Spring time

Springtime has arrived in Minnesota.  We have been a bit out of commission for a few weeks due to injuries and illnesses, but are back up and running now.  Ali has been keeping busy coaching a high school girls ultimate team, and Matt has been training for his triathlon.  Here's some snapshots of what we've been up to:

Making marmalade and yogurt in my double dutch ovens.  Our kitchen gets a lot of love.  

I got a sewing machine from my aunt and am diving into quilting (by which I mean I've sewed six squares together in two weeks).

Perennials sprung up in our yard!  It's been fun watching what comes up.  

We finally built some of the bookcases we got for Christmas and unloaded our books.

We also got a grill to put on our awesome treehouse deck.  

Settling into our house

We closed on a house in Minnetonka at the end of the year.  Being homeowners has been great so far.  We have been paying bills, doing little construction and maintenance things, and generally getting settled in what we hope to be our long term home.


Here are some photos of the house before we moved all our stuff in.  It's woodsy outside!  And jungley inside!

 

 And then we moved in and there were boxes everywhere. 

 

We painted all the bedrooms and one of the bathrooms upstairs, and are getting new carpet in on Monday.  We opted to remove the carpet instead of having the contractor remove it.  It turns out that this includes removing the carpet pads and the staples and lots of cleaning.  Luckily, we've had some great help from parents and siblings.

We now have a driveway to shovel.  It happily faces south, so we don't always have to exert a lot of effort.  My parents recently sold their house in the suburbs and saved shovels, rakes, hoses, and such for us.

 We like that the kitchen, eating area, and family room are attached.

Living in the living room (that's what it's for, right?) feels a bit like being in our 700 sq. ft. apartment in Boulder, but with plants!

 This photo is staged:

 

 This one too, though I'm sure you'd never guess.  My sister re-upholstered these chairs, and they look great in our house.

Matt got "Modernist Cuisine," a huge and beautiful coffee table book filled with food photos.

In other news, we have inherited a marlin that my grandpa caught.  He hangs on the walls and looks classy.  Unfortunately, there are only about two walls in the house long enough for him to fit on, so we are still figuring out where he will live for the long term.

 

We've recently been replacing lightbulbs and fixing some last minute things before the carpet goes.  It's been wonderful to have our own kitchen again.  We've been baking and cooking more like normal and now have ample storage space to keep all my supplies. We have also started hanging our artwork on the walls, and thus the place is starting to look like our home. 

After the carpet goes in, we can actually move upstairs, which should be super cozy.