Setting up House

So, I'm home. My new home, that is, in Baltimore County Maryland. I'm still a little bit amazed that I drove across the continent last week. Still settling in.

The apartment is... well, I'm still undecided. The bones are good, but it's clear shortcuts have been taken over the years, and it's not as quiet as we'd hoped. I'll blog more about neighbours later, but lets just say it turns into a Mexican Karaoke Disco around here on weekends. It's not as bad as it sounds though, because it means we don't have to worry too much about the noise we make. Besides, some of those karaoke singers aren't half bad. (but most of them are ALL bad)

When I first got here, I could tell that Sean had done a lot of unpacking and assembling. The living room was basically unpacked, as was the kitchen.

The kitchen is large for a rental apartment (big enough to fit a 4-top kitchen table), but it has about one quarter of the kitchen storage I'm used to, and very limited counter space. I opened the cupboards, and Sean has them well organized, but they're already full... and there's a lot more to go.

Then, I saw the bedrooms. Yikes. These are some of the empty boxes (Sean broke them down shortly after this was taken and we took them out to recycling).

These are just a few of the boxes waiting to be unpacked. Sean's been hard at work, but the truth is, we've run out of places to put things. You may have noticed there's not a lot of furniture... very observant to you. Let me show you some of what we have.

Our media center where we watch TV & movies, play Xbox 360, listen to music and relax.

My office, where I email, surf the web, and blog.

Our bed, where we sleep. (Don't worry- it folds out!) Also the dining room (chairs which double as tv trays not shown) 

Alright, it's not quite as bad as that. We have a kitchen table which is currently being employed as a computer desk & breakfast nook. We have some cabinets and bookshelves. But that's pretty much it. We didn't bring a whole lot with us, because we weren't sure what was going to fit, and it was going to be cheaper to buy new furniture than it was to ship the old (much of which were hand-me-downs and didn't owe us anything).

So what did we do this weekend? Quite a bit. We ordered a butt-load of furniture for one; bed, mattress, chest of drawers, night tables, desk, more bookshelves, etc. This will be the first shipment of several as we paint and get an idea of what we want to do with the space. We've decided to take the second bedroom as ours because it's quieter, and use the master bedroom (which is almost twice as big) as a media room. It'll have a desk with the computers, a sofabed and tv. We'll see what else we can fit in there.

For those of you counting, that means we're going to have 2 guest beds... enough to accommodate a whole family... *hint* hint* Quinns, Brayfords and Kings! We already have some friends who have made plans to come and visit and I can't wait to have them here!!

We also got some phone lines (land & cell) set up, so if you don't already have our numbers, and you want them, let me know!

The rest of the weekend was quiet because we both needed it to be. We did some grocery shopping, a little housework and just spent time together. Nice to be able to do after so long!

Finally, a big thank-you to everyone who followed me across the country, leaving encouraging comments and emails!! It felt good connecting with home every night and sharing my adventures. I'm going to continue blogging both the amazing and the monotonous parts of life here in 'Bawlmer'. I hope you all stick around for the ride and keep in touch! Leave me a note in comments if there's something you'd like me to write about!