Housewarming party!

Our housewarming party was Saturday evening. It rained during the day, so everyone was in the house...

And by everyone, I mean LOTS of everyones. It was a great party... so great that I didn't take photos! ACK! But there were lots of wonderful friends.

We made North Carolina pulled pork, my veggie dip "cowboy caviar" recipe, watermelon, raspberries stuffed with chocolate and vanilla chips, and strawberries with piped cheesecake amaretto. Bob made a crazy strong batch of mojitos, we opened a few white wines, and I made a fruit punch of blackberry lemonade with chopped basil (which went quickly). Friends brought more food, more wine, flowers, and other things. Fabulous!

I even threw together a new wreath for our front door (which encircles our new bird door knocker!). Yes, we put a bird on it.


Bob was a bit cynical when he saw it, but I went around the house before the party and put up little explanations of our current, past, and future projects. Our friends loved the notes, since they could read about our plans without us having to always be at their sides (there were a lot of visitors!). Plus, it was a housewarming and encouraged folks to walk around the house.

Such as....

The woodstove:


Painting the house next summer:


Replacing the front door and garage door, eventually....


Redo the wine rack in a few years:



Redo the storage areas, like the one under the stairs:


Putting up a wall of photos:


My (likely never to occur) dream of putting french doors to a deck off of the kitchen:


The "may occur when we decide to someday also replace the tile and linoleum and backsplash and hardware" kitchen sink:


The plans for the lower tier next summer:


The china cabinet replacement project:


We locked two cats upstairs, and with the narrow, railingless staircase and other construction things, we decided not to have people go upstairs. So, we plastered the door with photos of the upstairs.






The other closet also got a note discussing our plans to reorganize it:


And we talked about painting the bedroom gray:


And our plans to soon paint the bathroom (seriously. Matte paint?):


And another closet organization system:


And the purple desk description:


It was such a fun party, and we have so many lovely friends. We ended Saturday feeling very happy, lucky, and wonderful.