a kiss a day: October 2014

We have been living in our new house for 4 weeks today! It has been so great! Maybe it's a little "greater" than normal because we were living in a rental house on post down south for a year and a half. (It was fun as you know from my blog posts... and we made it homey...but it wasn't our home)...Then we moved back north and lived with family for almost 4 months while we were in transition. (Again, we were grateful for a place to stay, but it wasn't our home).

Now....We are HOME! How great it feels!

We looked at so many houses. This house stuck out to us, it was love at first site for both of us! We were nothing but smiles for the rest of that day. We talked, we saw some more...then we brought the kids back to this one. They too loved it from the start!
It really was move in ready...there was nothing we needed to do to make it "livable" besides give it a good vacuum and clean some toilets, but really we just moved right in! The walls were all white, which is awesome in my book...no crazy colors I needed to cover up and change quickly. We can take our time and decided what colors we really want.

So first.....the moving truck showed up! AWESOME SAUCE!!!!!! We hadn't seen our stuff since mid to late June when they packed it up at Rucker and drove it away.... MAN did it feel so good to see my couch, my dishes...and the rest of MY CLOTHES!!! .....best of all.... MY BED!! AMAZING!

One of the first things I did was add some paint to the kitchen and stairs...the walls are all white, however the back of the kitchen Island (or peninsula I guess you would call it) and the risers on the stairs, were a deep red color. Not terrible, but not me......we chose black :)

So here is the kitchen before with the red paneling...and the old chandelier...we changed that out as well...

After, with the black paneling and the new chandelier....(and our newly refinished table too... we still need to build benches for the sides, we are only keeping two chairs, for the ends....I'll have to add pics of that when we are done too.)

Here is another angle of the red and black, and shows the stairs as well. I have a thing for black! My husband started it when we were in our first house by talking me into black walls in the dining room. We compromised by doing 2 black and 2 a soft shade of white... LOVED it! Anyway.... the picture...

Haven't done much else to the kitchen, just cooking in it ;) adding touches here and there. We will eventually replace the counter tops, I'm not a fan of the mint green, but they work and they are in fairly good condition, so I can't complain.

Here is the kitchen the first night we were in the house (before our stuff arrived the next morning...just some things we have packed into our car, that's it.)

And here is it now...more lived in, and a few things added...like the rug... in time we will do more in here..

We added some paint to the living room to warm it up... along with curtains and some other touches. Here it is before we finished unpacking...

Here it is with things more organized, but before paint....and of course a cute lil girl hanging out...

And with paint.... (and my little "Vanna White" showing us what we've got here..)

I wasn't sure at first, with the "milk chocolate" brown color... but I LOVE it now! it really warms the space up and makes it feel so very homey! Which is my number one goal! Now for an area rug!

So that's pretty much where we are at this point... the kids rooms are all cute and what not, they need some paint and some special touches here and there...we need a dresser for the K man and some area rugs for their rooms as well. The big girls have a really fun little area in their room, which we are turning into their own special "stage". They love to perform plays and dances for us, so it will be perfect. I'll have to get some shots of their rooms in the daylight, before we finish them...and of course some after shots when we are done! ;)

I'll throw a few more outside pictures in here...since the kids and i spent the morning raking up some leaves and making a scarecrow...and prettying up our front lawn....

stuffing their scarecrow... "Mr. Frumples"

SO.MANY.LEAVES .......

And then we cleared most of the front yard.

Have I mentioned I LOVE my front door!

(And....That tree ^ in the front yard.... it is lethal! The squirrels love it though! It is filled with acorns, and they are ALL OVER our front yard! Hundreds....THOUSANDS.....

EVERYWHERE!

SO...there is the first bit of our settling in and making it our own, blog post. Room, by room...corner by corner.... little corners of our home. I guess I will have to leave this blog as....

To Be Continued..........................................................

Ryan and I hiked Mount Monadnock a couple weekends ago. With no kids...it was some good quality "US" time, and it came at a good time, when we both needed it. It has been a long summer with all the house stuff going on and living with family and not having any of our own stuff. The 1st good news is we got out and reflected and it was great, even though it was foggy and rainy. That actually turned out to be a blessing. The views are gorgeous, but focusing on just getting to the top together in the rain & reflecting on all that is going on, was better than the views! The 2nd good news...we bought a house and are now settling in. (I promise to blog...quite a few people have asked...it's coming!) ;)

So Monadnock.....

Like I said it was wet, and a bit slippery....

It has been years since we have hiked Monadnock....before we were married I believe! I know for sure it was before children.

There are so many beautiful spots along the hike.....

We made it to the top!!

I had a little fun with this picture from up top before we headed down..

It's a fun hike...someday the kids will join, but I didn't feel like taking turns carrying Lil Missa up the mountain. She does pretty well on smaller ones, but she gets tired and whiney they bigger they get. Ryan is determined to take them up a really big one..... baby steps....

We decided to take a different way down...we wanted to hop on the Pumpelly trail, however it wasn't well marked and it was cold, foggy and WET...so ended up taking the red spot to the cascade trail and then finishing with white dot.

And we finished with a stop at the spring. One of my favorite things about this area is the crisp, clean, fresh water!

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We took a family hike yesterday up Rattlesnake Mountain. It over looks Sqwam lake and has absolutely STUNNING views! It's a short, easy hike....very good for little kids! So worth the short easy hike, even without kids, just for the Amazing views!