The Move! At last.

Yes, we've done it. We've moved into our new house! As you can see above, I had some help packing. "Help," we call it. A house full of boxes + a toddler = endless surprises :-) You can't imagine how many things went missing, to turn up later in some box or other!

Miss Pie also fell back in love with her baby swing when it emerged from the closet, as you see.

At first I told it her it was just for her dolls, that she was too big, and she went along with it, pushing her beebees in the swing ... and then I'm sure you know what happened next. I turned around and little sly one was swinging away with an innocent "what?" look on her face. Ah well, why not? Turns out it held her 25 pounds perfectly well, and kept her entertained while I packed.

Ugh. Packing. It's not so bad at first, because the natural impulse is to tackle the obvious stuff: dishes, books. And then you feel like you should be done but there's all the STUFF you don't know what to do with. It's horrible. Stuff you don't totally want/need but don't totally want to get rid of either, and that's kind of hard to pack, etc etc. Oh man. The suck. Ten years of stuff accrued. My new motto is: "Move often or move never."

Hopefully we're in the never category now. I love our new house so much. I see no good reason why it won't be our home forever.

Pizza picnic in empty house, the night before the move!

We wished we had more nights like this, with the house empty, the work essentially done -- look at those floors, those walls! Mwah! *kisses fingertips* -- to do stuff like finish paint trim, etc, but we did NOT have time. Our other house sold (yay!) and we had to get out of it! So we had this one evening, and I brought over Clementine's HEMA house (from Auntie Lori in Amsterdam; it folds up tiny like a car windshield screen!), and the Moroccan poufs for sitting. While Jim did final stuff I cannot now recall -- helping with radiator reinstall? -- I pulled the painter's plastic and blue tape off the windows to let in the light, and it was awesome and clean and empty. For a short time.

 I love the way Clementine's dollhouse has paralleled the phases of the move. Empty:

Ack! Chaos!

All it needs are tiny cardboard boxes, ha ha!

On actual moving day, the gods were not kind. Sandwiched between two days of perfect mild sunny weather, 70 degrees, we had ... rain. All day. Seriously, from the minute Jim pulled the U-Haul up to the old house to the minute the last box was carried into the new: rain. On cue it stopped and started. It was not awesome.

But our friends were awesome. We could NOT have done it without them, they were such champs.

Need to get settled in now and make them a thank you feast!

It will be a slow settling in though, as Jim and I are both back to work regimens. I am at my new writing cafe now, which is wonderful in so many ways: big, quiet, pretty, and cheap, yay! It makes me happy. But we are getting a little done each day. Things are slowly coming together. The little things make me happy, like these gorgeous vintage doorknobs and plates.

You might remember when we got them at Hippo Hardware. They're like jewelry. I love them. They were a splurge, but other things have gotten the IKEA treatment, like lighting. Wow, lighting. Expensive! But not at IKEA. Have you seen this guy?

It's only half put together there, but I finished it last night. It's giant. Love.

That's the living room. For the dining room we are DIY'ing a fixture. It's still in progress, but involves this antique bottle dryer from Cargo (This house brought to you by IKEA and Cargo :-)

Jim is just holding it there, but we did hang it last night. I'll have better pictures once it's all done -- we still need to cluster some glass balls around the lightbulbs. We envision embellishing the bottle dryer with different things seasonally. The possibilities are endless really. We could put strings of chandelier crystals for that pretty-meets-industrial look; we could put garlands, or Christmas ornaments, or heck, cobalt bottles. Tea cups. Skulls.

Okay, not skulls. Probably :-)

So. Much to do, much to do, but it's so good to be IN. More pics when there's more to see!

And now: to writing! Happy almost-weekend!