Home Sweet BellingHome

It's official. We're all moved in. Unpacked. Everything has a place. With Don gone at Gottacon all weekend, it gave me the opportunity to give everything a good enough tidying up to finally post some pictures. From here on out, the place will always be this organized and spotless. NOT!

The office. My home "away" from home is now about 10 steps from my bed (to the right). Working from home certainly has it's perks. Being able to roll out of bed and jump start my day with 10 minutes notice has definitely played a bit of a shift on my sleeping patterns which has allowed me to spend more time with Don, the night owl. He's done a good job of keeping up with my morning routine as well. He usually gets up about the same time as I do in the mornings. We take turns making each other coffee and on days when I'm really lucky, he may even whip me up a breakfast sandwich.

The Master Suite still makes me feel like I'm staying at an expensive resort. Taking up nearly a third of the square footage of the house, it contains said office, master bath with dual sinks, soaking tub, and stand up shower, his and hers closets, and plenty of square footage for bedroom furniture without over crowding. There's even a place to put the laundry baskets and dog beds without them getting in the way.

The biggest selling point of this house, as you can see, is the wide open floor plan.

The living room is spacious with lots of comfortable seating and good light.

The gas fireplace in the corner is set to a thermostat and puts out enough heat to keep this entire well insulated house warm. The dogs love to lay in front of it and soak up the warmth as you can imagine.

The built in dining set was a huge bonus considering that we had to leave our former table and chairs behind in California due to limited space in the Uhaul. The dining area has also been a great "Gaming Nook" with minis cabinet to the left and plenty of storage for gaming books, etc., under the cupboards to the right. The bench seating even opens up opens up to additional storage which is where we keep our board games.

And the kitchen is a dream come true! For as much as we cook, it's nice to finally have an open, inviting, functional kitchen with plenty of storage and working space. We had so much space in fact, although you can't see it from the pictures, we decided to put in a second fridge to the right of where I'm standing that we picked up on Craigslist. It has become a personal mission of mine to keep the attached island that separates the dining area from the kitchen from becoming a catch all for books, papers, and junkmail as it seems to be a magnet for this sort of thing. But see how pretty it is in the rare moments when it's clean!!!

The kitchen island was our own addition. Purchased from Ikea and assembled, finished, and sealed by Don himself, it was one of the few items we decided to drop a bit of cash on figuring we would certainly get our value out of it. And we haven't regretted the decision a bit. It has been a great workspace that we use daily and it is especially functional to be able to work from all sides when you have more than one cook in the kitchen.

Finally, as if it weren't enough for Don and I each to have our own separate offices for the first time in our adult life, we still had one last bedroom to use up. We'd really missed having a spare bedroom for guests like we did from our first home in California. So it feels good to finally have a comfortable space again to host friends and family. My sister Kristy and her dog, Emmy, have already been to visit twice (although, I apologize the room wasn't quite this put together yet), and now also with the hideabed in the living room as well, perhaps it's our turn to host the next Thanksgiving? :) But even more exciting, on the days of the week when we're not having overnight guests, it is so awesome to have my very own exercise room where I can go and close the door and not have to worry about working out in a common room and working around other people's schedules. The dresser is the perfect height to set my laptop on and watch DVD's while I run. And our stacked aerobics steps double as a nice bedside table for the lamp and alarm clock for our guests.

At some point I will get around to taking pictures of the exterior. We have a great porch and BBQ area, and a nice open deck that will be a fun place for outdoor dining in the spring and summer. But wanted to at least get these up while I could. Hope you enjoyed a sneak peak of our lovely BellingHome and let us know when you all wanna come and visit!