Laundry List

I take after my mother, which means I am an all-out, balls to the wall planner.
We have quite a list of projects to do before Baby S. gets here. We want to paint the family room, foyer and hallway. We would like to finish up the second flower bed in the front yard. We would like to paint the downstairs bathroom. We are definitely going to completely gut the main bathroom upstairs. And, obviously, we have to get the nursery completed. This is quite a list and The Husband is willing to tackle what he can. With Christmas arriving in the first month of my third trimester, a baby shower in early January and getting ready for Baby S. after that, I don't want to be running around, trying to finish up the nursery. I want to get it done before my third trimester even begins so I don't have to worry about it and can then focus on the holidays and doing what I can to prepare and (hopefully) relax as much as possible before our little one arrives.

After finding out we were pregnant, I immediately started planning. We had already decided (before we even got pregnant) that we would go it old school and not find out the gender. I have always, always wanted it this way. I love the idea of not knowing and hearing The Husband yell out in the hallway "It's a ___!!!" to all of those anxiously waiting. However, nowadays, this can cause some grief. ALOT of the bedding, clothing and what-have-yous are not gender neutral. It's either pink/purple or blue/red. It is difficult finding things that can work for either a boy or girl. So this has been my frustration since soon after getting our Big Fat Positive.

I found a few options that I didn't detest, but still nothing that made me go "Oh yes, this is what I have been dreaming about." I am not a huge fan of all the cartoonish animals and characters. I prefer the modern, somewhat eclectiv, colorful and not too matchy-matchy look. So I was constantly on the internet, looking at stores, but found nothing that floated my boat.

Until...

I was at Target with The Husband and found the most perfect patterned comforter that I instantly fell in love with. I didn't buy it, but couldn't stop thinking about it either. All weekend I thought of nothing else, and on Monday, I headed back to that Target to buy the comforter. Here is where I ran into my first issue. The comforter was on deep clearance, at only $7.83! A steal, right?? However, I couldn't find any of the other pieces at any other local store and Target wasn't willing to check any other store around the United States unless I had a zip code. I was willing to pay the shipping costs, but they weren't willing to help. Luckily, I was able to buy the 3-piece set, along with curtains and the crib skirt online. I was ecstatic about that. I couldn't, however, get the changing pad cover or any of the single crib sheets (so I could have more then the one that comes with the set).

I figured I could just find some solid colored sheets and changing pads to coordinate and it would have to do, because I loved the rest of the set so much, right?

Not so fast! My MIL is an amazing sewer (she sewed for Ford Motor Company for 30 years or so) and has agreed to make a changing pad and crib sheet from the curtains that come with the set. They are 100% cotton and very soft and feel just like a sheet! So I ordered two more curtains and VOILA! A nursery has been born :)

Not only is she going to make those, she is also adding material to the bottom of the curtains to make them floor length. A friend and I found some awesome coordinating fabrics to help get the look I have always dreamed of and I couldn't be happier!

Here is a picture of the main pattern (on the right, in the package). It is an off white background with light blue, orange, sage and brown animals (hippos, giraffes, elephants, camels). There is a very small polka dots and a flower pattern inside each animal. The green fabric with white polka dots in the upper left corner is what's going to be at the bottom of the curtains to give them more length. The color matches perfectly and I love the polka dots that ties in with the polka dots in the animals. The orange fabric with the white flowers will be tied into the room by a pillow and possibly some wall art. The other small swatch of blue and brown fabric (on top of the main pattern curtain) may or may not be used, I am not sure yet.


I think we are going to go with the very top paint color, a lighter shade of the same green in the curtains and green polka dot fabric. We tried the darker green that's also in there, toward the bottom, but it is way too dark and olive-y for the room.

I also found a great rug at Target that will hopefully go with all the colors and tie the room together:


The rug arrived today, on the same day The Husband picked up the crib and dresser! He is hoping to paint this weekend and then, hopefully, the room will slowly start to come together.

Just for fun, here is a picture of the crib and dresser we found at Babies R Us. We got a great deal on everything and are very happy with our purchase:

What do you all think? Do the fabrics go? Does the rug tie it all together like it does in MY head?

The only thing I am missing is a mobile. Do I even need one of those?

Mish Mash

Sorry for the absence, but after The Husband's health scare and my (unexpected) 6 day vacation from work, it was hard to get back into the swing of things.

*Work seriously kicked my butt last week. On Thursday, my computer got a nasty virus and wouldn't let me get online, which I need to do for some of my job responsibilties.

*The virus got fixed on Friday morning, but I still had quite a few issues that needed to get ironed out. Computer issues + the half day we got on Friday due to Good Friday (that I had forgotten about) = this girl working a full day anyway (but scoring three hours of overtime - YAHOO!). It was a long week!

*Our first party went smashingly well back on 4/16. It was great to have everyone over and actually still have room to move about. Our old condo was so small and it was difficult to have more then four people over at a time, especially if they have kids.

*It has been raining non-stop (at least that's how it feels) forever! I know I should count myself lucky since it seems as if the rest of the United States is being bombarded by tornado after tornado lately, but I just really wish the rain would stop! I am ready to work on the outside of our house. Plus, I just really want our yard to get a chance to DRY OUT!

*The Husband got me a Pandora bracelet for my birthday. Before I received it, I wasn't sure if it was my taste, but I think I will love it the more beads I add. They have beautiful glass beads that I LOVE and that will help make it more my style. The only problem now is that my two measly beads keep sliding all over and end up next to the clasp :)

*As previously mentioned, there have been tornados and other forms of devastation all over the world lately. Seriously, what is going on?!?! I feel like the world is getting back at us for slowly killing it. You know what I mean? All the hurricanes and tsunamis and earthquakes...and now tornados? I am in disbelief that 13 people lost their lives in Tuscaloosa yesterday. I feel so saddened and helpless.

*I really, really want to go back to Disney World! My parents took our family last April and it was the first time I had been since visiting back in 1999. It was The Husband's FIRST visit and he LOVED it! Seriously, he wanted to buy into the vacation club! Anyway, I am trying to find a way for us to go back, on our own. I am hoping they will offer free dining again over the holidays, because I would love to show him what the World looks like all decked out for Christmas!

*It is almost the weekend and I couldn't be happier! The sun is supposed to be out and in full effect on Saturday so we might actually get to do some outdoor work. Rain until Friday morning, though, so we'll see how much everything dries up!

Hope you are having a great week!

Now that is RED!

We started a new project this week: The Fireplace. It's brick, but has been painted at least twice before. When we moved in, the brick was a pink-y, beige-y color. Not my taste at all. I had painted the wall above the mantle in our old condo a burnt red and really loved it. All of our decor went with it and I just love red as an accent color. So we decided to try it again in the new house.

Here's the fireplace right as we started painting:



Samson watches over us and isn't really sure what to make of it all:



And here's the fireplace after the first coat - Wowsa!



It's showing up a bit brighter in the photos then it really is (I was going for a more burnt, brown-y red), but it is still pretty bright. The Husband put a second coat on last night so it's a little darker/better, but I am just not sure. He also painted the mantle white, so I don't know if that makes the red even brighter or not. Either way, the red really makes the fireplace stand out and look bigger. Before, when it was that pink-y beige, it just kind of blended into the room, because the walls/wallpaper were all beige. Now...not so much.

What do you think?

Our new digs: Christmas edition

Here are the before pictures of the house and the after pictures of what we've done so far. We've painted the 3 bedrooms, painted the kitchen, replaced the floor in the kitchen, pulled out the carpet in the living room to expose the hardwoods underneath, and replaced the carpet in the family room.

Before:















And after, starting with the master bedroom:
























There's still lots of work to be done. After the holidays, we want to take down the wallpaper in the family room and paint the fireplace brick (red) and the walls (a tan color). We also want to paint the living room, foyer, upstairs hallway, 2nd bathroom. We have a HUGE main bathroom that we'd like to update as well. So you can see, lots of projects. Closet doors still need to be painted and hung back up, curtains need to be hung. The biggest project we have in our future is to gut the kitchen and really make use of all the empty wall space and creat a warm, functional gathering place.

Hope you all enjoyed my first house tour. MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Welcome Home!

Well...we did it! We closed on our house last Wednesday, 11/10, painted/cleaned/ripped out carpet on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and moved in on Saturday. Needless to say, it has been an exhausting, exciting, crazy and chaotic past couple of days. I returned to work this morning for the first time since last Tuesday and it was definitely weird to wake up in our new master bedroom in our new home and get ready for work. My routine was the same (pack lunch the night before, watch the news, shower, do hair, get dressed, leave) but it just felt different. Closing the garage and pulling out of the driveway definitely felt different, but it all felt different in a good way. A great way. A phenomenal way.

We got the three bedrooms painted (including all of the trim, quarter round and closets and ceilings) before moving in. The kitchen, master bedroom and second bedroom are all unpacked and organized, minus curtains (Yikes! Gotta remember to be careful getting undressed - HA!) and closet doors (that were taken off for painting).

Many filled boxes remain that I hope to get to before Thanksgiving, but we shall see. I am a Christmas fanatic (I am that person that wants Christmas music to start playing before Halloween) and I can barely stand waiting for Thanksgiving to pass before getting all my holiday decorations out. Some years I don't wait, but most of the time I do. So, I'd really like the boxes unpacked and everything put away and in its place before I get out the Christmas stuff, however I might have to settle for putting some boxes down into the basement until I can get to them. There is NO WAY I am missing out on decorating for our first Christmas in our new home.

I hope to have pictures of rooms as they get finished, so fingers crossed I actually do it!

Still on the hunt

Since our last foray into buying a home, The Husband and I have seen numerous homes. Purchasing a home is a tedious, stressful and frustrating process. You find so many homes that look great on paper and in pictures, but then you see them in person....and everything is not as it seemed. So last weekend, we spent 3-4 hours looking at homes we'd found on both Saturday AND Sunday. We found 2 houses on Sunday that had great potential. One was completely updated and was in a great location (just a few houses down from the one we put an offer on the week before), but it layed out a little weird and had smaller bedrooms. The second one was gorgeous and had great spaces, but the location wasn't as desireable. Either way, we LOVED the second one and wanted to put an offer in. While we were looking, the homeowner came home from a run. She came into the house, we talked for a few and then...this is so weird...she went upstairs to TAKE A SHOWER! With strangers in her home. A little disturbing, right? Anyway, the point is, she took time to answer our questions and talk about the neighborhood and the house. After she went upstairs to shower (!!!), we left a few minutes later and told our agent to call the listing agent to find out any other information and what was going on since it was a short sale. An hour later we get a call from her telling us that the house already had an offer! Son of a...!!!

Our agent was so mad, she told us she really lit into the other agent about how unfair it is of them to not tell us about the other offer and to keep showing the house and get people all excited. So...no house.

We looked at more on Sunday, all the while still thinking about the first house we'd seen the day before (great location, smaller bedrooms). Then we looked at another house in an amazing subdivision with beautiful streets and well-cared for homes. The outside of the house was just what we wanted. All brick with an attached 2-car garage, a nice porch and nice landscaping that just needed some work, a beautiful backyard with a very nice deck. The inside had some great qualities as well. Separate living and family rooms, big bedrooms, hardwood floors, a huge basement, a big main bathroom with double sinks, a big kitchen and a fireplace! The kitchen was hideous, but had lots of potential. The cupboards could be easily painted, the appliances were newer, lots of cabinet space. Plus, The Husband lays floors for a living, so we could easily (and inexpensively) replace the awful laminate flooring. Hideous kitchen and bathrooms (also outdated, but liveable) aside, we LOVED it! After looking at a few more homes, we left the agent and came back to this house and sat in the driveway looking at it (don't worry, it's a short sale and no one is living there! LOL!) and just talked about the house and what we could do with it.

I asked my husband "Which house do you like better?" He was silent for a while, really thinking about it. He finally answered "This one" and I immediately said "Me too!" I, of course, am always worried about fixing up a house. From the start, we'd both said we could handle fixing up a bathroom or two, but not a kitchen. They are so expensive and I worry we won't have the funds to make it the way we'd like. I don't need top of the line and I don't need it right away, but I still worry. But sitting there, in that driveway, we both felt it. It felt like home. So, the next morning we called our agent, ready to put an offer in. She tells me she'll meet us at her office that afternoon and that she'll place a call to the other agent to make sure there's no problems. She tells me that she'll call me back if there's anything wrong. An hour or two later, my phone rings. I whisper "please don't let it be our agent, please don't let it be our agent." It's our agent. Calling to tell me that there's already an accepted offer on the property. I was so angry, I had to get off the phone as quickly as possible. I couldn't believe our agent had taken us to another house that already had an offer on it!

I called The Husband and cried and vented and snotted all over the place. He was just as angry and called our agent. He firmly, but gently, told her that this would not happen again and that we were tired of falling in love with homes we couldn't have. He also she'd better come up with some other houses for us to look at. She came up with three more that evening (Monday) and now we are seriously debating putting an offer on one of them. It's such a hard decision, though. The location isn't as good as the other one, but it's got great potential, inside and out. It's a really great space and I think it could be a wonderful home. I guess we'll see...

First offer on a house FAIL!

I haven't blogged in a while. Partly because we've been pretty busy looking for a house and with work and partly because I haven't had much to say, or at least anything that would be interesting to the two followers I have! :) (Thanks for following ladies!)

On Sunday, The Husband and I went to the first of 5 houses we had scheduled to look at that afternoon...and we fell in love! We walked around, talked about ideas and then went outside and found the most awesome, most beautiful backyard we'd seen at any of the houses. We both knew this felt like home. We went to look at the other houses, or as our realtor put it "Let's go look at the other dumps" - HA! None of lived up to the first house and we kept comparing them all to the first one. We asked if we could go back to look one more time. Afterward, we went home with the intentions of putting in an offer in the morning.

After speaking to our mortgage guy, he told us he'd need the most current paystub from each of us. Since we are living in a temporary home at the moment, I leave all my paystubs at work...in a city that is about a 35-40 minute drive with morning traffice. First FAIL! We had to drive to my city of employment and all the way back, just to grab my paystub. You can be sure those babies will be coming home with me from now on.

After meeting with the mortgage guy, we booked it to our realtor's where we found out there was another offer coming in as well. We decided on our best possible offer, wrote a schmaltzy letter about us and how much we'd been looking forward to buying our first home together since meeting and how we'd fallen in love with their home and how beautifully they'd cared for it and sent them both off by fax. That was at 1:50pm. Almost exactly 2 hours and 40 minutes later, my husband got THE CALL. Turns out the other offer was a FULL CASH offer and they decided to accept it. However, the agent made sure to tell us that the sellers "really appreciated the letter and would've taken our offer if the other one hadn't been cash." Yeah, thanks. I feel SO much better now.

We are so disappointed and upset. Everything we find that we really like either already has an offer on it or it's out of our price range. The ones we are finding are outdated and not exactly the location we want. I am getting so stressed that we'll never find something we love and will want to live for years to come.

Back to the drawing board.

What about you guys? How have your house hunts gone? Any advice?

It's official!

We are currently homeless!!!It's been a long couple of weeks, but we closed on our condo and are all moved out. There was drama with our association/board and management company right up until close (of course) - the tried to slap us with a last minute $500 transfer fee! Our real estate agent said $500 is unheard of, outrageous and the highest transfer fee she's ever seen has been around $150. RIDICULOUS!

Anyways, we are temporarily staying in a condo my parents own and where my grandma stays when she comes down for the winter. Most of our things are in storage and we have a few things with us at the condo. It's weird, really. While we'll be calling this place home for the next four or so months, I don't think we'll ever feel settled or comfortable, especially since we don't have all of our "things" around us. We are both very anxious to find a house and start this new chapter of our lives!

Movin' Out!!!

So, this weekend is the big day(s) - The Husband and I are moving out of the condo! For now, we'll be moving into another condo that belongs to my parents. They rent it to my grandma during the winter months, but since it's now summer, my grandma has moved back up north and the condo sits empty. We'll be there temporarily while we save and search for our new home.

Tomorrow we'll be moving the big stuff - furniture, bed, etc. - and then the smaller stuff will follow in the days to come. If the bed goes tomorrow, that means tonight will be the last night I spend at my first home. Sure, I can't stand most of my neighbors and I can't wait until we are out from under their thumb, but I still get a little teary-eyed just thinking about it. I've been praying for this day to come for the last 3.5 years, but now that it's here, I'm scared. It all seems to be happening so fast, but then not fast at all. It's such a weird feeling. This condo is where I first lived, on my own and alone. I was my own roommate for 6.5 years and I'm sad to watch this part of my life become my past.

Homeless...kind of.

I moved into the condo the Husband and I are currently living in over 9 years ago. It's a small, 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom apartment style condo on the 2nd floor overlooking a beautiful courtyard. It was a great first place for a young women such as myself 9 years ago. While I've mostly enjoyed living there, especially the first 7 years, the last few years have become quite difficult due to overbearing and controlling board members and nosey neighbors. I made the decision to put it up for sale over 3 years ago, a few months after being let go from my job. I met my husband a few months later and a few months after that, we were living together. Since then, we have encountered problem after problem with our association and board members. I do not - and cannot - go into detail as it only fuels my anger and the best way to deal with it is to just not dwell on it. All I can say is that the three members of our board are power hungry and want to be in control of every little thing we do. I am not exaggerating when I say this, but it's gotten to the point where the Husband and I have decided we can't even consider having a baby in our current home, for fear of receiving letters and being fined when our baby has a bad night and is up late, crying and fussing.

This last year, we've been living quietly and keeping to ourselves, but still seem to receive letter after letter from the board, accusing us of one thing or another. Some accussations were way over exaggerated and some were completely false in their entirety. Either way, the Husband and I kept to ourselves and tried to stay out of the way. There were times when my husband tried to talk to the President of our board and he was basically shoved aside, being told "I don't have to talk to you" and "I am not going to tell you anything." After episodes like that, I decided I wouldn't talk to our President at all anymore, in any way. I deal stricly with our management company, even for the smallest question or issue. If I ever saw the president (or any board member) outside our condo, I didn't look at her and I didn't acknowledge her. I felt bad about it, but I didn't trust myself not to be provoked or riled up by her and I never wanted to do or say anything bad. So I kept to myself. The Husband went back and forth, sometimes saying hello, but mostly also ignoring her.

One day very recently, the Husband and I were walking into the building and she, the President, was walking out. We met in the foyer, between the 2 doors into our building, and as we were passing her, we heard "Hi guys!" in a overly nice voice. I kept doing what I had been doing and ignored her. The Husband didn't say a word either. As the door into the building shut, we heard her exclaim "RUDE!!!" I was completely shocked! What does she expect? She is constantly accusing us of things we didn't do and trying to fine us. We have to keep protecting ourselves from you, so why would we do anything BUT ignore you?!? It was so shocking to us, that after the Husband came in from letting Samson (our Yorkie) out, he said to me "I want to go knock on her door and tell her exactly why we ignore her." All I could say was "Even if you did, she wouldn't get it." Her "RUDE!" comment has bugged me every day since then. Am I a bad neighbor? Am I being too mean? AM I RUDE?!?!

A few days later, we got an offer on the condo. I pretty much hyperventilated on the phone while telling my husband, I was so happy. We should be out by June 15th, 2010.