While the hubby's away...

... the wife was hard at work! :)

Two of my three goals were accomplished this weekend while Nate attended a perfusion conference in Charlotte, NC this weekend.

Goal #1: Rake the leaves in the front yard - Complete

BEFORE:

 AFTER:

 












Goal #2: Unpack everything in the upstairs, clean/organize all of the closets and drawers, and feel like we actually have a bedroom - Complete

(This is our bedroom.  You can finally see the floor and ALL of our clothes are clean AND put away!)

Goal #3: Mop the basement floor and organize storage - Not quite.  I purchased shelving for the storage room in the basement but ran out of steam so will have to wait on this project for another weekend.

Fall decor

While we still have a lot of projects to do around the house, I was dying to do some decorating, so the house now finally has a feeling of fall.  I love it - and can't wait to decorate for Christmas now too!

 

Progress!

In our second weekend as home owners, the Cress' made the voyage to Ohio!  It was fun to prepare all three of our guest rooms so that Mom (Kayla), Grandma (Lorna), and Joseph drove from Iowa City to visit for the weekend and were great helpers.  Pictured here - each guest room during week 1.

This will be our primary guest room with an Ohio State theme...

This is our second guest room that will also double as my room for hobbies/ crafts and will store my excessive volumes of greeting cards and wrapping paper :)

And this is our third guest bedroom that we affectionately call the "Man Cave" that also doubles as an office.  Joseph slept on the futon pulled out while he visited with us.

And this is our guest bathroom with the shower curtain that we absolutely love!!

Mom was the perfect person to help us with all of the little questions we had as new home-owners - from door knobs to shortening mini blinds and more.  Pictured here - Mom working on the blinds to our back door.

We now have all new hardware at our entry - new door knocker, door knobs (much harder to replace than you'd think!) and doorbell.  Grandma helped us do a TON of dishes as we unpacked the kitchen and Joseph could probably count the stairs to our basement in his sleep from walking all of our overflow boxes down to them for us from the garage.  We love our family!  Pictured here - Nate learning to be a locksmith :)

Our new grill was assembled so Nate's friend Greg helped us by picking it up with his truck and bringing it to our house - so nice of him!  Nate celebrate our new grill with a delicious pork loin for dinner.

It was Grandma's first time to Cincinnati so we gave her a mini tour of the city, did some antique shopping, and of course, took a trip to Graeter's ice cream in-between football games on Saturday.  Later that evening, hell froze over... pigs flew... and the Cress' wore scarlet and grey!  We've decided they were the secret force that helped Ohio State beat Wisconsin.  What a game - Go Bucks!

Our biggest weekend goal was to clear the garage, and it was accomplished!  We now park both cars inside and it is WONDERFUL!

New Appliances and Visitors!

One of the wonderful things about having Chris come help us on our first day in our new house, was that she was able to be at the house for all of the deliveries while we were packing the apartment into the moving truck.  She is wonderful!

New fridge, washer and dryer... oooh la la!

Our second day in the house, Nate's sister (Gwen) and Dad (Randy), came down to Cincinnati to see our new home and help with the final loads from our apartment.  It was SO nice to have two extra sets of hands to finish up at our old place.

After my first expensive lesson as a home owner (wrong key on my keychain = no access to your home = locksmith), we unloaded the U-Haul for the last time.  Pictured below: Mike, our new friend, the locksmith.

Gwen was a huge help in getting our guest room and bathroom looking like the first two rooms to look "put together" - thanks!

The next big goal will be to tackle the garage and get cars in it in the next week...