Happy Homeowners!!

My dear readers,

We are homeowners. Tim and I arrived safely last Saturday night in Cleveland Heights. Our drive was really un-eventful. Kitty was awesome, just some meows initially, but he slept or was seething (I don't really know) the rest of the way. We drove across 80 into a beautiful sunset and made it to our (OUR) home (HOME!) in about 8 hours. Our first night here, with our limited supplies, we made grass-fed burgers with Amish cheese and a tiny salad and some Christmas Ale. We sat on the floor of our dining room. It was quite magical.

On Sunday, we drove the rental car to the Home Depot, bought some gloves and a rake and took care of our very leafy yard. We have a giant oak tree in the back yard and it decided to shed all of it's leaves in our driveway and in our gutters. Time to get to work. We cleaned out the gutters (yes, that's me on the roof)
and raked all of the leaves and felt quite happy with ourselves. We met up with Johnny for dinner at the restaurant in Ohio City for dinner and nearly fell asleep on his couch (we still didn't have any furniture). It's still very strange to drive (DRIVE) home (HOME)!

Car shopping was awesome. We test drove two cars - the Hyundai Elantra Touring, a sassy little wagon, and the Toyota Matrix. We ultimately chose the Hyundai, as I felt the Matrix was a bit of a death trap. Here we are with our awesome car salesman Charlie. And below that, a picture of Tim and me with our new car. It's pretty wild.

Totally rocking the wagon

So much more to tell you my dear readers. My parents visited us this weekend and brought a washer and dryer. Tim and I did laundry today, and I snapped this photo of mr. beans when I was walking back upstairs with my lamper (laundry basket/hamper).

We learned a lot about the plumbing in our house when we connected the washer, another trip to Home Depot and Target for laundry supplies, a leveler, and a mop. Our next big purchase will be a shovel, as it is supposed to snow this weekend!

I'm very sleepy tonight readers. We have two more rooms to unpack - Tim's office and my imagination room - the place where I can hide and read, sew, make fun crafty things, and write blogs or attempt NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).

I will write more soon, but I wanted to share some photos and let you know that we are quite happy. The top photo is of our powder room. It's red. I bought these lovely little dried flowers at the Shaker Square Farmers Market on Saturday. More soon, I promise.

Last day.

Good morning readers...

So, today is my last day of work at Brooklyn Public Library. It's a bittersweet ending - I've been given a lot of opportunities to grow as a librarian at the library and made some lovely friends. But, it's time to go.

Tim and I finished packing yesterday at 4:30 and celebrated with, appropriately enough, Sierra Nevada's Celebration Ale... so super tasty! Then we had a lovely walk to The Vanderbilt, a delicious restaurant in Brooklyn, just about a mile from our apartment. Click on the link to see their menu and go there - awesome happy hour drinks AND noms!

I also took some photos on Wednesday evening just before and after getting my bangs trimmed of some of my favorite places along my walk. Here is my favorite girlie store Flirt!

I once received a great skirtificate and designed a skirt! They have amazing clothes and accessories. I still have a wallet that I bought in 2005 - granted, it's taped up with library tape now, but I cannot let go of it. There is a little shop on Coventry in Cleveland Heights that appears to have a similar philosophy and style to Flirt called Blush Boutique... ah, so girlie.

Here is a delicious little food shop that I will be visiting for the last time today - Blue Apron Foods. I think I've spent more money here over the last 4 or 5 years than any other place in Brooklyn. A great selection of olives, charcuterie, breads, desserts, cheeses. And everyone in the store is super friendly. I hope I can find a place just like them in Cleveland.

And I'm really going to miss my DerbyFit girls - I'll definitely keep you updated and hopefully will send updates on my quest to become a Burning River Roller Girl... we'll see.

It's hard to say goodbye to Brooklyn. But I'm ready. Thank you Brooklyn for a mostly wonderful 5 years. Unless anything ultra exciting happens in the next 24 hours, like kitty growing an awesome afro with chops, I'll next be posting from our new home. Let the excitement begin!

Back and Taking Off

Hello dear readers. Much news since the last post... way back in who knows when. I hope I haven't lost you. You'll be better kept informed of the life in the Geaghan house from now on - hopefully on a more regular basis. One last relaxing day shown above back in June with Tim and Lana lounging on the beach after the Mermaid Day Parade.

We'll do the news first. As many of you know, my library spoke of lay-offs back in May. I decided that it was time to seek employment elsewhere. Tim and I have lived in Brooklyn for 5 years now and the lay-offs were just a sign to nudge us along onto our next adventure. I applied for several jobs and several nibbled. But I found one that I liked a lot and hey, they liked me too. I will now be an upper school librarian at an independent school in the lovely state of Ohio. Tim and I bought a house and we will be packing up the wagons this weekend and heading west (well, west of Brooklyn, NY!) next weekend.

So, the focus of the blog will change - as our life did. For those of you who know us well, we've been traveling along like molasses for the past 12 years... and year 13 basically slammed it's foot down on the gas pedal. Marriage and now a new home. I'll have more details on that in the next post - but as a teaser - the new background here is our courtyard. Yes, our new house has a courtyard.

For now, I'll leave you with some of my favorite pics from the Coney Island Mermaid Day Parade (n.b. I donated these photos to the Brooklyn Public Library - so there will be an Olivia Geaghan photo collection there). I'll be in touch again soon!