House!House!House!House!

Well it's been quite a long month so far, and we're not even done yet.

Last Thursday, May 19, Richard and I closed on our house!  We're now officially home owners, and we're tackling everything head on.

There have been some unexpected developments... such as the wallpaper someone apparently painted over in the kitchen. We've already demolished the bathroom, it was the original 50's pink bathroom and while it was cute... well, it needed some updating and it turned out that every wall had water/moisture damage because the room was never properly vented. So we're tucking in and getting to work, which is just a round about way of saying we'll be super busy for the next month and a half.

We'll take a brief reprieve next Sunday to go to the first Maxwell Street Days of the 2011 season.  And I am so excited for the official beginning to the flea market season.  Maybe now that we have a house we'll finally find that chrome kitchen table we've been searching for.

Hopefully I'll get some photos and updates about the house up in the coming weeks, but I'm not making any promises.

Good News and Why things are looking Up

So it finally came. The letter we've been waiting for since June when Richard was laid off. He's been recalled and we can both breathe a sigh of relief now that this summer of waiting is over. School starts next week already so now its crunch time.

We've withdrawn our offer on the house and have put our housing plans on hold. We're not actively looking for a house to buy anymore and we're planning to stay where we are for at least another year. We've gotten to the point where we're just going to let things happen as they happen.

I had an interview/trial run for a nanny position on Saturday, and I'm just waiting to hear back if they are going to use me on a regular basis which would be just amazing. In the meantime I'm still looking for a job nearby, and trying to whip myself into shape with my etsy stores.

New House!

We went back to look over the house again this past weekend and brought with us nearly every family member near by. Two sets of Richard's grandparents, his parents, his brother and my parents all joined us. It was a packed house to say the least.

I'm really glad that they are all so excited. It feels so good that everyone else is just as thrilled about the house as we are. But it was a little overwhelming having them all there putting in their two cents. Both of our families are ridiculously opinionated (something both Richard and I have inherited) and they each had their opinions on absolutely everything. It was actually kind of hard to sort through all the advice they were giving us.

Also, can you please just look at the color in the kitchen. I'm not sure how I feel about it.


On the update front, we're going with no news is good news. We haven't heard anything from the bank/owner and neither has our mortgage banker or realtor. The only downside is that we can't get anyone who still owns the place to go by the house to turn on the heat, which is probably an issue seeing as the water in the toilet has already frozen and since this is Wisconsin the odds that it is going to get warmer are slim to nil. We're worried about the pipes bursting, but the good news is that since we've already had an inspector come in anything that happens in the house will have to be taken care of by the bank/owner.

So much, and already late.

At the moment my life is a little bit.... all over the place. We're in the process of buying a house, but we have apparently done all that we can and now just have to sit back and wait to see where the pieces fall. And it really shouldn't, but it's putting me on edge just a little because I'm just so eager for this to fall into place.

There are so many creative things I have my hands in as well, so far this morning I have worked on creating a cross stitch pattern (yes, this might be my new winter shut-in hobby), packaged an order from etsy (big news in that department to come later!), and worked on some Christmas gifts.

Things I should be doing include dishes, laundry, exercising, and a post office visit.

As far as I can tell it hasn't stopped snowing since Sunday night, and now the wind is really blowing! I'm going to have to shovel the car out of the parking lot and venture forth for our yearly pilgrimage to The Rep for A Christmas Carol. I should probably do that before getting all gussied up.

I always feel like there is so much to do, so much that needs doing, and so much I want to do, and sometimes I just don't know where to start.

"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by." - Douglas Adams

Our House, in the middle of...

I've held off mentioning anything about our recent house searching just because we were so excited last time and it resulted in such a let down when the credit union backed down.

But here we are again. We made an offer on a house and it was accepted last week. It's a cute, tiny house - two bedrooms, one bath, one car garage. And it's perfect.

We've moved away from dealing with our credit union, so things should go a bit more smoothly this time. Today we're meeting with the house inspector and if all goes well with that and the paperwork in the next few weeks we're scheduled to close on January 15th, 2010.

And then the moving work begins.

also - the bathroom is blue! Tub, sink, and all! And it's not all that tacky - in fact it's rather cute!