Return from Blog Hiatus, part one

I have been on a long hiatus from my blog. There have been many changes in my life since my last post. Where to begin? Where to begin? Since I don't want to sit here typing all night, I'll start slowly and significantly:

Big change in life #1: My lovely man and I bought a house together. Our two households have become one. I now live with boys. (said man and his son) (and three male cats). Which is different. Very different. For example, tidiness is no longer a given in my life. There are evenings when I follow a trail of items from the door to the bedroom. Now my female brain begs the question: "If you were headed to the bedroom to begin with, why not wait until you got there to disrobe and/or drop items from your grip?" But the biggest difference is just how lovely it is for us to be a family here under one roof. All the little weirdness of males is nothing compared to all the wonder of being together.

Lots of work has gone into this house to make it ours. We moved essentially two blocks from where we originally lived. Three years ago I moved across country from Arizona to Illinois. I have to tell you, I think it was easier to move across country than to move two blocks! Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth you drive, carrying loads. Apparently the mindset is that since the move is that close than it should be easy to knock out yourself. After a week of this, we hired a crew!

The entire house (except for one room) needed to be repainted to my taste. Lovely lovely man allowed me to choose all colors and his basic line was "if you like it, I love it". Gotta say, I love my choices of room colors. Then the unpacking. Then the decorating. More unpacking. Unfortunately we have a full basement, so too many boxes were disposed of (outta sight) down there, so believe it or not, we're still not fully unpacked. Lots to discard and donate and re-box left. The plan has been to use the cold days of winter to accomplish this. We've had a couple cold months of winter here so far and few efforts have gone into this, but there's still plenty of winter left, right?

Here are some before and after shots:

Above is living room before we started painting and decorating. Below is living painted Santa Fe Boulder and decorated. Dark chocolate half wall before:

After:

Dining room to kitchen view before: After:Above view to dining and kitchen before; below is after. There are a some additional changes that have been made that are not photographed yet, but I will continue to update as we go. It's a lot of fun putting a new home together! It's a joy to come home to a new home together!