Apartment Living

The current state of our apartment is chaos…. complete chaos. Before we began packing I wanted to take a few photos to show how it was for a good two years and to keep a memory of it. It was a bit sad taking it down, realizing “wow we’ve been married for two years+” but then I realize all the excitement to follow in our new home once everything is packed. So I’ve been packing little by little now and the walls are getting empty, but here are some photos…












See a previous post about decorating our apartment, here.

Accepted Offer & House Tour

We got word yesterday that our offer was ACCEPTED, meaning now begins the rest of the steps (and packing)! Steps such as: 1. Turn in Earnest Money on Saturday. 2. Home Inspection Monday. 3. Talk with our lender about financing again. 4. Get quotes for home insurance. 5. Close!

We are so thrilled that we finally found our house and can start dreaming about it more – I am especially thinking of all the ways I can decorate it and make it our own. A few points that we love about it is the location (a short walk to Pewaukee Beach/Lake), it’s a tri-level (two living spaces are really nice) and has lots of potential – especially the kitchen! Here is a house tour (courtesy of the realtors photos). The next few weeks as we are waiting to close, I’ll share more detailed plans about what we want to do with each space along with my decorating vision.

Pewaukee House - front

Pewaukee House - Living Room

Pewaukee House - Kitchen

Pewaukee House - Family Room

Pewaukee House - master bedroom

Pewaukee House - bathroom 1

Pewaukee House - upper bedroom

Pewaukee House - lower bedroom

pewaukee house - bathroom lower

pewaukee house - laundry

pewaukee house - outside back

Things to Do When We Finally Own a Home

I’ve been thinking about this list lately, all the new things we can do that we couldn’t do while we were renting our apartment. Most of these things are simple, not awesome things, but when you haven’t been able to do them for 2+ years, you start to appreciate them! Here it goes…

Things to Do When We Finally Own a Home
Paint the Walls: you have no idea how much this was killing me, especially being a graphic designer. I tried my best to decorate around off-white walls or add a backsplash made of place mats from target.

– Play Dance Central and actually jump, not fake it: Due to the fact we have neighbors below us, every time we’d play, we’d pretend jump. It was seriously hurting our scores. Plus, we hope to have more space to spread out and play.

Use the Grill on our Patio: Our apartment complex only lets you use your grill on a paved surface, meaning our driveway. Yea, not quite the idea of the perfect bbq.

Make pizza that isn’t burnt on the outside and frozen on the inside: We seriously gave up trying to cook frozen pizza in our oven because something was wrong with it. We think it can’t maintain a constant temp, just keeps rising which is frustrating when cooking.

Have a real garden, not a planter garden: I have to tell customers at work to not plant things in pots due to bulbs rotting in them, yet I followed my own bad advice. I can’t wait until I can creatively design a bulb garden this fall! I also won’t be giving my neighbors a shower every time I water my plants – yea that really happened.

Vacuum whenever I want: Not that I enjoy this much, but seriously I don’t have to worry about if the neighbors are sleeping and I’m disturbing them.

Not be the loudiness police: Every time we had company over I felt like I had to make sure no one was being super loud, stomping their feet (Drew and his friends do while playing video games). I hated the thought of being the loud neighbors.

I’ll be adding to this list, don’t you worry!

Valleys & Hills

Things are up and down, up and down – like Valleys and Hills.

The valley is, we decided to pass on Cherry Hill due to the fact the seller won’t even counter us on the price – which I think is very stupid in his book, but oh well. There are plenty more houses out on the market. The house and yard needed a lot of TLC and Drew and I agreed we wanted to go in low if we were to get this house. Otherwise it wasn’t worth it for us.

put an offer on this house!

The hill is, remember our first open house on Partridge Ct in Pewaukee? Well, after we declined Cherry Hill, we looked at two more houses that we liked. One was in Brookfield, a tri-level, but the downfall was the small yard and the radiant heating. Then we headed over to Partridge in Pewaukee and were so glad we took a second look. When we first looked, we were more looking for fun, and not serious at all. The more we thought about the house, the more we remembered how much we liked it.

So – we put in an offer! Our buyers agent is actually the listing agent on this property, so again things are moving quickly. This time we are dealing with another offer. However, the other offer is contingent on her selling her home. Sadly, we are praying she doesn’t get an offer in the next 72 hours or decides to have two mortgages. If she walks away – it should be ours!

We’re going to put in our 6o days notice on our apartment and pray that all this works out! This Rocket Summer song came on the other day on shuffle, and basically sum up this “hills and valley” period.

Cherry Hill House Update

cherryhill house hunting

Things are happening so fast!

House Hunting Day 1 – Friday, June 20

Our agent made 3 appointments for us to check out on Friday night. Drew and I grabbed dinner at Panda Express before and while there, we got a call from our lender saying we were pre-approved for the 3% down 30 year conventional loan through Landmark Credit Union – wooot! Then we checked out our favorite Cherry Hill house first, while we did find some concern such as water on the ceiling and basement, we were still in love. Then we checked out a house on Canyon Meadows in Sussex. The house itself was perfect, however it was literally right next to train tracks and we heard from a neighbor they come almost every hour. So that one was immediately off our list. Then we went to another house in Sussex, on Oak Lane. However, the minute we stepped in, it was a no. The owners are heavy smokers and we can’t imagine living in that stink. Plus it didn’t have central air or natural gas.

House Hunting Day 2 – Saturday, June 21

We met our agent out at 10am to check out three other houses. One was a tri-level that we like from day one, but we had to pass due to the neighbor hood not being in a great location for resale. The next house, Drew actually liked, but there was something about it that I didn’t like as much compared to Cherry Hill – and it had blue ceramic floors – so weird. Then the last house was a house my family has wanted us to buy because it had an in ground pool. After seeing the yard and the home we realized it was way too much maintenance for the two of us!

So after thinking about it, Drew and I decided we’d like my parents to come see the house. My dad has a great eye for house issues and wouldn’t buy a house without him looking at it. While he did see some issues in the roof, in the offer they are putting on a new roof before closing, so we’re going on a limb hoping it fixes those issues. The owners are also throwing in a home warranty, so that gives us more peace of mind.

I talked to our agent tonight and she’s writing up an offer for us. Tomorrow we’ll review it, then submit it! Can’t wait to share more!

Cruisin’ 2012

We just got back late last night from our first cruise ever, and our summer getaway for the year. We had a blast exploring Key West, Cozumel, and the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico via a cruise ship. It was our first cruise ever, so we wanted to keep it pretty short incase one of us wasn’t a fan of the rocking boat or got motion sickness – which we didn’t, luckily! Though I think my body isn’t used to hard ground yet, I still feel sometimes like I’m rocking back and forth.

Here is a breakdown of our trip:

Monday – flew to Ft Lauderdale, drove to Miami, boarded the ship and familiarize ourselves with all that was offered.
Tuesday
– Dock at Key West at 8am, went out on a smaller boat where we witnessed dolphins, kayaked around an island to see endangered birds, and snorkeled amongst fish, sting ray and sharks – set sail at 2pm.
Wednesday
– Docked at Cozumel at 2pm, took a power “twister” boat that did 360 turns that then took us out to a beach called Isla Pasion. There we relaxed reading.
Thursday
– Day at Sea where we sat by the pool and got way too sunburned.
Friday – Leave boat at 9am, sit at the airport until 3:20 only to have our plane have a mechanical failure. Finally got on another flight at 6, flew to Atlanta and got home around 11:30 – and AirTran lost our bags, but were delivered this afternoon, how nice of them!

We are so happy to be home, but we had an amazing time away!

key west

Pinterest Did: I Love You Frame

Not too long ago I saw this awesome idea on pinterest to buy a frame, print off a sheet of paper, and use a dry erase marker to write reasons why you love each other to your special someone. For Valentine’s Day I made one for Drew and I, and we’ve been using it quite often. It’s just a fun little reminder to express to each other that we love them and some of those special reasons – heartwarming or just fun.

Here is the original  idea from A Content Housewife:
a content housewife i love you because frame

Here is my version I made for Drew, and how I’ve used it:
i love you because you kill bugs for me

To make our version, I bought a 4×6 frame from Walmart for $1 and then I designed the photo/print out myself. Then put inside the frame and found a dry erase marker we had laying around our house.

Our friend Serah asked for a copy of the download to make for her husband, and I thought others would appreciate it as well! To make your own, I included a copy for you to download and print off, and put inside any 4×6 frame! Click here the image below for a high res version!

I love you frame download freebie 4x6

 

Learning Patience – Home Buying

I’m learning patience when it comes to buying a house, here is why…

Once we decided we were going to go ahead to start saving for a down payment for our first house, I began researching like crazy just to keep my excited. However I may have gotten a little too excited because I began downloading all those real estate apps and began searching away. And then I saw a house that I absolutely love, it had the perfect location, perfect layout, awesome touches, and more. Here are the photos…

Problem is, we are in no way ready to buy yet. Number 1: We have no downpayment. Number 2: We just signed a year lease on our current apartment in March for June 2012 – June 2013. As much as I love this house, we know it’s just not the right time for us to buy a house, and it’s pretty much impossible.

So, we began thinking more and looking at our budgets, and we could potentially have enough saved up by spring 2013 to start looking for our first house, so that solves problem number one. But problem number two we are kicking ourselves now, wishing we’d had gone month-t0-month instead of the whole year lease, so we could get out early in case we find that perfect house right way. So to hopefully solve that problem, this weekend I actually contacted our apartment manager hoping we could switch our lease to go month-to-month, it since it hasn’t officially started, because I researched breaking your lease, and that seems like a worse idea. Fingers crossed they go for it!

So here’s the plan: Get our lease changed, in June meet with a lender to see what we all need to do to get to that point to purchase a home in Spring 2013, and make a home-needs checklist. And for myself, instead of researching actual homes to buy, to begin researching ways to improve our future home and other decorating ideas!

So coming up, I’ll be blogging all about our home buying progress along with ideas for transforming a house into our home – along with the usual blog stuff of our daily lives 🙂