Next week, we will celebrate our first month anniversary in our cozy condo in Cotati. And it’s almost starting to feel like home. I’m beginning to be able to identify electronic beeping sound goes with which appliance. Is it the dryer beeping, the microwave, the oven signaling that it has been preheated or the refrigerator telling me that the door has been open for too long?

Of course, celebrating holidays and creating memories definitely helps a house feel like a home. Hosting our family for Thanksgiving and having the aroma of a turkey in the oven fill the house – and thankfully not setting off our overly-sensitive smoke detector for the two hours that the turkey was in the oven – helped Steve and I get over the feeling that we weren’t staying in a nice hotel on an extended vacation.

And downstairs right now, our daughter is baking gingerbread cookies and it smells wonderful. Isn’t having the smell of freshly baked cookies that taken right from the real estate agent’s manual of “How to Make an Unfamiliar Place seem Homey?”

And we got our Christmas tree. Since our new place is full up with furniture, there wasn’t a wall or corner that made the perfect place for the tree so it’s sprouting right out of the middle of the room.  Actually, it’s quite nice having a 360 degree view of it.

In the long run, it’s probably the everyday activities even more than the special occasions that really add up to feeling like we are living here and aren’t just visiting. Now that I’m in the routine of cleaning the bathrooms and cleaning up cat barf, I’m darn sure that I’m not staying in a hotel. And you know what, it feels really good.