Brand new home sweet home!

Got keys!!!

I really should be unpacking and organizing but I'm exhausted so the boxes can just wait. We got the keys to our new house last week Tuesday. We were excited to get into the new house as soon as we got the keys but Simon couldn't get time off work so we moved bit by bit after work each day. With the help of friends and some creative packing and stacking strategies, we actually got all our stuff into the new house faster than I thought. Plus our new place is less than 10 minutes away from our old townhouse so it wasn't that bad to drive back and forth a million times.

packed and loaded to go!

But moving is exhausting, I never want to move again! Good thing this new place is a place I never want to move out of.  Here's some pictures of our new home sweet home. This is what you see when you walk through the front door:

and the other side of the living room looks out onto the street and our little front yard. Right now, it looks like we are farming dandelions and trying to set new records in how tall grass can grow but we haven't bought a lawn mower yet so sorry, neighbours but it's on the to-do list.

 

I love bench window seats, a perfect place to snuggle up and read a book!

and then the dining room goes into the kitchen which is one of my favourite rooms of the house because it's so big and open and we've put Natallie's play kitchen in the space past the kitchen so she can cook dinner for her dolls and teddy bears while I'm cooking supper. Plus, the kitchen goes right onto the deck so Natallie can play outside and I can keep an eye on her while I'm still stirring something on the stove. This feature is going to be awesome but right now Natallie is still unable to play independently and rather cling to my leg whining "mom! mom! mom" but theoretically, I could watch her play and make supper if Natallie would just do her part and go play by herself for more than 3 minutes.

 

kitchen to the play area (Simon's foosball table and Natallie's kitchen)

 

kitchen opens onto the deck where Natallie plays happily for a nano second

Oh and the kitchen has 6 gas stove elements, I have never cooked in such a grand kitchen before. It seems so wrong to make Kraft dinner in such a nice kitchen. Oh and on one of the first evenings at the house, I was trying to cook chicken on the element and I realized too late the gas stove heat up a lot faster and my chicken started burning and set off the smoke alarm. I had no idea how to turn on the exhaust fan so I started pressing any button that was in close range and one of them made part of the fan actually fall down into my smoking chicken...this led to an all out panic that made me accidently knock over a bottle olive oil which made my smoking chicken situation much worse. So unable to turn the fan on, I jumped on the counter and started frantically waving an oven mitt near what I though was the smoke detector and yelling for help.  Natallie sees me on the counter and things this is great fun and starts whining and trying to climb onto the counter too. Simon eventually comes in with boxes to see me profusely waving an oven mitt near the diffuser (not the smoke detector) and takes charge. After opening some windows, re-attaching the exhaust fan, the smoke detector finally stopped. No harm done, other than the poor charred chicken!

 

Anyways, back to the tour of the house, going downstairs there is a one bedroom a basement suite that we hope to rent out to help us tackle this insane mortgage. If you know anyone who wants to live with really friendly landlords with the world's cutest toddler, let us know! I don't have any pictures of the suite yet because its just full of boxes right now.

 

So let's go upstairs to Natallie's room. I love Natallie's room. I think she thought she was on vacation the first few nights since she was sleeping in her play pen and we didn't have her crib set up til later. But now I even have the decals that used to be in her old room back up and she loves them. I think she missed them. When she wakes up in the morning, she checks that the squirrels and the owls and the birds are still there. It's so adorable!

This is what makes it home for Natallie



Natallie kissing the squirrel on her wall!

And this is our room. I feel like I'm staying at a posh hotel, it's got a great walk-in closet and an ensuite bathroom that has a shower and jacuzzi. Oh another funny story was that I was giving Natallie a bath in the jacuzzi tub and she was having so much fun splashing in a tub that was so much bigger than what she was used to. I thought it would be fun to turn on the jets not knowing that if the water level isn't higher than the jets that the jets just spray water at full force in a million different directions. I prompted Natallie to press the jacuzzi button and then she was caught in the crossfire of water pisons eveywhere! Poor Natallie! Scared the bejeeeebeezies out of her. Now she won't go near our tub with a ten foot pole. Oh well, it's our tub anyways, she's can bath in her own tub for the rest of her life.

There's a small balcony off our bedroom that faces south so we can see the city all light up at night.

 

Our garage is detached from the house and Simon has got big plans for it. Its a double garage but we're only going to park my car inside so he has the other half for his workbench, his tools and workout equipment. I'm really happy that he'll have a place to go to work-out and work on his creative projects.  There's also a little fenced in yard, just big enough for Natallie to run around or maybe one day have a dog? I don't think Simon is convinced on that one...I think last time we talked he could consider a rabbit if it stayed outside all the time.

 

We feel so blessed to have this home and if you're reading this, you're probably going to be over here soon. We hope we can use our new space to bless all we know and host years of bible studies, dinner parties, backyard BBQs, playdates and fill it with memories with families and friends.