we have the best neighbors....

We really do love our neighbors.  These people will go out of their way to help each other, we have parties and BBQ's in the summer, they give us home baked treats not only when we moved in but also for holidays or just because they made extra.  They shovel our walk if we're not home.. one lets us use his snowblower all season (this has been awesome especially considering the amount of snow we've had this winter and last).

My good friend Carrie is the reason we bought our house.. she and I met through our children and she let me know about this house going on the market immediately.  She helped me remove about 1,000,000 staples and tacks from the second floor when we ripped up the carpet..  Her husband helped us move.. as in actually packed things for us and trucked it over here.  (That is big.. helping people move is not something most people volunteer to do!) She and her husband are from Charleston and moved here due to his job.... which is now relocating back to Charleston..   We are going to miss them so much... We are happy that they will now be closer to their family... but really it is not going to be the same around here without them.  Our children were going to be in the same grade... They walk past our house every evening when the weather is nice and often stop to hang out on the porch for a drink or just to chat...  Totally bummed.. 

The only positives in this are

1. We love Charleston.
2. We enjoy a good road trip
3. We now will have a place to stay in Charleston

Picture from our last trip to Charleston in 2009... we're due for a road trip.

I wish them the best in their move.. selfishly hoping they will take their time with listing and all that...   

house numbers, sconces & porch stuff....

Our front porch is one of the reasons we bought our house.  It's large, wraps around the side of the house, and is concrete which I didn't think at first I would like but it's really smooth, and feels nice when you walk on it in your bare feet.  I also like that it doesn't have a railing around it which makes it feel so open.  The kids were into skateboarding a lot last summer and before we had any furniture they loved just going back and forth across the front.. and then they realized they could jump off the end of the porch on their board and onto the lawn so that became the skateboard trick of the summer.

OK.. anyway we needed to buy some porch furniture so we started with a nice sectional set that we purchased at Costco online (it's called the hampton).  It's really comfortable and fits well on the porch.  We may buy another one for the other side of the porch.. I also would like to get a table for the side porch but haven't found one I like yet.

On the driveway side of the house we put up a temporary piece of lattice just to give us a bit of privacy from our neighbor but mainly to support the climbing rose that is growing there.. by end of summer it was pretty well covered with the rose bush.  I found this nice wood lattice from latticestix.com that I would like to use... but still figuring out what we want there.

Part of the plan to spruce up the front of the house entailed getting some new house numbers to replace the colonial 1970's looking ones that were there and also replacing the crazy giant sconces with something that had cleaner lines. The house numbers are basic pin mounted bronze numbers - they do the job and look better than the old ones.. the sconces are from restoration hardware (braxton sconce).   We still want to replace the door bell, mail slot and either get a new storm door or at least update the hardware.  That's where we are with the front of the house for now...