My favorite site is down for the next few days! Scrap Orchard is moving servers, so here I am, wondering what to do with myself. I don’t spend all that much time on their site, but I do like to check it out while I drink my coffee in the mornings, so I figured I’d blog today instead.
It’s been a looooong time since I posted last, hasn’t it? Since then, we put in an offer on a new house! We’re upside down on our current house, so we plan on renting it out after we move. It might be a gamble, but we just couldn’t let this market go without taking advantage of the low prices. Plus Andy’s office is supposed to move further east next month, so we want to be closer to their new location. Plus the kids are getting older and we need more space. Plus I’m beginning to become less thrilled with the school in this neighborhood. I could go on and on. The simple fact is that we only planned on being in this house for 3 years, and we’re still here 9 years later. It’s time to move on.
So anyway, I don’t want to get my hopes up about the new house because it’s a short sale with 2…yes, TWO…mortgages. We put in the offer 8 weeks ago and still haven’t heard from the 1st mortgage holder. Our realtor (Doug Nystrom, we highly recommend him, honest guy, not to mention Andy’s best friend) says that there’s a good chance we’ll eventually get the house, it’s just a matter of playing the waiting game. I don’t wait well. I keep thinking that Kyra goes back to school in August, which means we’d like to start moving into the house by the end of July, which means we’d like approval by the end of June, which only gives us about 7 more weeks! Yikes! And the kicker is, there’s nothing we can do to hurry it up.
But let me tell you about the house. It’s an older house, so nothing fancy, but we like it. Four bedrooms, one of which will be Andy’s office. If he has a private area for an office, he’s allowed to work from home up to 3 days a week (I think), so that would be really nice. Gigantic closet in the master bedroom, with mirrored sliding closet doors which will be the first things to go. Fireplace in the living room, which will be pretty much useless except to hang our stocking on at Christmastime. Huge kitchen with tons of cabinet space. Seriously, we’ve been drooling over the cabinet space while constantly talking about all of the kitchen gadgets we want but can’t fit into our current kitchen. The counter tops in the kitchen are wood (what were they thinking?) so they’ll be the second things to go. Separate dining room and breakfast room, but the breakfast room will probably become a sort of craft/kid art/work room. Plus a family room that will become the kids’ tv/toy room. Oh, and an actual, honest-to-goodness laundry room! It’s not much of a laundry room, just space for the washer and dryer, but much better than having them in the kitchen where they’ve been for the past 9 years!
Then there’s the back yard….aaaahhhhh! There’s a huge patio, a big, grassy area on one side of the yard, then a spa against a low wall, then a pool on the other side of the wall. Andy doesn’t care too much about the pool, but the kids and I have been getting way too excited about it. Just thinking about it makes summer in Phoenix seem bearable. If you’ve been in our current house, you’ll know that it’s pretty cramped and the back yard is downright depressing. It’s all I can do not to start packing right away, but I know if I do I’ll end up going overboard and we’ll be living out of boxes while still waiting for the approval.
Okay, I’ve been trying not to make this post too scrapbook heavy, but I will share a few layouts. I know we’re supposed to include credits, but this is my blog and I’m going to play by my rules! Plus I’m just too lazy to go hunt down the credits for all of these. If you see something you like, ask me and I’ll find it for you. It’s probably from Scrap Orchard, since that’s the only site I ‘work’ for anymore. I gave up all of my other creative gigs because I just didn’t have the time to keep up with all of them.
