A Crazy Fortnight

Today begins a bit of a crazy fortnight.

Tomorrow is the internment of Husband's grandpa and grandma who passed 7 years ago and 3 years ago respectively. They were cremated and never interned. My MIL secured a site for them at Jefferson Barracks in South County, as Peepaw served in the military for many years. The Husband's cousins are coming in for Thanksgiving and it was a good time to have the ceremony when most everyone is here.

We have a luncheon scheduled afterwards so we can spend some time with his extended family since we won't be here for the holiday.

Because after the luncheon, we head to the airport for a flight to DFW! I am so excited to see my family for Thanksgiving even if we may end up eating out instead of cooking a big fancy dinner. I still want to stuff my face with desserts when I get the opportunity.

Not sure about the Black Friday shopping - lounging on the couch in my PJs with a hot cider and shopping via my iPad sounds like it might be more my speed this year for some reason. {Side note: who AM I that I'm not psyched for shopping?! I am getting old.}

We come back home on Sunday evening and spend three days doing laundry, cleaning my house, setting up Christmas decorations (I hope) and then head to Walt Disney World on Thursday morning!

Yup, it's another trip to the House of the Mouse with only me and Husband. We're staying in one of our favorite resorts, Port Orleans French Quarter and have tickets for the Christmas party and the Candlelight Processional, neither of which we've done before. It's five days and four nights of a vacation that we've been looking forward to since April - he passed the bar and we decided this would be our celebration.

So for those keeping score, that's December 10 when we are finally back in town and ready for Christmas. We are hosting our first holiday in the house - with my mom and brother and his family - and there's some major decorating, tree buying and setting up, plus menu planning and executing to do.

How's your next fortnight shaping up?

Adventures in House Tours, part one

Welcome to our new home!

Since we closed on our first house back in July, we've been slowly getting the place in order. Unpacking boxes, moving furniture around, hanging pictures and slowly removing every single decorative flower in the house. The woman who owned the house before us had a thing for pink tulips and they manifest themselves everywhere - in the sidelights next to the pink front door, wallpaper and its borders in multiple rooms, window dressings, shower curtains and even toilet seat covers. It's quite impressive, actually. I have a whole collection of soft goods in the basement if you're interested!

I promised a house tour and I finally had part of the house clean enough to take pictures last weekend.

I can see lots of fun decorations on our front door in the coming seasons! However, that mauve pink on the door and the shutters will be going away next spring, I hope. Now, to choose a color!

When you walk in, the dining room is on the right hand side. The painting of Paris has been with us since our rental house a few years ago and we love it. It makes us want to go back every time we see it!

The dining room has a cut through into the kitchen. The wall with the painting on the right has the garage on the other side of it.

The dining room table and chairs, with the cabinet, came from my in-laws. That has been their dining room set for years and now its ours! Lots of memories with this furniture. The china in the hutch is also from my in-laws - so excited to have service for 12 now! I loved the Noritake pattern we chose for our wedding but we only have service for 5 in that one, and not nearly all the pieces. I hope that we can grow that pattern over the next few years because it would be great to have two! The blue china from our wedding would be amazing for Christmas, with blues and silver.

So when you walk in with the dining room on the right, this is the stairs to the second floor and the hallway to the back of the house, with the sitting room, powder bath and master suite.

If you turn left instead of right, that's our living room.

Complete with our family shrine - I am pretty sure that between the pictures displayed on the cabinet on the left and the table on the right, we might have everyone represented.

This is a good look from the corner of the living room across the whole front of the house. We love the double windows in both rooms and the great light it gets. We installed black out blinds in the living room so we can close 'em up and get it nice and dark for movies on the couch. It's the best.

One thing the old homeowner left behind (besides the window treatments and pink tulips everywhere) was this picture. It's an ink drawing of the house when it was about 10 years old. We absolutely love it! It's hanging in the main hallway and I think we'll leave it there until it's time for us to sell the place. Then, it will be there for the next owner. It's a really nice touch.

At the end of the main hallway, we have a small cabinet and more pictures. There's a castle cutout with the quote "To all who come to this happy place, WELCOME!" My in-laws presented me with this at our housewarming. I definitely cried.

Around the corner from the cabinet above, and in the back of the house is our yellow sitting room. I'm in love with our white fireplace that was like that when we moved in! We left the window treatments and decorated around them.

This is where our books live and the chairs from Weekends Only makes it a perfect nook for hanging out. It also opens into our kitchen which is exactly what we wanted.

Not quite as much counter space or cabinets as we would have hoped for but with those stainless steel appliances that were bought for the house before we put our offer in, how can I complain?!

The kitchen also has an eat-in kitchen. Love!

The door to the left is a double French door that leads out to the back patio.

We haven't done a lot to the outside, other than our small patio furniture and Hubs' new grill, but we will.

We've noticed that there are a ton of leaves that gather due to that big tree in the middle. It was so beautiful when the leaves turned but they fell so fast I couldn't get pictures. There's always next year!

There is plenty of space back here for expanding the patio or installing some kind of garden. We are really excited about the space!

The bedrooms and bathrooms are next!