When last I got my big girl camera out to take real pictures, we saw the living room, dining room, sitting room and kitchen, plus the front yard and back yard. That post is here.
On this lovely snow day, I decided to get some shots of the rest of the first floor. Around the corner from the sitting room, and directly behind the main staircase is another foyer. In it, there’s access to the basement, a coat closer and double linen closet that serves as half storage for entertaining things (crockpot, rice cooker, extra red solo cups, etc) and half linen closet for the master bedroom since there isn’t one in the bathroom.
Next to that linen closet is the guest bathroom, the only half bath in the house.
We managed to get most of the awful wallpaper off these walls, albeit in very close quarters with my father-in-law, over the Fourth of July, but we couldn’t finish the job. This is one of the rooms that the professional painter handled for us while we were on vacation to Seattle.
I highly recommend buying a house, starting a project and get halfway through, leaving for a fabulous vacation, having your mother-in-law let the painters in to your new house, and return to a freshly painted house. It’s pretty awesome.
Off that same foyer, there’s the master bedroom suite. It’s a bit strange to have it right off the kitchen and on the first floor, but growing up, my houses mostly had first floor master bedrooms so it’s kind of like I remember. Some people find it strange because most houses in our area have all the bedrooms upstairs. I have to say it’s amazing to be 15 paces from my bed to the Keurig in the kitchen. Nice.
This is another room we painted, and removed the floral border (by me, I mean the professionals). We still have the former owner’s window coverings in this room because we just haven’t gotten around to dealing with them yet. The awesome thing about this room was that floral pattern on the window treatment.
Imagine this with me… white walls, and that yellow-blue floral design on the windows, on the bed, on the border around the room. And then turn around and walk into the master bathroom. The border continued in there on top of white walls. There was a matching shower curtain and – matching toilet seat cover. We still have that one in the basement, if anyone is looking to buy one with a pink tulip on it!
We decided to make some changes in the master bathroom. The toilet seat cover and old shower curtain are gone, as is the border. We painted this room the same yellow as in the sitting room because we had an extra gallon from that project. I think it’s nice and bright!
The other positive about this bathroom is the double sink. We’ve had a chance to share a sink at a friend’s house or a hotel and goodness, how you get spoiled with your own sink in the morning! It’s lovely.
I like to say this closet is why we bought the house. It’s the same length as the bathroom it shares the left wall with and is rather wide – not quite enough room for us both to be in there choosing clothes, but do-able. We could even clear it out and put a small nursery in there if we wanted! It’s amazing and I can see my whole wardrobe in one glance. It needs some reorganizing already and I’m sure we’ll have to add some more shelving soon, but it’s wonderful to have all that space.
So that’s our first floor. It’s where we spend most of our time and we’re pretty much in love.
When you are traveling just the two of you, it’s a bit awkward to get a picture with Santa.
But you make him do it, or else give him this look all night long…
You find a spot to sit on Main Street to watch the big parade and giggle like a little girl when it snows when the soldiers come marching by…
You put up with the groans when the wait is over an hour to get this one picture with the 7 Dwarves…
And then take all the other character pictures you can find, especially Scrooge McDuck! Because they’re special for the parties.
You make him take pictures of your sad face – this might be the last paper FastPass we ever get. It must be documented.
You hang out at Hollywood Studios and take fun pictures of the scenery when people have left for the evening.
And then stand in another really long line to get a picture in front of the lights on the Streets of America.
You do all of this and have an amazing time at your favorite place on Earth, with just the two of you. Happy lawyer and happy wife!
With a new house comes all kinds of possibilities – where to put the couch, how to arrange the master bedroom, are we going to fit all our stuff in the tiny pantry. The usual!
Plus, when the holidays come around, how are we going to decorate the brand new place? When we first saw our house last Memorial Day weekend, I knew that I wanted to put lights on our holly bush outside plus candles in the dormer windows. It would be so perfect!
The inside of the house was more of a question. We had the big fireplace in the sitting room that would have the nativity on the mantle and the stockings hung below. We figured the tree would go in there too, because there was room. Turns out we had a ton of decorations and didn’t have to buy a lot for the new place, except for some ribbon to decorate the outside wreaths with.
That’s when Husband had a great idea – he took ribbon and some extra decorations from the wreaths and brought some color to our staircase!
We took the wide red ribbon from Costco and wrapped it around the handrail on each side of the stairs. We put a small piece of tape at the top of bottom to secure it, but the rest was wrapped around the balustrades.
The red and silver clusters are just stuck in the ribbon. We probably should have taped them down because holiday visitors under the age of 5 really loved playing with them!
I love going up and down the stairs, even if we don’t have a handrail to hold onto. It’s just so festive! Plus, we hung our holiday cards on the same ribbon going down the hallway to the right of the stairs so they are always in sight.
The first Christmas in our house was a good one!
