moving weekend!

It's been a full two weeks since we signed the papers on our new home.  Even though Paul, his family, and mine, have been working like crazy to get us in, it still doesn't seem real.  We really own a house.  A house that comes with an endless list of upgrades that I want to accomplish, but all in good time.  Originally, I wanted all of thr popcorn ceilings down, and wanted the entire upstairs repainted.  After taking down popcorn ceilings turned out to be a huge ordeal (who ever thought popcorn ceilings were a good idea anyway!?) we knocked room after room off our list of "must have done before we move in" and agreed to finish the master and call it good.  I'm super pumped to have one room completely repainted and have a new and improved light fixture to really make at least one space feel completely ours.

Paul's pretty great, isn't he?

We were lucky enough to have multiple friends offer to help move us in this weekend, which was fabulous, because with a baby and toddler in tow, I'm not much help.  Though Olive and I would often "visit" our stuff in the barn, I was excited to open up the storage unit shipping container that half of our things have been living in for almost two years now.  Two years!

Goodness, we're totally hoarders.

While helping Paul sand the trim in the master last week, we started brainstorming a general list of what projects we want to accomplish as well as when, and we both agreed that actually going through all of our stuff (and purging a little) made the most sense to do before anything else.

For the most part, I'm pretty sure that's my job.  However, I look forward to updating the house little by little, and I'll keep you posted on the journey as it unfolds.

renovation time!

We've been homeowners for less than a week and Paul has been burning the wick at both ends to get us in by labor day weekend.  I'd mentioned before that the one thing our new home lacks was the character we'd come to love from older homes.  This little farmhouse is definitely remnisant of the decade it was built, complete with faux wood beams, bad light fixtures, and popcorn ceilings.

Ever since we put in an offer I'd been scrolling Pinterest during my night nurses, brainstorming what we'd fix, how we'd fix it, and when.

After careful research, I decided the popcorn ceilings absolutely, 100% had to go first.  The Internet told me that it'd be a messy process, and I didn't want our stuff in there before they came down.  Paul's been beyond amazing at making this happen, despite politely informing me several different times on how much of an epic pain taking down popcorn ceilings are...

But look at the difference it makes when they're gone!  Check out that corner of ceiling that's clearly brighter than the rest of the ceiling.  That is what a ceiling is supposed to look like.  I'm so impressed with how much brighter it makes the room.

While he's been plugging away at that, I've been trying to pick out paint colors for the house.  We're not painting all of the rooms at once, and are instead doing a couple upstairs, and living with the rest for a while.  We are however, trying to decide ahead of time what colors we'd like for the whole house (so that we pick colors that compliment each other).  I've been on color picking duty, and with the trusty help of my two sidekicks, I've successfully collected more paint samples than I know what to do with.

We've been looking at what colors Behr has to offer, and have settled on Ultra Pure White for the trim, Silver Drop for the hallway (and eventually the entire downstairs as well), and Old Map for the master bedroom.  We've started looking at colors for subsequent rooms... though, the more I think about it, the kids will probably want to pick out their own colors in no time.  Which leaves me thinking about bathrooms as well.  I like the idea of using blues, yellows, and greens, and am currently looking at these three colors for a green tone.

These three are Urban Mist, Mild Mint, and Sliced Cucumber.  Thoughts?

Updates!

I feel like life has been a bit of a whirlwind ever since we went on vacation.  Even though we were up there to relax, impending house stuff was definitely looming over our heads.  Luckily, we scrambled together everything we needed and finally closed on our very first home this past Friday!  This.  This has been over two years in the making.  Two.  Flipping.  Years.  We started house hunting when we found out we were pregnant with Olive.  It's been an exceptionally crazy journey all the way to the very end.  We have easily looked at nearly 100 homes and have worked with three different realtors, and despite thinking some could have been the one, nothing quite worked out.

When we started looking exclusively in Strafford, we spent a year almost not looking at any other houses, but instead waiting for a local woman who claimed she wanted to do a private sale to get her life in order to do so.  When that didn't work out, we decided to go out on a limb and look at a house out of our price range, but that had been on the market for several months.  We have lovingly been referring to it as "Danielle's house" because our friend Danielle and her lovely family were the last people to live there.  Since we'd been looking at homes built before 1950, we were surprised shocked at how much we actually liked the house (a gambriel built in 1982).  It reminded us of our crappy apartment in Portsmouth (which overall wasn't very crappy, but rather, very 80's and owned by some slumlords in Florida).  After touring the house, we decided to make an offer, but soon after we'd put it in, we learned that Danielle's father, the owner of the house, had unexpectedly passed away.  We put life on hold again, and sent our love to their family.

Months later, when the paperwork dust had settled, we were able to come to an agreement with the families (their father had three kids who took over the deed), and were able to close on the house.  All in all, we sacrificed one thing off of our "wants/needs" list (which is kind of awesome in the grand scheme of things!) and have finally found a place that we can calls ours.

So that was Friday.  Oh, and Lou turned two months old.

On Saturday, our friends, Justin and Kelsey, got married at the Sheraton in Portsmouth.  We got ready at our friends' place and all showed up together.  We were definitely those people, as there were only two other kids close to Olive's age at the wedding.  Nothing like being the lady with the baby... Or the family with the girl with a cute dress and sparkly tennis shoes that wouldn't stop being utterly ridiculous.

Those are our classy looking friends, Brian and Meara.  And that my friends, is Olive in the background... doing Olive things.  

Whatever.

I drank champagne and pretended it wasn't stressful.  Actually, it was pretty fun all things considered.  I totally forgot to sign their guest book (which bums me out), and am proud to say that I only cried a little when Kelsey walked up the aisle.

On Sunday we drove down to Westford, Mass, to celebrate my great aunt's 98th birthday.  She looked fabulous, and did my cousin Pam's house.  She always hosts the family for Christmas and Alma's birthdays, and this year she definitely went big.  There were 2nd, 3rd, 4th and maybe even 5th cousins there.  I'm not really up on how my family is related, I just refer to most of them as my cousins and call it good.

On our ride home Sunday evening after stopping to pick up Knox from camp, Paul and I had a Clark Griswald moment in the car where we both looked at each other and said "we did it."