We Arrived!!

We're here!

Since I have not kept track of who I've managed to keep with telling what in the last couple weeks, this will be a bit of a catch-all / catch-up post.

Last Tuesday, we loaded up the RV and the Tacoma with everything we were bringing with us and hit the road. (As I think I told everyone, given the distance we were traveling, it would have cost about $3,000 to get a uhaul and PODS and the like don't service either where we were coming from or where we were going, so massive downsizing was called for.) Despite being the heaviest they will ever be, both the truck and the RV did beautifully!

My Prince drove so that I could work. (As a test case for the portability of my employment, it went smashingly well.) After 32 hours on the road, we arrived safe and sound at our new home Friday morning. We spent the weekend getting settled in and My Prince started his new job this morning.

I absolutely must make time soon to get some pictures of the area, but since I have a ton to do right now, we're going with just a couple pics of the apartment so I can get this up. We bought a little dining table, which is not only very nice and functional, but also creates a Canine Cavern for puppy napping. (As you can see, both the dogs are nappervising around the spot I had just been set up in. I am a tremendous amount of work, apparently.)

My Prince found somewhere to keep the RV that is literally two minutes away from the apartment, and we are walking distance from really good coffee!! We are spitting distance from his new job, a Super Target (which I didn't know was a thing) and a Lowes, which is convenient.

Do to quirky details of how things work here, we can't get mailbox keys (and therefore mail) for another two days. Other than that, though, we're pretty well settled in and loving it! (Aside from the dining room table, we're working with temporary/improvised furniture for the moment. Not the first time, and it's working fine.)

It has been gloriously warm and sunny here, though the temperature dips overnight, which makes it nice for sleeping.

Arthas has been working hard to show Nenya the ropes of apartment living. (He was an apartment baby once upon a time. She never has been before.) The apartment complex is extremely dog-friendly, which helps. They both slept almost the entire way here. Border collies are sensative, and our stress in the prep for this move and the upheaval at the house definitely took their toll. They're both happy as clams now, though!

Speaking of, the house is on contract!

We're looking at closing in July, which would be phenominal. We are delighted to have found someone who will love it as we did, and so quickly! (Our Realtor has been amazing.)

All future updates on that (and everything else), however, will be posted over at the new blog!

As a nod to our new start and as part of our continuing efforts to streamline and clean up our lives (including the digital aspects), I'm migrating this blog to wordpress. Please look up the new site and bookmark it as this will be the last post here! 

Okay, that's it for now. Lots of other responsibilities to knock out today. Check out the link for more, soon! 

Go Throw Out Twenty Things

You know how people give TED talks and write books and articles about how great it is to "sell all your stuff" and go do something you love? Yeah, turns out that whole "sell all your stuff" part - which only ever gets a passing mention - should have a whole talk/book/article of its own. Because it's a lot of work!!

After a couple weeks of intensively selling off a huge amount of stuff, I can say with great confidence that it is entirely not a fun process. I read a theory somewhere that every sock you lose in the dryer magically turns into a mismatched tupperware lid and manifests in a cabinet somewhere. I'm starting to think that it not only true, but just the tip of the iceberg. We have always tried to be organized and we started seriously paring down what we own like a year and half ago... and yet, when we started clearing out in earnest, things just kept appearing. The more we took out of closets, the more there seemed to be. I honestly have no idea how we acquired so much stuff.

Since I am sure it is not just our house subject to this phenomenon, do yourself a favor and throw out at least twenty things this week. You won't miss them and you'll thank yourself later. Promise.

So, that PSA aside, things here are both amazing and a little surreal. More updates soon!

MoB: Bathroom Project

I regret that I don't have the time to find "before" pictures right now, and also obviously I haven't cleaned anything prior to snapping these pics, but I've been promising and update on the awesome work My Prince has been doing on the Master Bathroom and if it doesn't go up now it never will. So, without further ado, here we go!

LOOK!! Look at this gorgeous tub with pearled marble surround that my madly-talented husband did!
It doesn't show well in this picture, but there's actually a fantastic little ledge on the back for candles
or a wine glass or something, so you can do some proper relaxing!

My Prince took out a (pointless) chunk of wall up at the top of the divider between the tub and shower stall.
Now said shower no longer feels like a cave! There's light, everywhere! Plus, there's a new ledge there that
can be used for storing shampoo bottles, candles, etc.

Look at how big this room is, now! Without the unreasonably (and pointlessly) huge vanity, there is room for a full length
mirror. LED light bulbs make everything gorgeously bright, as does the new wall color. (Which is called Sea Salt Blue.)

This is a certifiably horrible picture of our vanity, but whatever. There are sliding "barn style" doors on either end,
and full-length drawers in between. There's more freaking room in there than some linen closets I've seen! There's
a ton of room and it's beautiful in person. (And when someone other than me takes pics.) Love it!

This Week

Arthas says "this full-time Mommy-sitting
stuff is a lot of work! I need a nap.

In lieu of the ranting and blathering I am tempted to do, I'm going to keep today's check-in short and to-the-point.

The Good: 

•  Lots of progress made! 
• Plenty of stuff cleaned out and sold, which is reducing the stress (a little) and making it easier to grapple with what remains.
• My Prince made great strides on the bathroom (a separate post to come!).
• Nature has finally figured out it's supposed to be Spring, so everything is green and blossoming, which will be excellent visually when we post/show the house.
• We met with a Realtor who was super nice, very competent and extremely encouraging. 

The Annoying:

• Bureaucracy. (I'm on my 3rd try to renew/upgrade my license, which expires on my birthday, which is not quite far enough far enough away to prevent me from having to get another one before we go.) 
• People who do not/cannot read. (Can I tell you how many replies I've had to my craigslist ads where people paid zero attention to where we are, even though I explicitly stated it? Then they're all astonished and horrified at how far out we are from where they are... like, if you live in Albany, why are you even looking at Oneonta ads if you don't want to drive that far?!)

The Random:

• There were three bears at the hedgerow last night and turkeys in the yard this morning. I was definitely struck by the fact that that has become normal... and will cease to be very soon! 
• It is my informed opinion that all lipsticks and lip crayons should come with built-in sealer... because I found the best lip color ever, but I keep leaving burgundy smudges on two furry border collie noses and they are Not Amused. 

Multi-colored LED Christmas Lights?

Anybody got any use for some? They're new within the last couple years. They all work and you won't even have to untangle them!  : )

I think there's 50 bulbs to a set and we've got six sets on offer. Yell if you can use them, because they aren't going with us!

PS - New category tag for all things house/moving related is MoB : Move or Bust!  : )
Possibly the FBI/CIA people assigned to monitor our computers won't appreciate that, but eh... it's fun.  ; p

Cookbooks?

If anyone is interested in any of the following cookbooks (or if you know anyone who would like them), please let me know and I will gladly pass them along to you! All are in like-new condition except as noted otherwise.

Bones  (small tear to spine of dust jacket)
Fat
Olympia Provisions
Eat Your Vegetables
The Paleo Foodie Cookbook (some wear to the front cover)

Please forgive the laziness in the formatting of this post - I'm trying to bang out a bunch of things this morning.

-hugs-
 

Counting Down

In case I forgot to tell anyone, my last day at Panera is May 8th. This cafe has been good to me, but I'm tremendously looking forward to moving to content writing full time!  : )