Moving On Up

Well hello there folks! It's been a while I know, and though good intentions don't mean much when it comes to blogging, I assure you that I've frequently thought about posting about my recent domestic exploits. Mainly, there's one big piece of news that most of you already know, but it's fun to repeat it.

We bought a house!

With the help of my lovely parents we were able to close on a house in Champaign this past June. There's so much to share about how it happened, settling in, and working through the first-time-homeowner kinks. To ease back into the blogging process, I thought I'd share a few pictures of the place.

Here's the outside! It's not much to look at, a fairly plain white house that extends into the back. Note the fence coming up around the front of the house; that was a major selling point for us with the St. Bernard. The place came dog-ready right from the start.

Here's a drawing of the property altogether, with a few notes on landscaping that I made (in paint...). The first floor is 1200 square feet with two bedrooms, and there's a full basement that effectively doubles the amount of space we have. The basement is unfinished, but it has a lot of potential, depending on time and funds. 

I'll do a more detailed post on the yard landscaping soon! 

Here's a shot of the yard from August. Even before we bought the house we had purchased fruit trees from a local gardening store. August, of course, was a horrible month across the country and went over 100 degrees almost every day. Yet, we persevered and planted three of the trees (two apple and one peach), and I can safely say that I never want to do that ever again. I planted a fourth tree myself in October, and it was a much more pleasant experience at 75 degrees. 

We've made a lot of progress on the inside as well, and I'll write more about how we've made interior design decisions, especially the paint colors. That was a potentially frustrating process that I actually thought we handled rather democratically. The living room ended up being "Grandfather Clock Brown."

The dining room is "Fields of Gold." We thankfully got the table in through the front door, though we put a lot of scratches in it. Someday, I will fix them.

The bedroom by far has my favorite color: Melodious Blue. I wake up in the morning and just stare at the walls still, it feels so homey and comfortable to me. The cats, I think, mostly enjoyed having access to the bedroom and clear bed (usually they're locked out).

Moving forward with the blog, I want to make sure I talk about each of the following, as they're topics that we've learned a lot about over the last few months:

• The home-buying process
• Color selections
• Landscaping decisions
• Homesteading efforts
• Establishing a prairie
• Recent dietary changes
• Interior design
• Longterm plans for the house

I'll try to tackle at least one of these a week through the end of the year. And then, there will undoubtedly be more to talk about!