Home Sweet Home

Today we officially finished moving in. All of the boxes are empty, all of the pictures are on the wall, and all of our stuff is in it's permanent place. I can't even begin to tell you how awesome it feels to finally be settled, especially since I am completely in love with our apartment. It's the first time I've moved into a place and actually had the resources and time to unpack and decorate properly, and I'm very proud of the cute little apartment we've set up. Here are some pictures:

Our dining room - we haven't seen anything in this room (not one item!) in over 6 months. We never really got the chance to use our table at our old apartment...we've actually only used it for a total of 4 months since we bought it in 2006! The runner on the wall and the place mats were a wedding gift from Joe's Aunt Sue (she made them) and the contents of the china cabinet includes wedding gifts we never got to take out of the box and my Grandma Kirkwood's crystal and silver.

The Kitchen

Our living room, complete with a cat skin rug. :) The pink chairs were my Grandmother's, and we found a gorgeous table to go with them at a going out of business sale. It was originally $200 but we got it for $40!! Joe is slowly turning our place into a greenhouse as he becomes more and more obsessed with the plants, but they do look nice so I'll let it slide. The only thing I could possibly think of to add to this room is a coffee table, but we're not sure we want one. We like open spaces. We'll see.

This is the guest room y-all be staying in when you come visit. :)

This is our bedroom. I'm super excited to have the bed on an actual frame (the frame had to be stored before) and even though it's too hot to put my down comforter/duvet on the bed, I like the way it looks.

This is Joe's man bathroom, which he is just tickled about.

This is my chick bathroom - I'm also very excited.

And finally, this is our patio/balcony. You can also see our pool in the background.

Joe and I also have our own walk-in closets, which totally rocks (although I think he's more excited than I am...he has more clothes than I do and just as many shoes!).

When we haven't been unpacking we've been venturing out to find things like Walmart and grocery stores. I was surprised to find that groceries are generally more expensive down here, which doesn't make any sense to me. Wouldn't it cost more to ship stuff all the way to the U.P.? I was pleasantly surprised to find Leinenkugel's in the beer isle - we didn't think we would find the Wisconsin based beer we love down here.

We don't live very far from Joe and Sara or Joe's work and thus far we're finding our neighborhood to be pleasant. Most of our neighbors (especially all the kids) have said hi to us and we even had a girl come ask us to borrow a cup of sugar! I didn't even know people actually still did that. So most things are going really well. The thing I'm struggling with the most is the weather. It's hot and humid, which in itself is ok, but we aren't used to hydrating like this place requires. Also, since it's always so nice I'm constantly wearing sandals, which means my feet are constantly getting dirty....I'm not dealing well with that. I wash them a lot.

That's about it for now. Tomorrow Joe goes in for his first day at work in NC, which means I'll be at home with the cat (!). I'll probably venture out and try to find stuff like the DMV and the Post Office and maybe visit Sara and the kids. This weekend Jonny is having his birthday party at Chucky Cheese, and I'm looking forward to the bad pizza and screaming kids (for real). I'll try to remember to take some good pictures to post. :)

Ciao!