September 7, 2021

Good Morning! Hubby is working and babies are asleep so I decided to start my laptop during breakfast and enjoy a warm cup of coffee. I have four thousand other things to do (like a ginormous pile of clean laundry to fold) but sometimes deciding to spend some time doing things you enjoy is be better than stressing about the boring stuff. I’m hoping that L stays asleep a bit longer so that I get some time to work out as well, which is hard to do during breakfast haha. 

This three day weekend went by fast. But we got a lot done, not as much as we would have liked to but at least something:)
On Saturday we went for a walk around the block like we always do and then we left Thor at home and drove to the beach. That beach town got completely destroyed during hurricane Michael (category 5) in 2018 but it looked like houses are slowly being built back up. This long beach was before that hurricane supposedly one of the most beautiful beaches with bright blue water and white sand. I guess a storm can change that. Still a pretty beach but nothing special (we did however stop at one of the first parking we saw, I think if we would have driven down further it would be nicer). It was super windy and we had kinda woken Lily up from her nap so she was a bit fussy, so not a super relaxed beach time but I still very much enjoyed it. I fed Lily for a few minutes under the umbrella, I dipped my toes in the water, sat on a sandy blanket with my two loves, can’t be much better than that. We only stayed for an hour since babies under 6 months can’t wear sunscreen and the temperature was rising. Just like our last beach day, we left when everyone else got there.
On our way home we stopped by a cute family owned coffee drive thru and got bagels and coffees.
The beach made us tired so we relaxed for a bit on the couch at home. In the afternoon we decided to check out a park 10 minutes away from our house. There was a playground for kids, pathways for easy hiking, workout and picnic stations. Pretty cute park. We didn’t walk too much since it was still pretty hot outside and there was rain on the way, but we will definitely go back to this park.

On Sunday, Jim put together a bookshelf that finally arrived. And then we stayed busy in the house. I actually don’t remember what else we did other than cooking dinner hahah. All I know is that we didn’t get that much done in the house that we should have, but whatever. 

And yesterday, Labor Day, we went for our morning walk and then drove to Home Goods and Hobby Lobby (and L had a poop explosion of course like always haha). We found some of the things we needed but I still need to buy stuff online. For example, I really want some nice pantry jars but I haven’t found what I’m looking for yet. Back at home I started to unpack the boxes of books. All my dance and yoga teaching books and teaching material has to stay in boxes until we have a book case for possibly the master bedroom where I might have a desk with the PC in the future (haven’t decided if I want one in this house, might just wait til our new house has been built and use my laptop for the time being, we’ll see).
As I was helping J put some things in our attic in the garage, the garden guys showed up. It’s funny in a way how all of a sudden you have people working in your yard, it’s definitely something I have to get used to and something I have to keep in mind when feeding Lily. Our grass looks soooo good now, it’s very green and fluffy. The main guy said when we hired them that he doesn’t want to do any other landscaping until maybe October, I guess rainy season isn’t ideal for planting things. But I can’t wait to have some palm bushes and palm trees around our house. And last week the HOA had a meeting and our fence was approved so hopefully that company comes soon and put that up and we can have some privacy.

It kinda looks like we’ve had an earthquake or a bomb go off in our house, nothing feels done, but at the same time I feel very at home here. I love having our own space without weed-smoking-2am-fighting neighbors on the other side of our bedroom wall. Neither of us thought that living in a community like this would fit us (we want more space in between neighbors and not so cookie cutter looking) but we quite enjoy it  

♥ Our little princess ♥

September 3, 2021

We have a dining table! I am 35 years old and have never owned a dining table before, hahah. So I’m excited:) When I had finished making lunch today and went to tell Jim to come eat, I realized that I had set everything up on the kitchen island hahahha. I totally forgot that we had a table and chairs now
We also have a bed frame. Jim put it together yesterday and it looks great and we slept so well last night. Too bad this was a night that Lily woke up twice and wanted to eat (she normally sleeps 8-10 hours/night), but then it was nice to be in a cozy bed to quickly fall back to sleep in between:)

I didn’t get a chance to do anything in the house today. I feel like I was feeding and playing with Lily all day and when J was done with work we drove to Winn Dixie (grocery store). So it looks like a complete mess here, like, worse than when we moved in. But, last weekend I finally organized Lily’s closet. It’s been pretty organized since day one but now I really made it easy to see everything she has.
This baby has sooo much clothes. There are two bags filled with bigger size clothes standing on the floor waiting to be washed and used, some hanging as well. And we have bought very little of babys clothes ourselves, people have been very generous She has grown out of so much clothes already. She’s in a weird clothing size now where she is too big for some clothes and too small for other, she doesn’t have a lot that actually fits her well now. So this weekend I might have to take some time to put away whatever that doesn’t fit her, and now when everything is organized it should be an easy task.
Once I was done organizing I took some pictures and made a short film clip just for fun. Who doesn’t love to look at organized closets hahah
((If anyone is wondering about the little wood pieces on the hangers, they are cedar blocks. We currently don’t have bugs in the house and we want to keep it that way))

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I would love to update you with pictures of the new furniture but I’ll have to do that at a different time. The other three are sleeping now and I am pretty tired so I will make this quick and update everything later. Ok, bye

August 30, 2021

This weekend was slow and cozy. It was also Jim’s 35th birthday. We had ribs for lunch and then I baked a what google calls it “Swedish Sticky Chocolate Cake” (“kladdkaka” in Swedish). I decided to put frosting on top which was kinda a disaster and then I tried to write 35 and create flowers with blue frosting and since I didn’t have any good tools, it ended up sooooo ugly, hahah. But! It was the best “kladdkaka” I’ve ever made!!

Our couch was delivered today, yay! We moved the other sofa into Lily’s room and we’ll see what we do with it in the future. And tomorrow we’re hopefully getting the dining table replacement. Still haven’t got our bedframe that was supposed to be delivered two Sundays ago though and a nightstand for the guest bedroom looks like dog poo (and overstock.com where we bought it from apparently deletes bad reviews – including the one we wrote – and will only give us like $13 back, so we are not buying anything more from them). A bookcase is supposed to come at unknown date, some storage for the master closet as well, and yesterday Jim put together a storage unit in the guest bath. After this week we are hopefully living in a more functional home. 

It is raining a lot these days here in Florida. Luckily we are only getting the edges of hurricane Ida, which hasn’t been that bad. We go out for walks in the morning or afternoon in between rain showers, usually a bit cooler temperatures then. So far everyone we’ve met here are very friendly and welcoming. We are also part of a facebook HOA community group and I’ve noticed that people like to post a lot, haha. But it’s good-to-know updates, not just random crap. Things like “be aware of the bear that is walking around” a couple of weeks ago, or that someone found a lost dog or to look out for the kids shooting paintballs at cars driving down the road to our neighborhood two nights ago. It’s a small, calm and friendly neighborhood next to a bunch of other upcoming neighborhoods. Pretty quiet and uneventful but ya, some things to look out for I guess. So far we like it. Once we get our fence up (got the approval from the HOA today) we can get a bit more privacy. Right now, everyone can see into our house from every angle, which isn’t super fun when I am nursing.

We really enjoy living here. Yes, hurricanes and thunderstorms are scary, but anything is better than snow in the winter hahah. 

August 23, 2021

I realize that I haven’t actually told you much about the house or what’s going on. It’s just tough to juggle feeding, doing laundry and trying to get the house in order. My body is screaming in pain as well. The couch we have now (the one that was upstairs in our apartment) is nice and comfortable if you sit on it for a little while, even sleeping on it is just fine (it’s a sleeper sofa), but to sit cross-legged with a baby eating from you all day long is certainly not comfortable. So I try to stretch muscles a little here and there throughout the day but I need more than that. Every day I try to think what I should prioritize when I have free time; take a shower, do yoga or start my laptop

Most of all I wish we had a dining table. This was the first thing I wanted to order and luckily I found a dining set I liked right after we moved in. I was so excited to be able to sit down to eat a meal and to possibly be able to feed Lily while doing stuff on my computer or do my yoga study sitting at the table. But, shopping online has unfortunately been disappointing. One chair and the table arrived broken. And one drawer of the TV unit we ordered was broken as well (plus almost delivered to the wrong house, but Jim ran over there to stop him). It took several days of emails and phone calls to the different companies to be able to get replacements. So, it looks like it might work out after all but we now have to wait two three weeks (or longer) for new furniture to arrive. So we have to continue to eat standing up by the kitchen island (the chairs are too low for the island). 

Our bedframe was supposed to be delivered last Sunday, but on Monday they said it was delayed. Figured it was due to the storm. Now they say it will be here sometime in September. 

We have also ordered a couch. When J was on the phone with the sales person right after we found this couch they said it could be shipped the 20th but we wanted to take a day to think about it cause a couch is an expensive purchase plus it was a bit bigger than we had originally thought about so we wanted to space it out in the living room and think about it first. The next day when he called to order they now said it won’t be shipped until the 27th (I guess someone had purchased the couch the day before so they needed to order a new one or something), but that’s ok. However, I don’t know when the arrival date is, it could be any time after the 27th and after reading all the reviews on all the hundreds of furniture stores of different couches we’ve looked at, it seems like it will take forever for a couch to arrive. We’ll see. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

This weekend we ordered a bunch of other stuff. We said before moving here that we would only buy stuff that we had thought through, but now we ended up making quick decisions and just ordered tons of stuff anyway, haha, but sometimes that works out for the best in the end:) I also decided to order a changing table last week without really thinking about it or doing any research. It arrived yesterday, I put it together right before Lily’s bedtime and so far I love it, so it worked out. 

And our address is still a problem. You see, there is two streets next to each other with almost the same name. One ends with Drive and the other ends with Lane. Both streets starts with the same house number. It. Is. Retarded. This means that our house on the corner and the neighbors house on the corner of the other street has almost the same address. And since our house is brand new, this house number didn’t exist before.
It must have been so frustrating and annoying for the neighbor dealing with this. When our house was being built he would sometimes end up with huge packages of wood and bricks dropped off on his property. When the dining chairs arrived he came over and told us to bring our car to pick up our boxes cause it was huge and heavy. This guy has now moved so now we have to sometimes walk over there to see if there’s any packages laying around.
The cable company said at first that they can’t install internet in our house cause we already have internet = the other house has internet and by default when searching for our house it directs to the neighbors. My husband has probably started to get some grey hair from dealing with the post office and the postal services. But he fixed the problem, now our address exist and we do get mail in our mail box and we do get packages delivered to our door, except from FedEx. J has spoken to them multiple times and they have put in a note that we live in the BLUE house on the corner and yet, everything they deliver goes to the neighbors house. Whenever we have large stuff coming (like the dining set) J has to sit by the window all day to look for FedEx. I just hope our couch which will be extremely heavy, wont be dropped off at the wrong house, that would be a disaster. 

If anyone is interested, I created a new Instagram account for our house. You can follow our journey to make this house a home and later on follow the process of building our Dream House:)

 

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