Under Contract

We found a house that fills most of our requirements AND we like it!  We put in an offer and then negotiated very little and we are set to close on July 29.  The new house is about 6 miles north of where we currently live and it is located in a super cute neighborhood.  Here are a few pictures of the new place:

The townhouse is on the market and we are hoping that it sells quickly.  Judging by the history of the neighborhood, houses have typically sold in under 30 days.  Keep your fingers crossed for the sale of the townhouse and get ready for a house warming party at the new place!

Alternative House Photos

On Monday of this week we had a professional photographer come to the house and take photos for the listing and he took some great photos. However, Elizabeth and I have looked at hundreds of photos of houses over the last few months and we feel that the photos that are typically taken for a house listing lack something. So, we decided to take our own...

Living Room with Fireplace

Kitchen

Kitchen

Bedroom #1

Bathroom #1

Bedroom #2

Bathroom #2

I wonder if these photos would help the house sell faster??

Kitchen Make Over

When we first mentioned to Rick that we would be looking to move to a big, better house at some point in the future, he immediately said that we'd have to paint the kitchen a different (more normal) color. So, it was no shock at all when we met with him last weekend that the thing at the top of his list of things to fix was the color of the kitchen!

For those of you that don't know, I painted the kitchen green in May or June of 2007. It had never been anything other than white and was dull and boring. Elizabeth bought the paint and disappeared somewhere for the weekend for Camp. While she was gone, I painted the kitchen and surprised her (she thought we were going to do it another weekend). I have included some pictures of the green kitchen below.




I had been out of town Monday - Thursday, so I started the job of painting the kitchen the same color as the rest of the downstairs on Friday morning. As you can see from the photos, there are lots of small areas the paint so it takes a long time (and two coats to cover the green). I had the job of handling the edges and "cutting in" and Elizabeth did the rolling. We finished the first coat by 1:30 and then did the second coat in the late evening so we could get it all done in one day. It was a long hard day, but between us we got it done.

The photos below show the kitchen as it is today! Hopefully perspective buyers will like the new color...

Sir Tedrick Mulley

I got an email a couple weeks ago from Grandpa and Grandma Mulley saying that a dear old friend of Dave's was going be moving to Raleigh.  They asked if we would mind giving him a place to stay for a while (or maybe forever).  I'm all for a house guest but a new resident?  Aren't we already getting one of those in December?!  Being the kind daughter-in-law that I am, I told them to send him on.  I honestly couldn't wait to meet this guy.  He is one of Dave's oldest friends.  Dave has actually known him since the day he was born!  

This afternoon, as Scout and I were walking out the door we bumped into this:

Scout and I love to get packages in the mail so we rushed back inside to open it and see what had arrived.  It was quite the struggle to open the package, but with a little help from Scout, we finally got it open and guess what popped out?

It was none other than Dave's long lost friend, Sir Tedrick Mulley...aka "Teddy"!  Scout was a little confused as to who this was and what was he doing in her living room-so she kept her distance.  Teddy was dressed up like he had just come from a World Cup game.  He was sporting his patriotic England Shirt and some snazzy shorts with London written across the bum (you never want to forget where you came from) and, of course, some sunglasses. To say the least, he arrived in style!

I introduced (or tried to) Teddy to Scout.  I think they will grow to love each other.  Come December, Scout is going to wish there were more Teddys in the house...

After further inspection of the box that Teddy arrived in, I found a picture of Teddy and Dave.  Dave is about 20 months old in the picture and since Teddy refuses to divulge his age we can only assume he is at least as old as Dave.  I think they have both aged well!

I also introduced Teddy to my dear friend Bunny.  Like Teddy was to Dave, Bunny was given to me when I was a little baby.  I'll have to dig up a picture of us back when I was cute with my pigtails.

Both of our childhood friends are in really good shape.  This brings hope for the baby we are bringing into this world.  Let's hope we can treat this baby as well as we treated our stuffed animals as children.

Teddy has had quite the long journey, so I took him upstairs to go to bed.  Before he could get in bed, he found another friend from England sitting on the guest bed.

After they caught up on lost time, Teddy was ready for some well deserved sleep.

We are all very excited to welcome Teddy into our home and we hope that he will stay for a long, long time!

Summertime, Summertime, Sum-sum-summertime...

I have never really had a summer off since I turned 15 and got my first real job as a lifeguard and it's never really phased me.  I just knew that if I had the free time, I should be working or taking classes or both.  When I started teaching, I spent the first few summers directing a summer camp.  Then I started working for the year-round schools in Raleigh and so I've been working year-round again.  The good thing about working for the year-round schools is that I still get my 2 months off but they are spread throughout the year and therefore I don't get a second job to fill my time.  With all of this said, I really really really want this summer off!  I have been so jealous of all of my teacher friends who have been talking about the end of the school year and what they are going to do with their summers.  The countdowns in the classrooms that I visited nearly killed me!  It's not that I have any great plans on how I would spend my summer off, I just really think it would be cool to sleep in and wander to the pool and read trashy novels all day.

But alas, I must leave my dream world...and tomorrow, I will go back to work.

Hey internet, what are your fabulous summer plans?

Maybe One Day...

As many of you know, I enjoy running and I have already decided that we need to own a baby jogger so that I can run with the baby.

I saw this video on one of my favorite blogs today (Mark Remy on runnersworld.com) and thought I would share it with everyone!

Let me say straight away that a 5 minute mile is out of my reach, but a 6 minute mile with the baby jogger might be a fun goal to have!

Let The House Hunting Begin!

We had already been planning to "upgrade" to a bigger house this year but now we have added incentive to be moved and settled before the baby arrives. Yesterday we took the first step when we met with Dan (aka Dan, Dan the Mortgage Man) to set our budget and work out how much money we needed to have available at closing.

The meeting went very well, and we are ready to start looking at houses and get our current house ready to go on the market!

Rick is coming over on Sunday afternoon to take a look around our house and tell us what we need to do before we can list our house. One thing I know I will have to do is paint our kitchen a different color... apparently bright green might put off perspective buyers! I'll be painting it the same color as the living room (Pale Sunshine). It isn't a bad size room to paint, but there are lots of areas that are small and difficult to get to - I think it took me two days last time (when I painted it bright green) as it needed two coats of paint.

There are a few other small things that I know I need to fix, but there isn't a huge amount. We are lucky with this house that the outside is maintained by the home owners association, so we don't need to worry about the deck (that needs replacing badly) as it will be replaced free of charge for the new owner.

We are excited to start looking at houses, and I am sure we'll update everyone along the way!