Our Little Cottage

On October 1st, we MOVED…for real!! Yes, believe it or not, we are now living in our very first HOUSE!!!!! Our home teacher here in Grandview is trying to sell this cute little place, and he was happy to have us rent it from him in the mean time-- no contract, just month-to-month. Since we get the whole house and a yard for only $500 a month, I’m really hoping it doesn’t sell till next summer!

I wanted to wait till we have this place under control and organized before I posted about it, but that is obviously going to take a lot longer than I want to admit (with only a pathetic pregnant lady, an inquisitive 1 year old, and a working husband in charge of getting it all together). So today, Jay and I took some pictures of what we’ve done so far…

The front

The front room, complete with weird little wood stove fireplace thingy. I like the mantel though—this year I won’t have to hang our Christmas stockings from the window!

The eating room, full 'o boxes

La cocina—this is where I’ve done the most work, because I can’t cook in an untidy unorganized kitchen. The house had not been lived in for a while when we got here, so it was pretty dirty. I had a major mopping frenzy to get this floor cleaned up. Do you see the ole dishwasher? I think it was the first one ever made, but it still works like magic, and I can’t believe how easy it makes my life!

Speaking of labor-saving devices, check out my gorgeous “new” washer and dryer!!!! We got ‘em off of craigslist for a deal. Laundry is no longer a heave-ho-across-the-parking-lot-pay-a-million-quarters ordeal!!! I wonder  if laundry will ever feel like a chore again?

The previous 4 pictures were of the rooms stacked along one side of the house. There are 2 bedrooms, a sun room (above), and a bathroom along the other side of this narrow little place.

Jay’s room. No, we don’t have 800 Huggies diapers, we saved those boxes to pack baby gear.

The bathroom has a door into the kitchen and a door into our bedroom. I won’t put a picture of our room up because it is boring: square with a bed in the middle.

The back yard has random land forms. For example, I took this picture from the top of a round grassy mound—maybe we have a hobbit? That square shadow is made by this random gazebo porch that the neighbors constructed on top of their shed. We have a shed too, but it’s just a shed. You can’t really tell by the picture, but the grass is pretty long. We don’t have a lawn mower. Come on, WINTER!

This must be the hobbit—he hangs out behind (or under?) that mound I mentioned. We think he belongs to someone in the neighborhood, but he likes our wild back yard a lot. That’s fine by me—no mice or creepy crawlies in our house! He’s a fierce kitty—we heard this screeching the other day, and discovered that it was the hobbit-cat defending our yard from a much bigger, scarier, uglier lion-cat. This morning, I saw him attack a squirrel that was nearly as big as he is—the squirrel only barely got away. I haven’t tried to pet him.

So there you have it. Our new house. It feels huge. Before now, the biggest place we’ve lived in was 650 square feet. This house is 1050 square feet—almost twice the size! Not easy on this feeble recovering invalid-mommy. I stopped taking my anti-puke medicine on Saturday, and it has been rough. I only barf once a day without the medicine, but I feel yucky all the time. After a happy reunion with my beloved Kitchen Aid mixer, I have started making myself soft, yummy bread again, which helps. Jay’s cuteness and Jeff’s sweetness help a lot too, but the thing that will help the most won’t happen until February, or whenever this squirmy  little girl decides to meet us! In the mean time, we have a HOUSE!