The last box has been dealt with and I even cleaned house on Sunday. Now if I can just get some of the pictures up and the ones that we aren't putting up, tucked away. (Some of my older pictures just don't go with the current decor. The walls in the living room and master bedroom are sage green. My old master bedroom was done in blues so the pictures I have just look hideous, lol).
I want to buy a decorative clock for the living room. There's a niche above the fireplace that needs something in it to make the fireplace the focal point. Right now the TV is the focal point, not so much what I want.
I've discovered that even though the condo is smaller than the house we were living in, the only space we lost was a spare bedroom. We actually gained cabinet space and drawer space in the kitchen, even though we lost an island. I actually have two cabinets with nothing in them at the moment (3 if you count the weird cabinet that goes all the way back into the corner, but only has a little skinny door. If anything fell over into the corner I would never get it back out again!).
The master closet is big enough to use as a craft room (my old kitchen table in in there at the moment!), or even put a bed in for the kiddo should we have visitors. it's absolutely HUGE! You get to it through the bath, so there's a little nook with shelves for linens and towels. So nice to have the towels right there!
And my bathtub! Oh I get tears of joy when I think of the tub in the master bath. After 2 1/2 years of a hideously uncomfortable tub in the hall bathroom at the old house (there was an odd ledge that hit right in mid-back. Ouch.) the new tub is heaven! It's larger and deeper than most kid's wading pools and comfy enough that I can quite happily take a book in there and read in the bath for hours *grin* And conveniently, water is the one utility we don't pay!
There are actually cabinets, and even drawers in the master bath. I can keep the toilet paper right there instead of in the hall closet, where I kept the towels and linens as well. And I finally have a place to keep all the junk that one has in a bathroom. There are even *gasp* towel racks!!! (The master bath in the old house didn't have a single towel rack!)
I find that the longer we are here, the more I realize how much I actually disliked that house. (I said from the day we moved in that it was obvious it was owned by a single male, just by looking at the master bath. It was small, only had a shower and had NO storage what so ever). The layout of the house was odd as well. The layout here makes much better use of the space we have and the rooms feel larger, yet more cozy (that's the paint I think, no stark white paint in this condo, except for the kiddo's room).
And you can't beat the view from the back deck. I our last two houses we rarely sat outside, though at one point we ate dinner outside on the deck of the first place a lot the first summer, until the weather got unbearably hot, then never got back into the habit. In the last house I don't think I ever sat out on the patio.
Here though, we sit outside every morning and have breakfast and watch the lake with its ospreys in the nest, pelicans and geese, while listening to the red winged blackbirds calling (talk about a sound that brings back wonderful childhood memories!). We even saw 2 Great Horned owls one morning.
The other night we sat out there and heard coyotes yipping and howling. It truly is lovely and makes all the trips up and down the stairs while moving worth while!
Anyhoo. I will try and take some pictures and post them soon, since I need to send some to my mother anyway, haha.
PS. Speaking of pictures, my external hard drive just gave up the ghost. It has every photo we've ever taken on it. My boss is going to try to recover them for me, but it's maybe a 10% chance. But I don't have $1000 to send it off for data recovery. So keep your fingers crossed for us that it works, please!
