Bumps in the road

It's official. We are no longer home owners. We closed on the sale of our house Friday. The new owners take possession on Saturday. Late last week it was looking like we were going to be able to get into our new house with time to spare before we hand over the keys to this house. The sale of this house was going smoothly, and our financing was all arranged for the new house pending the results of last Thursday appraisal. Sadly our appraisal on the new house brought all of that to a screaching halt. The house appraised for more than we're paying (yay!), but it turns out we can't get financing for the new house without adding a railing to the never completed back deck. No big deal, you might think, until you find out that the deck looks like this--

42' x 10' and falling apart. Matt and I were willing to put a railing on even still, but then we realized that it would require a permit. I called the city and found out that there is already an outstanding permit--not just for the deck, but for the whole house! That opens up a whole new can of worms. Given the current condition of the house (broken windows, over-spanned deck beams, etc) I don't think there's any way an inspector would come out and pass off the railing without requiring that we fix all of the other problems. The permit has been open long enough that the city could make us bring anything and everything in the house up to the current code if they wanted to. I don't know how much code has changed in the last 6 years, but it wouldn't take much for the costs to add up. So we're negotiating with the bank that owns the house and trying to decide who's going to put up a railing and if we want the building permit to be closed before we're willing to buy.

On a brighter note, check out the color scheme of one of the bedrooms!

I think this example probably sums up why we want to repaint every square inch of the house. Sadly, this room looks better in the photo than in real life!

Out with the old and in with the new

Guess what! We sold our house! We showed our house 36 times. I think that equates to about 100 extra hours of cleaning so I'm very glad it's over. We close on the sale on December 8th. Yay! Homeless in time for the holidays.

Actually, if we're very good, Santa might be able to get us into our new house in just a couple of weeks. New house, you say? Yes, we're under contract on this lovely house in Springville.




(Please excuse the smoke bush trying to devour one side of the house. The yard could use a little TLC).

Dream house? I'm not so sure. It's about 100 years to new to be my dream house, but this is the first house we looked that I didn't think needed a major remodel. The current interior isn't exactly my style, but I probably wouldn't have liked it if I couldn't think of some projects to do. There are some things I love about the house like the kitchen--it's laid out exactly how I would have chosen to have it if I had built the house with fantastic features like big deep drawers and a cabinet for cookie sheets right next to the stove.



And there are some things I don't love about the house. The master bath for example:

Doesn't it look like it would be soothing and restful to lean your head against a wall of uneven stones?

The house has 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, a formal living room, great room and laundry up and an unfinished basement down. The house is on a hill so most of the basement is daylight. The future family room in the basement even has a set of french doors that walk out into the back yard. Upstairs there is a deck that spans the whole back of the house and can be accessed from the great room or the master bedroom.

The house is a lot bigger and nicer than I was expecting to be able to buy. I feel a little bit spoiled. I'll have a cold storage room! A garage! A pantry! A big, unfinished basement, just waiting to be anything I want it to be! For a while I think we'll just rattle around the house not knowing what to do with so much space (over 3x our current square footage), but everyone tells me that we shouldn't have too much trouble figuring out how to fill it up.

Now wish us luck in trying to get our closing dates to line up with each other!

A house obsession update

So, my dream house sold, and not to us. We weren't the first offer in the line, but all signs seemed to point to our offer being the one the bank was most likely to take. Don't trust the signs. Currently the house has a contractor's sign out front and really BIG dumpster on the drive, but not much else seems to be happening. I'm scared to drive by, but too curious not to.

We also made an offer on a bank-owned house in the Edgemont neighborhood. Edgemont is a good compromise between Matt and I. The neighborhood is old enough that the houses still have character, but they don't require quite as much work as my dream house. The house in Edgemont was a really good fit for our family, but it was also a really boring ranch. The yard was the redeeming factor in my eyes. The bank liked our offer, but not our closing terms. We'd set our closing date at the end of August and they balked at having it out so far. Unfortunately, that house is now under contract.

Our house has been on the market for just shy of two months now and we've had a lot of lookers, but no buyers so far. This is good and bad. Bad because it's really a pain to try and keep my house clean enough to show at a moment's notice! A lot of our stuff is packed away and I don't feel like I can start anything that will make a mess--like making bread or sewing. The good part of all this is that, right now, there isn't a house on the market that we're really interested in, so we're not feeling rushed to get out of this one. Tonight Matt and I took some video of the best options out there right now, but we've decided we aren't going to make any offers until an offer comes in on our house. We dropped the listing price of our house today, so hopefully we'll get an offer soon.


Matt's and my wants for a house seem like they would meld the best if we could build a custom house (of course). I surfed online floor plans, looking for a house that contained all of my ideal elements--a studio for Matt, a craft/sewing space for me, a good mud room that could be the main family entrance, an eat-in kitchen with good views of the yard and at least 3 bedrooms on the same level. I actually found a plan that is almost exactly what I would have come up with if I'd been working with an architect--the Lakeland Cape Cod from simplyeleganthomedesigns.com. Here's the floor plan.


First floor:

Second floor:

I created a gallery of interior/exterior photos here.

(My only complaint is that the house is a little too big. If we were really to build I might work with the architect to see if we could scale it all down a bit.)

I was really getting behind the idea of building until we started to look at lots. Lots in the Edgemont neighborhood cost as much or more than houses! How can this be? How can anyone afford to build a house--you're instantly upside down. I guess they are depending on people who plan to stay in their house forever and don't care about the market value? The lot we really like is .31 acres and would fit this house plan really well, but it's listed for $134,900. That is $10,000 more than our new listing price for our townhouse and only $50,000 less than a house of comparable size and acreage just sold for only two blocks away. Maybe we could build the garage for $50,000 and live in a studio for a few years while we save up. I'm sure the neighbors would go for that!

All dressed up and ready to sell

As of tomorrow morning, our house is officially on the market. We took the pictures and signed the contract tonight and the listing should be up in the morning. I was just done vacuuming when the photographer got here. There's no way I would have made it without the help of my sister-in-law who ended up watching the kids all day! Thanks, Jenny!

We packed up, paired down and painted to try and make our house show better. Here's a little tour:

The front--with a for sale sign!

Looking into the living room

The living room facing the window

The dining room

The kitchen

Upstairs bathroom



Master bedroom

The kids room

I think most of our rooms look pretty good in photos, except the kitchen. I would love to have had time to paint it to brighten it up and simplify the color scheme, but it's not going to happen. At the rate I finish projects I would need at least a year.

Of course, there are still a lot of little things that need to be done. Hopefully we can get to most of them tomorrow.

6/25/10 - Our listing is up!

The Times They Are a-Changin'

Matt started a new job on May 17th. He's working for HotDocs Corporation, managing their technical support operations. While he's not working as an attorney we both felt like this was the right job for right now, since it would allow us to accomplish several of our goals--particularly allowing me to quit my job and stay home with Winnie and Luke. My last day of work is June 30th. I actually gave my notice on May 5th and I think it's taken until today for it to sink in that I'm quitting. I've been there for 10 years now! I'm really excited for the transition, but somehow knowing that it's coming to an end is making everything at my job seem fresher and more interesting than it has in years. At least that should make this last month of work go quickly. Matt's been sworn into the Utah bar, so he's going to be doing some legal work on the side to keep up his skills. In fact, he's already got a case he's working on.

The other big change we're looking forward to is buying a house. In fact, we made an offer on the house that I haven't been able to stop talking about for the past year. The house is headed to foreclosure and we made short sale offer, so we have no idea whether or not the bank will accept. We're crossing our fingers and waiting. The bank has until June 30th to respond. If the bank doesn't accept our offer we'll probably try to buy the house at the scheduled trustee's sale on June 29th. It would be the biggest birthday present ever!

A Post About Nursing

I came across a blog post about breastfeeding today, via a friend's blog. I wish I had seen more posts like this 3 years ago. I spent the first two months of Winnie's life doing nothing but nursing, pumping, visiting lactation specialists and doctors, taking every galactagogue known to man and feeling depressed and guilty that I was failing at what should be the most natural part of motherhood. The last thing I needed was strange women in the grocery store check-out line chiding me for not breastfeeding. Let's just feed them, shall we?

Disclaimer: At the top of the post there's a picture of the author breastfeeding. Don't follow the link if that makes you uncomfortable.

Menus

I updated the menus on my side bar for the coming week. We threw a party for Matt's graduation last Friday and this week's menu is heavily influenced by the leftovers. If there are a lot of heavy winter foods on the menu, it's due to the fact that it's supposed to be 80 degrees Tuesday and then snow and rain Wednesday through Saturday.

Luke's First Hair Cut

In honor of Luke's first birthday (although a little late) he got a haircut tonight.

He was really good while Matt was doing it. I'm a little sad because I think it makes him look older, but he looks cute enough to make up for it!

We Have A Birthday Girl

We have a three-year-old now! I can't believe Winnie is three, even though she usually talks like she's 15. I don't ever want her to grow up, but I also enjoy her more and more all the time.

We had a fantastic day. It included a trip to our favorite park, pizza, dinosaurs, doll houses, new books and new dresses.

The cake (you're looking at 10 eggs and 1 1/2 pounds of butter right there).

The candles

The presents. (Someone should brush that poor girls' hair--or at least wash her face. What was her mother thinking?)

The dolls on the cake go to this doll house.

A set of sporty red wheels.

Winnie got a bucket of dinosaurs from her cousins. I think they were her favorite toy of the evening. Even still, she told everyone they could chose one to take home. Only Luke took her up on the offer, though.

As Winnie went to bed tonight she was singing "Happy Birthday" to herself.

And my baby is

On Luke's first birthday he. . .

weighs 23 pounds.

isn't very interested in learning to walk.

says about 10 words.

is almost all smiles--even when he's sick.

loves blankets.

is very patient with his sister, who often isn't very patient with him.

Meal Planning

One of the goals I made in 2009 was to start making weekly meal plans and shopping lists. Having a meal plan for the whole week has definitely cut down our trips to the grocery store, wasted groceries, fast food lunches at work/school, and dinner-time dilemmas about what to eat. Coming up with a meal plan is still a struggle sometimes, though. I've gotten a lot of ideas from other blogs I read, so I've decided to post my meal plans on my sidebar. I get a lot of recipes online and will post a link when available. We try a lot of new recipes, so I can't vouch for every dish, but most of the new recipes come recommended by someone.

Rambling recent developments

A few weeks shy of 1 year old and Luke has finally decided he can sit. To clarify, he's been able to sit for months and months--he's just had no desire. If you tried to sit him down on the floor he'd immediately arch his back and refuse to bend. A couple of months ago he started kneeling on the floor when he was playing and now he's started to sit and kneel about equal amounts. I can't believe he's almost 1!

Winnie got a very cute haircut Saturday and I thought I had good pictures of it until I looked at them on the computer. On the computer I could see that Winnie had a goopy nose and some left-over soup on her mouth. We'll try again tomorrow.

Matt took the bar last week and we're now all enjoying a life of luxury with no studying in sight. No job in sight, either, but let's try to stay positive, shall we?

On a slightly related note 261 E 100 N went under contract on January 29th, right after I had settled on a fabulous "black bean" paint scheme. It had been on the market somewhere around 8 months! Couldn't it have waited a couple more months??? Who buys a house with broken windows in the middle of winter, anyway? I've been obsessively checking the county recorder's documents to see if anything has recorded showing that the sale has gone through. Nothing yet, so I still have a slight hope that the sale will fall through and we can snatch it up! I haven't been able to bring myself to drive by for fear I'll see vinyl replacement windows going in. Oh the horror.

Saturdays

Today I did 9 loads of laundry (3 loads of bedding, 1 load of towels, 2 loads of light clothes, 2 loads of dark clothes and 1 load of underwear), loaded and emptied the dishwasher multiple times, cleaned the kitchen, changed the sheets on all of the beds, made lunch and two dinners, fixed the kid’s blinds, made and played with salt dough, made menus for the next week (hooray for none of our menu items requiring a trip to the grocery store!), administered 3 time-outs, vacuumed the downstairs, changed 6 diapers (3 poopy), read 5 stories, gave 2 baths.

Today I did not get my kids dressed, iron, clean the bathrooms, finish the touch-up painting in the bathroom, vacuum upstairs or the stairs, mop the kitchen floor, wash my white slipcovers (never fall for the lines in magazines where mothers claim that white slipcovers are easy), wash the windows (they get a lot of condensation on them and the kids like to “draw” in it), exercise, or start reading any of my library books due this coming Friday. And yes, I really thought I could accomplish this as well as what I actually got done.

The mischief a two year old can do. . .

during the time it takes to change one poopy diaper.

She cut all of this hair from the right side of her head (see how it looks a little sparse over her ear? She basically left a thin layer from the top of her head, but cut all the hair underneath). Ironically, her hair took forever to fill in on the sides and it was just recently starting to really grow there. This afternoon, before this happened, I'd scheduled Winnie's first professional haircut. We were going to just trim the back up to match the length of the sides. Now that the right side of Win's hair is only 1" long, I think that plan is out.

Family Projects

I bought Winnie a pair of slippers. She doesn't love them, but guess who does.

All of my seed catalogues started to arrive last month and I got a real case of Spring Fever. Winnie loves anything that involves scissors and glue, so we planted a garden. Winnie named it the "E" garden--and no, I don't know what that's supposed to mean, either. I'm not sure this garden is doing anything to make me more satisfied with my 120 square foot yard, or the contents of my refrigerator where it currently resides.

We got a second set of Duplos for Christmas and Winnie has started to want to build things other than plain stacks of Legos. Matt is always assigned to build the animals that Winnie sees on the sides of the bucket. I was busy trying to get everyone looking at the camera in this shot, and didn't notice that you can't really tell what they built, but it's a dragon.

Walking

Painting

I still want this house and I've been spending way more time than I should thinking about it. Lately I've been thinking about exterior paint colors. I used the Sherwin Williams "Visualizer" to show Matt what the house would look like painted a couple of the colors in my head.

Current (except the columns have been painted white now):

Prairie Red:

Black Bean:

I love the Black Bean palette, but I think it needs a Prairie Red door. What do you think?

I've Turned Over a New Leaf

I finished a project! Within my projected time frame! I made an Elephant and some burp cloths for my cousin Stephanie's safari themed nursery. The baby shower was today, but I actually had her gift ready on Wednesday. I had no idea what to do with myself on Thursday. If I keep performing miracles like this, I might be nominated for Sainthood.



On another note, this little guy is 10-months-old today. 10!!!

A New Go-to Recipe

I've found a new recipe that meets all of my requirements for a great meal--fast, easy, inexpensive and requires ingredients that are staples of my pantry. Oh, and tasty. Tasty matters, too, I guess. Additionally, this recipe makes a lot and reheats beautifully. Recipes that meet all of my criteria are so singular that I have to share when I find one.


Pasta Fazul

5 servings (I don't know what size servings they're talking about. I'd say it's much more like 8 servings, even if you eat it as a one-dish meal)

Ingredients
3 cloves garlic, minced (jars of already minced garlic are one of my favorite cooking time-savers)
1 onion, chopped
1 carrot, finely chopped (I got a food chopper for Christmas and it was the perfect thing for chopping the carrots and the onions. Thanks, Mom!)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley (I had fresh parsley in my garden when I started making this. Lately I've been using 2 tsp. dried parsley flakes. It's not quite as pretty, but I don't notice a flavor difference.)
2 teaspoons dried basil
1 teaspoon dried oregano
4 tablespoons olive oil (I probably only use 2, but I never measure. I keep my olive oil in a squeeze bottle and just squeeze it in until it looks right)
1 (14.5 ounce) can whole peeled tomatoes (I use diced and just dump the whole thing in. Forget measuring out can juices like the recipe says. Who has time for that?)
2 cups cooked cannellini beans, drained and rinsed (I usually use Great Northern beans--mostly because my normal grocery store never has Cannellini, but I've also found that I like their firmer texture in this dish. I also just use two cans of beans instead of measuring out 2 c. and having a 1/4 can leftover)
8 (1 3/4 c.) ounces dry macaroni
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Directions
In a large skillet, saute garlic, onion, carrot, parsley, basil and oregano in olive oil until onions are tender.
Add the tomatoes plus 1/4 cup of the can juices and the salt and pepper. Cover and stir frequently, simmering for 10 minutes or until vegetables are tender. Add the cannellini beans and cover. Simmer for 20 minutes. (I throw the tomatoes & beans in together. Who can wait around for things to simmer incessantly?)
Cook macaroni according to package directions, drain and toss with butter and Parmesan cheese. Add to cannellini bean mixture. Serve immediately with additional Parmesan cheese, if desired.

Suzy Michelle

I finished Winnie's Christmas doll on Christmas Eve. Well, I sort of finished Winnie's doll. Playing with her has proved that I did NOT tack her hair down well enough and she still only has one dress instead of the 4 outfits and 2 pairs of shoes she was intended to have. What Winnie doesn't know won't hurt her, right?


Winnie has christened her Suzy-Michelle. Maybe the Easter Bunny will bring more clothes for Suzy in Winnie's Easter basket.