Project: Basement

This weekend we (OK, well mostly Josh) worked on the basement. As a reminder, this is what the basement looked like when the house was on the market:




Here's what it looks like now, after adding our own furniture, some new curtains and lighting, & our computer and TV:







I think Josh tackled this so he had a nice place to watch football this weekend. :)

Project: Dining Room

Here's a room we can almost check off the list of things to improve / redecorate: the dining room. We recently purchased a dining room furniture set and accessorized it. We're pretty happy with it, and here's a peek at how it looks in the dining area:



We have a couple more chairs and a leaf for the table. We can comfortably seat six or more in the dining room. We still need to hang some things on the wall, but we bought the hardware to do that today so that will be completed soon.

More Interior Home Shots

Here are some interior shots of our new home from when it was on the market. We'll call these the "before" shots. Hopefully some "after" shots will follow soon, once we've completed some projects.

Living Room:

Dining Room:

Kitchen:

Upstairs Bedroom:

Upstairs Sitting /Landing Area:

Basement Living Area / Bar:

Basement:

Bathroom on Main Floor:

Home

Here it is...

From the front:


from the side:



the backyard:

Musical Apartments

When our temporary living arrangements in downtown Minneapolis expired in early June, we needed to move somewhere reasonably priced with two bedrooms. The new place needed to accept these guys



and it also needed to have a washer and dryer in the unit. We chose a place in Plymouth, MN, which was just rated the best place to live in the United States by Money Magazine (http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bplive/2008/). Neat, huh? Unfortunately, we don't really love it in Plymouth. It probably has something to do with the fact that we don't love our current apartment.

We had our household goods (from MI) delivered to our Plymouth apartment in early June. Right now, there's stuff everywhere! We are using our 2nd bedroom as our storage unit, as well as our 2nd bathroom. We even had to use our extra space in our kitchen for storage. There's stuff stored in the living room, too. There's just nowhere to put anything.

We look forward to the day when we can move on to something that feels a little more like home.

A Little Background Info

We started this blog in August, but should probably go backwards a few months to catch you up on how we got here. We relocated from Detroit to the Twin Cities in April 2008. The hardest part was leaving behind our family, friends, and our home.

We were fortunate to have a couple months of temporary living arrangements when we first arrived in Minneapolis. We lived in downtown Minneapolis, in the Loring Park area.

The city center was right outside our front door,

with access to lots of parks, lakes, restaurants, and shopping.

We were also within walking distance of the Metrodome, where we took in a Tigers vs. Twins game in early May.

We visited St. Paul to check out the Cathedral of St. Paul (http://www.cathedralstpaul.org/),

and Summit Hill.

We had to move along to our next place in early June, which was a whole new world compared to our great first months in Minneapolis...