Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Currently "Homeless"

Technically, we have no home, although I believe that home is where your dog is (I know this from experience.) So I have 3 homes?

An update on our life as of late:

-Sold our house and they close TODAY, July 31st. We don't have to be at closing because we signed it all over to the relocation company. I'm glad for this because today I am having second thoughts about selling my house. Mostly, I miss going into the nursery (as I predicted I would.)

-We bought a house in the Indianapolis area and close on August 15th. We will caravan to Indy with my parents (plus my 3.... home-dogs?) starting on August 13th. That will be C's first road trip, and he decided last week that he hates the car seat, so that's exciting.

-Our entire house was packed up on Thursday and Friday of last week. It is now on an 18-wheeler somewhere between DFW and Indianapolis. I literally do not know where my bed is. Weird.

-Campbell rolled over from back to front today! It was a one-and-done kind of thing, but exciting none-the-less!

-3 years ago, when we moved back to TX from South Dakota, we lived with my parents while we waited for the short sale on our house to be finalized (which ended up taking 3 months!!!!!!!) Now, we are living with my parents again. Things are different now, because instead of 1 dog, we have 3. Also, we have a baby.

-I'm watching women's tennis (doubles) - USA vs Poland. Poland has cute uniforms (outfits?) That has nothing to do with me or my life, but still.

-Emily chose Jef, and so far there is no proof of her affair with Chris Harrison. Real Housewives is in their off-season and the Olympics is not even close to dramatic enough for me.

-[Update: There is a new series on BRAVO called Love Broker, and I think it will fill my reality void for now. Real quote from a woman on a first (blind) date: "So have you ever texted a picture of your junk to someone?" My, how the dating game has changed since my first date with Kennedy. But for all my single/dating friends -- I feel that this is a legitimate, dare I say, really important question to ask before you begin a relationship with someone.]

I am ready to be DONE with this move. I have a good-sized Pinterest board going for the new house, I miss sleeping in a king-sized bed, and I miss routine. This 2 month limbo is wearing me OUT to say the least.

The only thing I need to do before we drive up there is compile a Texas-themed playlist for the car ride.  Please feel free to leave suggestions in the comments below.


Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Fashion

Me: I think my becoming a housewife is gonna allow me to take more risks, in a fashion sense.

Kennedy:........Yeah right, you're just going to be wearing sweats all the time

Me: No, I think I wanna try out some new "looks"

Monday, July 16, 2012

The best thing about being a woman -- Warning! TMI Alert!


I tend to only half-way agree with Shania. I don't think the best thing is getting to have fun, but the going crazy part seems kind of accurate. However, I wouldn't say that's the best part.

I don't know if this is true for everyone, because I definitely haven't come across it in any of my google searches lately, (which, by the way, let's just say that if anyone ever saw my google search history, they might choose to no longer associate with me) but I am definitely suffering from much more severe PMS after giving birth.

Anyway, thanks to that, my new side effects are extreme irritability followed by anger which leads to a cleaning tirade. On. Every. Front. Plus I have superhuman strength, so that's actually nice. But I had to have a really crappy day first in order to get to that point.

So I'm multi-tasking by steam-cleaning my floors while doing a facial mask. I have recorded the Bachelorette, which I will watch later while painting my toenails.

This week (and past weekend) I have waged a war on fleas in my house. I don't like talking about how my house and dogs have fleas, because it makes me feel like I'm not a good housekeeper (which I'm not.) But I want to be. So I don't want people to think I'm not. But the truth of the matter is, fleas might be more invincible than roaches.

They are parasites which contribute nothing to this planet. They both disgust and infuriate me. The dogs have gotten 2 flea baths this weekend, and it seems as if they gained MORE fleas each time.

Today I went to Petsmart and spent way too much on flea ammunition. This had better work. OR ELSE. I'll keep you posted. Here's how you'll know: If I blog again, it worked. If I don't blog again, I have literally gone crazy and started eating beehives or something.

This blog post seemed a lot more coherent in my head while I was steam-mopping the floors a minute ago...

I don't know what the best thing about being a woman is. Maybe cute shoes? What do you think?

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

UPDATESTRAVAGANZA

This is gonna be a big one, y'all. And I refuse to apologize for the amount of opinions, words and pictures that happen in this blog post.

1. First of all, I hate myself for watching the Bachelorette. But I really love myself, so it's a weird kind of conflict. I have to say I am truly shocked at her decision tonight. I mean, SEAN CHASED HER CAR EVERY TIME SHE LEFT. He obviously loved her.

But here's what bugs me about the show: Imagine you have just been anticipating a life-changing relationship commitment (perhaps, a marriage proposal?) and instead you find out that you will never see the person again. It is definitely a devastating moment.

Then imagine that you climb into a car to go home, and someone shoves a camera into your face and orders you to explain in great detail what emotions you're feeling right this instant. Needless to say, I always feel awkward watching that.

The good news is that I don't think Sean cried. Because lets face it: Nothing is more irritating than watching a grown man cry on television.

Random question: Has anyone else watched "The Glass House" that comes on after the Bachelorette? I have. But only because the remote was over there and I couldn't reach it. I feel like I the TV tricked me into watching. Literally one of the most blase shows I've ever accidentally watched.

WHO WILL EMILY CHOOSE NEXT WEEK? Only time (and Reality Steve) will tell!

2. Let's move on, shall we? The next update is about our house. I don't want to jinx anything or jump any guns (dangerous!) or what not, but we have accepted an offer! It's a great offer and the offer-ers seems to really love the house, which makes me feel better about having to sell it. Barring any crazy, unseen roadblocks, we will close at the end of the month. Perfect timing in the grand scheme.

3. Our master bedroom and bath are officially...OFFICIALLY...OFFICIALLY complete. And now I would like to share befores and afters of this labor of love. Irony is...finishing your dream master suite just in time to sell it. Or am I still kind of wrong about how to use irony? Ah, well.

I'll start with the bedroom!

Or should I say, bedrooms?

When we moved in, the upstairs had 4 bedrooms. They were all somewhat small, including the master bedroom. I don't really even have a very good photo of the master bedroom, but I'll go ahead and humor all you Nosy Nancies.

(This is the view from the original closet area.)


This is actually the old bathroom layout. The photo above this one (with all the mattresses) was taken as if you were standing between the two closets looking away from the bathroom.


And this was the guest room that eventually became part of our master suite. Before, the bedrooms were side by side and shared a wall in between respective closets. (Does that make sense?)
We knocked out the closet from our master bedroom and the closet from the guest room and ended up with one large space.

We also took the closets that were once at the entrance of the bathroom and decided to use that as additional bathroom space.

That left us with absolutely no closets, but we had an ace in the hole. (Is that ok to use there?) The ace in the hole being the room pictured below.

The previous owners had converted attic space into this little beaut. They had originally housed a teenage boy in it, but he had to walk through the blue/grey guest bedroom to get to it. It is now our huge walk-in closet.

These plans have been 3 years in the making, with actual labor dragging on for over a year and a half. It's great to be done, and it's sad to have to sell, but I'm glad that the potential buyers love it as much as we do.

Oh, you want to see the after pictures? Well, alright.

I didn't take any pictures from similar angles as before shots, sorry! But in my defense, there wasn't much to look at before. And also, I have a baby. (How long can I get away with the baby excuse before I have to have another one?)

View from the corner by MY side of the bed.
View of the sitting area from Kennedy's side/bathroom door. There was some strategery on which side of the bed I chose. You can see in the photo above our "sitting area". Or as we like to call it, "The most expensive laundry basket ever." (When we weren't forced to clean for house showings...)

Looking toward the bathroom.

The sleeping area.

Now let's be girls and go to the bathroom together.

Our (Kennedy's) masterpiece. FINALLY.

I'll save you the trouble of scrolling up so you can see the old bathroom layout below.
We removed the two closets to make the bathroom more open.

Looking from the old water closet that housed the toilet and a dark, tiny shower with a dash of mold. Just outside that doorway are the closets on either side.

Looking in. Remember how there were mirrors on almost every wall, yet it was still SUUUUUUPER dark? And notice the vanity. We reused it. Or upcycled it. Yeah, that's the new hot phrase. Upcycled.

Old is made new again. We lifted the vanity on turned feet and finished the edge with some molding. Repainted it and replaced the hardware, countertops, sinks & fixtures. The center also used to be 3 drawers, but Kennedy turned it into a shelf and I put baskets full of JUNK in there instead. Yay Junk!

A reallllly artsy (hah) shot of the bathroom floor and our refinished antique claw foot tub.

Another shot of that big, beautiful vanity. It ended up being raised about 9 inches. Before, my 5'5" self had to lean over the counter to brush my teeth. Poor Kennedy was practically brushing his teeth while sitting Indian style. It's much more comfortable to use now, and also proved my theory that there would be fewer toothpaste splatters on the mirror.

Oh, also, we installed those oval swivel mount mirrors and two wall sconces to match the hardware & grey slate.

This is what it feels like to take a shower in here. Minus the soap and water.

This is what it feels like to...well, this is the view from the toilet. It's kind of peeking in here, but we installed a huge window above the claw foot tub. This is where the vanity and giant mirror wall used to be. I still can't believe we cut a hole in the side of our house.

Boring picture looking out into the bedroom. I had originally planned to find a cool, un-matchy sit-down vanity for the left-hand corner. That's why there are two random outlets there. Now the new owners can find one. Or leave it open. It doesn't feel that weird to have open space.

I freakin' love that bathroom.

And here's the closet. We did nothing to it, except put rolling clothes racks in there. We were going to eventually install built-ins, but never got around to it. So that should be fun for the new owners.

Looking in. Don't know why everything looks so orange. Oh, because I don't understand how to use my camera.

Facing a little window area.

I staged this as a little office-type place for showings, thanks to our wonderful realtor, Becky, for that advice. If you are looking to buy or sell in the DFW area, let me know, and I'll send you to Becky! She's great!

View looking out, with a huge carpet remnant left over from when we installed carpet last Thanksgiving.

And there you have it! Now what I'm going to do is go lay on the floor in my master suite and whisper good-bye to it while I cry. Or go to the pool. I'll let you know what I decide.


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