Animal Wrangling

J goes out of town for work a lot.

Usually he's back within the day or two, but it's become a tradition to get K a stuffed animal while he's gone - most often, a Ty "Beanie Boo" - essentially what took the place of those Beanie Babies that were all the rage in the early aughts. But with big, glittery eyes.

Imagine at least one trip a month (sometimes more!) over the past 3 years. That adds up to a lot of Beanie Boos! Add to that the other stuffed animals kids get as gifts or prizes, and we've got quite a menagerie on our hands. K is never without the Boo of the Moment, and for awhile we would cart the whole crew back and forth every few days from mom's to dad's house. As the group grew, it became more difficult to manage, so we stuck to just one at a time, and the others were split between houses.

Even with the Great Beanie Divide of 2014, we still have a TON of stuffed animals. Maybe it's lingering trauma from the time I found all my stuffed animals in the donate pile, or maybe the fact that she legitimately loves each one of these things, but we can't bring ourselves to cull the herd yet.

So I needed some tricks to keep them all off the floor (and out of the puppy's mouth). We started with a big, pink bucket. It worked well to keep the majority of the toys in an area the approximate size of a big, pink bucket. It did not work so well to find Jinx or Ollie on the night she wanted to sleep with a black cat or pink polka dotted octopus. So I tried Pinterest and found the perfect solution:

Shoe hangers. They worked perfectly as "Beanie Boo Apartments", and she loves deciding who gets to sleep next to whom. It also lets her see everyone, so she can rotate through some of her old favorites as well as new friends. It filled up quickly, and I've added another beside it since I took this photo (there's a bit of an overlap to accommodate the handle, so we're currently 7 x 6 with a few spaces left to fill). 

I went for the classic hammock-in-the-corner for the larger, more sentimental animals - easily pulled down if requested, but out of the way when not being used. The Power Ponies are lined up on the dresser and ready to have their hair brushed, and the big, pink bucket is still in use for big stuffies that get more action.

Gosh, this kid has a lot of toys. 

So far, it's worked. Since October, her room has been the only one in the house that is consistently clean. She gets a quarter for making her bed each morning - if her toys are picked up. But honestly, the combination of having a place for everything to land with a puppy that will chew on toys / shoes if you're not careful has really made that plan stick. 

Any other tips to control the clutter? We did do a gentle culling during the move, and we'll do another at birthday time (I'm going to try one-in-one-out method) but there are still way more toys out than I'd like.

 

Three angles

There are approximately 3 angles from which this house looks clean / unpacked:

Sitting in the front room, looking to the back. 

We don't have a dining room table yet, so bonus clean!

The living room. 

This was supposed to be the dining room (according to the floor plan), but then we bought the biggest sofa known to man and needed more wall space. 

The kitchen.

All the stuff is in cabinets, so this was the first "clean" room in the house!

I don't live there anymore

After several days lugging everything I own across state lines in 90+ degree heat, subsisting solely on pizza and sheer willpower... I live in Indiana.

(Justin says this makes me a Hoosier, but I beg to differ. I think Hoosier is a state of mind. Don't let him quote Wikipedia at you.)

I was cleaning my old apartment until well past 11 pm tonight. I'm not much for scrubbing usually, but it was cathartic today. I just had some time to think about my life, and where it's going. As I cleaned my way out of the apartment, turning out the lights as I mopped room by room, I felt like I was saying goodbye to my youth in a way. This was my last "bachelorette" pad - I'm trading in my life of solitude (and knowing everything is exactly where I left it last) for a precocious 5 year old, two rowdy puppies... and the love of my life.

Moving Day!

I'll just leave you with this...

My apartment

This is what my apartment looks like right now.

Fingers crossed I'll be ready to move on Saturday!

We own a house!

This afternoon, J and I took off work early and bought a house.

As you do.

The process involved signing / initialing a LOT of paper (they gave us our copies on disk - saving trees!), but I'm so grateful to Mike Ryan - our realtor, Guaranteed Rate - our mortgage company, and Kemp Title agency - who made the whole process go so smoothly!

I am also grateful to the previous owners, who left wine in the fridge :)

Knocking on wood...

To date, this process has been deceptively easy. We found a house. Made an offer. It was accepted. Inspection was clear(ish). Appraisal was great. The loan went through.

We're a week and a half away from closing, and I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. Justin suggested getting my utilities switched, and I balked. I realized that I'm subconsciously not even packing 100%... just in case.

Inspection update

So yesterday was our inspection.

I was so nervous, but it went really well. There are a few things we'll need to update or fix - our A/C is past it's designed life, but still working well... for now. Something about resurfacing box gutters seems to solve 90% of the rest of our problems. Overall, the bug/radon guy and both of our general inspectors (we had quite the team over last night!) have told us the house is in great condition for it's age, so I feel so. much. better.

Also, if you're in the Louisville / S. Indiana area and need home inspectors, I'd recommend Home Team. They were awesome.

While the fellas were at work crawling through every imaginable space in the new house, I got to spend some more time measuring and mentally placing furniture. Somehow I completely missed the fact that there is no closet in the master bedroom, so that might get swapped with the former guest room. The room is a bit darker, but there is a hanging rod in the 1-ft deep closet (?!?), so I feel like I'm already ahead of the game. Also, I will be sleeping in my bedroom, and I like the dark. So maybe not such a bad thing.

I was going to include a screen shot of the floor plan here, but apparently this app makes you pay for that. I mean, it makes sense - but not worth it for this post. So just make it up in your head and I'm sure that's exactly right. Or probably not.

Anxiety

I feel a little erratic, looking at what's posted on here - it's like hooray! boo! exciting excitement yay! AAAAGGGHHH!

But I also think that's consistent with someone who is buying a house and getting married and oh yeah decided a puppy would be a fun addition to the mix. Most of my life feels a little hooray! boo! exciting excitement yay! AAAGGGHHH!

Today's AAAGGGHHH - the inspection is tomorrow afternoon. I am deeply afraid the house is going to fall down. Or that the ensuing appraisal will fail. Or that the other shoe will drop, in general.

Crossing fingers.

Colors

I love reading home improvement and family blogs, I have for years. My friends and I laugh when we catch ourselves referring to the decisions of John and Sherry (RIP YoungHouseLove) or Katie and Jeremy like they are people we know personally.

Part of realizing I am not Sherry Petersik is what led us to buy a home that needs less TLC than Justin's current home. I love watching people put a room together board by board. I don't love spending my weekends doing home improvement work. This is something I now know and have accepted about myself.

That being said - I was reading the most recent post on Bower Power and followed a link to an older post about paint schemes. She had painted rooms haphazardly as they were completed, and now had a hodgepodge of paint colors to keep track of. Since we haven't lifted a brush in this new house yet, I thought it would be a good idea to pick a few basic colors we'll stick to throughout the process. I actually like many of her colors as a starting off point.

The top row is meant to be wall colors, the bottom is accents. Perhaps this is where I'll start my planning as well.  It's based around Justin's favorite, gray, with several of my favorite bluey-greens. Since our house is currently a beige-y taupe, we need to shift the color palette towards gray while also recognizing that there are things like brown-based tile to deal with.

Stay tuned for updates!

Today's "mood board"

So I know it's a stretch to call these mood boards, but I like to get a visual for what I'm hoping the room to resemble.

Here's the upstairs bathroom now:

Again with my sketchy use of the Behr ColorSmart website (there were no bathrooms that resemble anything like a normal bathroom, so I fudged it with a mud room):

My goal is to bridge the beige tile with the gray we're planning on painting the house. I think I'll use blues and teals (which are my favorite anyway) for the rooms where we can't get away from brown tones. The color here is majestic blue. The curtain is the closest I can find to one I got at Target. It's pretty close, but it's a window curtain instead of shower. I don't know why they haven't posted the new collection on their website yet.

I like the way the white pops on the dark blue, so I might switch out the mirror for one with a white frame. I love that this one has a shelf!

We'll also have to find a towel storage option. I'm a fan of hooks over the door, which I've already got in place at my current apartment, so I'll just have to see if we can make it work for a family of 3.

The Fun Part!

So I'm overselling it a little, but I do think this is kind of the fun part of buying a house.

1. No problems yet - we haven't had the inspection, so I can't worry about whether the ___ is going to collapse or explode or ... whatever else could go wrong in a house. 

2. I haven't spent any money yet (earnest money aside, but I'll get that "back")

3. Now I get to draw floor plans and pick colors!

I'm going to do this in a mood board rollout, because I think that sounds fun and it's my blog and there's probably no one else reading this anyway.

So this is our bedroom now:

And this is how I envision it:

This is our bedding set, superimposed on one of those online color-picker things. This happens to be Behr Nile River.

Our bedroom has wainscoting, which I find totally appropriate. Right now the walls and wainscoting are painted the same beige color, but we’re taking it back to the more traditional white. The furniture is a hand me down from my aunt, and at some point (SOON) we'll have to build a closet. Because this house, while big and gorgeous, has closets about 1 feet deep, max. No hanging rods or anything. That might be the first project I hand over to mom when she comes to visit. ;-)

A Change in Plans

So on Monday we looked at a lovely, well-kept, craftsman-style home. On Tuesday we made an offer, counteroffers happened Wednesday, and by Thursday... it was clear this was not going to be our new home:

While we were waiting for the (ultimately disappointing) counter offer, I found this house:

It had just gone on the market that day. It was 700 square feet larger, for 20% less - a few blocks away, but facing a busier road (hence the price break). Everything that concerned us about the first house (small bedrooms, and only 3 of them) was solved in spades in this house - we could make 7 massive bedrooms and still have living space if we wanted. And what we loved about the other house (old house charm and lots of "introvert spaces") were still there.

So yesterday we made an offer. Today they accepted it. Now the roller coaster begins!

Beginnings

There is a lot going on in my head right now.
In the past, the best way to sort it out has been to write / blog about it, and since many of the things going on in my life will be of interest to at least one other person (hi, mom!) - I've decided to put it up here.

Currently taking up space in my brain / stealing my sleep:

New house.

We put an offer on a house last night. I'll know by 5 pm whether they've accepted the offer. I am anxious about this. The house is pretty awesome, but there are always pros and cons between one house and the other. Since we placed an offer within 24 hours of seeing it (and within 4 days of meeting our realtor), things seem to be going pretty quickly.

I am also mentally decorating the house in my sleep. So there's that.

Wedding. 
(honeymoon / parties)
Hey, I'm getting married in 115 days! Between now and then I have to sign contracts, get my dress fitted, figure out what I'm doing for place cards, and how to set up a photo booth. I also have to pretend not to be an introvert at numerous parties and showers between now and then. And finish addressing invitations (and decide who can get added from the wait list), and there are probably other things I have to do, but those are just the things I'm thinking about today.

At the end of it, I'll have an awesome partner though. So it's OK.

Money.
Did you know that a lot of money changes hands when you're buying / mentally furnishing a new house, planning a wedding, and booking a honeymoon? And that while you're doing those things, you also have to pay rent and eat food and buy gas?

While we're getting significant help from my parents (that's pretty much the understatement of the century), and definitely planning within our comfort zone, there are a lot of zeroes entering and exiting my bank account. Yikes.

Work. 
Wish this wasn't #4 on the list, but since we're in a bit of a summer lull it's fallen some. It is the place I spend 40-ish hours a week, though - so it's up there. Also, I've been working on a creative project, which always gets me excited. So whatever is left of my brain after #1-3 is currently occupied by felt board. Lots of felt.

My health.
I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis about 6 months ago. While I deal with it every day, I'm currently in a pretty bad flare. Particularly my right pointer finger. It's a weird place to hurt, but it's also a place that you technically use / bend / touch a lot during the day, so I'm pretty constantly aware of it. I think I need to do another (OK, it would technically be my first full) Whole30 to reset, reduce inflammation and shed a few pounds before the wedding dress arrives, but I have notoriously low willpower when it comes to sweets. And pasta.

As you can see, I have a few things on my mind right now. I guess it's time to stop writing and get to doing something about it!