first things first

poring over decorating books is a nightly activity.

when you move into a new house, especially one where you know you're going to do a whole lot of work on it before you truly settle in, you are selective about what you unpack. you have to have enough things out for your everyday life, but you don't necessarily need that special checkerboard cake pan at the ready. i found that i immediately went to work unpacking the kitchen. because if the kitchen feels relatively normal, you feel like you can more or less function on an everyday basis. this kitchen, with its horrible pepto bismol pink cupboards (going to remedy that this weekend), has loads of cupboards, so i've managed to put things away and then forget which of the many cupboards i put them in...now where were those measuring cups again? but the teacups are in place, as are plates and pots and pans and a selection of the most essential cookbooks. oh, and the liquor cabinet - at least with the essentials (read: hendrick's gin stash) at hand. a girl does have her priorities.

the second most unpacked room is the bathroom, because that also needs to feel more or less normal for you to function on a daily basis. makeup, contact lenses, hairbrushes, flat iron, husband's razor and towels are all at the ready. as far as our bedroom, work clothes are hung in the closet, but there are still loads of boxes along the sides of the room. luckily, we have a whole large room just to stash boxes in, so we've done that. the only problem is that in frantic searches for various essential items, those boxes keep shifting around and it's becoming impossible to find anything. i'll have to try to get some order in that area this weekend.

for the child, the first priority was the satellite t.v. package we had promised her (a horse, a saddle, an iPhone, a season pass to Legoland, an iPad, satellite t.v. - the kid made out like a bandit on this move). her father dutifully went down and acquired the box for that on saturday and got it up and running. to her relief, she now once again has her fill of hannah montana on a daily basis.

for me, it was essential to get the iMac out and set up my desk area, tho' i'll admit that the computer feels rather useless without an internet connection (just got confirmation that it comes on tuesday - YAY!). but i have had time to process loads of pictures, so that's a good thing. i do, however, out of habit, find myself rather frequently hitting that little firefox icon down at the bottom and feeling a twinge of sadness when it tells me that i'm offline. oh well, it's probably good for me.

several boxes of "essential" books have been unpacked - the decorating books above are being used on a nightly basis as we readjust our thinking about what we're going to do with the house - e.g. tear down at least part of it. surprisingly, since deciding to do that we've felt much more free about the whole thing and less constricted. it really opens up the thinking and lets husband's inner architect run free.

it somehow felt important to cook in the house right away. i brought the first meal along from the old house--i had made extra veal parmesan so we had a pan of that to begin with the night we moved in. it seemed right to bring something from the old kitchen to the new one. the next day, i made our favorite focaccia. there were leftovers of it that got a bit dry, so i cubed the bread, tossed it with some spicy sausage and garlic in a pan and we gobbled that as an appetizer the next night. eating good food you make yourself in a new place sets the tone.

this weekend will bring lots more settling in, a bit of painting and definitely some riding. happy weekend one and all!