Pursuit of Happiness: We're In!

First of all, let me just say how awesome you guys are! I had such an amazing response to my last post. Between the comments, the tweets, and the emails, I just wanted to hug all of you. Thank you so much for sharing your experiences; it really meant so much to me.

If it's alright with you, I'd like to skip around a little bit here in my ongoing series of how we bought our home. I have a lot more information to share, but after nearly a month-long hiatus from blogging, I figured I owed y'all something a little better than just me whining about the aches and pains of closing (although the story of our mortgage broker is a pretty good one...stay tuned).

So how about some photos of our new house instead?!

We've been unpacking for a few weeks now, and it's finally starting to feel like we're settled. Some of the rooms are still a bit incomplete, so I'll just save those photos for another post. For now, here's (most of) our new home!

First, the foyer.

When you first walk in, the dining room is to the right (still a work in progress), and the den is to the left. It was a playroom with the previous owners. We'd like to turn it into a library/study, but first we need to save up for some kick ass shelving. For now, it's the big empty room where Chelsea keeps a lookout for squirrels.

Then, you walk down a hallway (with a half bath on the right...figured that wasn't worth taking a picture of) to find a wide open space. On one side is the kitchen.

On the other side, we have the living room.

Behind the living room is my favorite room in the house: the sunroom.

This is my favorite spot in the house:

 Just a little bit of color starting to appear on the leaves outside:

The sunroom leads out to a two-story deck (the house is built on a really big hill...well, big for us East Coasters).

The deck looks out over a woodsy yard.

Finally, here's the front of the house...complete with Chelsea watching for squirrels.

What do you think? Needs more Halloween decorations, huh? I can't wait to finish decorating and show y'all the rest of it!