Our first day

....And it was a snow day!!! But first, our closing...

...We were so excited to close LAST Friday, because we'd have all weekend to 'live' in the house and set up the bathroom, get the coffee maker plugged in, run the water so you can drink/take a shower there....you know, the weird routine stuff you don't think of.

BUT since closing was moved to Monday, it suddenly threw everything off and I didn't realize just how thrown it all was until Sunday morning. We were trying to get EVERYTHING in the apartment packed, except what we'd need for Sunday night/Monday morning, and then go to Irish breakfast at my parents, and then paint the kitchen with Jesse's mom, and hopefully get in an hour at the gym (ha), all before Jesse had to work at 3. Of course none of that happened accordingly, and by 11:30am I had a mini meltdown. Enough to freak Jesse out and reassure me that we didn't have to paint yet, and who cares about the gym, and maybe we shouldn't go to breakfast (which started hours before)....we were both stressed and overwhelmed but he was great and I saw that in all we were doing fine. We DID manage to pack up everything, and my sister and her boyfriend came with a welcome basket full of goodies that made me laugh (including chips and a rubber band toy gun for Jesse to hang above the door...according to my sister, very 'Pa Ingalls.')

Finally it was Monday after school, and I raced to town to meet Jesse and close! So many people prepared us for lots of signing, and for being overwhelmed, but at that point it felt like all of the months and waiting and nervousness and more waiting and extensions and delays were over, and I was in a state of bliss as I signed my name with a nice pen over and over and over. Our attorney was great and explained everything without dragging it out, and our realtor and bank lady were great. And the seller bought us almond horns from Amy's bakery afterwards!

I felt so happy and relieved, and could not wait to get home. 

Jesse and my dad had delivered our bed that morning, and we could finally stay there. Of course I was too nervous to crank the heat (on account of paying for oil, and I was afraid I'd break something/something would leak/the house would collapse, the usual.) So our first night was freezing. I actually slept in two sweaters. By morning Jesse had convinced me it was ok to put it above 60˚, and the snow had started coming down that night, so when my sister called our home phone at 5:30am (no cell service! ah the country:) I was just a smiley joyous fool. We had all day to set up house!!! It was perfect.

think-spring flowers hand-delivered by our mom down the road...

& view of our barn from the bathroom window--I caught the snow sliding off! Thank goodness for metal roofs.

   

& some housewarming cards on the kitchen mantle :)

I vacuumed the whole downstairs which had dirt and leaves from so many feet coming in and out over the last few days.  Then came the upstairs bedrooms, which were mostly ladybugs....ew. I have hated ladybugs since my childhood; after one pathetic attempt at keeping one I found for a pet (cringe) I realized that they smell, multiply during transitional weather, and love windows and corners of old houses. Alas, our house is old and a wonderful place for ladybugs. So we will be making sure to tightly seal off the windows come next fall, and I am prepared to be a ladybug exterminator for as long as they are around our house. Luckily I don't mind yet :) It's the honeymoon stage.

So as the snow continued all day, and with the vacuuming done, I wandered into our 'fireplace room,' which is a cozy open room in the back of the house that could serve as a formal dining room or a den, neither of which we really want/need at this point. It has a nice fireplace and view of the backyard/marsh, so maybe someday it will be a second living room (a classy one, without a TV :). 

We have a sunny living room off the kitchen that will be our living room:

(I love the pink, and luckily Jesse's ok with it since most of it will be hidden by books, etc. All of our unpacked pictures and books are temporarily perched here.)

Since we don't even have a real couch, the back 'fireplace room' is now the dumping ground for kitchen stuff that can't be put away yet. Our kitchen has cream-colored open shelves, which we want to repaint, and a nice cupboard that needs to be reinforced to the wall. Hence the unpacked boxes. Which I was starting to eye with angst when I realized Jesse had started painting in the kitch! 

  

We had peeled off the red wallpaper, leaving half bare walls with creamy wainscoting. Jesse was working on the walls, for which we got a light gray-blue (more blue than gray it turns out). We got a light periwinkle blue for the back wall of these shelves:

    

so I started on that. We bought a bright white for the wainscoting, window trim, cupboards and shelves, and are brainstorming fun colors for our many doors... :)

So that is the kitch a la moment. Our hallway is still home to the partridges&stripes, and will be for awhile I think. After the kitchen is done we want to paint our bedroom, which is downstairs. We stripped the two walls in it that had dark green wallpaper, so now it looks like this:

 
Sidenote: The cute teeny rug that looks like it resided in our cute teeny apartment? Heeeehe embarassingly that was purchased FOR our house. And we can't even make excuses like 'it was wrapped up so we couldn't tell how small it was,' because it was on full display at Ikea. And we thought it looked huge! It IS huge compared to where we were living. But my sister called it a dog bed when she saw it in our living room, so we moved it into the bedroom hoping it'd be better. Not really. It might go in my 'office' upstairs eventually. Oh well.

There's a door that goes through our closet, and into the downstairs bathroom. 

My closet space :)

The snow never stopped, so we painted a bit more and then took a break for our first dinner at the house! Thanks to mom-in-law for the daffodils, and our realtor for the champagne, and Jesse for the delish feast. xo