A tour of the new apartment :-)

You guys. I LOVE LOVE LOVE our new apartment. Love it!! It's so much cleaner and newer than our old house, for starters - no matter how much I cleaned that house, it was so old and decrepit that it always felt dirty, and was full of spiders and holes and all sorts of other impossible-to-get-rid-of-yuckiness. This apartment is the complete opposite of the house. It's bright, and airy, and comfortable, and just the right size! Our house was technically a 3 bed 1.5 bath, but the stairs to the second floor were very narrow and steep, and the two rooms themselves had slanted ceilings and a definite attic-y feel. It would also be freezing in the winter and roasting in the summer (the whole house was like that because it was basically made of plywood and VERY poorly insulated, but the upstairs was worse). Anyway, we ended up not using the upstairs at all except for storage because it was so dreadful, so we've basically been living with 1 bed and 1 bath this whole time - so the apartment has felt like a definite upgrade!!!

But anyway. You want the tour, not me blabbering on. So, without further ado:

This is what you see when you first walk in the door. Happiness! I love this view. Except the couch - don't mind that. It has a sheet over it because Max drew on the entire couch itself with permanent marker one time, and the sheet is a little askew in this pic.

Here we walk out of the entryway and into the living room. My camera isn't great, so bear with me on the dark pictures for a few more months until we can afford a better one!

The sliding glass door opens onto a nice little patio and a lovely lawn that is surrounded by forest, which no one else ever uses so we basically have the entire thing to ourselves. I posted a few pics of it in my last Wordless Wednesday post and will probably post more in the future, too.

Also, note the air conditioner next to the recliner. AIR CONDITIONER! I have never lived in an air conditioned residence before - and my oh my, what a magnificent thing it is! It almost makes me not want to go outside at all! (Almost.)

Next, if you turn to the right with the sliding glass door on your left, you see this:

*Sigh* More happiness!!

This is more of a close-up on the dining room area. I LOVE the dining room. We have never really used our table before because the dining area in our last house was so yucky feeling, but this one is awesome! The lighting and the view are wonderful. It's so nice to open the window in the mornings and listen to the birds and the dogs and the occasional distant train while we eat breakfast (Max's favorite part of breakfast is gasping when he hears something outside and commenting on it. "(gasp) A dog!" "(gasp) A pane! [plane]" "(gasp) A doo-doo!!! [choo-choo - a train]".

It's also carpeted, which I adore. I know that carpeted dining areas are impractical, but I feel like they are so much more cozy and inviting than hardwood floors in dining areas. For the record, the dining room where we are moving in Maine is also carpeted and just as cozy a spot as this one. ^_^

We sit here all the time: for meals, for drinking tea, for scrapbooking (me) or painting/coloring (Max), for chatting when we're not in the living room. Happy place.

Turning further to the right, you get a view of the layout of the kitchen and then the hallway.

Here's the entrance to the kitchen (above), but the view from the dining room is better (below):

More happy sighs. I love my kitchen as well. But THIS is absolutely the BEST part of it:

"[insert sound of angels singing]"

A DISHWASHER!!!!!!!!! 

It is glorious. I'm pretty sure I haven't washed a single dish by hand since we moved in. We haven't had a dishwasher since we lived in Boston, and the two kitchen sinks we've had in the past three years have both been abysmal (one was so small you couldn't put a dinner plate in it sitting flat. Truth.). I am SO. OVER. DISHES. Dishwashers are one of the best inventions in the history of mankind, I'm quite certain.

...Seriously, I don't even want to show you the rest of the house because I just want to keep staring at and rhapsodizing over this marvelous kitchen appliance.

But I suppose we can go on.

Here's the hallway. (Max and Dada are playing "Hide-Behind-Things-And-Jump-Out-And-Scare-Each-Other"; Max is currently hunting for Dada.)

The closed door in the foreground is a wonderful storage closet with big deep shelves.

The folding doors on the left are the closet where the washer and dryer sit.

The room Max is looking into is the guest bathroom, and behind him is the spare bedroom.

Peeking into the guest bathroom. It has a shower and tub, too; actually, the entire bathroom is HUGE. The picture doesn't do it justice.

Left: bedroom. Right: spare room. Directly to my right is the bathroom we just saw.

Don't mind Todd being passed out on the bed. It's hard work playing with Max! Believe me!

Here's the spare bedroom. We are using it for storage/baby changing area.

Back to the bedroom. Both boys have now disappeared which means they are probably just hiding in a closet waiting to jump out at us and terrify us to our very souls. Nothing to worry about.

My camera is now deciding to get persnickety and refuses to take pictures with normal light or color, so this is what we'll have to make do with. Sorry. Anyway, this is through the door of the bedroom. ...Note the co-sleeper attached to the bed, all ready and waiting for Baby Nichols!! Eeeek! I get all warm and fuzzy and excited whenever I look at it. BABIES. Yes. Sometimes it's hard to believe that there is actually going to be a real person coming to live with us soon. But things like car seats and cosleepers serve to remind me that it WILL actually be happening (despite my concerns that I will be pregnant forever. ...What if I'm pregnant forever!?? Nothing exciting seems to be happening in there yet... like I said, this whole second kid thing is hard to believe. :-S)

Anyway, in the mean time the cosleeper also makes a rad end table. It will probably continue to serve that function. I'm pretty sure that when we used it with Max he ended up in bed with us and all the baby-nighttime-survival paraphernalia ended up in the crib. Oh well.)

If you turn left from where we're standing, you see the bathroom:

There's a vanity area outside of the actual toilet/shower room which is very nice for teeth brushing when other people are showering. Directly to the right, outside of the picture, is a closet. This whole area where we're standing right now is much bigger than it looks in the picture.

*****

So there you go!!! Our new Nook! :-) I love it so much that it almost makes me not want to move to Maine. (Don't get too excited, people. I said ALMOST.)

If you want to come see it in real life, PLEASE do. Because maternity leave is awesome in every way, I now have way more time on my hands than I did before, so I'd love some visitors!! Especially after the baby is born! I'll even let you admire my dishwasher. (But you can't touch it. Sorry.)