New home!

It's been a crazy several days since we drove to our new home Thursday night. It's still a mess, but we are ever so grateful for Fred and Chris' help in driving down here and unloading our containers. I know they are generous at heart, and I'm glad they got to see these views for themselves.
5 am sunrise from our deck.

This heron.

 

 Reunited with Grandpa again!

 

The deck is probably our favorite part of this place because of the gorgeous views (the whole east side of the house, really), morning, afternoon and evening. There's great shade by lunchtime and even though it's SO hot right now (and no A/C), I'm really going to miss being out on that deck come winter. Hopefully our winter won't be like last year's record.

Our couch was delivered today, so now the deck and my new couch are competing for first place in my heart. Oh how I love my couch.

Alright, let's have a tour of the house (photos taken before the container & mess arrived).
As you open the front door (from the dorm), this is our entryway. Space enough for strollers, shoes and coats. There is no closet, however. The view straight through is the kitchen, but you can see an opening on the right. This is our livingroom.

Here is the livingroom and the beautiful big windows. These are hardwood (and very old) floors. They need to be sanded and refinished and unfortunately, Kent's legs have already gotten some scratches...

 Bad lighting, but gorgeous views of the bay.

Windows to your right, here's the other side of the livingroom. Fireplace works, we think, but there's no way I'm going to light it with a baby learning to crawl and pull up. Nope. Love the built-ins on the left and the mantle. Beyond this fireplace wall is the kitchen, and as you can see, there are two ways to get to the kitchen. 

View of the kitchen from the entryway. Everything is brand new. The floor is linoleum, which I'm really happy about because it's so easy to keep clean. Those doors close off a laundry area. We had to buy a washer and dryer. You can see some stairs leading upstairs. These are narrow and circular and carpeted.

This is our deck off of the kitchen. You can see the 1/2 closet just beyond the heater. It's more narrow than my shoulders. It's the only "storage" on this floor, soooo we're just going to have to be creative.

 Another view of the kitchen and the entry.

At the top of the stairs are three doors: straight ahead is the bathroom, to the right is Kent's room and to the left is our room.

Bathroom. I sooo wish there was a 1/2 bathroom downstairs, but oh well. It's tight in here, especially when Kent goes on the potty and I have to change him. Basically the toilet juts into my back. All the more reason to teach him to wipe himself. Ha!

And because Kent was following me around, pulling himself up by the skin of my calves, then gnawing on the back of my knees, I figured I would carry him and snap these pictures one-handed. Go Mama!

Kent's room. How did they know to paint it blue?? (the rest of the house is a nice cream with white trim around every window.) Also, notice the weird built-in drawers in the wall? Strange but incredibly useful. Kent has 1 closet (full of my clothes) and our bedroom has the other (Matt's clothes). There are no others - no pantry, no linen, no entryway, no nothing. It's tough. We are going to be minimalists. 

Look! My closet! Kent playing in his pack and play. Notice that the upstairs has the same carpet. I didn't expect carpet, but I'm glad it's there because it's nice for Kent to crawl around on, even though it's more like flat dorm carpet. Still, it's brand new and it'll warm up the place in the winter.

 Here is part of our room. Windows towards the bay.

Other side of our bedroom. Matt's closet. Notice the door next to the closet. This leads to a hallway to two more bedrooms that use to be dorm rooms.

Hallway. The door at the end there, leads to the dorm, so this is always locked. There's a door on the left and the right, those two additional, no-closet rooms.

On the right is this TINY room. The picture makes it look big, but it's triangle shaped and soooo small. We call it the dungeon and this is where we put Christmas stuff, boxes, suitcases, winter clothes, vacuum cleaner, camping gear... basically everything that would be in closets.

Here's some of the guest room / Matt's study. We're going to put everything that we don't want Kent to get into in here so that the livingroom and kitchen are safe spaces for him. We want the livingroom to be spacious and clutter free so he can learn to crawl and practice walking when the time comes. Big bookshelves to climb are too tempting for him.

 

Here's the other side of this no-closet former dorm room. The futon will be there and the views are still magnificent, so come see us!!!

 

The only downside to this house is, of course, the space to put things. And I'm not even talking about extra silly things or excessive toys and home decor - we got rid of so much before we packed up! I'm talking about towels and sheets and extra blankets and my sewing stuff. In fact, I had to keep 50% of my dishes in boxes because other useful appliances and food needed their place in the cupboards. I've been organizing the best I can, being as clever as I can, and it still doesn't seem like enough, but we'll get there. Some shelving in the dungeon and possibly our room is an option, but what's even more important is to remember to live simply and to go easy on the clothes shopping and toys and other housewares. I especially think of my sister and brother-in-law who have 2 pans to cook with: one big pot and one cast iron. I think that was it? And here we had 7 frying pans (two were specifically crepe pans for dorm food) and not enough room for all of them. 3 stayed, 4 went to the dungeon.

It sounds like people don't really move a lot on campus, so if we want to stay here a long time, it seems that we can!! And even though the space is slightly annoying - how can you get tired of these views?!?!?!

And now, The Couch. (please ignore the fact that two pictures fell from their cluster, on the left of the clock).

 Did you see it?? Let's take a closer look.

It's waiting for you to come visit and try it out!! Just remember though: no feet, don't squish the pillows, sit on a different cushion every 20 minutes and get off of the couch after 50 minutes maximum. House rules, yo.