The Deliveryman Cometh

My mom was here all last week, helping me decorate and celebrate Thanksgiving. It was absolutely exhausting to have her here because even though she's older than I am (funny how that works, right?), she's got about 6 times the energy I do. Because of that though, we got an incredible amount of things done around the house (well, she did. I helped occasionally, slept a lot and worked at night).

The most exciting (and stressful) part of her visit was picking out new living room furniture. The stuff I had was in pretty good shape but more suited for apartment living, and the size of the house dwarfed the furniture. Also, it was the first stuff I bought after college so it wasn't the nicest set...mostly just whatever I could find at Wal-Mart and carry home. :)

We spent the first three or four days checking out every furniture store in the area and trying to find a common ground between the styles each of us like (since they'll be spending a lot of time here, too). I had a green sectional (see pics below) and wanted to stick with a sectional, but mom wanted a couch and loveseat because that would "give me more options" to change up the living room if I wanted.

Comfort was a big deal since my butt and the couch go hand-in-hand at night, but for every piece I found comfortable, my mom's feet couldn't touch the ground (she's short enough in some states, I believe, to qualify for a free helper monkey). This may seem like a problem, but seeing her sit on all these couches and kick her feet in the air like a little kid was one of the highlights of my shopping experience. :)

Also there was the leather vs. microfiber debate. Mom wanted leather but it's twice as much, and it seemed that, in order for the couch to be comfortable, it had to be huge and bulky if it was leather. I dunno ... anyway, you can see that making us both happy was going to be a challenge.

Soooooo between us, we had gone to five different furniture stores by Wednesday and we were both frustrated. Although we'd found a lot of cute sets, nothing really jumped out at us.

On Wednesday we were both ready to scream when we walked into a furniture store with - no lie - 3-story-high pink and blue neon palm trees in the window. We found a set we both really liked right inside the door and were geeked until we learned it was fake leather. While my mom was talking to the sales guy I found a cute kitchen table and chairs. We weren't really looking for dining room stuff at this point but I called mom over to look at it in an attempt to get her away from the sales guy.

She actually loved it even though it's kind of funky and she's more of a traditional furniture person, so we set it aside. The store was only open for another 15 minutes but both loved the next couch/loveseat we looked at. It was leather, very comfortable (I can sit and not hurt, mom's feet touch the ground...well, sort of), and it was a good deal, so that went in the cart as well. We got a coffee table, two end tables and a sofa table to match, and called it a day.

Because we're smart (or crazy, depending on how you look at it), we went back at 6 a.m. on Black Friday to buy the stuff. Although 6 a.m. is way too early to be awake for any reason unless you're on your way to bed, we saved about $800 and also were able to get a mattress and box spring for the third bedroom and two lamps to boot.

Alright, I've rambled on long enough, here are the before/after pics. I didn't think my old stuff looked all that bad until the new things arrived! Why didn't y'all tell me? Yeesh.

No stuff

Old stuff

New stuff

 Old stuff

New stuff

Here's a few other pictures from different angles, including Hova, who was pretty sketch about the whole leather couch idea at first but obviously warmed up to it pretty quickly. ;)

 The chair in the corner, obviously, has to go. Just didn't have time to move it out before the delivery guys showed up with the furniture. :)

Oooh, I think she likes it. :)

 In addition to all the new furniture, the guest bathroom got decorated and mom was able to get the beginning of her and dad's bedroom decorated to suit her fancy, so here are before and after pics of that stuff. :) There's still a million things to be done and the walls badly need stuff on them, but we've come a long way in two months!

The paint job in the second bedroom was a little less than desirable when we got the keys...ummm...dark green? Really? 

 

Things were a lot better once the walls were painted.

Finally, a few decorations made things seem less empty.

Guest bathroom, after the creepy wallpaper got torn off (top), and then painted but empty (above).

Furnished! Or whatever it is you call it when you put colors and towels and stuff in a bathroom...

And finally, y'all HAVE to remember the kitchen pre-rip-the-jungle-paper-off (if not, below are a few ugly reminders...finally, a few decorations in there as well.

Holy hideous wallpaper, Batman!

I DID get to play on a ladder though, so that was fun. :)

Soooo that's all the updates I can handle for now. At this point, all of the common areas are the house are pretty well taken care of (besides the wall art) as well as the guest rooms, and now it's time to work on my wing of the house since, ya know, I'm the only one who actually lives here.

All the painting's done over there and my bedroom furniture is good to go, but the bathroom is giant and I'm having some difficulties figuring out how to decorate it. I've got some stuff to hang so we'll get that up and go from there.

Also, since I've decided not to have a roommate after all, I gave Mary Kay the third bedroom (where the twin bed is). Because we were going to set her up in the office before, the office is now free to be, well, an office. This is great because it gives me a place to put my old couch/kitchen table (I'm turning it into a desk). Also, because we painted that room green, it's also going to be my Michigan State room. :) I've got a few cool State posters to hang, along with two very important Tigers paintings, and am happy to have a place to hang them where people can actually see them! (they've been collecting dust in the garage).

One Girl, One Truck

If you were expecting a sexy website/video to go along with that headline, I'm sorry to disappoint you. Those of you on Facebook who have heard me whine about moving for the past two weeks are free to skip over the next section and the coinciding pictures while I fill in everyone else.

My dad and I counted yesterday: I have moved 16 times to nine cities in two states over the past 11 years. Now you'd think that with all that experience that by now I'd have learned to pare down my belongings to a simple box or two so that I don't have to go through the misery of packing/unpacking each time, but in fact the opposite is true. I'm a victim of creature comfort, and since I spend 95 percent of my life outside of work, at home and alone, I want it to be both comfortable and entertaining.

That being said, with an army of helpers in the past (usually mom and dad), we still manage to get out in a day.

Not so this time. This move was my biggest yet (stuff-related, anyway) and it was a solo mission. 3 1/2 weeks, three U-Haul trucks and two car trips later, I celebrated closing my townhouse door for the last time by screaming as loud as I could...and then remembered I'd left all of my silverware in the drawer. Hmph.

It has been an absolutely draining month! I'll say my biggest accomplishment to date is finding a way to transport the flatscreen from one place to another without delivering a single scratch (flexes muscles)! Out of all of the things that could have fallen/broken, my baby would have been the most devastating, and I'm happy to report that she is posted up in the living room and broadcasting ESPN in hi-def once again. :)

In fact, that was the first thing I set up (hey, priorities!):

Sooooo the mission this month was to get everything out of the townhouse and garage, and transport it to Amnesty. Because I am who I am, I may have dragged my feet for the first two weeks which resulted in total panic for the final two. What should have been a move full of easy days spent organizing and making things easier on myself resulted in a frenzied stuffing everything I could grab into giant, black trash bags, and then loading/unloading a U-Haul at 4 a.m. -- twice -- during a single weekend. Whoops.

Nevertheless, Everything eventually made it into the new digs. Hey, I didn't say it was pretty:

As you can see, once everything was in, I had to wait a week for the carpets to get cleaned before I dragged the furniture to its proper place (thankfully, the dining room didn't mind becoming a temporary dump spot). Got everything steamed yesterday and once it dried, I was able to move some things around to create something resembling a living room! ... and, most importantly, I got my bed set up. Sleeping has never felt so good as it did last night, let me tell ya!

(Sorry for the poor quality of these photos, my camera has made its way into one of the aforementioned trash bags and I'm pretty sure I'll never see it again, so these are cell phone shots.)

While I've been adjusting to life in a bigger place, Hova wasn't so sure this move was for the better. Out of all of the indoor/outdoor area she had to explore, the guest room closet is where she stayed rooted for the first couple of days. (She was much less unhappy once I found her blanket in a box).

No worries, as of yesterday, she has found her way back to her spot on the back of the couch and has remained nonplussed with all of the moving/scraping/bumping noises going on as I move furniture around her:

That's it for now! The next few weeks will be spent sifting through the 9 million boxes and bags in the garage, which has gone from having enough room for two cars, to being able to barely squeeze one in a matter of days, oops. I hope to make the house look more "homey" in the next week or so, and will update again then. Mom is coming for Thanksgiving to decorate their room, bathroom and the office, and I can't wait to have someone back here to help out with all the junk that there is left to do!

-Sportsgal

Baby Steps

There hasn't been much to post about lately, as I've been working on packing and cleaning the townhouse in preparation for the big move (I have to be outta here by Halloween). I have had a little time to "get dirty" lately though, including climbing up on the roof to clean out the gutters, powerwashing the pool cage (again...algae is gross) and being cute and domestic by potting flowers! (Who knew, right?) Forgive the outfit, it was a get-dirty day, heh...

Despite the fact that most of my work so far has been centered around getting out of the townhouse, big progress was made at the house this week as painter extraordinnaire Bill Lainhart has been putting in hours  painting all of the ceilings, rooms, closets and the front door, and along the line saving all of us one, giant headache.

The house, as is expected, is an absolute mess as he got in all the prep work Monday night (removing fixtures, placing drop cloths, etc). I promised to stay out of his way until he's done on Thursday, but sneaked over there Tuesday night to snap a few pictures of the work in progress.

 Who paints a bedroom dark green? Honestly...yeesh.

It seems as though all of Bill's prep work is done. He's painted all of the ceilings and gotten to the walls in one room...but it was the area of the house I was most excited to see done -- the master suite! I tried to keep everything colorful and bright, (hence the orange/yellow walls in the great room) but wanted to tone it down a little in my bedroom, so I chose a blue that goes with any kind of crazy bedding motif I could throw at it (my zebra comforter will be right at home!). My beautiful bathroom was still unpainted and heavily covered in plastic as of Tuesday night, but I DID see color creeping toward it, woot.

I was happy enough with the progress that I brought my first decoration from home, heh. Hey, you can't blame me for being eager to get started with the move-in. :)

Another bit of good news: The backyard neighbors have decided to go in half on a 6-foot privacy fence across our yard. Growing up on a farm in Michigan where only thing behind me was miles of farm field and the river, it has been a big adjustment so far to remember that my new neighbors are less than 20 feet away when I'm on the lanai. You can hear everything that goes on over there and vice versa, and they have two little dogs that go absolutely nuts any time I go outside, so in the end the fence was a necessity. I'll still need to be more quiet than I'd like in the backyard, but the fence will at least cut down on me having to have the curtains pulled at all times!

Of course, Sarasota County is crazy-Nazi about all types of things, including needing building permits for anything taller than a foot, so we've had to wait a couple of weeks for the permit to be approved. But the fence folks showed up on Monday and started to sink the posts, and they should be done by the end of the week! It was too dark to take pics in the backyard, but I'll post them as soon as I can get over there during the day.

Getting excited about moving into my own place after 12 years of renting! The day slowly approaches. Lots and lots to do before I go (clean, repaint the townhouse, pack everything, move, unpack, repeat) and just 12 days to go!

Oh, and for those of y'all who think I exaggerate about nearly everything...I do (I'm a writer! It's how I pay the bills.) But I'll leave you all with proof that the spiders in Florida are no joke. My rule of thumb is, if it's furry, has eight legs and is bigger than my hand, it's worth taking pictures of. How'd I do? ;)