denver update.

well, it's day three of our week-plus visit to colorado.  it's been a very fun-filled few days, but yesterday was notable for one big reason.

we went back to our house for the first time since we moved out of it and our tenants moved in.

it was a very strange experience to walk into our [old] home that we spent so much time painting, decorating, fixing [and even buying!] and seeing someone else has made it their own.  i definitely miss the house.  there are so memories behind every corner... the paint party we had when we first ditched the yellow downstairs, painting the hallway upstairs while i was home after our first miscarriage, the hundreds of headaches we dealt with remodeling the upstairs bathroom, and that's just work we've done.  all the dinners and friends we've hosted, our annual christmas parties. 

it was our first house.  and i've said it before and i'll say it again, but most of the time pi and i feel like we could live anywhere.  even now, as we've walked the streets of lodo and hit some of our favorite spots, we've said we miss it. but really, i miss our house.  if we could just pick it up and take it along with us to massachusetts, to california, to wherever we decide to move to, it would be pretty much the best.  although a lot of times we thought about it as our starter house, our five-year-plan house, there was a part of me that seriously thought we'd keep it forever.  it was big enough, with four bedrooms and two bathrooms and a huge backyard and room to expand.  but no matter how much i love that house, i can't move it anywhere else with us, unfortunately.  it stays here, without us. 

moving day, december 2012

the rest of the trip has really been wonderful.  with all of the time i have, ive gotten the chance to just hang out with friends.  no rush, no cramming visits into every moment of the day, lots of time to relax... just what we wanted here. 

til next time...

home is where you make it.

home print found on pinterest, buy it on etsy here!

PI + i have a problem.  whenever we go somewhere - anywhere, really - i'll tug on his hand, or he'll wrap his arm around my shoulders and hold me close, and one of us will say, 'we should live here.' 

it's true.  when we lived in denver, we would fantasize about living in boston.  when we lived in boston [the first time] we fantasized about living in brooklyn.  and once we were in brooklyn, we reminisced about living in denver and decided to move back.  and now that we are back in boston again?  well, we have been tempted by the sunshine, ocean breeze, perpetual spring weather [and of course our nephew ryder's kisses don't hurt either] of california. 

no, we aren't moving.  but we are learning to love our wanderlust instincts, moving around from place to place, not totally being tied down to any one city.  it's freeing, really.  as hard as it was for me to leave our beautiful home in denver, the longer we are away from it, the easier it becomes.  yes, it was our home.  but now, my home is a lovely 150+ year old loft in the south end of america's oldest city.  it doesn't feel so foreign anymore, like we are living in a hotel room or someone else's house with our stuff in it.  we are becoming more versatile, and i am starting to feel just as home in our loft as i did in our house. 

there is something liberating knowing that we can move at the end of the year if we want to.  that doesn't mean we will, or that we even will want to - maybe we will fall so deeply in love with boston that we won't ever want to go anywhere else.  but may we will be ready for a new adventure, and we are so lucky that PI's new job will let that happen for us. 

something interesting about PI + i is that we have family everywhere.  so we always miss people, no matter where we live, we won't be near all our family.  which means we have to kind of pick and choose, decide who we can live near and how it will allow us to travel to the other members of our family.  but with all the changes we have gone through, i am loving the idea of MORE.  i hate the packing and moving part of moving, but love the exploring new cities, making new friends, and enjoying my new home with my husband every time. 

who knows where our home will be together a year from today.  it might be somewhere new, and i can't wait to find out. 

on that note, we are headed back to boston today on the red eye... excited to sleep in my own bed and be bombarded with snow once more [ok, not so excited about that second one, but it's happening whether i am excited about it or not]. 

til next time...!

loft update

hey friends! i know it's been a few days since i last updated my blog, but there is only so much you can do before you get your internet hooked up :)

i am LOVING our new loft and life in the south end!  it's slowly coming together [emphasis on the slowly part of that phrase].  the first thing i did was unpack the kitchen, but it wasn't until today that i finally made it to the market to fill our cabinets with food.  side note: hooray, we finally live in trader joe's territory! hellooooooo boxes of red wine!

yesterday i tacked my closet and vanity - and let me just say that consolidating from four closets to just one is not as easy as you'd think it is.  but we are making do so far, with some minor adjustments to come. 

one piece of decor up, looking into the living room

makeshift dining room right now

a few home comforts up in the bathroom

yikes. my closet so far - and that's organized.

more fun than unpacking, however, has been getting to know our new neighborhood.  over the weekend we discovered a great diner as well as estelle's, a sweet southern kithchen with a kick ass brunch menu.  that's just the tip of the iceberg - a list about a mile long of restaurants and bars to try out in our neighborhood has already been started.

i am also trying to adjust to my new routine, which consists of getting up and then finding things to keep myself busy all day.  with all the unpacking to do it hasn't been too hard yet - but i am worried i might end up like ross.

but the best news of all is that my mom has already booked her first trip out to visit, just a few days before my birthday!  i am so psyched and can't wait to show her a great time out here in my new home.

well i have lots to unpack... so hopefully i can share more progress later.

til next time! 

high high #29

we got the apartment!

yes, we finally have a place to live here that isn't my dad's spare bedroom/home office.  now i promised a few pictures once it was official so here you go.

to the left of the entrance - amazing fireplace!

lovely kitchen, more counter space than at home!

courtyard-facing loft means nice views, less noise

view from the kitchen into the loft

 and, as with yesterday's high high, today's comes with a low also.  the city of boston is impossible to move into.  all moving trucks have to have permits, and you must apply for these well in advance of your move, and you must have the meter numbers that you will be blocking, and you must PAY for how much those meters would bring in had you not been blocking it all day.  so i'm still working on figuring that out.

but huzzah, we finally have our boston loft!  kind of feels like we are moving backwards in phases... that phase of your 20-something life when you have the nice apartment in a great part of a magnificent city is supposed to come before you buy the house and go back to school.  but that's ok - i'm just happy to finally be home :)

til next time...

the hunt is on.

so, here we go, apartment hunting.  while i loved house hunting soooo much, our house was the third house we saw on the first day of hunting.  so that was pretty fast.

but here we are in boston, and since we just got here, all the apartment hunting i have been doing until now has been online.  it's not very helpful.  so since the day we got here (2 days ago) we have been on the hunt.  we saw once place on the 26th, one place this morning... and then we stopped at a building in the south end that i have been emailing for two months.  and you know what?

IT'S OUR NEW BUILDING!

we just put the application in today... so i don't want to say much else until we get the approval.  but it's gorgeous, and i can't wait to share pictures.  so now, it's just about waiting!

hopefully i'll have news to share soon, but in the meantime... stay warm :)

xoxo

welcome to massachusetts

well, we finally made it to massachusetts.

we live here now.

but we are up in the most adorable town you've never heard of - great barrington.  we are holed up in a little farmhouse for christmas, watching movies, catching up, drinking and laughing.

this is the best pic i could get as we blew past the NY border into MA

here's a few quick pics to catch you up on the last few weeks since i've blogged:

my sister anne came out from tennessee for graduation

I GRADUATED.       :)

my parents threw a brunch for me at my fave restaurant after graduation

we threw our annual christmas party/goodbye party for all our friends

goodbye dinner with my best girlfriends all together [almost]

we had a very tearful goodbye with our house...

and we packed up our cats and drove from denver to mass.

since i am now not working or attending school lots of updates will be coming... but for now i am putting on love actually, wrapping gifts, and drinking champagne.

merry christmas to all!

DONE.

announcement:

i am done with school. forever.

i turned my paper in today after spending over an hour editing it.  i can hardly believe it - i kind of feel like i am in shock or something.  i was hoping that it would feel like all my stress just melted away... but with the move and the party coming up there is just no chance of that happening.  but i do feel less stressed.  i don't think it's really going to hit me until graduation on saturday, to be totally honest.

i want to say so many things to all the people who helped me.  but right now i am so tired i can hardly type this... so we'll save it for another day :)

finally.  goodnight all!

i think i'm going to boston.

so as soon as i got home from class i put on pandora for some background study music.  (fyi: my go-to station is 'early jazz radio.'  it's amazing.) 

anywho, this is the first song that came on:

if you can't see it, that would be 'boston' by augustana (don't judge; it came up on she & him radio).  so, the song may be a little a little depressing, but it was just a good sign for me.  all the time i kind of go back and forth on this whole move to boston thing, but i have been pretty optimistic and excited lately.  and i love finding little signs from the universe that my life is headed in the right direction - especially in times of change.