Finally a little more settled

We had a great long weekend full of fun activities, but we did manage to fit in some work too. And finally, I think I am starting to feel a little bit settled here. We are really starting to organize and make some more room as best we can.

Our first task of the weekend was retrieving some rose bushes and azaleas that were outside Jim's office townhouse near his job site which is about to be demolished (his office is moving into the building they are constructing in case you were curious ;) But since no one else wanted these plants, we gladly took them to start the landscaping that is seriously lacking in our yard.

Here's the newly planted bushes, the rose bushes will definitely stay here. But I may move the azaleas later if I find a better spot for them.
The rest of our jungle backyard which eventually needs taming and landscaping (maybe next year!)

We headed down to Charlottesville for a wedding and got to spend a good bit of time at my parents. We played some Wii, enjoyed the weather, went out on their boat, and did a bit of winetasting (a lot for less than 24 hours!) Lisa (one of Jim's coworkers) and Lucas' wedding was Sunday evening at the chapel where we got married. We had a great time!!

Winetasting at Barboursville

Wedding reception at Glenmore Country Club in Keswick

The bride and groom dancing!

Monday brought us back home and we fit in a quick visit with our friends Kelly and Joe and their son Sam, visiting from St. Louis (and Cristina and Aaron too!). So great to see you guys!!


We are thisclose to finishing painting the bedroom and doing finishing touches in there. Then we can move all the furniture back in there and free up some much needed space elsewhere. We are also still working on final touches in the bathroom. And Jim is putting in the new utility sink in the basement. I'm hoping in the next post (or one in the near future) to show each room's progress, but I'm not quite ready for that!

And last, but certainly not least is that we just found out the kitty is coming home on JUNE 8!! We are really excited, but still don't have a name! We are continuing to accept any suggestions so we don't have a nameless kitty ;) Please help!! :)

Progress?

We are continuing to make progress...although not all of it is entirely visual, so pictures are going to be more sparse this time around. We are continuing to organize and try to make the space more livable....I do have to admit its a little difficult at times to even know where to start (since it feels like EVERYTHING needs work). But we are trying to take it step by step...Jim is better at that than I am!

Jim broke up the old concrete utility sink that was in our basement this weekend, which was cracked and broken. He also worked on starting to strip the old paint off the bathroom door so we can paint and re-hang it....yes, we are still living without a bathroom door...we are getting really good at verbalizing our bathroom usage ;)



We are also working on getting the closets all painted as well, which has turned out to be a multi step process. My main goal though is trying to really tie up all the loose ends on the bathroom and bedroom so we can cross those both off the list. Hopefully that can happen soon.

Lastly a few fun items, first, I don't think I've mentioned that our driveway is a little more crowded these days since Jim's Land Rover made its way over here. He is glad to have it close to home and I know it will be the first fun project for him to work on once house projects are under control ;)

And we found a whole bunch of strawberry bushes over on the side of our yard, near our neighbor's fence. If you look really closely, you can see that they already have little tiny berries on them. We are looking forward to enjoying them this summer! YUM!

We have a wedding in Charlottesville this coming weekend, so we won't be accomplishing much on the house, but it will be nice to be away for a few days!!

Good Day Sunshine

I don't know about you, but I sure was happy to see the sun out this morning!!!

We had another action packed weekend and this week has kept both Jim and I pretty busy with work so far, but I wanted to do a quick post with some pictures from the weekend.

We started our weekend having dinner at Andy and Becky's on Friday with the Klapmust crew (or krew). It was fun-filled, spending time with our adorable nephew, playing Rockband (we even got Jim's parents to play!!), and watching Buster and Java wrestle (which was so funny!) See pics below...


On Saturday, I did an Ovarian cancer 5K walk with my friend Ellen. It was pretty rainy, but we made it through without melting :) After that was Jim's company picnic. The weather still wasn't the greatest, but we made the most of it and Jim got just a little muddy during the annual volleyball tournament.

At the picnic...


Sunday, my parents came up to help us a bit and we also squeezed in a Mother's day celebration :) Thanks again to mom and dad for your help. Our house progress has slowed a bit, partially due to us just trying to get settled and used to a routine (if you can call it that) in our new place. But, we did get some more done on the bathroom and the bedroom only needs the trim pieces painted now. We also pulled up the carpet in the bedroom this weekend. Both bedrooms' hardwoods look pretty good, unfortunately we aren't so lucky on the rest of the house...there's a carpet pad stuck to the floor, but we are hoping to have them all refinished once the kitchen is done.

And last but not least... which I somehow forgot to mention until now (wishful thinking) is that through all the torrential downpours we've had over the last week, part of our basement flooded. Although we do have a warranty to a drainage system that was put in our house about a year ago, somehow it didn't work so well through 8-10 inches of rain we've received over the past week. It could be much worse, we just have some puddles now....but it's still an annoyance, which I suppose is our welcome to the world of homeownership :(

Animal, Vegetable, ....Allergies

First and most importantly, we met our kitty this weekend! He's still only 10 weeks old and teeny tiny, so it will be about another month before we can bring him home. But he was sooo cute and sweet and I think he'll be a great addition to our home. We are still accepting name suggestions! Here are some pictures we took during our visit.

On Jim's leg...

And lastly to give you perspective on how tiny he is, just a little bigger than a paper towel roll...


We also puppy-sat Matt and Mary's adorable new puppy, Buster this weekend. He was so good and romped around our backyard while we were hard at work in the yard! OK, we stopped to play with him some too :)


This weekend we enjoyed the beautiful weather and spent a lot of time outside working on our yard. I got my vegetable garden started while Jim mowed the yard and put together our new grill! Unfortunately, all that time outside was not good for my allergies :( I'm still pretty congested and hoping the tree pollen goes away soon.

Here's my garden, it has lots of herbs, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, and peppers. Cross your fingers that it all turns out alright since this is my first attempt!



And Jim with our new grill...

Our first meal, hotdogs!

All moved in

Sorry for the sparse blogging lately, there just haven't been enough hours in the day! Thankfully, we are all moved in to our house and out of the apartment. Even though we aren't settled yet, it feels good to be in one place. It's hard to get used to the fact that we'll be living out of boxes for awhile since I really like for everything to have a place and to be organized. But I'll get used to it and we'll find a way to function in the chaos for awhile ;) Thank goodness we have a large attic where we are storing a lot of our things!

The bathroom is 99% done! We have a fully working shower, toilet and sink. Just a few more final touches, like installing towel racks and rehanging the door and we can check it off the to do list!


I thought I'd share a few pictures of our current living areas. It only gets better from here, so these pictures are motivation for us to get things organized and looking good :)


Here's our bedroom. This set up is temporary since we need to finish painting the trim and ceiling, which hopefully can happen this weekend.
Here's the 2nd bedroom, which is currently storage...

The living room, again more storage and some furniture too which doesn't currently fit where it needs to go! And yes, there is a couch in there some where too (hiding behind all the boxes)
Last, but not least, here is our dining room which in its current state would be more accurately called the "work room." And you can see into the kitchen too...still just down to the studs, hopefully soon we can figure out how to design the layout and start ordering cabinets and appliances.

Last weekend, before the big move, we went to Charlottesville for the Foxfield Races. Despite a few unexpected complications (our bus took 3.5 hours to get there and then got stuck in the mud on the way home due to the torrential downpours), we all had a great time and made the most of it. It was definitely a memorable event.



And I'll leave you with what was probably the highlight of Foxfield weekend....when we met Tiki Barber!!