It’s hard to believe that just over a year ago, we closed on this crazy, wonderful house of ours.  And in a few weeks, it’ll be the anniversary of our actually *living* in the house, after all the repairs and de-smoke-ifying that had to be done before the place was habitable.

There hasn’t been much to blog about, because we’re still saving up for our next round of renovations…  hopefully in the Spring, our tax refund will allow for some final touches on some of our rooms and there’ll be some fun stuff to show everyone.  In the meantime, we’re still dealing with the fun (and I say that totally sarcastically) that comes with owning an older house — a roof that will hopefully make it through one more winter, a storage shed that has started leaking and needs a new roof of its own immediately, and a slate front walkway that had to be completely patched because most of the stones heaved due to the crazy fluctuating temps in January and February.

BUT — to celebrate our 1-year “houseiversary”, we did treat ourselves to something special that wasn’t a repair.  🙂  We bought ourselves and the house a gift, in the form of a piece of memorabilia from Mad Men!

A couple of months ago, ScreenBid (an auction company in California) held an auction of hundreds of pieces from the Mad Men sets and costumes.  The whole thing was almost overwhelming in its awesomeness — artwork from the Sterling Cooper offices, furniture, Don’s car, light fixtures, you name it.  We had a massive list of items on our watch list, but the bids went way outside of our price range almost immediately into the 2-week bidding cycle.  Especially if it had any remote connection to Don Draper, it immediately went into the thousands of dollars.  Crazy!

But we did manage to get one piece on our list, that I’m so in love with — a piece of artwork from Megan’s LA apartment in the final season!

If you watch the episodes where Don comes to visit Megan in LA, you can see this hanging in the hallway leading to her bedroom.  It was perfect for the bohemian style of her apartment — a 5′ tall wood carving of a man with a cat rubbing up against his legs.

Not only do I love the style of it, and the tone of the wood exactly matches the wood paneling in other areas of our house…  but we had no artwork at all in the hallway, and now we have a cool piece of the perfect size that draws your attention when you look down the hall!

Here’s his handsome face:

…and the fact that there’s a cat in it is just too perfect for us!

So, yay!  A great way to celebrate our first crazy year, and so much more to look forward to in the year to come…  🙂