It Begins!

The kitchen

My mother in law and Tao our contractor

The master bedroom with a lovely seat for two outside.

The trash is piling up in the garage. Look at my beautiful beadboard for my kitchen and dining room though!

Above are a few pictures of our new place. The pictures were taken after everything was pretty gutted. Everything was very dated.

The beginning of our new adventure. It obviously needs quite a good amount of work, but it has an incredible amount of potential. It is 1,460 sq ft, and has double master bedrooms and a half bath downstairs. Julian is one lucky kid because he is getting a huge bedroom!

There were several things that made me fall in love with this place:

1. Gated community

2. Landscaping is amazing! Grass and hills everywhere! Perfect for Julian as gets older.

3. A lot of natural light

4. Attached garage! Very important when you have a baby!

5. Generous amount of open parking for guests.

6. High vaulted ceilings. I love the open feeling of a room.

What is the"full chair"?

My Full Chair

Today I decided to start a new blog. This blog will help me document the memories we are about to build as a family in our new home. This blog will help me remember what it feels like to finally achieve what my mother had always wanted me to. This blog will help me continue to fill the empty chair.

You might be wondering what the empty chair is. Well, during graduate school I often had to do mock therapy sessions, and in these mock sessions we often used a technique called "The Empty Chair." This technique was derived by the famous psychologist Fritz Perls who believed that people could not be fully functioning unless they became "whole." One way to become whole was to work-out  unfinished business by role playing with an empty chair. The therapist would ask you to work your problems out with an empty chair that you imagined to be your "problem"...this was usually a person. Then, you would switch places and respond to yourself as that person - sort of a "if I was in her shoes" moment.

I wanted to take the idea of the empty chair and begin to become "whole."I am slowly filling that empty chair. The first thing I filled it with was my husband Eric. The second, my son Julian. And now, the third, is our first home. I never want that chair to be empty again. I want it to remain full until the day I die.