First spring

We finally got to see our first two flowers in the new house. We've spent so much time cleaning up leaves outside lately and it's exciting to finally see flowers!

We also held our first party, which meant we had to whip the house into shape. We decided to paint the kitchen which turned into a larger project. Doesn't it always? I'll post before and after pictures soon.

The party was a surprise birthday party for my mom. (shh, she turned 60) We invited my aunts and uncles, they all came. Which meant we didn't have enough chairs for everyone.

People liked the house inside and out. I think it was a success. Mom was certainly surprised.

A little snow?

We got a little snow and did a little shoveling. Notice how the driveway is nearly dry. Imagine how much had already melted. Killer icicles hanging from the eaves too.

Our first turkey and Christmas

Mike's company gave out free turkeys for Thanksgiving and he really wanted to cook it on Christmas Eve to start a new tradition with just us.

So, I found a simple recipe from Ina Garten, Mike made mashed potatoes, and it all worked out well! You always hear horror stories about young wives who forgot to take the giblets out, or forgot to defrost it, etc. I don't know if I'm ready to serve a big Thanksgiving dinner just yet, but I'd have no problem doing this next year.

And after we carved up the meat, I made some stock according to local food guy Michael Ruhlman's directions. I have about 8 ziplock bags of frozen turkey stock in 2 cup increments.

Christmas card

I know I'm a little behind in posting this, but here is what our Christmas cards looked like this year. I only sent about 10 out, mostly to people who sent us a card.

I wasn't going to do them at all but I figured that by next year no one will care about our wedding pictures or new house pictures.

entryway

When you walk in the back door to our new house, this is what you see. (Minus the rag doll).


Walk in, turn the corner, and look back and you see this:


Because this is the main entrance M and I will use, we need someplace to put our coats, take off boots, etc.

Here are some ideas I've found:

I like the tall bookshelf for all the mittens, hats, etc.

Here's another idea from Martha Stewart

We're going to be homeowners!

We had inspectors in, signed a lot of addendums and revisions, but it is finally going to happen. The sellers fixed what needed to be fixed, and we are closing this week. We should have the keys soon.

We are so excited and have been having house dreams all weeks.

yet another bump in the road

We hit another bump in the road. We had the general home inspector to see the house, and he had some major concerns about the foundation and support.

1. The foundation walls might be bowing in. It's impossible to tell for sure because the waterproofing goes up the whole wall, so you can't see it. But you can feel a bulge and see that the wall isn't straight.

2. Some of the floor joists are cracked, split, and rotted out. In fact, when you step on the floor above, you can feel it move a little.

Because the wedding was 3 days after this inspection, we decided to just put it on hold, while our realtor and the sellers find structural engineers to come out and give their opinion.

Offer made and accepted!

The Sunday before our wedding we had an appointment to see this house in Northfield Village. I wasn't crazy about the neighborhood, but M drove by and said he thought I'd really like it.

The minute we drove up to it, I knew I wanted it! We had talked about possibly making an offer if we liked what we saw inside, because we sure liked the outside, and the description sounded like exactly what we were looking for.

We went inside and were pretty impressed. Big, renovated kitchen. Hard wood floors. Wood trim. New windows. Built in 1925, which is about the age of home I wanted.

And the outside is charming. There's a big wrap around porch that spans three sides of the house. Two-car garage, and a shed. And lots of "mature landscaping" as the listing says. It really looks like a summer cottage.



So we went back to our agent's office and wrote out the offer. The next day we found out they accepted it, and we scheduled a house inspection to be done before our wedding.

Bump in the road

After we made our offer, we anxiously waited everyday for the seller to call us back. She had seemed ok with the price when we verbally made the offer. So when M finally got to talk to her, she hemmed and hawed about waiting on her lawyer, and waiting for other offers. This was two weeks after we made the official offer.

Later that week her lawyer writes up an agreement and faxes it to me at work. To me it is an affront to everything we’ve sent her. It’s a completely new agreement, says none of the things we wrote in on our offer, and has her original price listed, $30,000 more than we wanted to pay.

When M sees the offer he calls her and says this is not at all where we want to go and she blames her lawyer for filling it out wrong. At this point M tells her he’s not sure if we even want to pursue this anymore. It’s been 3 weeks since we put in an offer. She says to talk it over with me and let her know if we want to withdraw our offer.

We talked it over and decided we don’t really want the house for a number of reasons. I really wanted a pre-WWII home, this one was built in the 50’s. There’s a lot of work to be done to the wet basement, and electric work. The house is a ranch, and it’s on a busy street. And the seller doesn’t want us to work with a realtor, she wants us to her with her and her lawyer. There’s no way we’re going into this just on our wits alone. We’d have to hire a lawyer or retain our realtor out of our own pocket.

In the end we weren’t comfortable compromising so much for a house we weren’t in love with and withdrew our offer.

Made an offer

We decided to make an offer on the ranch from my last post. We are offering about $30,000 less than her offering price, because it needs a lot of work, including the basement which has been very wet each time we've been over.

The woman is selling the house For Sale by Owner as part of her grandfather's estate. She doesn't wants us to deal with her lawyer, no realtors, but of course we need someone experienced on our side, so we are working with our realtor.

Now we begin the waiting game!