Home Sweet Home

It's been a busy around here lately. All this packing and moving and painting and yard work. And between all that we've got to fit normal life in somehow as well. Whew, we are worn out! We closed on our first house as a married couple and have been slowly putting our stamp on our new home. B started off by working in the yard. His eagerness to get our vegetable garden started is both endearing and contagious! So far he's gotten a good sized plot tilled and fenced, and it will only be a matter of time before it's safe to transplant all our little seedlings. Now that will be an exciting day!

In the meantime, my projects have involved deep cleaning the entire house (there was dog hair and dirt from the previous owners everywhere, yuck!) and repainting the dingy kitchen cabinets (also filthy!). Can I just say that I have a new appreciation for all those hard-working indivudals who work cleaning up other people's messes? It's one thing to clean up after yourself and your family, but to clean a stranger's dirt, hair and soap scum was almost enough to push me over the edge. Many of you know that I'm not a fan using chemicals in the house to clean and prefer to use natural cleaners, but after a week of intense cleaning I gave in and bought some heavy duty stuff at the store. I hate the idea of exposing B, the kitties and I to all those chemicals, but for my peace of mind I was willing to make an exception this one time. Especially when it came to the bathrooms--at least now I can shower and actually feel clean, which makes it worth it if you ask me!

Now, I'm off to unpack a few boxes and perhaps enjoy a glass of wine!

P.S. For anyone interested, here are some pics of our progress.

 This is my amazing husband working hard on his veggie garden. Shh...Don't let him know I took a picture of him! 

A before shot of the kitchen cabinets. You can't really tell, but they were dingy and sticky and not something I'd want anywhere near my food prep area.

 And here's an after shot (please ignore the mess from cooking breakfast!) 

After much cleaning, sanding, and several coats of primer and paint, the cabinets are just about done! All that's left now is to add some shelf liners and do a few touch-ups (for the record, you know that painter's tape that promises not to remove paint? Well, that's a lie, and there are a few places I need to touch up because of that, but overall I'm happy with the result.)

Late Nights and Cake

Well, we learned the other night that all it takes to get me out of bed is the promise of cake, lol. B and some of his coworkers have gone out after work a couple of times to the local diner which is open 24 hours. It's probably one of the only places open when they get off work around 2 am, and this time they invited me to tag along. Granted when I first got a text message from B and I was freshly out of the shower, cozying up in my nice warm bed and it was storming outside so I had no intention of going anywhere and politely passed up the offer. But then after some prodding, the promise of amazing cake was made and long story short, I found myself hanging out at a diner at 2 in the morning with people I barely know, very well aware of the fact that I had work early the next morning. But honestly. Totally. Worth. It.

You know what surprised me even more than how awesome the diner's deserts are? How busy it was at 2 am! I walked in and at least half the tables were filled, people were laughing and chatting. It was such a cool, laid back place. And the food? To die for! Our waiter was wonderful too. He joked with us and treated us like old friends. Needless to say, I will definitely be going back. I have made it my mission to try each cake they make. I can cross off the Boston Cream Pie, so that leaves Red Velvet, Reese's, Snickers, Carrot, German Chocolate, a Fruit Tart, Cheesecake, Oreo, Strawberry Shortcake...

...OK, so maybe I should make sure to join a gym too before I go all cake crazy!

Seriously, wouldn't this get you out of bed in the middle of the night too?

An Apology and Quick Update

It's been a little while since I've updated here. Actually it's been so long that I'm a little ashamed of the fact that I haven't been able to find a few minutes to spare. It's the same feeling I get after I promise myself I'm only going to have one little Oreo and end up eating an entire sleeve....actually Oreos sound amazing right now. Maybe I'll go grab a little snack. No, focus! Dessert can be my treat for finishing this blog update!

Well, I guess an update on the house is as good a place to start as any. We had a few tense moments there last week. Our lender went out to the house to do the appraisal and came back with quite a shock for us. We expected the appraisal price to be slightly lower than the selling price, however we were not expecting it to come in at $12,000 less! The homeowner's apparently didn't expect it either. We thought they might even pull out and decide not to sell the house at all, but lucky for us, they still want to sell the house to us (We Coloradans have to stick together!). The only downside is that like many people throughout the country right now, they are upside down on their home loan so they will have to bring money in to closing. This in turn, means that they won't be able to make any of the repairs that we requested, like replacing some of the siding and getting rid of the animal nests in the garage and attic. But, on the plus side, the repairs will cost us nowhere near $12,000 so we still come out looking good.  We have just over a week until we close on the house and we can't wait! It will be so nice to have a place to call our own again!

Let's see what else has happened. Oh, my wonderful husband surprised me with tickets to see the Atlanta Ballet perform Dracula. It was actually the same day that we found out about the appraisal and the seller's decision to continue with the sale. B came out of the bedroom all dressed up, brought me out a dress and told me I had 15 minutes to get ready, but he wouldn't tell me what he had planned. All I can say is that the show was AMAZING! Such a wonderful sensory experience, and B surprised me by actually enjoying the show. The Orchestra did a wonderful job and the dancers were all so talented. It was truly a wonderful gift to be able to experience, and being able to spend the evening at a nice dinner with my husband was wonderful. With our crazy schedules, we don't do dates like that nearly often enough, so when we get the oppurtinity we cherish it.

Well, I think that's all I have for the time being. I feel like I'm leaving something out, but I'm sure it will come to me in the middle of the night or some other inconvenient time. In which case I will dutifully log-on and post it here! For now thought, I'm signing off. Those Oreos in my cupboard are calling to me, and I think they may be just the motivation I need to do some packing tonight. :)

Thanks for sticking around guys!

House Hunting part 5: The Inspection!

Is it a bad omen that every time we've gone to look at the house, it's been pouring rain? People say that if it rains on your wedding day, that it's supposed to be a symbol of good luck, so I'm going with that same line of thinking on this whole house-buying experience. Let's just hope it works!

Anyways, today we met the inspector at the house and we went through the entire home to make sure that everything was working and to note any repairs that need to be made. The whole process took some time, but we were glad to have someone go through the house so thoroughly with us. There were a couple of things that we learned will need to be dealt with. Like the nest we found in the attic vent and the giant tree root going through the crawl space, but being the DIYers that we are, B and I are confident that we can take care of most of the issues ourselves.

You could tell that the inside of the home had been pretty well taken care of, but the outdoor maintenance had not really been kept-up with. Nothing that a few replacement siding boards and some fresh paint won't fix though. We're going to be chatting with our real estate agent later to figure out how we want to proceed having now gone through the inspection. Maybe the sellers will be nice and fix everything for us so we don't even have to lift a finger when we move in! :)

House Hunting Part 4: Well, that was quick!

If you could see me right now, you'd think I was crazy--well, you probably already know I'm crazy, but you'd probably still be wondering why I'm jumping up and down all over my apartment. My friends, I have some great news--the sellers on House #3 accepted our offer!!!

Things are moving so much faster than what we initially thought, but we're so excited that it doesn't even matter. Our lease isn't up until the end of April so we were thinking we wouldn't even be finding a home until we got closer to that timeline. I guess life has a way of throwing you for a loop like that sometimes. If all things go according to plan, then we'll have the keys to our new home at the end of this month! I'm totally excited and am off to go have a celebratory drink now! I guess I should start getting everything packed up this weekend too! :D

House Hunting part 3: Why are all the good ones taken?

Remember how I said we asked our agent to get us some more info on House #3? Well, she did, and apparently so did several other people. At how adorable the home is, I'm actually surprised it's been on the market as long as it has been. But anyways, we had 2 options. Forget about the house since their were 5 bids on it already, or make the sellers an offer they can't refuse. Guess which one we chose? If you guessed that we made an offer, than you're a winner! Your prize is...uh...I think I have a gold star sticker around here somewhere...

We managed to go back in and see the house again early this morning, just to make sure that we really wanted to go through with this. In my husband's words "I like it even more the second time"  so this one is definitely a keeper! We put an offer in and now the waiting begins!

House Hunting part 2: Let's Go See Some Houses!

So today B and I went out with our real estate agent to look at a few homes. We saw a couple different homes but here's a brief rundown of what we saw.

House #1 was in a nice looking neighborhood and had a GORGEOUS kitchen. There were only two odd things about it--the only way to access the basement was from the outside and it was very narrow and tall, which made it resemble a brick church of sorts. Not really our style.

House #2 was an itty bitty brick ranch. While it was cute (and had a lovely kitchen), it was off a main road and also only had a basement access from the outside and the laundry room was in the garage! I don't like the idea of doing laundry in the same place where B changes the oil in our cars, so that one was off the list.

House #3 was an adorable split level. It had the wood floors and vaulted ceilings that I love, a large backyard and the kitchen, while small-ish has the potential for us to really personalize and make our own. B was glad that the rooms were large enough for all of our furniture too. This one was our favorite so far.

House #4 was in a great school district and was a split level home. It needed a little TLC (hello floral wallpaper and mauve carpet!), but it was at the bottom of our price range so we'd have a little dough left over to update it. While the neighborhood was adorable (and had a pool and tennis courts!), the yard was small, the laundry connections were in the garage (is this a Southern trend that I'm unaware of?) and we saw some water damage on the ceiling, which made us cross this one off.

House #5 was a possible contender. A very cute ranch stye home, that was fully updated. The kitchen was small but completely updated. It was on about an acre of land, but was mostly wooded in the back. The overall feel of the home was nice although  there was no basement which meant that it's about the same size as our current apartment.

At the end of the day we asked our real estate agent for more information on house #2 since it was our favorite.

Foiled by Mother Nature

I realize it's been a few days since I've updated and I was hoping to be able to write an upbeat post this afternoon after our house hunting expedition, but it was not meant to be. We woke up early today (a very big deal since B is now working nights) so that we could go out and see some homes that we picked out with our real estate agent. Of course, right as we're getting ready to leave, we get a call that the agent doesn't want to go out because the weather is "bad". Sure there was a little rain, but nothing to write home about and cancel and entire day's worth of showings!

Maybe I'm a little jaded because in Colorado things seemed so different. In Colorado, people actually seemed to want your business (don't even get me started on hard it has been to find someone who will actually answer my emails and phone calls!) and even if it was snowing people still showed homes, but apparently down here a little bit of wind and rain is enough to scare people away. Granted, there was a tornado warning in effect for a portion of the county that we were going to be in, but the warning was set to expire an hour before we even headed that direction so it most likely would have been fine. I've come to realize that around here there is a tendency to overly worry about the weather so I tend to take everything with a grain of salt because 9 times out of 10, there's nothing more than a little rain and wind. 

So now I'm sitting here, staring out the window at the grey sky and wondering if it was worth cancelling our entire day.  The wind has died down, the rain has passed and we would be halfway through our list of homes for the day had we actually stuck to our plans. We've rescheduled everything for tomorrow (another early morning for my poor husband!) so we're hoping for the best. Considering that we've already had to rearrange plans twice now, I'm not holding my breath but we shall see what tomorrow holds.

Chips and Salsa and Guac....Oh My!

Guess what I picked up on my way home today!!! An amazing delicious burrito bowl from Chipotle. As some of you know, when we lived in Colorado I ate at Chipotle probably way more than I should have (in hindsight I probably should have bought stock in the company). I've never been able to resist their burritos and I always comforted myself with the knowledge that even if I was eating "fast food" at least it was organically grown, right? 

When we moved down to Georgia I had to give up my habit because unlike back home there was not a Chipotle on every corner. In fact until recently I think the nearest one was at least half an hour away, in a part of town that I rarely end up in, so it's been about two years since I've actually eaten at one. But as I was driving home from running errands this evening I happened to notice that there was a brand new one just up the road! I must not be the only one who loves their burritos because the line was all the way out the door (and it was chilly out!). But like the devoted fan I am, I waited in line, ordered my favorite meal  (a veggie bowl with brown rice, extra black beans and veggies, pico de gallo, salsa roja and guac!) and scurried home to enjoy my dinner. 

And you know what? It was amazing! I have a feeling I'm going to find myself there a lot, which may not be great for the weight that I've recently lost. But if you'll excuse me now, I have some chips and guac to finish! :)

This is the package that deliciousness comes wrapped in. 

House Hunting, Part 1 - The Emotional Roller Coaster Begins

As some of you may know, B and I have been looking for a new place to live. It's not that we hate where we live but every time we renew our lease we think about how much better it would be if we were actually putting that money towards a home of our own. One that has a yard for our vegetable garden, and space for our quickly accumulating stuff (don't all married couples tend to accumulate lots of miscellaneous stuff, or is it just us?). We long for a place that has more than one bedroom, where we can paint the walls bright purple if we wanted to (not that we would!) and that doesn't shake at all hours of the day and night because there is a train passing by. Actually as I write this, I've heard/felt two trains go by already. 

And today we thought we had finally found the home we were looking for online. Brand new on the market, it had the beautiful hardwood floors that I love, space enough for us and all 5 of the kitties, an amazing kitchen and a huge yard. We were so excited! We got the paperwork all sorted out and were ready to go see this beauty in person--we couldn't wait! I swear B and I were acting like giddy little kids and had basically mentally moved in. And then we received the fateful call that burst our happy little bubble--there was already a bidding war on our dream home and unless we could pay cash we were out of luck. Oh well, back to the drawing board...

Life As We Know It!

Welcome to our little blog! A place where we hope to share stories and crazy adventures with all of our friends and family. The reason for starting this blog is twofold. First, I promised myself that I would start writing again and this seemed like a good way to ease into the process without getting too overwhelmed. I've also been told that I suck at keeping in touch with people so this blog also stems from a desire to stay connected with the people I care about. Hey, it's not perfect but it's a start! So without further ado, I bring you "The Garritson Garrison: Stories from the Front Lines of our Crazy Life"