Mainly Moved

"I love it," I decided, standing in the rear of a bargain store rather than the lovely showroom we'd wandered an hour before. I was staring down at the hutch in this first photo, squinting carefully as I opened both glass doors and opened the drawers. "It might be a tiny bit too dark for the other woodwork, but I still think it's lovely."

"On sale," Mom noted happily, pleased that she'd found the piece tucked away in a corner. "And it would hold Grandma's china."

Furniture for the dining room at the front of the house was low on my prioritized list of things to buy, but I did want a place for that china. So we had the nice workers roll the hutch toward the front and I waited to pay.

"This is gorgeous," one clerk said. "Is it being held?"

"I'm buying it," I piped up when nobody answered her. "For my new house and Grandma's china." She smiled at me, then looked wistfully at my hutch and I soon hustled it protectively toward Mom's car. Dad and I hefted it into the dining room and they sat and watched while I unpacked dishes into their new home.

If you came to visit (and, really, you should), and we moved toward the back of the house after admiring my hutch, we'd be in the small kitchen. While there are two pantries (one is in the photo and the other is directly across from the refrigerator), gas stove (I grew up cooking with gas and like it much better than electric), dishwasher, and built in microwave, the counter and cupboard space is much less than what I had before. But the glass doors open onto the lower deck and I've made my peace with the lack of space. It's not like I cook all that often anyway. (We'll order out when you come to visit - it'll be fine.)

"Be careful," I told the movers fretfully as they moved the kitchen table inside. "It's older than I am."

"It's young then," one of them panted, and I offered him a distracted smile, thinking that I'd toddled over to one of those chairs and pulled it over on my small head. Then I cried and cried because the chair had attacked me. We've since had a friendlier relationship and I've grown fond of the old - and slightly worn out - set. But it made it safely and sits in front of the glass doors.

Oh, and that's Grandma when she was younger. Wasn't she lovely? There's another portrait of her and Grandpa in the central hallway. Oh, and I just bought those new valences! I didn't like the old ones.

When I moved into an apartment my junior year of college, my roommates and I decided we needed art for the living room wall. I paid for it and have hung it in every living room I've had - it was the first piece that got hung on the wall and sits right between the two living room windows.

We shopped for furniture from which to admire the gas fireplace come winter. We failed miserably. Everything seems too uncomfortable or big or ugly or expensive. So it's nothing but boxes and plants and a few spare pillows for the poor living room.

While I bought this house for the master bathroom, one of my favorite parts is the way the main floor loops around. The dining room leads into the kitchen that flows to the living room that then connects to the office. Chienne and Sprout will sometimes do laps as they play. I find myself smoothing my palm over the wood in the stair rails, thinking the gleam quite lovely. Standing in the office, I could climb up two steps to the landing, then could continue up to show visitors around the upstairs bedrooms or continue down the next two stairs into the living room.

We hung pictures at the bottom of the stairs yesterday, carefully creating a 2x2 grid that didn't look crooked. (It's harder than it sounds. Honestly.) The bedrooms are coming along, as is the office. I've order $1000 worth of shelves to hold books (high priority!) and they should arrive next week. Likewise, the fence gets completed on Tuesday and the dog door goes in soon after. But for now, I'm content with how things look. And tired enough for a nap before tackling a bit more cleaning tonight.