We're Homeowners!

Well...we did it!  Hubby Blue and I officially became homeowners yesterday. :)

Even though it felt a little surreal after the closing was over and we were standing in our new house together, this has also been a long time coming.  More than three years ago, before we were even married, I had really, really wanted to buy a house.  I thought that's just what you were supposed to do. But our lives were in such a state of flux that it really wasn't the wisest idea at the time.  So we waited.  And rented.  And rented again.  And rented for a third year.  It was really hard watching all my friends buy houses just before they'd get married, knowing that financially we could be buying a house too, but we just weren't settled enough in careers and whatnot.  It was also just frustrating knowing that we had to move all the time.  Having to update our address over and over.  Never feeling like you could get really comfortable somewhere because it wasn't going to be forever.

But now...it is!  Or at least, it could be.  We could live in this house forever if we had to or wanted to, which is a pretty nice feeling.  And it's also a good feeling knowing that buying this house was a goal we worked towards together and accomplished together.  We've built this life together.  I like that.

So shall I tell you about the house???

Where to begin...?  Well, if you can picture the filthiest, dirtiest house you've ever seen, and then picture what would be worse...you might be able to get an idea of what we bought!  Yay!  Haha.  But seriously, it is filthy (I'll tell you what we were thinking in a second).  The scary part is, the first time we looked at it, Hubby Blue said he's actually seen worse when he's been on calls.  I just can't imagine anyone living that way.  Yuck.  Anyway, it's your typical two-story house, living room, dining room, kitchen, family room, laundry, two-car garage, three bedrooms upstairs, a first floor bathroom and two upstairs, and this great big beautiful loft that overlooks the family room.  We could actually turn that into a fourth bedroom someday, but I think we're going to leave it as it is right now.  But let's get back to the filth and disrepair, shall we?  There are several holes in the drywall in places...sometimes it looks just like someone kicked a hole in the wall.  The railings on the stairs are caked in black grime.  The kitchen cabinets and the stair risers look like someone took a water gun full of chocolate syrup and just went to town.  I'm pretty sure there is macaroni and cheese still left on the kitchen ceiling.  Half the kitchen floor has been ripped up.  One of the drawer fronts on the kitchen cabinets is missing.  There is creepy stuff written all over the walls of one of the bedrooms - when the termite inspector walked through the house he advised us to "get some clergy up in here" and promptly got himself outside!  We're missing window screens.  The basement is partially finished, but you wouldn't want to leave it the way it is anyway.  There are three rooms walled off that all lead into each other one after the next, and they look like the walls in A Beautiful Mind.  LOTS of weird writing there.  Ironically, the laundry room is probably the cleanest room in the house - probably because they never used it?

So, if you can picture this filthy, dirty house, hopefully you're assuming we got an amazing deal on it, because we did!  It was obviously a foreclosure, and we paid waaaaaaaaay under what the rest of the neighborhood is going for.  But, we chose to do it this way instead of buying something that was already livable because we wanted to be able to comfortably afford it (and be able to sell it if we had to) AND make things just the way we wanted them.  We're both willing to put our blood, sweat and tears into it (I'm hoping there will be more tears than blood...), and Hubby Blue and both our dads are pretty handy.  Plus I figure I'm pretty smart too.  I bet I can google how to fix drywall holes, right? :)  One of the sweetest parts was when Hubby Blue told me he never thought we'd be able to live in this town "because cops just can't afford to live there."  Stick with me, honey, I'll find us a bargain we can't pass up. :)

We have a lot of work ahead of us, but we're both excited.  For now.  Check back with me in a few weeks.  Ha.  Just kidding - sort of!  The plan for this weekend is to rip everything out - carpet, the rest of the kitchen floor, old doors, trim, kitchen cabinets, maybe some of that creepy drywall in the basement...we'll see what we have time for and how much we can fit in the dumpster I ordered!  I know I'll be grateful for all that overtime Hubby Blue has been working when he's able to take a couple Saturdays off here and there.  So thank you for your kind messages on my last blog post!  I'll check back in in a couple of days, and maybe even have a picture or two.  Wish us luck!

Some BIG News!

I should start this post by first explaining that I am NOT, under any circumstances whatsoever, a country girl.  No sir!  I am definitely a city girl, and the last three years of country living have been more than enough for me.  When Hubby Blue and I got married, we moved into this little rental house in this country town no one had ever heard of...because it was semi-halfway between Hubby Blue's university and my new job.  (I applied for and accepted said job because it was within a 90-mile radius of Hubby Blue's school, and I was pretty desperate for a job.  That's another story for another day.)

Anyway, moving out to the country was a novelty for a while, and I felt like I could legitimately appreciate country music, pancake breakfasts and steak fry dinners, and tractor pulls.  After awhile, though, I realized it took at least 30 minutes to get ANYWHERE.  Grocery shopping was at least a half-day event.  Want to go out for dinner or grab a drink?  You can go to the town bar...or the town bar.  Want to go to church on Sunday?  I hope you're either Methodist or Lutheran.  Need to talk to the police because people are driving through your front yard every other Friday?  Better wait until 9:00...the police are only on duty at night.  It got old...and fast.  But we stuck it out two years, and finally Hubby Blue graduated and got his police job, so we moved 30 minutes closer to my job, into a fairly sizable town, thinking we were moving to the promised land!

Long story short...this is not the promised land.  It's still pretty "country," and we're actually farther from most of our friends and my side of the family.  Hubby Blue is farther from work, and we live in a tinier house than when we first got married, so most of the time it feels like our stuff is caving in on us!  And, oh, did I mention the snakes?  We live two blocks from a river, so people acted like I was the crazy one for being, um, SHOCKED when I found a dead snake in our house.

So, I was driving home from work today on the same old country roads as usual* when a little (I assume it was little) rock hit my windshield with a SMACK.  It startled me, for sure, but it didn't appear to have done any damage, so I continued on my merry way.  I went to the gym directly from work, took a class, and came out an hour later TO A HUGE CRACK IN MY WINDSHIELD.  "Huge" might be an exaggeration, but it's definitely about as long as my hand.  Talk about something I DON'T need right now.  The aggravating part about this is that the saaaaame exact thing happened to Hubby Blue's windshield last summer.  He was picking up our moving truck (so we could move from the country to the pseudo-country...meaning "bigger town but still surrounded by lots and lots of country") when something came flying at his windshield and shattered it.  UGH.  Does this happen in the country all the time?  BECAUSE I'M SICK OF IT!

Soooooooo...here comes the big news............

WE'RE MOVING!!!

This has been the hardest thing to not blog about, but I didn't want to say anything until it was more of a sure thing.  It's something Hubby Blue and I have been talking about for months because of how hard his schedule is, how far we live from his department, how we have so few friends here, how we spend so much on gas, how we are really not digging the small-town lifestyle anymore, and how I haven't been super happy in my job for a while now.  It also was not in our plan to be buying a house at this point, but after a lotttttttt of thought and talking and praying, we decided to take the plunge.  We've been renters for almost three years now, and we're both eager to put down some roots.  I know it's risky to buy a house before Hubby Blue's probation is over, but it's also risky to buy a house before you're a tenured teacher, and I know people who do that all the time.  Whether you're a teacher or a banker or a businessperson or a lawyer...I guess it's always a risk, but I hope this one pays off.  So, come this summer, we'll be moving to a town that is about 15 minutes from Hubby Blue's department.  And there are plenty of stores and restaurants and interstates nearby.  It's still a teensy bit country (because Hubby Blue is definitely NOT a city person) but hopefully it will feel like a much better fit than where we are now.

Anyway, we are closing next week - yikes!!!  It's been one of the most stressful processes we've gone through, and I'll blog more about it in time.  And I'll blog more about the house itself because there is lots to tell about that too!  But for now, I'm just hoping we can make it through two more months with our windshields intact. :)



*I guess technically it's not a country road.  It's a state highway, but any two-lane highway is a country road in my book.  Country livin' was fun for a while, but this city girl misses her interstates something fierce.

Domesticity

I recently learned how to use Hubby Blue's our sewing machine!  I've mentioned before that I never learned how to sew, even though my mom is like, the best sew-er (I first wrote that without the hyphen...and no, my mom is not a sewer, ha) ever.  I took an online class a few weeks ago and learned a lot, but what really got me going was the apron kit I picked up at Walmart!  It sat in a box for months, and finally, I just decided to figure it out!  I didn't really figure it out by myself...Hubby Blue tried to teach me and got really frustrated...so I asked my mom.  Anyway, I've gotten a lot better since then, and I can't wait until the day we live in a town with an actual fabric store so I can try sewing projects more often!

In the meantime...Hubby Blue...wait for it...asked me to...fix his police pants!!!

WHAT?!?!

He had two pairs with rips in them, and he said he didn't mind taking them in somewhere to get them fixed but that he knew that would cost more money, so did I want to try fixing them?  I wanted to say, Hubby Blue, you just need to stop chasing bad guys and then your pants won't rip...but let's be honest.  That'll never happen.

So, I put off trying to fix these pants my entire spring break, and finally, today, I decided to give it a try.    I think they turned out pretty well, actually, but the best part was Hubby Blue's reaction:

"Hey!  You can't even see where they were ripped!  Thanks!  I really liked this pair!"

Yeah, you can just call me a domestic QUEEN these days. :)