Did I mention we were doing a little work on the house? Well, we're kind of done. For a minute, anyway.

For instance, the kitchen before:

(And yes, that's a dropped ceiling that's covered with shingles and inset with a bank of fluorescent lights, the latest in Brady Bunch design. It felt as though we were erasing an entire week of 1973 when it all came out.)

And the kitchen after:

(And yep, that's my same stove and sink. In fact, a lot of the finishes in the new place are the same as in the old place because I'm massively homesick and wasn't nearly done with living in my other house so this one, while utterly alien, still feels freakishly familiar):

Now, if all the art and photos would spontaneously adhere to the walls, and the books would fly onto shelves that would miraculously find their way from the storage shed to the just right spot in the house, and the pots and pans and dishes would tell me where, exactly, in the new kitchen they would like to live, we'd have a Pixar film be finished.

More photos (some shot when the previous family still lived in the house) in the slideshow here.