Our First Week at Wayfarer Cottage!

One of the biggest highlights from our trip home was our long-anticipated first stay at our beach cottage! It was the most glorious week, filled with brilliant blue skies, hours of beach walks and hunting for driftwood, delicious food, successful outlet shopping, and lots of treasured family time!

While we had seen photos of the progress made at the cottage, we were absolutely giddy about finally seeing it in person. I don’t think we stopped grinning once during the drive there!

Walking through the front door was absolutely surreal…

We could not believe how wonderful everything looked already! The white walls and dark floors were absolutely stunning- we’re truly going to have a “Coastal Living” cottage by the time we’re all done. Thank you a million times over, Dream Team!!! There is still plenty of work to be done, but it was so thrilling to see our vision developing and looking as beautiful (if not more) as we’d imagined it would. Plus, we can’t wait to roll our sleeves up this summer and finish off as many of those remaining projects as we can. Heck, who are we kidding?! It’s a beach house- we’ll have projects to keep us busy forever ;).

After checking out the house (and doing our happy dances) we headed down to the beach to enjoy the beautiful weather…

Miss Bubble Booty was super excited to walk on the beach… her favorite place!

 

The tide was out so we walked all the way down to the mouth of the river.

 

A sunset view from Wayfarer Cottage.

Morgan came over to see the cottage, which she proudly helped paint, and meticulously inspected every room. “It’s not broken anymore!” she exclaimed. She then pointed out that there was no stool in the bathroom and therefore she could not get herself on the toilet. I found one later that week and she loved it, and was SO appreciative! Too cute!

Still caught up in the Christmas spirit, Morgan decided she would be Santa and asked Isaac what he wanted for Christmas.

 

New Years Eve was a very relaxing event. Both families gathered up at the cabin to eat, play games, and watch the ball drop. For dinner, we scrubbed down the table, rolled up our sleeves, and made dumplings for the second year in a row- perhaps this will be our New Years tradition?

 

New Years Day boasted brilliant skies… bright blue, with the most stunning streaky clouds. So, we bundled up and made our way down to the beach to hunt for the perfect pieces of driftwood.

The Little Mermaid!

WHAT was that?!

All that crossfit is paying off 😉

Bella and her ball…

 

The next morning Isaac’s parents brought Morgan down to the cottage for breakfast. Morgan brought her little stool into the kitchen and Uncle Isaac taught her to make pancakes. Definitely one of our most treasured moments of the trip home…

Bella, ever hopeful!

LOVE!

After breakfast Morgan took the first bath at Wayfarer Cottage. She gave the tub two thumbs up!

Poor Bella had to wear an e-collar because she kept trying to lick at a cyst on her foot. She actually didn’t mind the collar at all, and pranced around the house whenever we put it on her (she’s actually not unhappy in the above photo- this is her “I’m SO tired!” face.)

 

January 4th marked my Aunt Joanie’s birthday, so we celebrated with a seafood feast and bubbly! YUM!

 

While we kept ourselves quite busy at the beach, there were still a few quiet moments here and there…

The BEAUTIFUL print Isaac made me for Christmas. I LOVE it and I love that it’s the first thing you see when you walk into the cottage.

My loves!

That tongue is just plain ridiculous!

We added a few new sand dollars to our collection.

Rounding the bend at the mouth of the river we came upon a huge group of seals napping on the bank. We’re planning to get some kayaks for the cottage… we’re already dreaming of paddling up and down that river!

 

Before leaving the cottage we partook in a little dumpster diving and found some great old wood to use for future building projects…

Next time you see this old Lazy Susan it will be the base of our new coffee table!

Check out all the perfect aqua- this stuff was meant to be ours!

Leaving the beach was tough. It was all we could do to pull ourselves away from those dove grey skies, mighty green waves, and the cozy little cottage with the sandy black floors. We are already counting the days until summer!