New addition to the Buffalo Hall's

Now that we are married and bought a house, the next step is to begin building a family. And that is exactly what we did yesterday on Teresa's lunch hour.
That's right, we adopted a puppy from the local SPCA.
We named her Molly. Originally I had a picked out Ireland, but she was not responding to well to it. She is however, perking up to the name Molly.
Molly is just 3 months old and is a Beagle Terrier Mix. If you take a good look at her, you will notice her paws are the larger side. The SPCA told us that she will not get above 50lbs., we will see. You can see a little beagle in tail and a little in her face, but I think she is mostly Terrier.
As I brought her home yesterday, she managed to run down that street and into the neighbor's yard. Not knowing all the neighbors yet, I had to introduce to myself as: "Hi, my name is Dennis and I just moved in to the house down the street. I just brought home my new puppy who is in your back yard, do you mind if I go get her?" Talk about a good way to start meeting the neighbors. As I carried Molly home, she was definitely scared since I had to scold her before she even made it past the front door. Well, she paid me back for it....she expressed herself all over my arm.
Other than that, the first day was pretty good. She hasn't, knock on wood, barked or messed in the house. We know that she is still getting used to everything and time will tell to see how she will adjust to us and the house.

Our house is a very, very, very fine house!

Finally we will take you all on a tour of our new house. Of course it's still a work in progress, but it is coming along very nicely.

I have to put this picture in of our new couch...it was such a steal. It's actually more green in person but seems to look beige here.

Living Room, complete with woodburning fireplace, large front windows, carpeting, and built-in cabinets which you can't see in this picture.

Dining Room, with hardwood floors and really nice lead glass window. The light is coming through so it's hard to see the details, but it makes rainbows all over the room in the middle of the day. Pretty cool. I have always wanted a red room. It's not everyone's taste, but it's a nice pop of color with the rest of house being pretty neutral.
Kitchen. I love our kitchen. The fridge and stove are new and very sexy.

Downstairs Bathroom with stand-up shower. This is pretty big for a bathroom in an older house. We enjoy it.

Family room/Kitchen eating area with another fireplace. The back door you see leads to the back deck and yard.

We are upstairs now! Here's our bedroom.
This is the most wonderful closet I have ever had. I could only get part of it in the picture, but there's even more shelving up higher and to my right. Loving it! Dennis's is similar but a little smaller (which he's not all that happy about)
Guest room...all ready for people to come visit!

The random bedroom. Currently houses laundry, yoga stuff and exercise ball, and of course...
The infamous shoe collection. You will note the mural on the wall. There's actually one in each bedroom. This bedroom has a trees and flowers painted on it. The guest room actually has fish and sharks on the wall. They're cute for kids...but we're gonna have to paint these pretty soon. I don't want our guests to feel like they're in Jaws. This is the upstairs bathroom. It is ugly. This is going to be the first major project once we hit the lottery. The tub/shower isn't functional at the moment and there's a bit of a space issue going on with that huge vanity. Luckily, the downstairs bathroom was updated recently!
Let's go outside. Here's the back deck. Perfect for barbecue, sunning, and hanging out. One really neat thing the house came with is a retractable awning. The thing covers the whole deck and is great for hot days.

Even better for hot days is the pool!

I'm even trying to nuture my green thumb a bit. Here's one of the planters I did and it's actually still alive!

Here's a random flower that came up in the yard. It was about 4 feet tall. I'm also showing off my new camera with this picture. Dennis got me the camera I've had my eye on for my birthday. I must say I'm very happy with it.

That's basically the house. The only thing I didn't show you all is the walk up attic. This will be Dennis's "man room." He is very excited about it, and I wasn't sure if he wanted picture posted before it's finished. I will leave that part for another day. Hope you all enjoyed the tour. Come visit soon!

Movin' on up

The Halls have relocated! We are officially in our new house after all the fun real estate drama and let me tell you...it is a good feeling. We have been very busy the past couple weeks working on making the house our own and moving, unpacking, and getting settled. We have just unpacked the last box tonight (at least the last important one)

We took lots of before pictures, but have yet to take the after pictures of all of our work. I'm sure there's going to be another post where we can brag about all of our growing home improvement skills.

Can we just pause a moment here and notice the ridiculous size of this moving truck? Seriously, our stuff filled up a fraction of this thing! We decided at the last minute to take the plunge and hire movers. We have previously moved ourselves with the Uhaul and a few bribe-able friends. Let me tell you....this was the most wonderful idea ever. Those guys got it done so fast and we didn't have to lift and maneuver everything up the stairs. But as you know, every move has a casualty. For us it was our almost new box spring.

Since we moved into an older home, we didn't take into account that the staircase is very narrow and not forgiving. The mattress made it up with some acrobatic moves but no hope was in sight for its counterpart. We tried to saw it, to bend it, to un-staple, to remove springs, to stand on it, sit on it, kneel on it, yell at it, swear at it....but it still would not get up those stairs. We gave up eventually and called up our new friends at Raymour and Flanagan to order a split box spring which we are now sleeping on very peacefully.

Next on the list of to-dos is painting. I must say that Dennis and I are expert painters now. The entire house was covered in this turquoise-green color that you see Dennis taping here. This does not go so well with our furniture, so it was imperative that this situation be remedied ASAP. We did the living room, master bedroom, and dining room all in one weekend. Luckily, I lured some very nice friends/coworkers over with the impression that they were coming to a "painting party." Whoever invented this idea was a genius. Make painting sound like fun, feed some friends and play some party music... and make them slave away working on your house.
Little did they know that they would soon be lured into the hell that is known as wallpaper removal. This now may top my list of the worst things to do in the world ever. It took 3 of us 6+ hours to get this flowered, butterflied paper and its glue off the wall. This was just in the dining room. I feel terrible for those people who move into the houses covered in the stuff. Now Mom I know I have helped you put up wallpaper before...but never again. Now I know what happens when poor innocent people take that stuff off. To top it all off I found more of that turquoise-green paint underneath AHH!

Despite my complaining we really are having a great time making this house our own. It is work, but it is very rewarding to sit back and look at what you've accomplished and enjoy and nice hot McDonald's dinner while sitting on a step stool. Gotta love moving!

Check back for more updates coming soon!