Where am I?

I'm buried under a mountain of boxes.

Coming soon:  more Conference Preserves!

Have a great weekend!

Update

The last time I posted, we were pretty discouraged.
That night, we pulled ourselves together, and decided to re-list our home the next day.

We had 3 showings, and an offer by the end of that day!
So we are back on track and hoping to close by the end of the month.
We were supposed to close on our new house by the 29th of October, but we did some financial digging, and we will close on that house today {fingers-crossed}!

After the last offer fell through, I took a small break from packing.  Now, I need to get going again.  We will probably be moving sometime next week.
Anyone have any extra boxes lying around?

A Not-So-Funny Thing Happend on the Way to the Closing...

Life has a funny way of keeping you on your toes.
As I was driving to the closing of our old home and purchase of our new home, I got the call that everyone who has ever sold a home dreads.  The buyer changed their mind.  They are walking away from the contract.
1 hour from signing.
Who does that?
Who spends several hours looking at a home, does a full inspection with positive results, goes through a final walkthrough with no hint of cold feet--and then backs out at the last minute?
We are baffled.
But must regroup.
So.

Our home is on the market again.
Anyone know anyone who is interested in buying a home in Saratoga Springs?
For a full tour, see this post and this post.

Good-Bye Home Tour {Part 2}

Welcome to part two of my Good-Bye Home Tour!

Today we are headed downstairs and into the backyard.

One thing I really like about our stairs, is that it is split at the bottom.

I like how it makes it feel more open.

I used to have a little gallery wall there by the landing, but those photos have already been packed.

 

Downstairs is our family room, two bedrooms, and our laundry/storage room.  The basement was partially finished when we moved in.  We replaced carpet, painted, and installed baseboard.  We also finished a bedroom and bathroom.

This is my boys' bedroom.  I somehow don't have a decent picture of it, but it is an interesting room because it has 2 doors; the one that you can see comes from the stairs, and there is also one at the foot of the bed, that leads to the family room and the bathroom.  It is in the process of being packed, so it feels pretty naked right now.

This is my girls' room.  I made the headboards, but never really got around to putting the rest of the room together.

Outside their bedroom is a small hallway that leads to the bathroom.  We built this bookcase there.

Here is the bathroom.  It was our most recent project, and we are so glad to have it complete.

Just to be thourough, I'm throwing this picture in.  This is the laundry/storage room.  It has some good space, so that's nice, but it's a dark, partially unfinished room in the basement.  That, combined with the fact that it is the laundry room, made it one of my least favorite rooms in this house.

Outside is our patio.  We had this poured about 3 years ago and continue to love it.  It gets a lot of shade in the afternoon and it is perfect for hot summer afternoons.  My husband and I debated on having the concrete stamped--I thought I wanted just plain concrete, but he wanted stamped.  When I found out I could have the stone stamp around the edges, I was sold.  I'm so glad we had it stamped, and would do it again.

Another feature of our house we will miss is our hot tub.  It's really great to have in the wintertime when it is cold, and the kids love it.

 

Here is our garden space, and beehive {the bees are moving with us},

and here is our fire pit.  It was made in about 30 minutes from landscaping rocks that we found at Home Depot for about $100.  The sitting rocks are from our yard.  My husband dug them up when he was building the deck.  We have a lot of rocks here.

When we moved to this house, the backyard was unfinished, and was covered in tumbleweeds and garbage.  We planted the grass and fruit trees {2 cherry, 2 nectarine, 1 plum, and 1 peach}.  We have really loved our backyard and will miss having such a great space at the next house.

This house has been a great home for our family during the last 7 years.  We have loved making it our own, and will miss it. 

We will also miss all of the good people in our neighborhood who have made living here so nice.

Good-Bye Home!

Good-Bye Home Tour {Part 1}

Welcome to my good-bye home tour!

Today we will do the front yard and first floor, and next time, we will tackle the basement and backyard.

We moved into this house just over 7 years ago.  There were no trees, a poorly-done, weed-filled brick patio on the left where the flowers are now, the lawn was crispy, and there was very little charm.  But I really liked the brick front, and could see potential.

So we started planting trees, ripped out the brick patio, removed tons and tons of gravel, and planted flowers.

One of the things I like about our house is the foyer.  It used to be much smaller, but we opened it up by removing a small wall.

Just off the foyer to the right is a piano/sitting room.

If you continue straight through the foyer, you end up in the living room.  It's a good room for visiting and is just off the kitchen.  The deck is through the double doors.

When we moved here, this area had some pretty bad carpet.  We installed the hardwood floors, and I. love. them.  It is one of the things I will miss the most about our house when we move.

Here is the kitchen.  A few years ago, I got up the nerve {and the husband's reluctant permission} to paint my golden oak cabinets.  The only regret I have is that I didn't do it sooner.  I really like them.  I learned so much, and I would probably do them differently next time, but they are so much better than before.

We added knobs, too.

And the granite countertops.  Which I will also miss considerably.

Off the living/kitchen area is the master bedroom.  We didn't really change anything in here except some horrible really red paint on the bottom half of the wall right after we moved in.

My favorite part of the master bedroom is the closet.  You can see the evolution of the closet here.

The other bedroom upstairs has been re-invented a few times.  When we moved in, it was painted a dark army green, which we then painted lilac purple for my daughter.  After we finished her bedroom downstairs, it became our baby son's room, so I painted it a nice neutral color {I was tired of painting at this point} and accessorized with color.  A few years later when our youngest daughter came along, we decided to keep the two "babies" in the same room, so there was a crib, and a twin-sized bed.  After a while, we moved our youngest daughter downstairs with her sister, and put our queen-sized guest bed in this room.

One of the things that sold us on this house in the first place was the view, but there was no deck, just a twelve foot drop when you opened the door.  So one of our first projects was building this deck.  My husband was unsure of building a super large deck like I wanted, but we use every inch, and love it.   I think he would build it even bigger if we were to do it again.  We used Trex, and even though it was a little more expensive initially than using wood for decking, it has been completely maintenance-free, which has been awesome.  Our welder-neighbor helped us make the railing.  Our deck is great because during the spring, summer, and fall, it is an extension of the house.  We really missed that extra space in the winter.

There you have it--the front yard and first floor of our home.  I hope you've enjoyed the tour.

 

Have a great day!

My September

Some of you may have noticed that I was a little absent in September.  Here's what's kept me away:

at the beginning of the month, my daughter turned 12!

She loves peanut butter, so I made her a chocolate peanut butter cake.  Including the filling, it has 12 layers, which made it a little wobbley, and not super pretty.  However, if there is one thing I've learned my many years of dessert-eating, it's that sometimes {usually} the not-so-pretty desserts are tastier than the super pretty ones.  This was the case with this cake.

 It. was. awesome!
Also at the beginning of the month, we spent several hours in the mud.

Remember this post?  Well, in early September, we got a freak rain/hail storm that caused a mudslide,

 that caused several houses to flood,

that caused a massive effort to help the owners of these homes.

 

What a blessing it was that nobody was hurt, and that we could have such a great opportunity to serve.
Ammon has been playing soccer. He is so fun to watch!

Many of you also know that we have been considering a move.

We love our house, and our neighborhood, and our views, but we would love to shorten my husband's commute, and we've grown out of our little house.  In September we found a house, put an offer in, and it was accepted.  We then got to work getting our house ready to put on the market, which involved an embarrassing amount of cleaning out to get it ready.  Within a week of putting our house on the market, it was under contract with the buyers wanting to be in by October 15th.  So my life has become centered around finding and filling boxes, and praying that everything happens as it should.

Because my house was cleaner than it usually is, I took lots of pictures!  I'm hoping to share a few of those pictures with you this week, in a mini home tour.

I would also like to apologize for not doing a Visiting Teaching Message in September.  Fingers crossed for October.

Have a great day!