One Year Ago Today...

One year ago on this date, hubby and I woke up for the first time in our new house (we had closed on it the day before) to a snowstorm not too much unlike the one that is going on now. We were so ill-prepared for it and spent three hours shoveling out our driveway and if you listened closely you might have heard us mutter under our breaths "Welcome to home-ownership!". I remember our neighbor Patty yelled across the yard "Welcome!" as I knocked a huge snow drift off the roof, right onto my head. "Welcome Indeed!", I thought to myself. But no matter the weather, there was nothing like snuggling up in our house that day and realizing it was ours, completely ours. Well, ours and the bank's.

It is so hard to believe we have been here a year already. I sit here typing this in our kitchen, which looks nothing like it did on this date in 2006 (goodbye ugly wallpaper and garish turquoise paint!), and though we still have so much we would like to do to our house, it is certainly our home now and not just real estate. We have been so lucky to have the help of many family and friends to help us renovate and redecorate and fix and stumble thru the many projects we have completed in the past year. Hubby is outside with father-in-law snowblowing this year's storm off the driveway (no more shoveling here!) and I'm grateful that I'm inside where it is warm and dry. I hope the same is true for all of you.

I dug up some of the pictures from those first days for fun, here they are:

Hubby starting the shoveling...

Part of the tremendous crew that showed up that weekend to rip down more wallpaper than any of us ever wanted to see again and tear up half of the house's carpet, and paint, and on and on...

One last "welcome to home ownership" surprise - we needed a new hot water heater, Oh... about 48 hours into ownership. Thanks to friend Paul for acquiring and installing that (with hubby's help).