closed

we closed today! so now we are official homeowners. one celebratory lunch, trip to walmart and lowe's for house supplies, and one car load of boxes later and we are pooped! tonight will be spent packing up the remnants of the apartment and preparing for a looooooooooooong day of moving, cleaning, and unpacking tomorrow. closing wasn't nearly as long as we expected. we did some serious signing, but nothing as overwhelming as we were expecting.

on a side note, we met some of our new neighbors today and they were so friendly and nice. we're excited to have offical neighbors and can't wait to get settled.

walk through

we had our final walk through this afternoon and had the pleasure of meeting some family members of the current owner. it turns out vince and i know his granddaughter and we got to hear some neat stories from the family's history. it made us very excited to start our own history in the house.

only three more days until we close and we just can't wait!

box city

it's really starting to look like cardboard box city around the apartment! we've got stacks of collapsed boxes, half packed boxes, empty boxes, and taped up, heavy boxes littering every room. we keep reminding ourselves that after this move, we won't be going anywhere for a few years!

all the excitement of moving is getting to us, including earl, our cat. even if we're just packing for vacation, he seems to know that we are going somewhere and he isn't. with all the boxes i guess it's no surprise that he's getting antsy. but little did i expect what i woke up to this morning.

usually when i wake up, earl is laying on the other side of our bedroom door, as if he was waiting all night for me to get up and play. but this morning, no earl in sight. assuming that he's not hungry and decided to snuggle up in a closet, i head downstairs to exercise and start my day. about 20 minutes later vince lets olive out and she heads downstairs, without chasing earl, also not typical. so then i start to think something is really up. after doing a quick search, i start to fear the worst...we cleaned last night...what if earl drank a cleaner and crawled off to die...what if he's stuck behind the water heater in bad shape...what if someone broke in and he got out...and on. and on. and on.

my next step is to wake up vince and search our bedroom. still no earl. so then i take olive out for her morning routine. after sniffing each section of the yard, she wraps up business, and as we're about to head inside, i hear a faint, but unhappy little meow. i guess it's like mothers and their babies, because i immediately knew it was earl. i couldn't locate just where he was, but i could hear him. so i ran in, grabbed his food dish, and coaxed him out with breakfast.

somehow the little bugger got outside and spent ALL NIGHT outside! thankfully he's completely fine and he miraculously knew to sleep in the shrubs by our front door. we still have no idea when he made his escape, but somehow he did. now i'm even more sure that he'll have to be "locked up" as we move everything out!

approved!

we're so excited! we just heard back from our appraisal and we 'passed'!! the house was appraised for a whopping $10k more than our list price, so we are well on our way to homeownership.

vince and i were really worried about the garage being flagged and stalling the process, so this is a huge sigh of relief. in fact, our broker said this is the largest gap he's seen in his 10+ years of the business. we can easily tell him how and why; we only prayed 7593483728439455483 times that things would work out. so, praise be to god that we're in the clear!

our next stepping stone: home insurance. it just keeps getting better...

she's crafty

i'm very proud of how my gift for my friend's bridal shower turned out! each guest was given a room to help "furnish" and i was assigned the kitchen. i wasn't quite sure how i could glam up a gift for this area, but i gave it a go and i really like the end result.

here's the final package, complete with a fun and sassy bow for the ribbon bouquet she'll use at her rehearsal.





























included, for the culinary delight of my favorite new mr. and mrs., are a betty crocker cookbook (a must have, if i say so myself), miscellaneous kitchen utensils off their registry, metal measuring cups (i love how these look), a metal shaker and a yellow mum in a cute and modern looking white ceramic pot (you can't really see this).

i found this sleek looking basket at our local wal-mart and i think it can be multi-functional in a bathroom, office, living room, etc. after the other items are removed. to give my 'gifts' some height, i scrunched in a bunch of grocery bags and covered those with the crinkled decorative paper used for gift wrapping. to top it off, i picked out that sassy ribbon. if only i could master tying that bow straight... but i think it adds to the charm of the gift and it certainly matches the gift giver. now i'm just excited to give this to the bride-to-be!

so excited

during our latest stroll through the goodwill store, vince flagged me down to "show me something". with a bit of hesitance i followed him and was pleasantly surprised to see that it was something not architecture related. (sorry, babe - i just don't love it like you do.)

he found an old, green sears - kenmore sewing machine for only $15! i have been begging for a sewing machine for quite some time, so i am psyched. we have yet to plug in it though, so i can only hope it works. homemade curtains and pillow covers are this.close!

waiting it out

no real updates on the house front... we're just waiting on the inspection items to finalize so we can (hopefully) move forward with an fha loan appraisal. i suppose the name of this game is 'patience', which unfortunately is not a game i am good at. luckily, this will give vince and i an opportunity to pack and clean this weekend. if all goes well we'll need to be ready to go on aug. 26th.

think outside the box

let the packing begin!

we are very fortunate that our companies let employees have dibs at any boxes they receive from shipments. taking full advantage, i loaded up my car to the max with boxes galore. so tonight is going to consist of papa murphy's, oodles of boxes, and packing our possesions with the dark knight in the background.

i suppose next time it would help if i collapse the boxes first...

(thanks for pointing that out, mom!)

making the most of our weekend

our house enthusiasm has really carried over into our weekend. saturday we woke up early to hit up some local garage sales and a flea market. we found a rug that i LOVED for our future dining room, but it was just a tad too small, so vince made me leave it... thank goodness for his practicality in those types of situations.

then we dropped off some old clothes at goodwill and did a little 'trash to treasures' shopping in its housewares aisle. i'm happy to report that we found a cute little bird sculpture. we were able to look past the dingy gold exterior and envision a crisp white coat of paint. check out the before picture, but ignore the dinged up sewing machine/end table. that's a different trash find that still needs restored.

yesterday we managed to pack up a few boxes and clean the microwave! my hope is that if we chip away at things we'll be all set for a timely closing/move. then, we donated three bags of books to the public library (a very satisfying feeling, to have not wasted all those books!) and dropped into another goodwill.

based on the ease with which we painted our bird statue, i felt really optimistic about a lamp we found there and now I can't wait to get started on painting it. since i'm not sure which room the lamp will end up in, i'm having a hard time deciding what color the body should be. but i do know i want to paint the base silver.

so much to do and so little time, i suppose. we are absolutely loving every minute of it! in fact, vince wants to go buy the other identical bird statue for our desk in the office.

enjoy the "after" photo, after three even coats of valspar spray primer

we did it!

after several months of searching, we found our dream house! located in our in the quiet, charming 'historic uptown' area of our hometown, the house is a spacious 1904 Bungalow with loads of 'old' character and detail.
so now we are on to the nerve-wracking process of inspections and financing. with the inspection complete and the termite inspection early next week, we are waiting with crossed fingers for no termite activity and a successful FHA appraisal.
already we have visions of restored hard wood floors, newly painted walls, and bold, vivid textiles dancing in our heads... we are really looking forward to taking this house and making it our home!