It's Gonna Be May

Tomorrow is May 1st.

May 2013 will probably go down as one of the busiest months of our lives. Here is why:

May 1: Doctor's appointment.

May 3: Last day of work until August!!!

May 7: Move all of our crap out of our current house into a moving van. All of it. Thank God we found movers who are cheap and willing to come two days in a row. Clean said house. Park said moving van in sister's driveway for the night. Also have my 40 week appointment this day, because we're not busy or anything.

May 8: Close on our first house. Close on our second house. Give away keys to one house. Get keys to another house. If it sounds confusing, that's because it is. Drive aforementioned moving truck over to our new house and unload. Begin painting. Why yes, I did purchase 14 gallons of paint this weekend. Why, what did you do?

May 9: Our 4-year wedding anniversary. Reminisce with me will ya?

May 10: My 29th birthday. Also known as the last time I will ever publicly acknowledge my age.

May 11: This is the ambitious day when I'd like to believe that all of the painting is done in our new house. After living in various states of construction for 4 years, I am so so so happy that the only thing our new place really needs is paint (14 gallons to be exact). Still, Rome wasn't built in a day, so I'm sure it will take more than 3 days to paint the whole place, despite how many helpers we may or may not have. However, I like to goal set so here we are.

May 12: D-DAY. Also known as Due Date. Also known as Mother's Day. This would be an okay day to go into labor, don't you think?

May 18: My good friend Heather's wedding. I've already RSVP'd yes, and it's annoying when people RSVP and you pay for their meal and they don't show up for your wedding, so bloated or not, I'm going to be there. I should probably start Googling "Dresses to hide post-pregnancy weight" now.

May 2_- 2_: He's told me 100 times, but Jon has some kind of work conference thing one of the last weeks in May. All I heard was "You're going to be alone with two children for the first time ever" and I decided to block it from my memory due to terror.

May 31: Memorial Day weekend begins. I'll be able to wear a bathing suit again by this time right?? And by bathing suit I mean Turkish bath robe.

Alright May - let's do this!!!!

Audra's Version of Property Brothers - Part 1

Let's do some math!!!

What do you get when you combine:

A lifechanging, major purchase

+

Pregnancy Insomnia

+

A person who watches WAY too much HGTV

=

A pregnant woman who has come up with a comprehensive design scheme for a house that she doesn't even own full and clear yet.

Ok, so let's just say that, hypothetically, we bought this house: 

Well, non-hypothetically, I have spent hours upon hours coming up with a design scheme for this hypothetical house that has beautiful bones but an outdated color palette.

This is where Jonathan and Drew come in. No, I'm not having an affair. J & D are the hosts of Property Brothers on HGTV, and they have been my inspiration for our hypothetical new home design. 

If you haven't seen the show (seriously, what's wrong with you), the premise is that a couple is looking for a home that is contemporary and move-in ready, but they don't have the budget to accomplish both of those goals. So Drew finds them a house with potential, and Jonathan helps them renovate, re-imagine, and resign their fixer-upper into their dream home. He shows them his design plan, but also leaves it open to change.

Our hypothetical house is definitely NOT a fixer-upper (trust, I've been there) but it's just... beige. Boring. And we're not boring people. (At least I don't think so?)

So in all of my insomnia, I have re-imagined and re-designed every square inch of our beautiful new hypothetical home. Now it's just up to MY Jonathan (my actual husband) to renovate it. I probably shouldn't be installing carpet and painting at 9 months pregnant, hmmm?


So I thought I'd share some of my design ideas because they are burning a hole through my laptop and Pinterest boards.

And here we go:

Hypothetical entry way as it looks today:

Design Ideas:

The main color of the house will be Revere Pewter gray, and we plan to paint all of the wood trim white. We're also replacing all of the carpet, because it's beige with dark brown and black flecks and reminds me of vomit.

Formal Living Room Today:

Design Ideas:

As of today (and I have every right to change my mind because I'm a woman and I can and will), I'd like to do a dark gray accent wall, with white adjoining walls. Then I'd like to bring in pops of yellow as accents. I'm leaning toward either white or dark grey furniture in here (or both). Not pictured: A gorgeous built-in bookshelf that is to the left of where the picture was taken. May either paint that white or black.

Instead of a TV, I'd like to do a black and white photo wall as the focal point in the room. Probably with pictures of my sweet girls as the main subject of interest :)

I think these curtains from Z Gallerie are PERFECT for a room with a dark gray accent wall and white walls. They let in a good amount of light, but it brings the gray over to the other wall.

Dining Room Today:

 Design Ideas:

The theme I'm thinking for this room is Sage, Beige and Black. I want a gray/green since again the main color of the home is gray, so the colors have to coordinate. Right now I'm leaning toward a color called October Mist.

This room is the closest to my vision, but I think we'll paint under the chair rail white because there's only the one small window in this room and I don't want it to feel too dark.

So what do we think of my hypothetical stabs at home design??? Would Jonathan and Drew be proud or ashamed???

The 7-Year Scratch and a Non-Announcement

Today is 4-5-13.

On this day 7 years ago, 4-5-06, Jon and I had our first date. 

We went to the Winking Lizard and joined the World Tour of Beers. Because nothing says true love like sharing a lager with your crush.

We consider that our first "date," but, when you're friends with someone for 4 years before you start dating them, it's kinda like "Hey, let's hang out like normal, only now we might kiss at the end of the night."

The oldest recorded picture of us on Facebook and therefore readily available to post. May 2007 I think?

Seven years. This is supposedly the time when couples develop the "7 Year Itch" aka they are growing tired of each other, I guess. I just know it as a Marilyn Monroe flick. This also means that we have lived together for 7 years. (Stop judging me - we were roommates while we were still friends, and then we started dating and it seemed silly to live apart at that point.)

Now I'm not saying that we are a perfect couple or having a perfect marriage. But after 7 years, I love him exponentially more than I ever thought I could. 

2007/8 - I think?

Maybe it's the fact that we've been through the worst experience imaginable together. Maybe it's because we have the world's most wonderful daughter, and another on the way. Maybe it's because he makes me laugh like no one can.

Whatever it is, I can honestly say I don't feel the "itch." Metaphorically, I feel like we've only "scratched" the surface our relationship. Meaning, holy cow that was a quick 7 years! I still feel like we're learning about each other. 

We have so much going on in our lives right now, maybe we'll experience a 9 year itch. I'm sure we are not immune to hard times in our marriage.

But for now, dare I say I actually still like this fella?

Engagement Night

As for my non-announcement, it's Non because I don't want to say it out loud until it's all said and done.

But let's just say, hypothetically, that maybe we sold our house. And, hypothetically, maybe bought another one. 

Hypothetically of course. 

Stay tuned.

SOLD

Some of you may have already seen through Instagram, but I have something I would like to show you on this fine Monday morning:

That's right - we sold our house!!!! We are officially in contract. Life has a crazy way of working out. Though we've just introduced a whole brand new level of stress into our lives (we have to be out by April 1st - shit!) it's the good kind of stress. Meaning, we get to go find our "dream" house, or something close enough. In a perfect world, we'd move in somewhere before new baby gets here, but I also don't want to impulsively buy something just because we're on a time crunch, and then regret it 6 months later. Yanno? 

Worst case scenario? We move into an apartment for a few months while we wait for "our" house to come along (and I'm hoping it comes along soon, since the vast majority of new listings go up in the spring). 

I probably should be more panicky about this, and maybe I will be, but honestly I feel so relieved. This was one thing I couldn't control. You can choose your house, you can choose your own timeline to buy a house, but you can't force someone to buy your house. And luckily, there was no force involved. Just a wonderful couple who needed to buy a home quickly and ours was their favorite :) I plan on buying them a fancy bottle of wine to leave on the counter for when they move in, as a small THANK YOU for changing our lives.

So funny/crazy story about this. 3 weeks ago, I followed the advice of a co-worker and ordered the St. Joseph statue off Amazon (for the bargain price of $6.97 mind you). Burying this statue upside down in your backyard plus having a little bit of faith is supposed to give you good luck in selling your house.

When it arrived, I waited until Emerson went to bed to go bury it. Well, it was dark and cold, and the ground was frozen. So essentially I just shoved it into the ground, but I couldn't get it to go all the way in. Oh well, I thought. If it works, it works. If not, not.

Well the next day I started feeling really uneasy about it. I told Jon I was going to go re-bury it. I felt like I did it wrong and it wasn't going to work. But I couldn't find it! I looked all around where I had placed it, and it was nowhere to be found. So I just figured it sank down enough to be properly buried.

On Friday afternoon, I texted Jon to go throw out an old dehumidifier from our basement and I had just remembered it was down there. We had a showing that day and I thought it was an eyesore so I wanted to get rid of it before our open house on Sunday. On his way out the back door, Jon thought about the statue and wondered if it had resurfaced after the rain we'd been having. As he looked down, he saw the feet of the statue popping up out of the ground! He wasn't there when I buried it, so he had no idea where, in our entire backyard, I had put it. So being the nice guy he is, since he knew I was paranoid about it, he unearthed the statue and gave it a proper burial and covered it with grass.

We had a showing 30 minutes later, and a signed offer later that night. 

Whether or not you believe in God, saints, or miracles, even you have to admit that's a pretty interesting coincidence....

So now we move. In 27 days. Hooray! And oh crap!

Adventures in house hunting

"Oh yeah!!!! I'm so happy it's Monday!!!"

~ said no one ever.

Harrumph. 

I've got a case of the discouraged grumps today. 

We went to see our first round of houses, and what a total, unequivocal BUST. I feel like crying.

We saw a total of five houses yesterday. The first two were old, outdated, and just smelled.... off. (I guess I'm finally starting to see why people love hardwood floors so much - ICK!)

The third house could NOT have been more haunted. It was a foreclosure, so we going into it thinking "Oh man, this is a super deal!" Well, we pull up, and though the neighborhood is nice, the house looks.... creepy. Okay, let's keep an open mind, I thought.

I got nauseous as soon as I walked in. I have no idea why. Does a house ever just give you the heebie-jeebies? Well this one did. I felt nervous being there, like something really bad had happened in it. Plus, it was only a "good deal" because it would need so much work to make it liveable. To top it off, there was a car parked across the street the whole time we were looking at the house. There was an old lady in it, just sitting there, staring ahead at the house. Didn't blink. She was either the ghost of a person who died there, or an evil neighborhood troll set to cast a curse upon anyone who would buy it. Go ahead, try and tell me that's not a sign to get the HELL out of there, and fast. So we did.

The fourth was in a lovely area, and was actually a pretty decent house (though dated from the outside) which only needed minor cosmetic updates. Except the layout was terrible. For some reason, before the 2000s, families and builders just must not have seen the value in having an unobstructed view from the kitchen to the other rooms in the house. One of my "must-haves" is having an open concept from the kitchen to the living room/family room, so I can watch the girls play while I cook. Even my architect husband couldn't find a way to make it work with that house, so it got crossed off the list.

House #5 was another foreclosure in a gorgeous area. The neighborhood was so nice, and we thought maybe this was it. When you walked in, you were greeted by a horrible smell. The layout of the house was open, perfect, exactly what we were looking for, but the house was a piece of shit. No, literally. There was human/dog/something excrement everywhere. I wanted to puke. Again, it was a "good deal" because you'd pay $20k immediately to replace every square inch of carpet, plus pay someone to professionally sanitize every square inch of the place. I don't have time for that. I'm due in 14 weeks (!!!)

So that was three hours of my life I'll never get back. Neat.

But because I'm me, I'm going to look on the brightside after that disaster of an experience:

- We now know more of what we DO NOT want. No more foreclosures. No more homes in the area where the first two houses were (not nice or well-maintained homes). Zeroing in on two specific zip codes now.

- We are going to stop trying to "get a deal" and just focus on finding a nice house in a nice area. 

- We are SO appreciative of our current house now. It feels homey, smells nice, and I was so happy to get home and sleep in our nice comfy house after seeing where we could be living

- If what we've seen is what's out there right now, our house has a good chance of selling! Compared to the (literal) shit holes we saw, ours is palatial perfection.

- It's February, so not prime selling season, so the odds that better/nicer homes will come on the market as we approach spring are pretty good.

- Our house is ready to go and will be on the market TOMORROW! All of Jon's our hard work will finally be justified when a "For Sale" sign is in our yard in 24 hours :) Very exciting!

If you have any encouraging words, please do share them! ;-) I'm in need of some today.

My newest obsession

I think I've mentioned this a few times before, but we are looking to sell our house this year. It's a lovely home that was perfect for us back in 2008 when we were childless and Jon was working downtown, but our entire lives have changed since then. The 3 bedrooms, all wood floors, and convenient access to downtown have completely lost their appeal. I want more space, more carpet, an extra bedroom, a big backyard, and to get as far away from downtown as possible.

Initially, we were going to wait until May to list the house, but, um, well, I'm gonna be kinda busy that month, ya know giving birth to a human and all. When we found out we were pregnant I was all like "Cool! Let's sell our house and buy a new one and move in and decorate it in the next 9 months! It can be done, yay!!!!!

There must have still been some residual caffeine in my system, because here I sit, sipping my decaf at 22 weeks pregnant thinking how in the fuggity fudge are we going to make this work??

No, it wouldn't be a deal breaker if we had to stay in our house. But it just feels like the walls are closing in on me. It got so much smaller once Emerson (and her toys) moved in, so I can't imagine living there with two babies.

Though we bought our house right before the economy went to shit (of course), we bought a "project" house that we have since renovated. Every single room has been updated in some way, some more than others. Though it's definitely not a seller's market, between the updates we've made, the school district we're in, and the lack of inventory in our area, I (foolishly?) think that we'll be able to sell our house in a reasonable amount of time. I can say without a doubt that we are selling a MUCH better house than the one we bought. I could kick myself for not taking more before/after pictures, because we have put so much time, sweat, blood and tears into that place and I want to show it off.

I am actually less worried about selling than I am about selling and buying a new house before the new baby comes. I am sure it's ridiculous to think that this will all work out, but that's just how I function. When I want something done, I do it. I can't control who if anyone will buy our house, but I can control everything else. And believe me I am trying to. I'm a mom. Control is my life.

Since I have a kicking time bomb (not a typo), I have become OBSESSED with home staging and HGTV (even more than usual). I am trying to de-clutter, de-personalize and re-organize to make people walk into the house and think "Hot Damn! Give me a pen so I can give these people top dollar today!"

The room I'm struggling with most is our kitchen. It's so boring. We've updated the appliances, put tile behind the stove, added a new light fixture, painted the walls, doors and trim, and added knobs and pulls to all the cabinets, but it still seems dull. We didn't want to pay to update the countertops, but I'm just not sure what we can do to make this room look a little more exciting. I've been scouring Pinterest looking for ideas, but only seem to find good ideas for our potential new house, and not our current one.

 

So other than tidying up a bit, what can I do to make this kitchen better? I'm calling all you good decorators and stagers out there! 

I don't want to spend much more money, but HGTV tells me that kitchens and baths sell homes, so I don't want to skimp on this. Help me.