House to home

Hello friends and neighbors!  How's life?  Well, we here in Virginia have been busy beavers.  Andrew and I have been unpacking like crazy and setting up the house.  Andrew got our lovely apartment in Alexandria right before we got married and my stuff was all shipped here via moving company in May.  When we came home from the honeymoon I hadn't seen the house, but I was very happily greeted by a very nice apartment and I was excited to set up housekeeping.  

We worked hard last Sunday to unpack all the boxes in the living room and kitchen so that we could properly entertain one of Andrew's friends from pilot training who was in the area so he could fly the president around (isn't that nice).  We cleaned and organized like crazy and got pictures hung and the main rooms figured out for the most part.  

This Sunday we worked like crazy to get our spare room cleaned out and unpacked so that my cousin Owen could come and stay with us for a week while he's on leave from the Army.  We're down to only a couple boxes of random stuff that Andrew needs to go through and we're pretty much completely unpacked and organized throughout the house.  We're still working on some more pictures for some picture frames and finishing a "Patriotic" wall in our hallway, but we're done for all intensive purposes.  

Let me take you on a tour of the house.  Here we have the left side of the hallway as seen from the living room.  Just beyond the folding door is our front door.  The folding door is our laundry area and across from it on the right side of the hallway is our hall closet.  (exciting!) This is a sweet picture of our "Family tree." It's one of our wedding pictures from some wonderful people in Hereford.  

 Next we come to the living room.  To the left is the hallway we just saw.  The pictures (as pointed out by Vandrew White) are all of Europe.  2 watercolors from Prague, 2 prints from Venice, an oil from Paris, and two Van Gogh prints.

 Here is Owen on the other side of the couch and behind him is our kitchen and dining area.

 Across from Owen is our fireplace.  Please note the awesomeness of my pinteresting.  Ok... So maybe the giant picture is called an "Engineer's Print" and is available for less than $4 at Staples.  I think they're only available in black and white... Anyway, I put it in a poster frame and then hung it from a curtain rod. I like it a lot.  It think it's pretty much the coolest thing ever.  I'm going to change the ribbon color to provide a little more dimension to the set up, but otherwise I'm pretty proud of myself.

Also notice the picture of Christ.

 When my birthday came around in April, Andrew asked what I wanted.  I told him the normal "a cool CD or a movie or something" answer and then really thought about it.  This Carl Bloch painting is my favorite picture of Christ.  It's taken from a verse in Luke discussing the atonement.  It says that "an angel appeared and comforted him." I find it amazing that Christ, the most powerful man of all time still required comfort as he went through the hardest time in his life. If God would do that to someone then how much more will God do for us in our trials.  Anyway, it's amazing.

I wanted to buy it after I graduated from BYU as a present for myself, but I was moving, etc so I didn't get around to it.  Then I went on my mission and when I came back I was poor, in grad school, and moving around a lot.  Long story short, Andrew got this picture for me as a birthday/graduation/wedding present.  It's lovely and I love getting to look at it in my living room every day.

This is taken standing in the dining area looking back toward the living room.  This framing of the Family Proclamation was done for Andrew and I by Brittany, my super cool former roommate and maid of honor.  She's so cool! 

 Behind the windows in the living room, or through the door in the kitchen is our balcony.  It's not super big, but it's a perfect size for our awesome free patio furniture.  I'm thinking about getting an ivy or something to put on the table.  It's so cute!  Also, funny story.

Owen and I picked up the patio furniture yesterday and set it up.  While Owen was putting the chair on the right down this crazy centipede thing crawled out from behind the cushion.  It was like the color of a scorpion plus the creepiness of a centipede.  It was just uber scary.  However, I'm sure it was not as scary after Owen kicked it off the balcony and following the 4 floor drop to the ground.  Needless to say as a barefoot individual I freaked out every time something moved out there for the next 10 minutes.

 Another view of the patio/awesome free patio furniture.

 Here is our little tv stand (which funnily enough houses CDs and has no tv on it...).  We've got a bunch of pictures of the Washer family and then on a side table about 3 feet to the right of it there are several pictures of the Moynihans.

 Here is one view of our kitchen.  Another funny story... I'm not sure if you can locate it in this picture, but Owen couldn't find the oven tonight.  Take a moment and play a little Where's Waldo and find the only oven-like thing in the kitchen.  He did find it, but said that it was tricky because the little window was covered by dish towels...Tricky dish towels.

 Here's the fridge.  I write the things I need in dry erase marker so I don't forget them when I go to the store.  It's so very effective.

 Here's a view from the living room at the top of the kitchen opening thing... I've got all my vases up there which is pretty cool and looks really pretty with light glinting off of them.

 There's Owen in the kitchen and a better view of the kitchen from the living room.  The War's End Kiss poster is actually in a different place now, but everything else is the same. That's a picture of the San Antonio Temple that the temple people gave us when we got married and a copy of The Living Christ and The Family Proclamation...We're so amazingly mormon now.  haha Also, to the right are pictures of Andrew and I's family.  Hooray for family!

 Inside the door on the right side of the above picture is the spare room.  To the right inside the door are these super awesome and amazing Ikea bookshelves that Andrew and I picked out the other day. Owen and I went and picked them up with his truck yesterday and built them and proceeded to put books on them.  Now they look like this.  Surprise! The bookshelves are the perfect size.  They go from the closet light switch on the left, part at the electrical plug in the middle and end precisely at the room light switch on the right.  Awesome.  Pure awesome is what that is.

 Here are the last 3 boxes that Andrew and I need to go through.  I'm pretty excited about the possibility of being totally unpacked.

 Following are two views of the guest bathroom from the door of it.  The entrance is to the immediate left of the fireplace or the immediate right of the spare room door.  We've chosen a "Texas" theme to decorate.  It's pretty easy to do as my last bathroom was Texas themed.  Also, I would just like to mention that I am totally in love with the shower curtain.  Andrew and I picked it out at Target last week when we got here.

The following two pictures are the view from our dining room window.  It's a nice pretty open view which is really nice because it lets me feel a little less claustrophobic.

Well... That's about it for right now.  Owen and I spent yesterday running errands-going to Ikea, to pick up patio furniture from moving ward member, going to the post office, etc.  Today Owen and I went to lunch with our friend Karin from the BYU days and then this afternoon after Andrew got home, she came over and we all played Skip-Bo.  Tomorrow it's to the sights of DC.  Hooray!!!  Good days!!!