a little tour

I'm back, and with internet! We've had no internet, phone, or cell service at the new house and have felt a bit isolated. 

I know everyone wants to see pictures, so I'll give you a little tour of the house. It's always fun to see house pictures, if you all are as nosy as I am :D. I'll have more posts coming about the house after this. These pictures show the house as it is today. We have most furniture in place, but some things will be added and the walls are still mostly bare. I'd say we're in pretty good shape though, less than a week after moving.

So... come on in!

When you walk into the house, there's an entryway with the living room on the right and dining room on the left. A hallway leads straight back to the kitchen.

Looking through the entryway to the living room:

The living room has comfortable furniture that's casual enough and not-too-nice enough for us to use the room every day. We didn't want a formal living room we'd never use. My piano is already in here, and yesterday I gave Pita her first little lesson. We played songs she requested, and played and sang a C Major scale a few times :). The living room gets a lot of nice light and is a very pleasant space.

This is looking from the living room back across the entryway to the dining room. As you can see, it's currently nothing more than a holding spot for moving boxes.

The kitchen area runs along the back of the house. This is the dining area:

The sliding door leads to the deck. The doorway ahead and to the left leads to a short hallway with the washer and dryer, and a powder room. The living room is through the doorway on the right.

Here's the other half of the kitchen area:

I'm not someone who must have granite, or stainless, or anything else in a kitchen. This kitchen is beautiful, but I'm just not impressed by that stuff. What does wow me about this kitchen is its function. I love having space for everything, and it's been easy to organize things so that most things I need are within easy reach when I'm cooking. I also like the way the kitchen is located in the house. From the kitchen, you can see all the other rooms on the main level. That doorway on the left of the picture leads to the family room. Let's go there next.

We're planning to create two spaces within the family room. One will be a play space for the kids:

And the other will be a tv/fireplace/sitting area:

The family room still needs a lot of work to feel finished. Some of the furniture (like the Ikea chair sticking out like a sore thumb) is temporary and it will be a challenge to fill the room and decorate it well.

Shall we go upstairs?

Here is Celia's room:

Hard to get good pictures. I need a wide angle lens. But anyway, it looks a bit smaller in the picture than it really is. There's also a little nook I didn't show, that has her dresser in it.

There are two other rooms that haven't been put together yet. They are the guest room:

And the baby's room:

It will be fun to set up the baby's room when we get to it. Celia's so cute, already calling it her little brother's room :)

Down the hall there's a bathroom,

And our bedroom,

With our bathroom attached:

That's the house! We also have a basement with a finished space that will be Chris's man room. Somehow he thinks he's going to spend all his time hiding down there... Methinks he's forgotten what it's like to have a newborn! Add Celia to the mix and I'll need all hands on deck upstairs before long.

Last but not least is the outdoor space. The deck runs along the back of the house. The previous owners left their bird feeders, and we have a wide variety of birds including finches, a woodpecker, and a hummingbird. We also had a large raccoon on the deck the other night. Lots of wildlife here.

This is the view of the back yard from the deck. To the left we have some trees that will be cut down to expand the yard a bit. There's an old stone wall out back that we'd eventually like to clear the yard to.

The front driveway is a semi-circle that's also a useable outdoor space. It's protected from the road by a raised island. And this is a view of the side yard from the driveway:

That's everything! This post must have more pictures than any I've ever written. I'll write about the house in smaller doses from now on :)