New House
Originally uploaded by maliburachel

We are getting really excited about our new house. In the meantime, a lot of work has to be done, what with packing, selling our old house, and taking a quick vacation. We’ve also had a change of plans, vacation-wise. Instead of going to California, we’ll be heading to Florida for a few days.

I’m getting really excited about this new kitchen. I mean, check out that stove! I’ve never cooked w/ gas before, so this should be interesting. I hope I don’t burn too many things.

Such a sweet entryway, too! I’m really looking forward to the challenge of arranging and organizing our space. Wouldn’t it be marvelous to have this Kelly Wearstler wallpaper in the entry?

I think my most favorite part of the house, with the exception of the kitchen, is the upstairs. There are three bedrooms upstairs, and the seller knocked out a wall to create a fantastic bonus room.

Plus, she knocked out a wall in one of the bedrooms upstairs, and created a special little bonus area. It’s such a perfect little nook/play area, and this will be Jude’s room. Heck, I wish it were *my* room!

This is an image from Parenting magazine, showing a before-and-after of a playroom. The look of this room is very similar to Jude’s room, as well as the bonus room. My plan for his room is to base it off of the Matterhorn Bobsleds poster (currently in his nursery now), a similar blue shade to the image above. As much as I love his green little room, I want to do blue-on-blue stripes in the play area, and blue in the rest of it.
Jude’s current nursery, w/ Matterhorn Bobsled poster
I think my overall vibe for inspiration for this house is a beach cottage. I want everything to be clean and modern, but not too contemporary. In my design, I like there to be a good amount of whimsy, too. What’s really great about this house is that we won’t have to do a thing to it, other than paint, if we so choose. It’s in such great condition, and for that, I am truly thrilled. As much as I have enjoyed slowly fixing up our current house, it has been a lot of work to get it to its current state. And to think, when we bought it we said to ourselves, “All it needs is a little paint and the floors redone!” Ha!

Here’s a photo (above) of the family room. Isn’t that mantel gorgeous? I can think of all the fun types of “displays” I might do for this, especially at the holidays. I can’t even wait. This house is going to be perfect for entertaining and for the holidays. In fact, I will be cohosting a bridal shower for a friend not too long after we move in(!). Ha – that’ll get me motivated to unpack!

In other news, the Sweet of the Week this week was, well, two-fold. I attempted Martha’s chewy chocolate chip cookies, but as I only had one egg, I decided to cut the recipe in half and inadvertently omitted a LOT of the required flour. What resulted was a molten mess of buttery gooiness that really would’ve made a fantastic ice cream topping. As it were, it was a tragic waste of Guittard chocolate chips. By the way, speaking of chocolate chips, here’s my shameless plug for them — the Guittard ones really are the best chocolate chips I have ever tasted. They are fantastic.

So the Sweet of the Week, Part II was for our parent support group at church. I decided to try Martha’s Peanut Butter Whoopie Pies. And WHOOPIE — they were unbelievably decadent. Warning: If you do not like soft and chewy cookies, these are not for you. So send them all to me. Mmkay?

They were TO DIE FOR. If you wanted to omit all the butter and sugar and delight of the peanut butter filling, I really think you could just slather plain ol’ PB on there, and no one would be the wiser. The batter for the cookies was the densest, richest batter I have ever made. As I poured the cocoa powder into the KA mixer, there were poufs of cocoa-y smoke coming out of the bowl. Simon’s eyes lit up when he walked in the door. Oh, and FYI, this recipe made somewhere around 55 cookies(!). In fact, you could probably halve the recipe for the filling as we didn’t use all of it, and I applied the filling generously.