FINALLY!!!!

Guess what?! We finally closed on our house in Cape Cod and have spent the past two weeks moving in and getting things adjusted. We still have a LONG way to go on the house, but all the boxes are unpacked and things are starting to feel like home.

The front of the house from the street.

Another view from the front. I think that Spring is going to bring quite a few beautiful flowering plants! We have lots of Rhododendron, 3 Azalea Bushes, a huge Crete Myrtle, a hydrangea bush and lots of little green bulbs poking their way through the soil! Can't wait until they bloom! This is the back of the house...exciting, I know. And yes, the white stuff on the ground is snow! I took these pictures last Thursday...I called home and MW said it was in the 70s in NC...made me miss home!!

And this is my view from my kitchen window. The cute little storage shed is ours and is wired with electricity (which we were excited about!).

We have a brick patio right outside the back of the house that has hedges around it for privacy...can't wait to have some BBQs when the weather warms up!! (oh and that is our bulkhead door to the basement to the right...G put the porch swing upside down over it for some reason...but the house has a full basement that is not counted in the square footage of the house. We've never had a basement before so we are super excited!! Its unfinished at the moment).

And the huge selling point for me...a KOI POND (that needs some TLC when it gets warmer)!!! haha, what people do with their property (no offense to my readers that have koi ponds in their backyard, this one just seems kind of random...I mean we live in an area where water freezes for 5 months out of the year!). Guess it is gonna be a swimming pool for the neighborhood kids...and Mason when he comes to see me ;) And Elsa (my niece that's on the way) when she is old enough! haha, it just makes me laugh.

Okay, now on to the interior. This is the kitchen looking towards the eat in part (the lighting was pretty bad for these, so if you get real close to your computer screen and squint you can make it out ;)

And then this is looking into the kitchen from the dining table (ignore all of the mess that is still laying around, we are still in a state of flux!).

And then this is a "bonus" room that is off of the kitchen/dining room. Its a beautiful room with lots of sunlight, but I'm still not really sure what I'm going to do with it...ideas?!!

The Living Room...I really didn't like the paint colors when we were looking at the house (I described it as a hotdog cart that exploded), but then when I moved my stuff in, I realized that it matched all of my accessories!!! haha go figure. As I told my friend...its colors that I would accessorize with, not put on my walls. So, the bold colors will be covered up (even though I do like the red wall...might have to think on that one!).

And then this is from the living room looking at the door into the kitchen (to the right) and then the stairs (to the left). And the front door is even further to the left out of the picture.

And this is our Master Bedroom...its HUGE! So huge that I am hoping that we might get a chance to put a small dedicated master bath into it!!! That's on the wish list (and so is taking down the wall between the kitchen and the living room...a girl can dream right?!)

From the other side of the room looking at the door.

Another view of our sleeping alcove.

The guest room...this is where you get to sleep when you come visit us!

The other side of the guest room...it has a roomy closet that will be perfect for all of the luggage you bring when you come visit us!!!

This is the office/sewing room/craft room/extra closet/library/I'm not sure what to do with it yet so I put it in here room.

The other side of the multi-function room (it WILL be repainted!).

And finally, the upstairs hallway, just to give you an update of the layout. The picture is taken from our bedroom...going counter-clockwise - to the right is the stairway (not pictured), then a hall coat closet, then the "office", then straight ahead is the guest room, then a hall linen closet, and then the upstairs bathroom is on the left. Hopefully you get the picture :)

Welp, that is a tour of our new home. So far we are LOVING it! Like I said, we have a lot to do on it...it just needs some love...but that is what we are here to do! I feel like we have made some major improvements in it in just the two weeks we have been here. I can't wait to see what we can do over the next 4 years!

And now that we are somewhat settled, we are ready for some visitors!!! We are open for business and taking reservations :) The Boston airport and Providence, RI airport are only 45 mins away and have reasonable ticket prices!! Did I mention that we live ON Cape Cod, one of the most sought out vacation destinations on the East Coast?! What more do I need to say to get you to COME VISIT US?!!!

The things we do while we wait...

Well March has arrived and we STILL are not in our house yet. One day it will happen (hopefully within the next week or two!), but in the mean time we have been finding things to do to keep us busy and entertained while we wait. Last weekend Garin had a 3 day weekend so we decided to go on a spontaneous road trip.

We left Cape Cod after Garin got home from work and drove all the way up to Stowe, VT (home of the HGTV Dream home...in case you watch that stuff...that is the first thing that comes to my mind when I hear Stowe, VT...think I've been watching way too much HGTV for my own good!). Then the next morning we got up and hit up Smuggler's Notch Ski Resort for some skiing/snowboarding. It was a very uncustomary warm day in Vermont, which made for a wonderful day of skiing...you could actually enjoy your ride up the ski lift instead of feeling like your face was going to freeze off! I actually have some pictures of this ski trip!

After a beautiful day of skiing/snowboarding, we decided that since we were only about 2 hours away from Montreal, Canada, that it would be fun to drive up for the night to check it out (we had considered this before we left the house so we brought our passports with us!).

South of the Border

We arrived in Montreal at about 7 and set out to find some food and check out the city. Montreal is part of the French speaking province of Quebec, so everything was in French, which was a little odd for me. Fortunately Garin minored in French in college so we were able to navigate our way around fairly easily (and I'm sure you could do it even if you didn't know any French because most people are bilingual, being that close to the States). Since it was a rather warm night, the nightlife was hoping and the main street was bustling! We ended up walking down the main street for more than a mile, taking in all of the shops (you could find most mainstream US retailers, plus a few more shady places as well) and enjoying some great people watching!

This was one of the pretty churches all lit up and decorated with winter snowflakes :)

The Art Museum was across the street from our hotel (FYI, we got an awesome hook up on Priceline's Name Your Price!), had some kind of large orb exhibit on its lawn. The music accompanying the light show was really quite eerie. It was really pretty though!

The next morning we went for a walk around the Old Montreal part of the city (which I favored more than the newer part!).
While we were there Montreal was having a neat festival called the "Festival of Lights" (in English). There was a whole block dedicated to community activities such as ice skating, concerts, an ice slide, and then various "activities" throughout the city.

Translated: Montreal Festival of Lights ;)

Outdoor ice skating rink

The famed, ice slide! Unfortunately it was closed for repairs. The previous warm day melted part of it and so they had to replace parts of it with new ice...see ice blocks below.

Another part of the festival was a Cheese Expo. They had about 50 vendors that were there giving out free samples of their cheese! It was a wonderful lunch ;)

After lunch we figured we'd seen most of what we wanted to see, so we started our trek back home to the Cape.

A welcome sight to our eyes, nothing like America!

On our way back home we made one more important stop...the Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream Factory in Burlington, VT. I mean, what's a trip to Vermont without a trip to Ben and Jerry's?! So we took a tour of the facilities and then got our obligatory free sample (we sampled some kind that was caramel ice cream with caramel swirl with caramel chips in it...can't remember the name...wasn't really a fan...now if they had substituted all of that caramel with Chocolate I would have remembered the name ;)

Picture with ol' Ben and Jerry :)

Welp, that was our brief but action packed trip. Come join us on one of our adventures sometime!