bit more subdued than our last blue bedroom. It is halfway painted (the blue is a bit darker in person than it looks in the pictures) and we're still looking for the right armoire to replace the temporary one Frank has now.

The "after" pictures will have the room entirely painted and there will be stuff on the walls. There may or may not be an armoire, depends on what we find.

The final upstairs room is the bathroom. Currently it is just an off-white color with a touch of yellow (testing the color) and a lot of spakle on the walls. When it is finished it will be yellow, which will coordinate with the shower curtain and compliment the black and white tiles.

I was hoping to have the bathroom finished this past weekend but the sanding block was in the car, and the car was under two feet of snow, so that didn't happen.

One major improvement that you cannot see is that when we moved in there was no showerhead. It was like taking a shower in a heavy mist - like the things they have at Disney World in the summer. Now we have a showerhead and I could not be happier about that!

That is all for now because the battery died on the camera as I came downstairs for more pictures.

Maybe I'll go paint more now, or unpack some more clothes, or take a nap.

We Survived! (Again)

We are officially residents of Arlington, VA again. Frank is returning the keys to the old apartment today (and picking up one last thing that would not fit in the U-Haul, any of the 3 SUVs, or the 3 other cars full of our stuff).

The place is great - and our friends are AH-mazing! We had 7 people help us from 10am to 4pm, then 4 more reinforcements came in around 5pm to give us a second wind and help us get some of the furniture placed and boxes unpacked. I'm telling you, there is no way we could have done this without each and every one of them.

The first crew got all of our stuff loaded into the truck and the cars, they helped me clean the apartment, take out trash, drive it all over to the new place, unload everything, take furniture upstairs, take stuff to the basement, and maintain sanity. We bribed them with pizza, but honestly, that wasn't much of a bribe considering how much stuff we own!

Thank you so much Matt & Katie, Chaz & Holly, Dave, Zach, and Tina for all of your heavy lifting!

Then, just as we thought it was over...in came the Connallys and the Bairds! We still had Tina there, too! We got a second wind and managed to get the living room and dining room into functioning order (like, you can sit down on couches, and put away dishes and stuff). Tina and I put together the bedroom so that Frank and I could crash later with minimal effort. Thanks to the Connallys and the Bairds our apartment is livable and navigable, two things I didn't expect to happen until later this week. The Connallys even moved all of the office furniture into the middle of the room so that the room is ready to be painted! The Bairds helped to clean, unpack, and move boxes like only the Bairds can.

We are so very grateful for our friends.

No we just need to keep unpacking and get to painting! We'll be ready for visitors by May :)

I'll take pictures soon so that we can have a "Before and After" post later, but for now there are a few things stopping me:
1. I don't know where my camera is
2. I don't know where my computer is
3. We don't have internet at home yet
4. I can't upload pictures at work

So you'll just have to wait

The Mountains Win Again

Only by "mountains" I mean mountains of boxes. They are beginning to take over my life. After 10 days of casual packing, this is what our home looks like.

Casual packing, in case you don't know, is the kind of packing that happens around the rest of your life at a relaxed pace. It occurs as a way to avoid the chaos of frantic packing up against the deadline of moving.

My hope is to not discover any full cabinets on moving day. So far I'm doing pretty well - a few empty bookshelves, some empty cabinets, and TWO empty linen closets!

I've done lots of laundry, lots of dishes, and I've managed to come down with a cold/soar throat/winter crud. I'm optimistic that I'll be able to do a little more packing today, but I may lay low and just focus on work and rest.

Queen of Countdowns

I love a good countdown, almost as much as I love lists (they keep me sane).

Right now I have two countdowns, both of which are bringing me joy and angst.

1. Las Vegas, aka vacation

We're off to the warm (read: above freezing) desert for a long weekend in 12 days! And it isn't just us - a lot of friends are coming, too. There are a few people still on the fence and my advice to them is BOOK IT!

Frank and I are staying at the Vdara, a new resort in the City Center complex near the middle of strip. Some friends are staying at the Bellagio (fancy-pants), some are at Bally's, and some are at Planet Hollywood. Then there is another group going containing a friend/acquaintance of mine, rounding out the number to be somewhere between 12 and 22 people I will know in Vegas in one weekend.

I'm looking forward to three things:
1) playoff football will be going on and that means betting on games
2) poker is fun! and when you add in playoff football, some casinos will splash random tables' pots when teams score, adding to the fun
3) the general atmosphere. I really loved the excitement and bright lights, there are so many things to do there that almost anyone could have fun! I hope to spend a little more time exploring and sight seeing, maybe I'll get a book about the history of the strip or something to read on the way out there.

The second big countdown is

2. The Move

We're moving back to Arlington at the end of the month and there is still a lot of work to do before that happens. Packing, cleaning, and priming the bedroom are the obvious tasks, but there are others like contacting the cable company, the electric company, the gas company, nailing down a date with the management company so we know when we get the keys, booking a moving van, rounding up our volunteers, etc.

Then, once we're moved in there are things like - do we paint? will our furniture fit? should we ask to install a dog door? I need rugs for the living room, bedroom, office, and landing.

While it is overwhelming at times, I am so excited to be back in Arlington and super excited for a back yard and a basement!

For now I must focus on work during the day and keeping myself sane during the evenings - I think I'll start making lists.

Guilt Free Blogging

I get on such a roll with this blog, and then something 'real life' happens and I fall off. Right now it is the one last stinking paper that is in the process of being written. The good news is that said paper is due on Thursday and I also have to present the paper that evening.

So, once that blankity-blank paper is finished I can be back to guilt free blogging - you know, where I can blog without thinking, knowing that there is something more pressing i should be doing. I'm sure I'll continue to put off things like laundry or dog walking for blogging, but neither of those things will 'fail' you if you are late so they aren't in the same category as a grad school paper.

After this weekend I can tell you about all of the cool things that are stacking up in life: we're moving (staying in NoVa), a beach trip, Christmas stuff, Terra Cotta Warriors, etc etc etc.

But for now, blogging is still full of guilt so I'm going to go take my dog outside and then get back to work on my paper.

again...

We're moving. Again. Dear Lord help us.

Our complex has upped our rent rate so much that they have forced us out. Our lease ends on 2/13/10 and we'll be moving to...somewhere.

We're staying in the DC area obviously, but we don't yet know where we'll land. Though we do hope that wherever it is, we'll be there for a long long long time. We've been married for less than 2 years and lived in two apartments, when we move in February we'll still be under two years and will have lived in 3 places. Wonderful.

I'm trying to be cool and calm about this, but I hate having a 'move out' date without having a 'move in' destination.

Prayers would be great, and any tips or ideas on where to live with a dog and 1 car would be welcomed.

We'll miss our awesome apartment, I guess it was too good to be true after all.