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!

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!

New Bed

I got one of my Christmas presents early. My mom & dad bought a twin mattress for Winnie. She was sad to see her toddler bed go, but doesn't seem to mind now that her new bed is all set-up. I found the bed through the KSL classifieds a few months back. I had half-heartedly thought about refinishing the bed, but now that it's all set-up I don't mind the wear on the finish at all. Good thing, too, because I really don't need to add anymore projects to my already overwhelming list.

Some day I will have a clean house. Maybe when I don't work anymore. Or when I finally find the perfect spot for everything. Or when I learn how to move faster. Or find two more hours every day. Or get a maid. Or overcome entropy.

Today I did 9 loads of laundry. That seems like more than 4 people should be able to generate. Between sheets, towels, gym clothes and spit-up we manage to make a real mess. Unfortunately, I did not finish vacuuming, mop or plant my bulbs. Don't plan to eat off my floors any time soon.

Matt's birthday is this Friday. I always look forward to his birthday because it means I'm not older than him for the next nine months. We're going to dinner at our favorite restaurant, Thai Ruby, which is always closed on my birthday. I also look forward to making Matt's birthday cake. Last year it was black forest. This year it's going to be pumpkin spice with honey-cream cheese frosting. He's lost almost 40 pounds since we got married, so I need to make sure it's really good and he'll want to eat a lot of it. My weight buffer is getting painfully small.

Winnie's Room

Here are a couple of recent additions to Winnie's room.

This is the Ikea crib that I painted black. I still want to put some vinyl decals on the foot of it, but haven't gotten around to making them. In the meantime, the Alice in Wonderland quilt that my grandma made her hangs on the crib. I love this quilt--I've used it to decorate the whole room around.

I bought these Red Riding Hood prints off of Etsy. They're paper cuts by a local artist named Cindy Ferguson. I'm amazed by how expressive she can make a silhouette. You can see more of her work on her blog.

And finally, here are a couple of recent pictures of Princess Winnie.

Oh my! Impulse buy!

Today is Grandpa Hall's birthday so Winnie, Susan and Jenny were visiting him in Bountiful. I usually spend lunch with Winnie, but since they weren't home I looked online at furniture. I have $700 from my tax return that I've been plotting how to spend. I really love the Hanover slipper chair at BallardDesigns.com and have wanted it for a couple of years, but could never bring myself to pay what they want for it.

This chair, in this fabric, costs $656. I want two of them. Add the $150 shipping to the cost of two chairs and they're almost $1,500! Another downside is the fabric--I got a swatch of it a couple of years ago and love the look of it, but it's not very kid-friendly.

I've looked a lot for less expensive slipper chairs that I like as much as the Hanover chairs that and never found anything, but today I came across this chair from Overstock.com

Very similar to my Ballard chair and nearly a third of what the Ballard chairs cost! The slip cover is way too feminine and the wrong colors for my house, but the fact that they're slip covered is a real plus to me. I bought two of these chairs and plan to use their slipcovers as patterns to make new ones. Hooray for good deals!