House Update

Hello! Sorry for the delay - it's been a busy few days here. We finally are finished with the house (minus a few piles of papers and such that need to be organized). To celebrate, on Friday we popped a bottle of champagne in the backyard and then went out in town for a nice dinner.

But it was a bit of a long haul finishing up the house. We didn't end up taking any touristy trips last week, instead choosing to stay home and get the house organized. On Friday, the couch and wardrobes came which was quite exciting.

The couch started off slow...

But after a little hard work we were really happy with the result!

The wardrobes were also a bit labor intensive, but not as bad as I thought they'd be. And they're totally worth their weight in gold - all my clothes have such a nice home now and Jay is able to use the whole closet in the room for all of his. Mission Accomplished.

And here's the rest of the bedroom...

We also hung the rest of our artwork and pictures which really gave the house a more homey feel. We were especially excited about the Boston skyline canvas print we found at Tesco:

Here's some shots of Jay's wonderful picture hanging in the front hallway and the stairwell:

And now that we have our couch, we were able to move the futon up to the spare bedroom, along with the vanity/desk that used to be in our room. So even the guest room is coming together nicely...

We also found this cute little Memo board/key holder that we've hung next to the back door (we generally use the back door rather than the front for coming in and out).

And as it was Jay's birthday on Saturday, we celebrated in the morning by taking the motorcycle out for a quick ride - it finally became legally road ready on Friday. In the afternoon, we took a quick overnight trip to his parents house in Milton Keynes. The drive was lovely - just over an hour on mostly back roads through beautiful countryside. We had a nice dinner with his parents and then on Sunday more of the family got together for a delicious Sunday dinner. By the time we got back on Sunday evening, we were exhausted, and crashed out on the couch to watch some NCAA action.

Now we're off to get a few more things done, mainly trying to open a bank account for me. For a little added fun we're going to bicycle into town instead of drive (about 2.5 miles each way). Hopefully, all goes as planned :)

I'll keep you posted!

Meg

Heading into town...

Hello again! As promised, here's a little peek into our new neighborhood.

We live on the Duke of Gloucester Barracks army base in South Cerney, England:

Most of the area around our house is either green fields on the base or the farm next door (our house is right on the edge of camp). Here's the view from our bedroom window, which looks out onto our front yard and the camp's playing fields.

Here's the view of our farming neighbor behind our house from our upstairs hall. The grassy part to the left of the fence is our yard, to the right of the fence is our neighbor's yard. The big fence in the back is the edge of the camp, and the brown field behind is the farm. Hooray for living in the country!

But South Cerney is just a village, not a proper town - there's only one shop and a couple of pubs. So when we need to "go into town" we pop down to Cirencester, which is only about 2 or 3 miles down the road. Cirencester is a market town that back in Roman times used to be called Corinium. I absolutely love the town - it feels to me like Newburyport back home. Here's a couple pictures to show you what I mean...

Today we picked up a few more things for the house and also stopped for a yummy lunch. I had a fish cake salad with a lemon hollandaise sauce that was to die for!

YUM!

In downtown there is also a really pretty cathedral-like church called St. John the Baptist.

But it's not all country living - we still have lots of the comforts of home. My favorite right now is our SKY satellite cable. We sprung for the good package to keep me (and also Jay!) from feeling too homesick for US TV (we've watched Bones and House already). But the best part is my new favorite channel...

Just yesterday we watched the Red Sox - Phillies spring training game. And we've been keeping up with a good deal of March Madness as well. Hooray for technology!

Allright, that's all for now. I'll try to update again tomorrow. We still have a fair amount of unpacking to do (we had hoped to get it all sorted today before shopping took a bit longer and a bit more energy than anticipated), but we're hoping to take a trip to Blenheim Palace (birthplace of Churchill!).

Good night!

Meg

Our New House!

Jay arrived to our new house in England on January 22nd. Finally, eight long weeks later, I have made it out here to visit him and check out our new home! I have to say, I was a bit nervous, but I shouldn't have been - our house and the local area are lovely!

We got right down to work these past couple days getting the house together - unpacking all of our boxes, shopping for furniture and odds-and-ends at IKEA and even the British equivalents of Home Depot (B&Q), Walmart (ASDA) and something similar to Target (Range). It's been exhausting and exhilarating all at the same time!

Here's a few pictures to give you a taste of our new home...

The front of our new house!

We're the left side of a duplex - the last one on a dead end street. (You can see Jay and our new car as well!)

Here's a view of our backyard (complete with the bird feeder Jay put together and the new fire pit we got today!)

We LOVE the fire pit!

Jay being super handy and putting together (with my help, promise!) my new dresser from IKEA (love that MALM!).

Our kitchen. Note the two separate faucets for hot and cold water. I was not a fan of the two taps. I found it incredibly difficult to wash dishes well using this system. I either froze my little fingers or nearly burned them off. But thankfully, Jamie is my hero and we found a "deck mixer tap" at the Brit Home Depot that did the trick and now we have one faucet - hooray! See...

YAY!

Our newly decorated living room - thanks for the bookshelves IKEA!

That's all the pics for now. I promise more once our couch and dresser come on Friday!

I'll also post some pictures of the local area tomorrow. We're heading into town to take care of a few errands - setting up my health insurance and opening a bank account for me, etc. and I'll be sure to take some good pictures!

Have a good night everyone!

Meg