What we've been up to the past 4 months!

My, how the past 4 (plus) months have flown by!!  It's been a very busy summer but we're finally feeling settled in our new home... San Ramon, California!

Last time I blogged, we were starting to melt in the Houston heat and humidity.  Just about the time it was starting to get unbearably hot, Marco got a call from his old manager at Symantec asking him if he'd be interested in taking a position in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Marco was feeling frustrated with his work at Worley Parsons and hating the long, daily commute (and all the tolls), and the girls and I missed having him work from home.  Marco had loved working at Symantec and he had been wanting to move back to California for the past six years or so (he started talking about it like six months after he moved to Utah!), so we decided to go for it!

As excited as we were about the move, we were a bit worried about the financial ramifications.  We weren't sure how expensive it was going to be to break our lease, plus we thought we were going to have to repay Worley Parsons for moving us to Houston (since Marco didn't stay with the company for the two years they required), AND pay to move ourselves 2000 miles across the country.  I guess it was all meant to be though, because our out-of-pocket expenses were minimal.  Marco found a loop-hole that made it so we didn't have to repay the moving costs for moving to Houston.  And after getting a few quotes from moving companies, we decided to save ourselves $5k and do it ourselves! (with the help of a couple of day-laborers at Home Depot :)

Marco doubted me... he didn't think we could make everything fit.  I only got 2 hrs of sleep the night before we left, but I stuffed things in every nook and cranny and got it all in there!





Our helpers, Ramon and Alejandro

It wasn't fun... it was definitely much easier first time around when someone came and packed up the whole house, loaded the truck, and we just flew to our destination... but honestly, it wasn't that bad and it was definitely worth $5k in savings.  (Plus Ramon gave Marco detailed instructions on how to ensure that we have a boy next time, which was really priceless!)  I'm glad we decided to spend a little of our savings on hiring day-laborers, because we loaded up the truck on the hottest day of the year and they did most of the work for us!

We had a couple of pieces of furniture that got scratched, but luckily all our furniture is cheap IKEA stuff that will need to be replaced in the next couple years anyway.  Surprisingly, I only had one thing that broke...

 

Anyone know the best type of glue for repairing porcelain?

Scotch tape is doing the trick for now! (Does it look totally tacky?!)

 

It didn't take too long to get all unpacked and organized in our new place.  In fact, I noticed it was much easier to get unpacked and organized here than it was in Texas, and I think it's because this house is SMALLER!  That might seem odd, but in a small space you're forced to get organized and stay organized.  Our house in Texas was nearly twice as big as our place here, yet in the 4 months we lived there we never got totally unpacked.  We had more space than we needed, so we just stuck all the boxes of stuff we weren't using in the spare room and in the garage.  The townhouse we're living in now is a mere 1200 square feet, so there wasn't anywhere to just store boxes.  I felt totally claustrophobic until everything was unpacked and in it's place.  Maybe I'm neurotic, but I really love having a place for everything and everything in its place! 

 

So happy to be getting organized!!

 

So here are a few pictures of our front room. I think my favorite thing about it is the cute little play space beneath the stairs... the perfect spot for the toy kitchen Marco made the girls, and for their ride-on and push toys.
 

These are some of my favorite accents from the front room... the big globe I found at a thrift store here and the little one was Marco's piggy bank when he was a kid. I got the cool fabric-covered vase on clearance at TJ Maxx YEARS ago. I've always loved it, but it never really fit in with my decor until now. And I found the cute tray at Target. It's great for corralling remotes and controllers, and also for rolling dice when we play board games.

One of the things I love most about our place is the nice open flow between the front room and the kitchen and dining area.  Even though this place is 300 square feet smaller than our house in Utah, it FEELS bigger because of the great flow...



View from the front door
(living room to the left, dining room behind that, and kitchen to the back left) 

View from the front room to the dining room

View from the dining room into the kitchen

 

 

Another thing I love about this house is all the storage it has!  The cover of last year's IKEA catalog had the best quote... "A home doesn't have to be big, just smart!" and this house is so smart!  It's a smart layout with smart storage everywhere...

 

 

I have not one, but TWO coat closets (one on each floor)!!  I also have a REAL linen closet for the first time ever! (Actually, I guess we kind of had a linen closet in our master bathroom in Texas, but it was so shallow and narrow that it would barely hold towels!)

 

 

We have some great storage on our back patio, including a closet that is the perfect size for our double stroller.  I'm thinking about putting a curtain across the open storage though, so it looks a little prettier.

 

 

I wasn't qute sure I could make everything fit in the kitchen, but I actually ended up with more space than I even needed!  We have this awesome laundry closet that separates the front room for the kitchen and it makes the perfect storage pantry!  I've decided I really love having the laundry area in the middle of my living space too because it helps me actually get my laundry done :)  Oh, and I also LOVE the smart storage area underneath the breakfast bar... it's the perfect place for storing all our arts and craft supplies!!  It's also the perfect hang out spot for our mischevious little munchkin...

 

 

Upstairs I created some special storage in the girls' room.  They have a nice big closet that takes up one wall of their room. (I've decided that I really prefer the "wall closet" to the walk in closet... such a more efficient use of space!!)  I knew I wouldn't need all that space for clothes and we needed a place to store the box for our massive flat screen TV (so that we can protect the TV next time we move), plus we needed more toy and book storage.  So here's the solution I came up with...

 

 

There were clothing rods on the right side of the closet, with a storage tower in the middle.  We stacked our TV box and all the random electronic boxes that we won't need again until we move at the back of the closet on the empty left side.  Then we bought the biggest Billy bookcase at IKEA and placed it in front of the stack of boxes.  It was the perfect depth and width to fit in the closet, hiding the ugly boxes, and giving us the extra storage we needed! 

 

Here are a few other photos of the girls room...

 

 

The bedroom already had one blue wall, and at first I thought we'd have to paint it a different color, but it ended up being the perfect backdrop for the wall-mounted flower lights.  Probably the best thing about the room is the new loft bed!  The girls are able to keep their babies, strollers, and dollhouse under there, as well as book rack and bean bag for a perfect reading nook!  Of course, the slide attached to the bed is probably the girls FAVORITE feature!!

 

Our room also had blue walls, and I thought about painting them too, but they turned out to be kind of a perfect neutral to brighten up all the browns we have on our bedding and furniture...

 

Can you guess who's side is who's?

 

 

Again, I love the wall closet.  It's such a smart use of space and the perfect size for us!  The only thing I don't love about this room, and the whole house for that matter, is the lack of overhead light fixtures!  Does anyone know why they put outlets on switches instead of installing light fixtures in the 70's?!!  Luckily we have a lot of good natural light, but opening the blinds to let the light in also lets the hot sun in, so I doubt we're saving any money on electricity by not having ceiling lights in every room.

Our third room upstairs is our office.  We sold all of our office furniture except for our filing cabinet and chairs when we moved.  I had been wanting to install the IKEA Stolmen system in our office (the white one, on the right) since we lived in Utah, but didn't have a good reason to get rid of the office furniture we had until we moved.  I love how clean and modern it is!  I wish I could have gotten a better shot of it, but it's a small room and I don't have a very wide angle lens.  I also love the desk we got for Marco... it fits perfectly under the window, is cool and modern, and only cost $69!!!!  



 

More smart storage!

No office is complete without Star Wars memoribilia!
Can you spot the 3 pieces here?

Another awesome thing about our office is the great storage... the closet for junk and the shelves for supplies and memoribilia!

Our bathrooms have great storage as well...

My favorite feature of our upstairs bath is the handheld shower.  It's the only way to really rinse a kid's hair clean!!

We have a second half-bath downstairs, but it's too small and my lens is too narrow-framed to get a decent picture.  It's a very "smart" design though, because it's hidden under the stairs and has lots of storage under the sink.

So that's about it for the photo tour of our new place.  It's small, but smart and we love it!!