New House, New Dreams

Thank you Anne Taintor!

Another house post, I know. But this has really encompassed my entire life this month. Today's post is brought to you by two gigantic updates from just today!!

First off, it's completely official - our house is sold. We just got the papers in saying that all conditions have been removed. We were on the market for just twelve days, had six showings, plus two repeat showings. We had an offer on the table Saturday afternoon, signed by Saturday night, and now all conditions have been removed. It's done!

Secondly, we've got a conditional offer on a new place!! And it's completely not what I expected! We were looking for newer houses (we like the style), which led us to a few different areas. The biggest problem was space. The houses were big, but the backyards were tiny, and new houses tend to be in new developments, which are, well, new. The schools, and even parks and playgrounds tend to be further away.

Instead we found an older home in an older neighborhood. Eight blocks away from the local school and community league, just down the street from a park. The back yard is HUGE and private, and the house had major upgrades!! It has a sitting room, diningroom, breakfast nook, HUGE kitchen, livingroom, fully developed basement (though there's room for upgrades down the road there) three bedrooms, and two and a half bathrooms (one being an ensuite).

It's a major upgrade all-around! We are SO excited to move into it!

***

On that note, I have such big dreams for ME in this new house. I am domestically challenged. Try as I might, the running joke is that I don't cook, and I don't clean. But I grow cute babies! And between me and my husband, we have a pretty great balance of working both outside and in the home, and raising said cute babies.

This might not be an issue for some, but for me, it is. It's not an issue because Greg shouldn't be helping out. I sung my husband's praises on Father's Day, because I felt he deserved it, but I expect him to be an active member of the family.

It's an issue for me because I always wanted to be a SAHM (stay-at-home-mom), and I've always wanted to be Little Susie Homemaker. I've always wanted to maintain an amazing home for my family, and to cook delicious meals, and craft and sew and raise babies. I do the latter three quite well, but it's the first two I want to work on. This has not been the first time I've attempted at making a change in this area. But maybe a new house will help to inspire me. And I want to host more playdates, parties, and gatherings in my home. I always felt too far out of the way in this house, and the layout wasn't ideal for larger groups. But for those who know me, you can only imagine how excited I am to host family Christmas this year ;) (For those who don't, I LOVE Christmas, and a few years ago I pulled out all the stops - including personalized, embroidered, handmade bird ornaments for each guest). I am excited for backyard barbecues, birthday parties, and just having friends and family over for dinner. I have some great hostesses in my group of friends, and I have been jealous. I would love to join the cool kids in that club.


I think this new house deserves some new-house resolutions! I have 35 days until possession of the new house to think of some ;)

Homeless!!!

... As my friend, the Common Sense Crusader kindly put it ;)

Our house sold on Saturday! It's still conditional on a home inspection and financing, but by the end of this week, if all goes well, we're sold! I'm not worried about the inspection - we have taken very good care of the house. And apparently the financing should be no issue as well.

So yeah... And now we have 46 days to find another house, buy another house, and move!

Eeeeee!!

LISTED!!

 

It's official, we listed at the beginning of this week. Papers have been signed, and we're even officially up on MLS. Now to play the waiting game... So far we've had 1 showing, but it's been a slow week all-around - the weather has been really nice and people want to go out and play. 

We're sitting on our hands, waiting for an offer to come in before we buy anything ourselves, so we're waiting on looking as well. I've seen a few awesome homes that are on our list, and I can't wait to be able to check them out :) 

Fingers crossed that this all happens soon! It's a bit of a PITA to keep the house in show condition with the littles running around!

So This is Love...

Sometimes I think my life is a Disney movie ;)

Le sigh...

I'm in love, ladies. IN LOVE.

And I'm not just talking about my husband ;)

We have been house shopping! We went on Friday, and again tonight. Friday we looked at 6 houses from a list of 12 that I sent our Realtor throughout the week. We looked at 2 older houses in one neighborhood (literally right down the block from The Common Sense Crusader!!), 2 older houses that were just minutes away from there, a new house in a BRAND NEW development, and a newer (12 years old) house in a newer development. It was a great chance for us to see in person the houses that had caught our eye online.

Today our Realtor honed in on our comments from Friday, and picked out 4 more houses in the last neighborhood we looked at on Friday.

I am in LOVE :)

The neighborhood mixed all that we love about older neighborhoods (the homes aren't quite so cookie-cutter, lots of parks, schools and rec centers nearby, and the trees along the street are a little bigger) and newer developments (newer houses, open floor plans, and lots of young families).

The last house in particular that we saw was lovely :) It was 1800 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms. The basement is unfinished, but there was a HUGE bonus room upstairs, and a nice backyard. As soon as we walked in, we started daydreaming. We felt a little like we did back when we were house-hunting for our first home - newly engaged, fantasizing about starting a family someday. It's been on the market for awhile, and so my fingers are crossed that when we sign the papers to list (in 2 weeks, as long as everything goes well!) that the house might still be available when we're ready to sign (we were NOT ready to put an offer on it today).

There was also another one we saw today. 4 bedrooms (one in the finished basement), 3.5 bathrooms (again, one in the finished basement - a perfect guest suite!) a beautiful bonus room, and a HUGE deck in the backyard, with enough space to still fit in some sort of play structure for the kids (a newer item on our wishlist). Apparently they have been getting a LOT of showings, but at least we know that we have some good options out there when we go to list! We also have a few more neighborhoods to look at. I don't think they'll be as perfect as what we saw today, but they could definitely still meet our needs (and a few are cheaper too!)

On that note, just 2 weeks left! Eeek! We've said goodbye to the red paint in our livingroom and kitchen (I'll show before and after pics soon!) and the blue wall in our bedroom has gone taupe as well. (SUPER impressed with our painter. He was inexpensive, and did kitchen, livingroom, and bedroom in just under 6 hours! He's coming back at the end of the month to do the basement).

It doesn't feel like our house anymore with all of our personal touches neutralized, but that's ok :) Tonight I found some pretty awesome places we can personalize instead ;)

Feeling a Little Displaced

If you've seen my house before (those who know me in real life), you almost wouldn't recognize it now!!

I've cleared the livingroom walls of all pictures in anticipation for this weekend, when our crayon-red walls get painted a nice, neutral taupe. We'll put a few pictures back up, but for the most part it's all staying down. The blue accent in our bedroom is going taupe as well (to match the rest of our walls). Thankfully we're leaving the murals Hubbyman painted in Princess and Tobe's rooms (he put a LOT of effort into them!)

We've got a storage unit for the extra furniture we have, and the basement is being measured for carpet on Wednesday (we've been promised installation by the end of July).

We have 3 weeks until we're hoping to list. We have 3 weeks left of certainty. I don't know how long it'll take to sell. We're hoping to be in a new home by Christmas, but that's just 5 months total from start to finish. How long will it sit on the market? How many offers will we get? What will the final price be? We built our first home, so the process was WAY different - we found the house, got the move-in date, and arranged our leases based on it.

We've obviously never done this before, so the thought of trying to orchestrate selling, buying, move-out and move-in dates. I know people do this all the time, but it's still new and scary exciting and daunting!

Eeep!

7-Year Itch

This July my husband and I will have been married for 6.5 years. That means that this July I will have been in this home for 6.5 years (my husband will be celebrating the 7-year milestone in September).

I mentioned earlier that we are moving. We are looking for a fabulous new home, with more space, more bathrooms, a garage, and unicorns and butterflies and rainbows and sunshine ;) Well, we ARE moving. We have found a realtor, the bank is throwing money our way, and we have all the contractors we need to finish the basement, minus carpet (though we're tackling that today). We need to repaint, finish the aforementioned basement, and then we're ready to list. We're now thinking Oct/Nov to list. It's a slower season but we've been told by both realtors we've met with that it should still be busy enough. We'll see.

I have the 7-year itch, my friends. I am ready for a change. I am ready for a change of space. I have been browsing housing listings online, and starting to dream up new decorating ideas. Our current livingroom is brown, tan and red (VIBRANT red walls, hence the need to repaint). With our brown furniture do we want to try out a different color (like green or blue?) on the walls? Or do we want to keep the walls neutral, and bring in pops of color with pillows, artwork, etc?

Princess and Tobe's rooms were decorated for gender-unknown babies. I am now thinking Princess needs a suitibly pink with white wainscoting, and doing a chalkboard mural on a section of one of the walls.

I also like this next picture for Tobe's room, though I'm now thinking of more muted tones to match the blanket I made him for his first Christmas.



The blanket colors. They're muted, but not this muted in real life!

For our room, I'm not sure. I love brown mixed with blues, or greens. But I also like yellow and green, or burgandies and gold, or even plumb. We're planning on upgrading our bed (king size!!) and bedroom set so we can really do anything.

I am dreaming of a kitchen big enough for both of us to be in there to cook, a big backyard for Princess and Tobes to play, and just a beautiful new space for us to be in, closer to our dear friends and family!

7-year itch. While I'm far to sentimental, I am just so freakin' excited!!

Movin' On Up!

**So in reality I started this really awesome blog post on my thoughts on motherhood, inspired by Mother's Day, and countless conversations with countless friends, but I'm still writing it. Unfortunately between work, an online lactation conference, countless sewing projects, and (oh yeah) KIDS, I don't have the time to do it justice yet. But it's coming, I promise**

We built a house in the year before we got married. We moved Hubby in September of 2004, and then in January, when we got married, I moved in. We built the house as our "5 year plan". We planned on buying bigger and better (and in a more ideal location) once we were settled into our careers, and basically once we had more money. We were both just graduating from university at the time.

We're now on year 7, and Princess starts school in a year! It's time to put up or shut up. In reality, it's not the end of the world to move while she's in school, but we've been talking about this for so long it's time to go. Almost everything in our lives happen in the other end of the city - we are driving there at least 3 times a week. We want to move closer to family, friends, and church.

We're getting realtors in to give us quotes and advice (we're still in the process of finishing the basement), and we're looking at listing anytime between this November, and next March (depending on the market, and when we get renos done). We're going in to meet with the bank after Hubby's next trip (that's right, he leaves again pretty soon for another week-long work trip, but that's a whole other post!) and see what we qualify for, and we're starting to browse MLS and coming up with our wishlist and listing priorities - we like the style of new-built homes, but we want a larger plot of land, so we're talking about what to compromise and how.

I am far too sentimental for all this stuff though... Hubby moved about 7 times before he came to the city for University (and has since lived in 3 different places within the city). I have moved 3 times. I lived in one house until I was 5, moved to the house my dad currently still lives in, moved out to an apartment for the year before I got married, and then moved into this house.

This is the house we built oursleves (well, not OURSELVES ourselves, but we picked out every aspect from carpet to light fixtures to placement of electrical outlets, and visited the worksite every week to watch it grow) the house we first occupied as newlyweds, and the house we brought our BABIES home from!! Princess' room is decorated with murals that Hubby painted just for her, and Tobes has a beautiful tree just for him. I have videos of Princess' first steps in the livingroom, and of Tobes crawling down the hallway at lightening speed.

I'm really excited for what the future has for us. I'm really excited for more space, and a new adventure in a new neighborhood. I just might need to take a bazillon pictures between now and then so that we never forget this house ;)