new house, new skills

We moved recently.

I look like I'm yawning, but this is actually my excited face.

That means lots of new house projects and exploring of the new neighborhood. We're technically still in our same neighborhood, but we're just far enough away from our old house that our whole center of everything has moved decidedly east. This means we no longer live on a bus route and every morning results in an intense discussion of strategic planning to make sure we both can get where we need to go. It can be frustrating.

As a result, I've decided to ride my bike as much as I can (which is still not as much as would be really beneficial), but did result in an impromptu bike ride to the grocery store on Wednesday.

Awe: adorable.

It was really empowering to ride my bike to the store. There's a great little bike path that starts close to our new house that goes right past the grocery store, so it was a very low-key ride. It was just nice to not feel trapped in the house and unable to do something that needed to be done on my own.

This week I also figured out how to add a shelf in our weirdly huge and awkward bathroom storage closet.

Our bathroom is small, so it's really hard to get a picture of the storage situation.
Here's the cupboard. There's also a drawer beneath the main part that you can't see in this photo.
The whole thing takes up the entire wall from floor to ceiling.

We added shelves in the right-hand cupboard (shelf supports were already there).
We used cedar wood and now it smells amazing every time we open the door to get sheets or a towel.

It's kind of hard to see, but I put in that shelf separating the blue crates from the white boxes.
I drilled supports into the left and right sides of the cabinet and just rested cedar planks on top to make the shelf.

 I've never felt very comfortable with power tools, but I think I've mastered our electric drill (and by mastered I mean I can drill a hole into a piece of wood with fairly good success). It feels good.

I also hung curtains in our front room and bedroom. It's starting to feel a bit more like our home...

It's a sweet little sitting space, isn't it?