The LOOOOOONNNNNGGGGG Move

So we gave ourselves a month to move from our apartment to our dream house. A month is a long time. But we are nearing the end. We've got the apartment nearly cleaned out and we are just adding the finishing touches on the house.

This past weekend we assembled furniture,

tackled some sewing projects,

raked our jungle of a back yard (this is the "before" picture)

and got the cats all settled in.

This coming weekend is our last moving weekend, so look for new and exciting "after" pictures next week!

Perfect! Well, almost...

Last week I traveled to Salt Lake City to present at the Imaging Science and Technology Archiving 2011 conference. Despite what I had heard about the city, I really loved it!

Sure, there were some wackos:

But it was also a gold mine of organic gourmet delicacies:

Spring had just sprung in Utah:

The snow-capped mountains were breathtaking:

And when I visited the temple they didn't even try to convert me (not sure if I should be relieved or insulted by this):

My only complaint was this:

Guess we won't be moving to Utah anytime soon.

A Nemisis for Rupert

There is a little cat who likes to sleep in our back yard. Rupert hates him. Probably in party because they look so similar. We call him Franco.

{Franco}

{Rupert}

Frienemies for life!

A Lifetime Supply of Bar Soap!

We inherited a lot of things with the new house. Curtains, curtain rods, vases, poison ivy... But perhaps the most awesome thing is the 9,000 bars* of soap left in our guest bath. They had a cute little apothecary jar of soap going when the house was staged. Little did we know they would leave that AND about a million extra bars* under the sink. Did I mention that we don't use bar soap?

* These numbers might be a bit exaggerated, but seriously! Look at all of that soap!

Two Messes, One Nicci

In addition to our move from an apartment to our first house, I am also moving offices into a brand new space! Some of these pictures are shots of our move at home and some are shots of the move at work. Can you tell the difference?

No? Yeah, me neither.

Stripes!

This past weekend was our second moving weekend and we finally finished our ambitious paint job in the front room: stripes!

This job took a lot of painter's tape.

I mean a lot.

But we are happy with the results! We also continued moving over furniture.

It's starting to look a bit like home!

Kitteez on Milwaukee

This past weekend, we thought we would take the cats over to the new house to start acclimating them to their new environs. After a thorough survey of the surrounds, they promptly found the smallest possible corner and they both shoved into it.

Commence awes.

First Weekend as Homeowners!

We closed on our Houston Dream House this weekend! Our amazing real estate agent, Cathy, gave us a lovely gift basket filled with a full Italian dinner (wine included), a lovely wind chime and vase and a gift certificate to Lowes!

The first thing we did was bring over tons of TP, a case of beer and a bunny.

Then we set to work cleaning and painting.

We will move in the weekend of May 21st. Until then we'll be working hard on more house projects and packing.