Life: Hiding under my rock

I'm alive, hard to believe I know. Some mornings I wake up and wonder if I'm actually living or just watching life happen around me.

Lets just say it's been a tumultuous month with more downs than ups since being back here. Unpacking and decorating have pretty much come to a halt as we decide what our next steps are.

I knew moving back here was going to be hard, but I didn't expect the issues and stress that I've seen this last month. If you had asked me 2 years ago where I wanted to be I would have quickly said that I wanted to be back here. That was me holding onto something...a memory if you will. A memory that had long passed, a fact that I knew, but I still held onto. It was all I had known for 24 years of my life. It was my stability, no matter how unstable my life actually was here. Deep down I knew that coming back here was not an option, but I held on. More and more reality set in. I knew there would be problems, but I never excepted them to show themselves in this way.

I haven't felt well since I got here, some of it due to the huge altitude change, but also the added stress and fear of being back. My last 2 years here were not happy ones. Indeed some might say they were tragic. It's something I dealt with and will continue to deal with, but being back here makes it that much harder.

I don't want to spend the next 3 years in fear. I can't and I won't, it's not fair to me or Nate. So we are in a holding pattern until things get smoothed out around here. That means happy decorating post and how to organize ideas will have to wait. I will try to post, but I can't make any promises. Right now we are in the process of moving forward. Hopefully it won't take too long as Nate and I are needing a happier month. And maybe...just maybe we'll be back with better, happier news!

Decor: Half bath

In our last house we had a half bathroom downstairs. It wasn't very big, but we chose to have fun with it and painted one wall in a bright blue. We kept the accents neutral with black and white.

We wanted to do something similar in our new half bath because we really liked the black and white pieces that we had. So instead of changing the accent colors we decided to go with a whole new wall color.

Our half bath in this house is very long and narrow, with the toilet facing the sink. Which gives us one very long wall. This is the wall that we will paint.

Pretty much the day after we got here we bought paint samples. I was really leaning towards a bright kelly green, though one aqua blue did make it into the mix. Funny enough when I posted a photo with the paint swatches on my FB wall everyone went straight for the aqua.



Out of the four colors we decided to go with the green on the far left. It is the perfect brightness and doesn't have as much yellow in it as the one next to it. 

In fact for all of the paint swatches we have around the house, this was the first color to be chosen for a room (then we decided on navy for the guest bedroom). 

Here's the mood board that I came up with quickly to give an idea for what we are wanting in the bathroom:



The green is Behr's "Formal Garden", it's bright, fresh and exactly what we wanted. The bath rug is a carry over from our last bathroom and is from Target. We also want to update the faucet for the sink, which is actually a nice pedestal sink. And we want to get rid of those awful, cheap looking "Hollywood" dressing room lights. We're still not sure what kind of lighting we'll go with, but a little crystal bling never hurt anyone! Something else that we may end up doing is moving the towel bar (seen in swatch photos). It sits pretty much in the middle of the wall and it's unattractive. If anything we'll get a towel ring and move it closer to the sink. Plus it will free up the wall for art...which I'm thinking I'll keep black and while.

This is probably one of the easiest rooms for us to work on, but I think the paint and new fixtures will make for a fresh new look. Which is great because it will be one of the rooms that anyone coming over will see/use.

Life: Settling in

We're finally in our new home and as of last night we have internet! We got here on Sunday after a long three day drive filled with Kansas and some  car troubles.

Monday and Tuesday were filled with address changes, prepping for our household goods, figuring out what needs to be fixed right away around the house and thinking about paint colors.

Wednesday our household goods showed up. Everything went amazingly smooth due in part to the amazing employees with United Van Lines. If you live in the Ohio/Illinois area we highly, highly recommend Planes United.

We were able to get the living room mostly unpacked Wednesday evening, which felt good. But we are still faced with the daunting task of getting things to fit in the house. This time around we are living in a smaller house, so we won't have room for some of our furniture and other items. That means we'll be getting a storage unit.

Honestly I'd rather get a bigger house, but in the long run that is a silly idea as we may not be staying here for more than the required 3 years. By that time Nate will be able to get out of the military and currently that's the goal. But that's a whole other topic. So yeah, while we would like a bigger house, with a better kitchen, we will make due. We can do a lot of little things around the house to make it better. Along with that we have future  flooring and kitchen reno plans.

I'm working on getting pictures taken as we set up each room so that I can do blog posts about it. Though it may take some time, as the altitude adjustment is kicking my ass. After 24 years of living here and not fully understanding the effects, I finally get what it feels like to have the altitude hand my ass to me daily. All due to the fact that we gained 5500+ feet.

Today there will be more unpacking with a possible trip to IKEA to look at some furniture ideas for our living space. The more the ideas in my head come together and translate well into our home, the better I will feel. I'm ready to have this place be a home and have it decorated the way that we have been dreaming of.



Life: Boxing (up a life)

I'm alive.

Promise.

Currently we are surrounded by boxes full of our life and memories here. We still have another day of packing ahead of us as well. It's always odd to have people come in to pack up our stuff, but I'm glad we don't have to do it ourselves. Prepping alone is enough to send me over the edge. Stress is commonplace for me while moving. In fact this move has been the most stressful one even though it will be our third.

Normally we'd have to deal with moving and Nate would have to out process from his job. This time Nate had to finish his thesis, go to class, defend his thesis, take finals, go on TDY, graduate and out process.

Busy.

But we're almost done. And on Friday we hit the road.

Before I go, here's a little look at our life in boxes.

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The LoveSac in its moving bag

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Our "hoarder" bathroom full of things we're moving ourselves.

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Hallway.

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Kitchen.

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Living room.

I don't know when I'll get back to the blog. We'll be traveling for a bit and who knows when internet will get set up. So yeah, don't go anywhere cause I will be back!


Life: That whole moving thing...

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...Yep it's happening! That's what our bedroom currently looks like. Yes we are living the glamorous life of college students at almost 30 years of age (no offense to college students). Once upon a 2 days ago our bedroom looked a lot like this...

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We had a love hate relationship when it came to our furniture. We loved how it looked and the quality was great. But the furniture was huge and it barely fit into our current bedroom and will not fit nicely into the home we're moving into, unless we want to crawl over the bed to get to things. The dresser itself was massive, but had awful storage. That's what happens when the drawers are made from solid 1 inch thick slabs of wood. The drawers also didn't pull out very far so you were stuck with shoving your hand to the back and hoping you found what you wanted. The furniture worked perfectly in the large bedroom we had in our last home. Yet for some reason we never took into consideration that we would move and most likely end up in a smaller bedroom. I think that was me trying to ignore the fact that the military moves us about every 3 years...

So after much deliberation we decided that we should sell our master bedroom furniture. It wasn't an easy choice and I almost changed my mind last night...after we had taken it all apart and moved it downstairs. Which wasn't easy mind you. At 10pm we ran through our likes and dislikes all over again. We looked at some furniture ideas and I calmed down. We wanted this change and it's good for us. I know it doesn't seem like a big deal and it really isn't in the larger scheme of things, but it's something we just needed to do.

Though currently we'll be living with a mattress on the floor. For 3 weeks. Let the good time and packing roll...