M.I.A. - AKA Moving In!

It has been a little quiet on the blog lately because I have been busy nesting.  That's right, folks, we actually moved into our new home.  We started off surrounded by boxes, and have slowly but surely been working on not being surrounded by boxes.  We have done a darned good job so far, but the last room to be unpacked is my studio, so alas, boxes remain there.  We are almost completely out of boxes throughout the rest of the house, but the garage is another story. Maybe next weekend we will be able to tackle that.  We do not have as many rooms here as we have had before, so the garage will have furniture in it for the duration of our time here. But, as the house was built in the 1930s, the garage isn't big enough to actually house a car at all. I am thinking that it would have held a model T or a horse, but that is about it.  So, if it is just used by us for storage, that isn't a big deal. I mean, let's be serious, in California, we had a three car garage, and it only held a car for about three months of the six years that we lived there! Our garage here will just hold furniture and shelving and Christmas decorations, but hopefully soon, no boxes. Oh, and the clothes dryer, I forgot it also holds the clothes dryer.  The washer, is in the kitchen, as is pretty common here.  It is also common here not to have a clothes dryer at all, but to line dry all your clothing on racks inside somewhere (rains too much to dry outside I think).  We even have a big rack with a pulley system in the garage, but the fact that it is currently filled with furniture and boxes would prevent us from being able to use it, even if I had considered that. Which I didn't. I mean, I'm all for trying not to be a spoiled American, but I'm drawing the line at not having a clothes dryer. I'm not a good enough planner for that business!

A few weeks ago, we started moving in. The movers delivered our stuff and proceeded to unpack as much of it as possible. I hid in a closet when they were hoisting armoires over the balcony to get them upstairs.  Not really, but I totally didn't watch!  They were able to do it, and all was well.  As is typical in any move, we have some broken things and are working with the moving company to get that all sorted out.  The majority of the damage appears to be the result of the movers in California packing cabinets, bookshelves, and armoires with the stuff still in them, or putting boxes in them. Sigh. It's always something, is it not?

As we are working on sorting out repairs and replacements and all of that, we have a bit of a shambles in Olivia and Sophia's room, and my studio is a disaster (but anyone who has ever seen my studio knows that is pretty much a constant state for that room anyway). But, we will continue working on things…

On the bright side, I'm going to share some pictures of our new home, and we actually have some pictures and things hung already!
The last look of the view from our temporary apartment in the Vauxhall area of London.

 The keys to our new home. No kidding. We have a skeleton key to our front door!  We have an additional lock. But, I am still amazed that one of our front door keys is a skeleton key!!

 Georgia unpacking her room.

Cleaning up our front garden was a bit of a job!

 This was taken a few weeks ago, and it is much improved since then, but this is our eat-in kitchen.

 
Breakfast in our new home! (and a peek at the kitchen)

My California girl outside in the back garden playing in flip flops. Spring has sprung here, but it ain't exactly flip flop weather!  As you can see in the photo on the right, her bike was not reassembled properly. Just one of the many little kinks we are still working out!

Chris and I toasting our new home. I even got him to smile and show teeth!

We visit the home improvement store every weekend for various items. The first trip included lightbulbs (US lightbulbs don't work here so we had to buy all new) and picture hangers and a cordless drill.  Our most recent trip included my first plants! I love plants, I'm just not very good at taking care of them. Apparently they like to be watered regularly. Whatever.  ;)  So, I found these awesome pink pots for my front door and bonus - they were on sale for 2 pounds 50 pence, which equals $4.10 each!  I picked azaleas to put in them because the round boxwoods I wanted were 29 pounds each (ouch!) and the azaleas were lots less expensive, and they have pink flowers on them, and they are hardy outside plants that perhaps I won't kill in the next month or two! Aren't they pretty?

Here is our parlor - what we would call a living room in the US. Above is the front window and the window seat is still a work in progress. I hope to make a cushion and throw pillows to make it extra cozy. The bench seat lifts up for extra storage beneath. It also makes a stellar hiding place for the girls when they play hide and seek! 

We are already making our mark on the place! We hung our wall of "S's" above the loveseat…

More next time...