Home Sweet Home

         We now call Jamaica Plain (JP for short) our home!! We moved here about three weeks ago and are loving it already. JP has a wonderful community filled with great activities, food and drink. This past weekend there was a JP wide yard sale all afternoon, I didn't buy anything but it was wonderful to walk around and see everyone buzzing around peoples' tables with questions and excitement over other's old and used things.  Today our block is having their annual block party where everyone donate $10 for beer, wine, juice and soda and each house provides a main, side or dessert. We are all looking forward to it because the neighbors we have met so far have been wonderful. 

The outside of our new condo, the second story porch is ours

         And you wonder how we ended up withthis wonderful apartment in this wonderful neighborhood? Well we have connections ;-) David and my high school photography teacher, Jonathan lived in this very apartment for years, owning the whole house at one point he now owns the upstairs. He recently decided to move his family closer to work and wanting to have excellent tenants, and good people to live above and around close friends of he and his wife's, he asked if David and I would be interested in looking at it. 

Tons of windows in all the rooms provide wonderful natural light

Our new kitchen which consists of new cabinets and stainless steel appliances

Our incredible stove with a convection oven and grill with a high powered vent so we can grill year round!!!

         I said no right from the start. It's in a beautiful neighborhood, it sounded like a beautiful apartment, it was in a great location, Jonathan would be our landlord. Too good to be true and too expensive. But he was persistent and after looking at apartments on our one day in JP and being sorely disappointed with the selection given to us we decided to give him a call. And all the things I said prior are true, we all fell inlove with it immediately. So then we worked out our budget and he worked out his and with a paint job of the apartment and some odds and ends to be fixed we decided on a price that worked for all of us. So we now live in JP with David's sister Jessica and her husband Andrew and it's awesome!!!

Our new backyard where our wonderful neighbor Joann has a beautiful garden

         Our downstairs neighbor Joann is incredible. She is also a photographer, was a nurse in NYC and is a social worker. She has amazing stories to share and is so gracious. She sometimes leaves us gifts on our doorstep from the farmers market, tells us about fun events that are going on in the neighborhood, and is always a friendly face when we run into each other in the yard. She has done incredible work on the yard, filling it with flowers, herbs and vegetables. It's awesome.

Our hallway which the two bedrooms, the porch, multiple closets, bathroom & extra "blue" room all run off of

And the weekend we moved in so many of the neighbors came up and introduced themselves and welcomed us to the neighborhood, despite missing Jonathan and Lynn greatly. It was wonderful and very unusual for most Boston or even Massachusetts neighborhoods. Or at least that is my experience from moves that I have done. We are all really happy to meet the neighborhood families. It also appears that there are tons of families with young children running around which I am very excited about. I love kids but as many of you know not quite ready to have my own.

Our living room with a beautiful working fire place

             We also have found that we all have nice easy commutes to work and school. Jessica and David are both going to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, which David can bike to on a bike path in 15min and Jessica and take the T or bus to in 20min. Andrew is working in downtown crossing and now has a commute that is 20-30min instead of an hour long and I am working at a local hospital 2mile down the road in Roxbury which I can bike to on a nice quiet street and be there in 10min without rushing. It is wonderful and has taken away so much stress in many of our commutes. 

Dining room with great light, built in china cupboard that holds all our dishes, wine glasses and serving dishes which saves a ton of space in our kitchen

Well this is our new home, it's been really wonderful so far and we hope to have you all over soon. We are slowly working through our huge list of family and friends so if you haven't been over yet you'll be invited soon hopefully. We do hope to stay here for a couple years though so we have time.