Week 1 in the [New House]

We spent the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend moving all of our wordly posessions from my in-laws' place to our new house. To accomplish this feat, we invited family and friends (about 2 dozen people!) to come help. Fortunately my husband is friends with a bunch of 20-something strong young men who are wonderful, helpful people. We started around 9:30 after picking up two trucks (one 10' and one 16') and we finished at about 2pm after two trips with the 16' truck and only one with the 10' truck.

Our house is three stories (basement, main floor, bedrooms on upper level) so as you can imagine I was very greatful for the guys who hauled all of our things up the stairs and put them in the right rooms. I think I only had like 5 boxes that ended up in the wrong place. It really helps to label all of the boxes clearly AND put signs on all of the rooms so everyone knows what goes where. Pointing out which floor it goes to is key to not having to move things up and down the stairs later!

So here we are almost a week later, settling into the new house and resuming our typical lives at home though in a new environment. My husband in enjoying going through his collections and putting them up to display on shelves and I am actually enjoying cooking in the new kitchen. I went through my collection of science fiction books and most of them are now in our new library (one of the extra bedrooms). It is really nice to have them all in one place again instead of just in boxes. We need better shelves though, the cheap RE shelves from Target are really not very good, it is basically one shelf sitting on top of another, not even connected well. They used to have better shelves for the same price but I guess with the recession they cut back a little by removing the support braces and only finishing one side of the top piece. That was disappointing because we liked those inexpensive shelves. Unfortunately the carboard backing to those shelves did not survive multiple moves and our third shelving unit is completely trashed anyway. Nicer shelves are going on my wish list!

iMove, Final Edition

The last 7 months or so have been pretty exciting! My husband and I decided to sell our 1-bedroom condo and buy a big new house. It took 6 months to get an offer we liked (I blame the crazy market and the winter season), but finally the condo has been sold! My husband bought it five years prior at the peak of the market but we actually managed to sell a little higher than the purchase price.

I am really looking forward to the new house and the prospect of never having to move again (at least not for a while, right?). Ever since I have graduated from high school I have seriously moved at least once a year, sometimes twice a year (during college). That makes me a l33t PRO at moving, with more than ten years of experience. Allow me to outline my experience:

1. 2000 - graduated high school, left my childhood home to go to college

2. moved back home for the summer

3. moved back to college my sophomore year

4. Mom remarried; I moved my stuff from my childhood home to Mom's new house

5. moved to the new house for the summer

6. moved back to college my Jr. year

7. moved back home for the summer

8. back to college for my Sr. year

9. 2004 - graduated, moved back home and Mom started charging me rent to make me get a job

10. moved to a tiny basement room of a house in Greenlake with 4 roommates (cheap rent)

11. got my own studio apartment (no roommates!)

12. moved to a 1-bedroom apartment

13. Fall 2008 - got married, moved in with the hubby (the 1-bedroom condo)

14. 2010 - sold the condo, moved in with hubby's parents (temporarily!)

15. COMING SOON: the FINAL move to our new house! (Seriously, we better not move again in the next 15 years...)

In less than two weeks we will be closing on our new house! I am already planning out where to put everything. We found a great new house which was new construction a couple of years ago but was barely lived in. The neighborhood is gorgeous and new, and Target and Costco are conveniently close by (woot!). The best part is that we are going from a 1-bedroom+den condo to a house with enough space that my husband will get his own man cave in the basement where he can display his action figures and I will get.... my own CRAFT ROOM! Woohoo!

Seriously, I cannot wait to start working on crafts again, it has been impossible to work on anything ever since we staged the condo and put it on the market. I have unfinished projects to complete and blog about! I feel like my life has been in limbo the past 7 months. Heck, I even cancelled my World of Warcraft subscription. Fortunately I had a StarCraft 2 beta key from BlizzCon 2008 so I have had a game to play whenever I have 20 minutes to kill. It's much easier to just sit down and spawn zerglings for a few minutes than it is to get sucked into raid dungeons for 3 hours straight.