6 month mark and some new color

Where have I been... again?  Vacation this time.  Siesta Key, Florida for 5 glorious day.  Yes, it was as good as it looks. :) 

But now that I'm back it's time for an update...the 6 month update to be exact.  We have been living in our home for over six months now.  I can't believe it.  I suppose it's one of those things that you assume that when you move in: the place will feel 100% yours because, legally, it is.  For us it was quite the contrary.  The first 3 months or so of living here, it didn't feel like our home.  It felt like someone else's home that all our stuff was in and we were just crashing for a while.  Sometimes if I closed my eyes, I could picture the old owners things filling up the home still.  I had this feeling that it was a well lived in home, everything in it's place.  Meanwhile we were still trying to figure out a place for everything.  It was like putting on a worn-in shoe that was on someone else's foot for years.  Its the right size, but our feet have different print.

But, but when I got back from Spain, I had that ah-ha moment.  The epiphany if you will.  Home is where my family is, but for the first time, this place truly felt like ours.  A little time away must have sealed the deal.  I think I also realized the changes we have made to make our place a home, and how much we've put our stamp on it's walls since we've moved in that I saw with fresh eyes when I came back.  I think back to this video that I made the day we closed.  We were very excited, but it clearly wasn't our place just yet:

I made this video to show you what it looks like today... 6 months after it became ours.  If you have followed our blog at all, you've probably seen most of what this video contains, so I apologize that you can't get 10+ minutes of your life back...



If you can't/don't want to watch the video, here is something else we I have been working on...Charlie's office.  He was quite opposed to my random desire one Wednesday to paint, but we went along with it and let me pick the color.  Valspar's Drizzling Mist.  It's a shade darker than our bedroom and two shades darker than our den.  Yeah, I'm really in love with that part of the color wheel I guess ;)

Here is the before:

And the after:

Here's something else that I did for Charlie as a surprise for the office... I was in Goodwill and for $3.99 I spotted an awesome, black shadow box from Pottery Barn.  I knew it would be perfect for displaying this karate belts that he worked so hard to earn and were just collecting dust in the closet.  So I surprised him with it.  He was mildly happy with it :)