house: colors

I am having a hard time.  In fact, I have stalled out.  We have the essentials in place, a few pretty things here and there.  The next step is to decorate my walls.  I am having a problem with this.  I have tons of pretty wall hangings.  Most of them are reds & greens.  Then I moved into a blue house.

I'm not sure why I gravitated to the spectrum I did, but very few of my things match here.  But, that isn't to say I don't like the blue.  So, I either need new wall hangings (which means I am going to have bare walls for quite some time since it took me 7 years to collect what I have) or I need to paint my walls, which I am not ready to do.  This blue is calming and nice.  What to do, what to do?

See the colors of my stuff?

See the color of my walls?

house: bug off bugs!

bugs. OMG bugs. there are bugs here. In my happy little cookie-cutter neighborhood, I had all but forgotten about bugs. I am not a fan of bugs. I can handle snakes, rodents... but I really don't care for bugs. Remember when I told you my two least favorite things about camping? Add a third.

When I was little we would go to my dad's cousin's house in Michigan. I was reminded of that place when we first moved in. I remember looking out the windows at night and all the millions of bugs on them, just trying to get in to the light. It's like that here. There are lots of flying bugs like mosquitoes, gnats and moths.

There are also things like earwigs. I saw a lot of boxelders when we were looking at this house. I thought, at least they're not earwigs. Just had a to wait a bit I guess. We had earwigs where I grew up - hated them then, hate them now. They are under the weather stripping all around my front door. It was raining them the other day when I took a can of spray to the entryway. Anytime you move a plant, or anything, there they are.

Then there's things like this happy fellow. Actually he's not so happy since he's dead. Finn has had a bin of trains and tracks on the deck since we moved in and I decided we better dump it, rid it of bugs, repack them and put them away. Giant spider in with the trains. He was too fast for a picture. This guy didn't mind waiting around for his close-up.

house: towel rack & garage door openers

This is a towel rack. It is quirky because it is vertical. I'm not sure how i feel about it yet. It is a
cool idea if you have limited horizontal space, but it's also not very cool if you walk your face into it and nearly take out your eye, which I have done.

Also, finally got BOTH garage door openers programmed into my car today. hooray! apparently, in newer houses there is a special thing you have to do on the unit itself to program your car. I never could figure it out on the Jeep at the Clinton house. Never really tried on the Murano. Here, I decided i needed to make it happen. one reason: there are two ancient garage door openers, neither one with hooks so they would just be floating around my car. another reason: my visor is like an inch thick so even if they had hooks, they probably wouldn't go on it very well, just like the Clinton one never did.
So, programmed the one where I would park, no problem. hooray! got 2nd opener from old owner a few days later and couldn't program that one. boo. finally called the company and long story short, even though they are identical systems, had to do an extra step with the second one. So now I have zero openers in my car and I can open both doors. Good deal.

house: campfires in the backyard

I am sitting next to a campfire, typing on my iPad. I decided I am going to blog about our house. I will do a post (maybe even everyday we'll see), about our new house. Something funny or quirky, or cool.

Here's something fun, I can have a campfire in my backyard. We had one last weekend with cousins and grandma and grandpa. This Saturday it is just us. We're making hot dogs and s'mores.

It is cool to have a campfire in your backyard because you can make trips out with things on the 4-wheeler. Forgot the relish? Well, go get it! Then you can go in and go to sleep in your own bed. I love camping but the two things I like least about it are going to the bathroom and not sleeping in my own bed.

Now if we just had a river running through it we'd never have to leave.

little dancers & tire swings

Today is Tuesday. Big day. The day Burgundy had her first dance class – she was so excited! And the day I made good on my promise to the kids and put up a tire swing!

This morning, as I was about to wake Indi up, she staggered out of Finn’s room, bleary-eyed and wobbly and said, “do I get to go to ballet class now!?”

She also had a little friend in the class, Elley, the one in black. Luckily her mom texted us and I realized the clock I had been going off of this morning was 10 minutes late. oops! So we high-tailed it to class and got there just as the teacher was opening the studio (who also happens to be the wife of the rancher directly behind our house who kept his cows in our yard – small world)

Indi did great! She listened to the teacher and participated for the whole class. Wasn’t sure how she would do, since she is my little bossy one. But apparently she will be my little teacher’s pet. Apple doesn’t fall far, does it?

Also today, finally got the tire swing up! At least it’s up for the moment until we can get some thicker rope that may be easier to hang on to. But of course the kids don’t care, they love it! When we first saw this house, that’s the first thing I put on my mental to-do list. Tire swing in the willow. It was also a selling point for the kids (as if they needed another one). So I am proud of myself that I can get a few things like this done and not have to sit around waiting for my husband to get home exhausted and ask him to do more work. Even though it happens, probably every day even. (PS: thanks for being our hero, Cody)

And special thanks to my dad, who put up a tire swing for us. I remember the day he put it up, and I remember how much I loved playing on that thing, for years to come. (and special thanks to my mom, who possibly told him to do it :)

cousins

We just love when cousins come to visit us! Luckily we have been able to see lots of far-away cousins lately! Sariah & Bridger came to see us a few weeks ago, which the kids absolutely loved. And this week we got to play with Max, Luke & Isabel. How lucky are we?

Neither of their far-away moms got to come and see our new house though, so they will just have to come again soon. So we had 2 days where kids all played here, and one day when Finn had a sleep-over (which went just great) and played at grandma & grandpa's all day. Then we went up for dinner this evening. We are sad they are leaving tomorrow!

But look what fun we had. Yesterday, I had the brilliant idea to have a little camp-fire and make some s'mores before the kids went home to bed. How cool is it that we get to have one in our backyard? Pretty cool, I'd say.

(love this picture of Indi, look at her face. she was looking at Max in every single picture. she is very enamored of him I think!)

We heart cousins :)

Crazy boys

These boys are crazy. It is 62 degrees in the shade. Looks like fun though, doesn't it?

and here we are…

have been thinking to update my blog about the new place and what it took to get here.  So much else to do.  But I think I am going to take a few seconds to at least summarize the tale...

So, the end of the story is, we are in the new house, and everything is all closed and recorded, funded, what have you.  If you are the type of person who likes to read the last page first, you will appreciate knowing that.

It is hard to want to go back to the very beginning of the story.  Will I wish I had more detail when I go back to reread my blog book when I am old and grey?  Or would I skip all the boring details anyway?  I’ve wanted so many times to blog about every little step of the way, but when I sat down to do it, it just felt like I was jinxing it.  So, sorry to keep you in the dark, but if you’re important in my life (and if you’re reading this blog, you are) then chances are you’ve already known all that has been going on.

Basically, we put it out there.  We had no ideas of moving, but somehow I had cleaned out the closets thinking, if we moved, what would I loathe packing up to take with me?  And that is what I got rid of.  So one day we went to look at houses “for fun” and here we are.

Selling and buying a house in 2011 pretty much sucks.  The economy is bad, the housing market is crap, and you lose money.  The good thing  is that you might just find something great that no one else has snatched up yet.  We came down about $35,000 on our house.  The guy who sold us our new house came down about the same.  Somehow it worked out.  His house had been on the market long enough and come down in price enough that he was willing to take a gamble on our contingent offer.  It was the longest 3 months ever.

All the rapid repairs and super-cleaning for listing, keeping the house 10 minutes from show-ready at all times (had a real love/hate relationship with that one), then all the offers, rescissions, renegotiations, red tape...  Longest 3 months.  Ever.

We had finally come down in price enough that we started getting showings.  2 offers that people changed their minds days later, people nearly buying this house out from under us several times.  Debating if we wanted to cover half the yard in cement for a buyer who had requested it.  Ridiculous.

Finally, buyers showed up who made a low offer, then came back with a better one.  They had a big tax credit coming if they stuck with our house.  Still we were holding our breath for 7 weeks.  That’s a long time to hold your breath.  Right down to the very last moment it was an uncertain deal.

We were injured.  Broken and hurting.  Abandoned.  We moved all our stuff in early and sat in a dark house, waiting for word that it was ours.  Neither one speaking of how awful it would be if it fell through at the last minute and we had to move everything back out. 

But here we are.  In the country.  Here is our cute little house.

Here is the view from the kitchen door.

I’m pretty sure it was worth it.

stuck

I have been looking for raincoats for the kids for almost a year now, finally came across some cute/cheap ones so grabbed 'em up. Of course the first day Finn had his he had to go play out in the rain. Makes sense. Well, he decided to play in the garden (unfortunately I did not also purchase the matching rain boots) and got stuck. I just had to take his picture before unsticking him.