A little shopping was done...

You would think I would have had to buy a ton of stuff, but not so far! Don't get me wrong, we've had to spend a lot, but on paint and knobs and random stuff that I didn't think we would need! But i've had fun buying a few decorative items so far. REALLY looking forward to buying some more.

Chance of course had to buy some things for the basement, we bought the couches and the fan and speaker mounts, but that's about it. Couches were from Marlo ($799), fan was from Lowes (I think it was $89).

The bathroom I had to get the most for. Neither one of the bathrooms have a shower rod, toilet paper holder, or anything! I haven't bought anything for the downstairs bathroom yet since we decided to start with this bathroom. I'll probably go get the stuff in the next couple weeks for downstairs. In this bathroom though, we had to get window film for privacy because the window is in the SHOWER! Boo. We got a curtain rod, shower curtain, toilet paper holder, bath towel rod, hand towel holder, soap dish, tooth brush holder, new mirror, new light (but haven't put it up yet) and I think that's it. Oh and new knobs for the vanity. Not expensive things, just a lot of little things. Everything was from Home Depot, Lowes and Ross.

The kitchen, all we really got was the pantry cabinet and the two plants from Home depot. Except I already had the pot from ikea for the violet.

In the dining room, all I needed was the light, which for now we decided to go super cheap and just got a decent one from Lowes. It was sooo inexpensive ($62!)

Plant came from Home Depot, it will bloom red. I had to buy spray paint for the pot that I already owned, it was chipping.

The bedroom wasn't bad either. I had to paint the bed and the cabinets, both from Ikea that we already had. I bought new bedding from TJ Maxx ($89). It didn't come with sheets but luckily we already had a brown sheet set so it worked perfectly. I got this cute little candle holder from Yankee Candle today ($3.99 for the holder, $1 for the candle). And I bought this little bookshelf type thing and the linen drawers from Target for $39 and the drawers for $5.99 each. We didn't have anywhere to put socks and stuff and this worked perfect for it.

Love my new pillows for the living room! I didn't want a matchy-matchy set of pillows. I first saw the flower one, it was on clearance at target for $13. Then I saw the blue pillow, which actually came in a set of 2, on clearance for $9 for the two of them! So I used one on the couch and one in the bedroom since it matched perfectly! While I was there I had seen the green silk one but I wasn't sure since it was $17 (not that expensive but the other two were just so much cheaper!) but I knew it would match great so I did end up going back and getting it and I just love it all together. The flower pillow has the blue, green and even some yellow in it.

Our new house- pictures!

As promised, here are some pictures of our house. I've even included some before and afters just so you can see how hard we've worked in the last week! :)

The outside: This needs some major work. I want to take off the scallops. You can't see it in this picture but there was a screen door and it was ugly. I ripped it off asap and now our pretty red door shows. But we either need to get full view storm door or just redo the trim around the door because it looks a little funky. A little lanscaping is necessary. And that light post needs to go! No pictures but we need a new mailbox. If you look closely, we are missing a shutter! So there's definite work to be done out here! :)

The Living room: Before/After. We have more things to hang up and maybe an arm chair to add but it's coming together. I decided not to paint in here. The walls aren't white, but they aren't bad either, for now! :) *Love my pillows? I do!

The dining room: Before/After. The table is a little closer than I would like to the door but what can you do!

The Kitchen: Before/After. I still want to replace the hardware on the cabinets....well I'd like to replace the entire cabinets but for now the hardware will do. I wasn't sure about the paint color at first but I really like it now. We also got a pantry cabinet ($185 from Home Depot, woo!) because this kitchen has no pantry! It works perfect and it seems to hold more than our last pantry that was already built in, but of course I've filled it quickly!

Our Bedroom: Before/After. Small, yes. But it's not too bad actually. We are making it work and it's actually my most favorite room right now!

Upstairs Bathroom: Before/After. We still need to replace the light fixture. It's already bought but we just need to install it. Then we are going to replace the faucet too.

Basement: Before/After. Chance has been working hard on his theater type room. The rest of the basement is an absolute mess. We haven't even started on it yet. But this room is almost complete. I couldn't get a good picture of it, but it really looks awesome! :)

Backyard: Before the tree fell down. It's since been picked up!! Woo hoo. I just haven't taken a new picture of the yard, but it's about the same I guess...though it does look better in this picture :)

And the rest of the house, the two rooms (well one room that we will be making into two rooms) in the basement, the two rooms upstairs and the basement bathroom look all something like this......

We still have a ways to go.

We are officially Homeowners! Pictures coming soon!

This week has been so crazzzzy!! I'll probably post pictures tonight so I'd thought I'd get a post in about the craziness and the fun that got us here!

First every second up until closing was chaos....absolute chaos. I'll skip the details but basically we were dealing with the apartment that Chance used to live in a couple years ago and the whole thing really made things difficult. Keep your documents people!

Then, at the last minute, the seller decided to gift us some money for an unruly refrigerator and hot water heater (yeah, NO HOT WATER in our new house!! Thank god I married a plumber, haha) which was great that they did that but then we were so close to moving our closing date back which would have been TERRIBLE because our moving truck was already scheduled for the next day and we needed to be out of the town house 4 days later. We were freaking out. I woke up at 4am that day feeling sick because I was so nervous. I think we found out 2 hours before we were supposed to close that we were actually closing that day.

On moving day, the truck company tried to charge us a ton of extra money for something, it ended up being ok. But then the ramp didn't work at both houses on the moving truck!! Ahhhh. BUT at least everything fit into the truck. We got the biggest one they had. We had a lot of helpers too. It was me, Chance, his mom, his sister, his dad, his dads fiance, her daughter, my dad, my brother and our friend Collin. We couldn't have done it without them!! For lunch we wanted everyone to be able to just grab and eat something so we went to Wendy's and ordered 20 cheeseburgers! :) I explained to the lady that Chelsey and I were not going to eat them ourselves since it was just the two of us picking them up. I've never ordered that much food before at a fast food place!

We took all of the stuff over the new place and got it unloaded pretty fast. While we were unloading, the ice cream truck came by and we ran over and Chance paid for everyone to get ice cream, which was awesome! It's been years since I've gone to the ice cream man.

Then we went back to the townhouse to get a couple small things we had left and clean up more trash. And take showers since we had no hot water at the new house yet. I don't know what it is about being at an almost empty house, even though we've lived at the townhouse for 3 years, as soon as the stuff was out of there, it gave me the creep vibe. We only had to go to the townhouse once more to get a couple more things and clean up some more stuff and that was the next day after (Monday). That day we left our keys and said goodbye to our old neighbors who we are REALLY going to miss, really! We got to meet a couple of our new neighbors as we were moving in and they have all at least been really nice so far.

Chance fixed the water heater so we now have hot water, thank goodness. And of course we've already had plenty of homeowner headaches! The waterline to the refrigerator was leaking but Chance fixed it. But we are having some electrical problems and it's happened three times, things will flicker and something is making a noise. It's freaking us out and it happened twice yesterday. My dad was here (thank goodness he's an electrician) but not while the noise happened. So we're going to do a little inspecting and see what it might be and maybe he can come back and take a look.

We had this tree limb down in our yard from when the storm happened like a month ago and they finally came and took it Friday night!! woo hoo, they were supposed to do it a lot sooner, but I'm just glad it's gone.

I've acquired some new favorites since I've been here. Thanks to my most favorite mother in law for the suggestion, if you haven't bought a Mr. Clean magic eraser, go buy one! Where has this thing been all my life?!? I've been finding all the teeniest little marks and watching them disappear. It was fantastic for all the little scuffs when we moved! I thought I was going to have to repaint a part of the wall near the steps, no way thanks to that sweet little thing! It awesome! And it's comes in a 4 pack for 3.99! Wonder how much they pay to be a spokesperson? :)

Annnd I've been dying to get an all natural cleaner, I keep switching between cleaners, Windex, Lysol all purpose cleaners and I just can't stand the smells anymore, they REALLY bother me. So I went into the all natural cleaner section at target and picked one out. I know that YHL has suggested Seventh Generation but in lemon lavender (I think?) but they only have lemon thyme and that smelled awful and I don't feel like ordering cleaner online. So I settled for J.R. Watkins All Purpose Cleaner in Lemon. It smells good and it looks cute too. They had some other products too that I'd like to try. Oh and it was only 3.99 for a normal sized bottle so it's not like it's expensive.

I finally made my first dinner here Friday night. I made beef stir fry (so good). I'll admit, I really didn't want to get the kitchen dirty. But we had been living off frozen food and eating out long enough. I'm terrified to get on the scale, I know I've been moving a lot but I've not been watching what I eat. We had gone to Jersey Mike's a couple of times, I had seen it before but never gone. It's soooo yum. I get the Italian cold cut which apparently is what they are known for and Chance gets the cheese steak which now Jersey Mike's is his new favorite place to get a cheese steak. I must take him to Philly one time so we can try a cheese steak, it is like his favorite food.

I thought I would miss all of the shopping centers that we were close to (Columbia, etc.) but there are TONS of shopping centers up here, TONS. Good ones, huge ones and close! We keep finding more and they are just huuge and we get really excited. My only complaint is where is the homegoods? I mean really, do I HAVE to drive to rockville or olney for one? All these great shopping centers and no one wanted to include homegoods?

Anyway, I think that's it for now. I'm so happy to be in the house. Happy that the house buying process is over. Nervous about potential things that could go wrong but glad that we know people who can do things. Here's to hoping the house gives us lots of happiness and not anxiety! :)

And don't worry, if you are waiting for an address, I was going to get cute address things made up but I didn't want to do them before we moved and what if they didn't get forwarded and then now I don't feel like waiting 2-3 weeks for them. So I'll probably run to a card store and pick them up and fill them out or something. I'll make sure to get them out soon! :)

We started this process March 22nd, 2010

Our realtor sent us the house July 16, 2010

We first saw the house July 17, 2010

We put our offer in July 17, 2010

We had to increase our offer on July 19, 2010 to compete with multiple offers

Our offer was accepted on July 22, 2010

We closed on August 27, 2010

SO glad it's over! :)

An update....

There is so much going on and I don't have time to do a bunch of posts!

We are closing on the house next friday, the 27th. We plan to just go change the locks, and buy blinds & curtains after we get the keys that day. Then we will move everything on Saturday & Sunday. I actually think we will spend the first night there on Saturday because we plan to get the big truck on Saturday. I'm SO excited. We did our own inspection last week and we had no power because of the storm. The place looked good and there wasn't anything serious to fix....we majorly need a bathroom window replaced so we'll have to price that out. I can not wait to decorate. I'm off work from the 27th and I don't go back until the 7th. woo hoo! Doing the loan and everything has been stressful, and we also have been having people coming in the townhouse to look at it to rent and that's been overwhelming.....I just keep thinking......a week and a half left!!!

I went to Home Depot yesterday and picked up a bunch of paint samples so we can start picking out paints for the rooms. I'm leaning more to not paint the living room/dining area right away since it's already a light yellow/tan. I'm not sure yet. I just know that I want to paint the bathrooms, the master, the kitchen, my craft room right away....sooo we'll just see. That's a lot of painting. If the living room/dining area was stark white I would just have to paint it because it would make me crazy....but I'm thinking I may wait 6 months to paint it.

Hmmm what else.....I'm down to 27 pounds lost now, that means only 21 pounds to go! hooray. I hope to lose it all by Christmas.....though I'm starting to get in a middle area where a lot of my clothes, especially pants are getting way too loose to wear but I don't want to go out and buy pants that are only going to fit for 2 or 3 months at the most....So luckily it's still summer and I have been wearing a bunch of skirts and dresses...if it was winter right now, I'd be going crazy!

This past weekend I went to Bethany Beach with some friends......it was in the midst of all the stress but it was perfect timing, I needed a little stress relief! Now we just have one weekend left to pack....we've been trying to avoid packing during the week. We've got a lot done but I doubt we'll finish everything this weekend so we'll probably need to start packing a few things here and there every night until next friday!

Our New House - yay!

We finally snagged one! I guess third time IS a charm! :) After 4 months of looking we finally had our offer accepted.....It was exhausting trying to find something, I mean we are looking in the 250,000 and under price range in Montgomery County....single family houses only....that's really limited and doesn't get you very much. So for a starter house, and a foreclosure (built in equity, hooray), it's great!

I almost don't want to even post pictures because I plan to clean it up a lot and it's going to look much better after I'm done. But I mostly mean the outside....the inside really isn't bad! It's clean and freshly painted....the "to do" list is a lot smaller than the last two we've put offers on. It's three bedrooms, two baths....one level with a basement....though it has two big rooms in the basement, we will use one as another tv room, the other room happens to have two doorways and is already perfect to be split into two rooms, so just like the other two houses, this house will be 5 rooms when we are done, though the two can't be bedrooms unless we add closets. We'll use them as my craft room and his work room. The kitchen isn't bad at all, the cabinets just need updating. I unfortunately settled for a dining/living room combo and that's probably my least favorite thing about the house....but it'll work for us for now. Oh and we also got this for $20,000 cheaper that we offered for the last two! woo hoo. And it's already fenced in but we have plans to put a nicer fence to hide the neighbors messy yard. And it has electric base board heating...booo, but we have plans to switch it out as soon as possible....anyway...it's not perfect but it's our 1st house and we are EXCITED!

Now we are just waiting for the signed paperwork back from the bank so it can start to get a little more official! :)

10 things I love

I started thinking of doing this on the way to AC because when I got my hair cut two weeks ago, I picked up this new leave in conditioner that I just LOVE! And I wanted to share so I thought I'd share a few other things that make my heart skip a beat! :)

1. I used to be the one who bought a $20 straightener every 4 months or so and finally for Christmas I asked for a nicer one so hubby went and bought me one from the kiosk in the mall in hot pink! They run about $100...I would have spent well over that by now. I've had it for about two years. I love this thing, I couldn't live without it....though one day when it does break, I do lust over the zebra pattern one they have at that kiosk now and I may just have to get that one next. So far this one is still going strong!
2. This perfume is funny actually...last year for my birthday, Chance went out and got me a sweatshirt I wanted from Aeropostale, while he was there he saw this perfume and without even smelling it, he bought it....It could have smelled like a foot for all he knew. I had never asked for it or even smelled it so it was a dangerous move.....well I LOVE it and it's cheap-o...I have a whole tray full of great and much more expensive perfumes but I love love this one, it's my favorite right now! For Christmas I asked for the bigger bottle, which is this in the picture, you can see I use it a lot!

3. I don't think this one needs a explanation? I love you sweet little kitchen aid mixer, some days I wish you were a pretty red but then I remember that no matter what color I decide to paint my kitchen, you will match.
4. I love these earrings, I wear them often. It's funny actually because I picked them out and when chance gave them to me I did not like them, in fact I wasn't even sure that I actually picked these out....until I put them on and ahhh they felt so right. :) I love these earrings, they are not heavy and they go with so much.
5. Hello bottle of love, the purpose for this post, the reason my hair feels so good lately.....when I recently got my hair cut I asked for a recommendation for a good leave in conditioner or something similar and he recommended this wonderful bottle. I love this, it's like a mist when it sprays. Every time I use it, I feel like I was just at the salon. It was about $15 but it seems to be lasting quite a while so far....I love love love this stuff.

6. I love this cute little tool box....it's perfect. I asked for it for Christmas this year, it's about $20 I think from Michaels and it has a hammer and a screwdriver and pliers and it's excellent. I hang pictures around the house all the time and get ready for this....I've been known to often use my lint roller to hammer things in....hahhahaha IT WORKS, but it's nice to have a little cute hammer now, that works much better!

7. Love this stuff, nothing fancy, you've seen it before....I buy lotions and all this stuff from bath and body works but I swear these are the only things that I use the entire bottle of and have to go buy more. Luckily they are always so cheap!! I swear I think I paid like $3 for this. Thats so much cheaper than regular store soap and it smells so much yummier! I have them in both bathrooms and a peach foam one for the kitchen.

8. Ok this thing is magnificent! You can see how much liquid is still in there, I bought this thing September of 2007, no joke. It ran me a whopping $12. Now I should probably throw it out because it does get goopy after awhile but it's up on a shelf. BUT the point is, when you buy these other places, the liquid is gone in no time, these last forever and you can still smell them! I mean you get at least a year and a half to two years before they get goopy....I had to throw out my other one at two years... This one is buttercream which is okay but my other favorite is cyprus rose....mmm makes me want to go out and buy a new one now!
9. Loved this book, and still trying to make it through the next one. It's about 4 girls who run a wedding business in this old house, they each have a role, one is a florist, one is a photographer, etc. There is still two more books to be released and each book is about one girl. I want their life! haha, no really but it was a good book and when I make time to start reading again, I'd like to finish the second book!! It's called Bed of Roses.
10. I love this thing, I wish I bought the rest of them in the store! It was like $10 at walmart! It's sturdy and cute and it would be perfect to hold some stuff in the closet. I have it in my living room, I love the color. For the price, I looove this thing.