Office Reveal

From A:

It's time for our final reveal!

I present to you, beloved readers of J + A, our Office / Guest Room:

Our extra kitchen table was re-purposed as a dual mega-desk.
I have to give props to J for the amazingly neat cabling job he did.

Queen size sleeper.  Also very comfy as a sofa, which was difficult to find.

This is where J + A blogging occurs!

And that's it, the last of our condo tour.

What will I blog about now?!

Bedroom Reveal

From A:

Once our bedroom furniture arrived it made finishing off our bedroom really easy.

And here it is!

The entire room - I especially love the panel bed with low footboard.

J's night stand with one drawer and a large door.  He thinks it looks manly.

My night stand with four drawers - so cute!

The dresser, mirror, and chest.

We're really happy with how the room turned out.  And we don't think the red walls look too overwhelming now that we have more furniture and a few wall hangings.

Only one room left to finish: the office.

Done

From A:

Check off all the boxes because the last of our furniture was delivered today!

The final piece to arrive was our sleeper sofa:

I was a little nervous about it since we had chosen the fabric from a small swatch and weren't able to see it on a large surface.  But I think it turned out looking good - a very versatile piece that should serve us for a long time.  And the throw pillow fabric ended up looking nice with the sofa fabric.

So now that all our furniture is here, J and I can spend the weekend getting our last two rooms completed.

Bedroom and office reveals are coming soon!

Furniture

From A:

The bedroom furniture we ordered from Gat Creek was delivered today!

After I finished doing a happy dance, I did a furniture photo shoot:

We had seen the dresser and chest in the furniture showroom, but we hadn't seen either of the night stands or the bed in person before - we picked them out of a catalog.  It's so neat to finally see them all together, as well as the stain, finish, and hardware that we chose - and it looks beautiful!

Choo Choo Chewies

From A:

As mentioned a while back, we took the Amtrak Auto Train to relocate from Florida to Virginia.  And here's the long-awaited recap of our experience!

When we drove into the Amtrak station in Orlando, staff members took each of our cars to the loading area where they were driven onto the auto carriers (I'm pretty sure the drivers arm wrestle each other to see who gets to drive the luxury vehicles - such as the new Corvette we saw).  We weren't able to watch the loading process, but we watched the cars as they were unloaded in Virginia.  In the photo below you can see the front of the first car about to be driven out of the carrier and down the ramp:

I don't know why the drivers wear hard hats.  Unless they're afraid of people like us to pack so much stuff into their cars that a quick stop might mean flying household goods.  Anyway, the slickest part of the vehicle loading / unloading process is the 360 degree camera that documents the condition of each vehicle when it's pulled into the station.  If a damage claim is filed once a car is returned, the vehicle condition is compared to the video taken prior to loading.  Good thinking, Amtrak.

Now to our accommodations.  We reserved a sleeping room for 2 people.  There are also larger sleeping rooms that can accommodate 4 people.  Our room had two chairs that faced each other, along with a fold-out table:

J decided the table was for taking out contacts - which he did like a pro!  No lost lenses or inadvertent eyeball stabbing:

Each sleeping car has its own attendant who helps with whatever the passengers need.  Our attendant was named Kenny - and I forgot to get a photo with him.  Let's just pretend that Kenny looked like this guy:

Anyway, Kenny asked us what time we would like to have our beds made in the evening, as well as what time we'd like to have our wake-up call and our beds put away in the morning.  We decided to have our beds made while we were at dinner (since only the latest dining time was still available when we checked in) and then have them put away while we were at breakfast.

And this is the really cool part - the two chairs in the sleeping room slide together to form the bottom bed, and the angled ceiling in the room pulls down to form the top bed:

Before - the top bunk is pushed all the way up to allow for more head room.

After - the bed is folded down to form the top bunk.

So while our beds were being made, we had dinner.  It was surprisingly good!  There was a menu with about 8 different entree options, plus about 5 different dessert options.  The kids menu includes "Choo Choo Chewies" which are chicken tenders - pretty cute.  J had steak with a baked potato, and I had chicken with rice.  And we both had hot fudge sundaes for dessert - yum!

The train had wine tasting and snacks in the evening, as well as a showing of Gnomeo and Juliet.  There was also a continental breakfast in the morning.

And 17 hours after we had loaded the train in Florida we were unloading in Virginia - amazing!

Kitchen Reveal

From A:

Our kitchen / dining area is now organized and decorated, so it's time for the big reveal!

We are just loving the layout of the kitchen.  Both the counter and cabinet space is easily three times as much as in our old place - which means that our kitchen supplies, appliances, and gadgets can all be stored in the kitchen!

And thanks to all the cabinet space, we were able to re-purpose our old kitchen overflow / other randomness storage shelves as display shelves.

We're pleased with they way our kitchen table, chairs, and shelves fit into the dining area.  And with the addition of two bar stools, the space works very well for us.

Living Room Reveal

From A:

It's been a productive week around the condo.  We:

1. Removed the last of the moving boxes and packing paper from the living room.
2. Moved the rest of our "stuff we don't use regularly but will still probably use at some point" stuff into our storage cage (have I mentioned this wonderful surprise yet?).
3. Found out that the rest of our furniture should arrive by the end of the month (hooray!).

So, time to tell the storage cage story.  When we rented our condo, we knew there was an outside storage area off our back patio, but we didn't know about any other storage.  Once we moved in, there was an extra key called "upper storage" which confused us.  As it turns out, it's the key to a storage cage on the floor above our condo - awesome, right?!  This storage cage has proven to be a huge help for storing sports equipment, holiday decorations, extra boxes, etc.  I don't know how all our stuff would have a home without it!

And now that our living room is box free, we're excited to reveal the finished product.  The couch and rug are new but everything else came with us:

The photo makes the walls look really bright, almost a "grinch" green, but it doesn't look quite as bright in person.*

Overall, things are coming together.  Once our sleeper sofa comes we can finish the office and once our bedroom furniture comes we can finish the master bedroom.  More room reveals to come!

*Reminder: we didn't pick the wall color - it's what the owner had when we moved in.

200!!!

From A:

This is our 200th J + A blog post! 

insert cheering crowd noise here

Since I'm currently writing our 2nd anniversary update newsletter (yes, it's late), I'm not really much in the mood to write an actual post today.  I will, however, share with you a photo I came across while searching for newsletter images in our digital files.

J and I had never seen a squirrel sleeping before - have you?  Here is one sleeping in the tree behind our condo:

Also, as a related question: where do squirrels go when it rains?

Playground?

From A:

Playgrounds are so last year.  The cool place (and I mean that literally) for kids to go now is the SPRAYGROUND!

That's right.  It's a playground with water.  Big jets of water, small fountains of water, unpredictable streams of water, ships squirting water, and the list goes on. 

No, I wasn't a creepy adult hanging around children on the sprayground.  I went with my friend Colleen and her adorable son Isaac:

I think his face says it all - it's a really fun place for kids.  It was a pretty hot day, but it really didn't seem so bad once you were in the water. 

Although, I'm not the best person to complain about the heat to - considering that I was still living in Florida a month ago.  I've stopped a lot of cashier small talk in stores lately when they complain about how hot it is outside.  Once I answer that I just moved here from Florida, they become very motivated to just finish my purchase and get me out the door. 

Sorry, local cashiers, but I can't sympathize with you just yet.  Perhaps after I've experienced my first Virginia winter.

July 4th Recap

From A:

Saturday:
We had a busy and enjoyable July 4th weekend.  It started on Saturday with a trip to Eastern Market.  We met one of J's high school friends and her boyfriend there.  We didn't really know what to expect, but we ended up finding the market very interesting.  It has an abundance of fresh fruits and veggies from farmers in the region - and many of them cut samples of their foods so you can try it before you buy it.

There are also many other vendors selling flowers, hats (I got one that I'll show in a photo later in this post), pottery, jewelry, and other hand-made crafts.  We will definitely return another weekend to shop some more.  One of the most important lessons we learned was to bring a backpack so you can carry home all the stuff you buy!

Sunday:
On Sunday we spent the afternoon and evening helping our friends from church work on their house.  They bought a foreclosure and have completely gutted it over the past year.  J helped re-frame the back deck while I helped with some painting and Adirondack chair assembly.  I still don't know how J and one other guy were able to set 6 x 6 posts weighing about 250 pounds each, being lowered from the second floor of the deck.  Somehow they got it done, with only a few minor bumps, bruises, and splinters.

Monday:
We spent the 4th of July in Maryland with our good friends C&C.  We also met new friends who live in Virginia and have a son about the same age as C&C's son.  We played bocce ball for the first time, which is basically like curling using balls - and with no goofy brooms to sweep on ice.  Here are a couple of photos from the action (as mentioned earlier, I'm wearing the hat I got at Eastern Market):

No worries about the small child who looks like he's about to get hit in the head with a bocce ball.  He had just thrown that ball himself and it landed in the grass right in front of him after the photo was taken.