The Lakehouse

Check this out:


Well, that's the view that Brent and I will have at our new townhouse! We've signed the lease to rent what we will forever call "The Lakehouse"!!

In the month since we found out about Brent's job, we've spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out just what to do. And, that question was really in two parts, consisting of a career for him and a place for us to live. We've gone 'round and 'round on a wide variety of ideas that would take too long to list here! For a while, it seemed like stuff changed every single day!

Back to the story of The Lakehouse... We started looking for places to live here in Appleton, and in our price range all we found was JUNK! I kept telling myself:

"Self, it will be okay to live anywhere, in anything. You can survive anything and it might even turn out better than expected! After all, you never thought you'd enjoy living in a tent for an entire summer, and that turned out to be lots of fun, and you never expected to share one tiny townhouse with six other women, and that turned out to be fun, and you never thought you'd have a total of 23 roommates before getting married and look what fun friendships you have because of it! You hadn't planned to move every three months all across the country, and what an adventure that turned out to be! And now you'll get to have fun living-adventures with Brent! What joy! I mean, who cares if your stove is from 1964 or who cares if the Rottweiller's next door look like they'll attack at a moment's notice or who cares if the odd-shaped house is so grimy you don't want to ever actually use the bathroom provided? There's always the locker room at work, right?"

Anyway, I digress... back to The Lakehouse. Well, it's true. All of those things were our potential living arrangements, and there were a few other scary things as well. So, when we drove by this little sign next to a driveway that said "For Rent, Lakeshore" we decided to call. We both actually thought that the price would be out of our budget, but I know I just wanted to see something fun at that point.

Well, we were so surprised to find out that it was within our budget! And, when we went to look at the place, we were excited to find that we actually liked it!

The huge bonus is that it happens to be on a lake! WOW!!

So, this will be my new kitchen:


I love all the counter space!


Our dining room, overlooking the lake, is open to the kitchen so I'll be able to be part of the activity when we have people over for meals (which I'm hoping happens often!)


I love that the dining room goes right out onto a great deck, so I'm planning on our summer meals taking place outside!


The deck, complete with seating all around.


The living room is really big. I know it's hard to get perspective from an empty room, so I'll show you again when we get furniture in place.


The only downfall is that these window face the front yard, not the lake, but really, there are no complaints about this house allowed!


The master bedroom faces the lake.


The bathroom has a big counter, and there's a light that's off in this picture in the second part with the toilet and bathtub/shower. (We don't have to shower in the dark!)


The guest room will be ready and waiting for you!


There's also a full basement with washer and dryer hookups, and after having my own for six years and then using apartment laundry for the last two years, I can hardly express how excited I am about that! Yippee!!

Really, we feel so blessed by getting to live here. Our landlord is the neighbor who lives in the other part of the duplex, but it sounds like he's often gone for his job. He seems really nice, and I think a little grateful that we're pretty normal people. If you can call us normal... :)

He already gave us the keys so Brent will starting moving in this week sometime. Oh, and for those of you asking about his job, at this point it looks like he'll keep the 1/2 time job at his school district and then look for something else to supplement it.

It'll be fun to keep sharing pictures with you as we get settled in The Lakehouse!