Officially Official…and other stuff

Posted in Family, Holidays and Seasons, House and Home by teamtradermom

Our house is officially on the market! Phew! I’m exhausted from all the work we’ve done to the house but it’s not over yet. We still have a “to do” list of small items that need to be checked off. Then we have to continue our search to find a new house for us. And once that is done – we actually have to move ! Eek!

I’m tired just thinking about it…or maybe I’m tired from this darn summer cold I still have. We’ve now entered phase 2. Phase 1 was a constant sore throat and aches. Phase 2 is a REALLY stuffy nose. I feel like someone inflated balloons up in my sinuses. I just hope there’s no phase 3!

I started P90X today! Well, I actually started it 2 weeks ago but with all of life’s craziness and getting sick, I only got 2 days under my belt. So I’m starting over today. I’m not following the P90X diet plan. I don’t have the book and trying to find info online is confusing. I’ve gleaned that there are several phases and the first one is high protein, low carbs, so I’m trying to do that. I will allow myself to eat some carbs, just pushing to get a little more protein in, to build up the muscle. Don’t worry, I won’t write a daily entry on it like I did with the Shred. That would be come a really long post after 90 days and you would get sick of it. But I will provide periodic updates as I progress. And I might whine a little too… Winking smile I can already feel the soreness setting in from this morning!

Mother’s Day was nice. Pretty laid back as we had to do work on the house. At one point, I was in the kitchen scrubbing cabinet doors and looked up to see CJ reading the paper while drinking his coffee, Isabella playing with her toys and Samson staring at me wanting food. Now, what’s wrong with that picture?

But we did have a nice afternoon at the museum and then dinner with the extended family. Isabella was crabby at times but all in all, a day with the family is a good day indeed! And the best part – I got a gift certificate for a 90 minute massage which I will be more than happy to use!

At the museum. Isabella was a little tired here from running around so much!

Me, my mom and my sister. 2 of the best moms I know!

Believe it or not, I’m actually going to take the night off from house work. I plan to repaint my toenails and watch Dancing with the Stars. Go Hines!!

If you liked this, you might also like:

Vacation from my Vacation

Weekend Wrap Up

New Year’s Eve

6May2011

Crazy Busy

Posted in House and Home, You Capture by teamtradermom

Did ya miss me?

I feel like I’ve been ignoring the blog. Life has been crazy and well, something’s gotta give. Between work, getting the house ready, family, outside activities and being sick, I’ve got no time left for thinking up witty blogs.

So here’s what’s been going on:

1. Operation Dream Home is moving at lightening speed! We’re nearing the home stretch of the first leg of the race and in a full out sprint. The realtors came over on Wednesday and think the house is ready so we’re filling out the paperwork tomorrow and it should be on the market by Monday! So excited and nervous at the same time. What if no one wants to buy and it’s on the market forever? Conversely, what if it sells really quickly and we don’t have a new house yet? We’ve started looking but I don’t think we’ve found “the one” yet. I keep telling myself it will all work out, and it will.

So every weekend in April has been filled with activity like this:

Painting or packing or cleaning or repairing or whatever. I’m ready for that phase to be over. Here’s what we have left from our big list:

~~Get a storage unit rented~~
Clean every room from top to bottom with a fine-tooth comb, including de-cluttering and organizing
- ~~Master Bedroom~~ and bath
- ~~Isabella’s room~~
- ~~Samson’s room~~
- Main Bathroom
- ~~Kitchen~~
- ~~Dining Room~~
- ~~Living Room~~
- Entryway (3/4 way done)
- Basement (3/4 of the way done)
- Utility Room
- Garage
~~Pack up all knick knacks and “personal” family type items (photos, etc)~~
Re-arrange furniture in a few of the rooms
- Samson’s Room
- ~~Dining room~~
- ~~Living Room~~
- Basement
~~Replace a sink or 2 and possibly a bathroom countertop~~
~~Clean up the yard~~ ~~and plant flowers, lay down mulch, etc~~
~~Put away all of Isabella’s toys and only keep out those that can fit in to a rubbermaid container~~
Paint or restain all baseboards and woodwork (about 1/2 of the way done)
~~Meet with a mortgage lender to see how much we can afford and how much of a loan we’ll get approved for~~
~~Repaint Master Bedroom and bath~~
~~Start looking for~~ and buy a new house

2. Our household was hit with a plague and we’ve all been sick for a week now. Well, Isabella for a week. It started for her last Thursday. CJ got hit on Saturday and me on Monday. All week I’ve been feeling “blah” and have negative amounts of energy. Yet, there’s too much going on to allow me to lie around so I’m pushing myself to the max.

3. April and May are crazy busy months. Between birthdays, Easter, Mother’s Day, Memorial Day and graduations, we’ve been on the go every weekend. I’m ready for a break! We also had a wedding and a funeral within a week of each other – for the same guy. Depressing isn’t it?

4. The royal wedding occurred and I pretty much missed it all! I feel so out of touch!

5. A little old lady tried to hijack my car.

6. I totally missed this week’s You Capture because the day just flew by me. It was afternoon on Wednesday when I realized I’d missed it. *sigh* I had some cute ones this week too! So, I’m going to post them here for you all to see! The theme was “outside”. I shot all these one beautiful sunny afternoon, when Isabella, Samson and I were out playing (CJ was probably out front painting).

Splashing in the birdbath (don’t you just love her little sunglasses?)

Playing with the wheelbarrow

Our adventurer peeking through the trees

Two buddies, taking a break

7. I did manage to spend some time last night getting my craft on. I had 2 projects to complete: 1) make a mother’s day gift for my mom and 2) make a fake plant arrangement for our living room.

See, if we leave real plants anywhere within toddler reach, she gets in them. But the realtors wanted us to have some greenery in one corner of the living room, so I had to go with silk. I was surprised how expensive it is to buy already made fake plants. Something like this would have cost $40. Instead, I made it myself for about $20. I think it turned out great!

And here’s the mom’s gift I made. It’s a mosaic stepping stone for the new rock garden my parents are putting in. I was going to have Isabella put her handprint in the middle but she threw a big fit so instead I wrote “Grandma’s” and drew a little flower to represent her garden.

I think she’ll love it!

And with that, it’s time for me to end this break, clock back in and go upstairs to do some cleaning. The checkout lady at Target told me to use oven cleaner on shower doors to get the soap scum off so I’m giving it a try. I will let you know how it turns out…

If you like this, you might also like:

Op Dream Home Updates

Murphy’s Law

Look out Martha!

18Apr2011

Op Dream Home Updates

Posted in House and Home by teamtradermom

We have been hard at work getting our house ready to be put on the market. Seriously, there is not a day that goes by which we don’t do something to further our progress, whether it be packing, cleaning, or whatever. I feel like we’re over the hump but there is still a lot left to go!

My Project Manager-Type A Personality-OCD-control freak mode is on high too. Yesterday I was grilling CJ about something and when I was done he said, “Ok, can you go back to normal Sarah now?” Ha ha…oops. 😐

Both of the last 2 Saturdays we’ve found someone to watch Isabella so that we could churn out a bunch of work. That was a huge help as it’s hard to make a ton of progress when you’re also trying to play with and watch an 18 month old! We don’t have any more sitters lined up so we’ll have to work in the rest of the list around Munchkin’s schedule. I’m sure we’ll manage just fine. If we can get Samson to help out instead of just lying around all day, that would be awesome. He’s supposed to be a working dog for crying out loud…

Here is what we have accomplished so far:

Get a storage unit rented
Clean every room from top to bottom with a fine-tooth comb, including decluttering and organizing

~~Master Bedroom~~ and bath
Isabella’s room (decluttered and packed but haven’t cleaned yet)
Samson’s room (decluttered and packed but haven’t cleaned yet)
Main Bathroom
Kitchen (1/3 of the way done)
~~Dining Room~~
~~Living Room~~
Entryway (1/2 way done)
Basement (1/4 of the way done)
Utility Room
Garage

~~Pack up all knick knacks and “personal” family type items (photos, etc)~~
Re-arrange furniture in a few of the rooms

Samson’s Room
~~Dining room~~
~~Living Room~~
Basement

Replace a sink or 2 and possibly a bathroom countertop
~~Clean up the yard~~ and plant flowers, lay down mulch, etc
~~Put away all of Isabella’s toys and only keep out those that can fit in to a rubbermaid container~~
Paint or restain all baseboards and woodwork (about 1/3 of the way done)
Meet with a mortgage lender to see how much we can afford and how much of a loan we’ll get approved for
~~Start looking for~~ and buy a new house

See, we’ve made a lot of progess! I have to keep telling myself that so I don’t go crazy thinking about all that is left to be done, because you know I totally will.

One thing I do every day is make a trip to the storage unit. Even if it’s just a few items, every little bit that I can pull out of the house will get us that much closer. One of my big irrational fears is that I will fall through the slats in the palettes we have covering the floor of the unit. We put those down in case of heavy rain or something. Since I make trips there before coming in to work, there are days when I’m wearing sandals or heels. So I had this fear that I would mis-step and fall through a slot or fall off a palette, breaking or twisting my ankle and being stranded there. I picture myself laying on the floor, in pain, yelling until my voice in gone, desperately waiting for someone to come find me.

I know, totally crazy and silly of me.

That is until it happened.

Last weekend, CJ and I made a trip to storage together, as we had some big furniture items. I was wearing tennis shoes and felt very stable and secure. When we opened the door to the unit, we found that some stuff had shifted and a few items fell over. We went in to assess the damage and then figure out how to rearrange so that it wouldn’t happen again. I was standing on one of the palettes and went to take a step back. Only I stepped back onto an opening between the slats rather than onto the board itself and my foot promptly fell through. I fell backwards and to the right, toward another box but managed to catch myself before actually landing on it. I think I let out a yell too which sounded something like this, “yeo-ow-oh!” That banshee scream caused CJ to turn around and find me on the ground in what looked like a position you’d only find someone in during a game of Twister (which I totally rule at by the way. CJ and I once had a “Twist Off” and I won but only after a really, really long time. But still, I won.). Left foot green, right foot red, left hand yellow, right hand red.

He started to laugh until he realized my right foot was actually stuck. I couldn’t pull it out from the angle in which I was sprawled out so CJ helped me up. I tried to pull my foot out but it was still stuck because I was wearing sneakers that were wider than the opening. You’d think that would have prevented me from falling in the first place but nooooo, not in Sarah’s world! CJ had to untie my shoe and help me slip my foot out. Then he yanked and yanked until the shoe itself came out. I was a little shaken up but otherwise unharmed. I have those crazy “what if” scenarios in my head all the time and never once have they come true. Until now! Good thing Ceige was with me to help.

Then a few minutes later he almost did the exact same thing. Those palettes are a death trap I tell you!

Anywho, now I’m extra careful. I probably look like a little old lady as I gingerly step on those palettes. Whatever. At least I’ll be an old lady with 2 working ankles!

Tomorrow we head out to walk through 4 potential houses. I’m going to be very picky as this will (hopefully) be our forever home and I want it to be just right. When we bought this house, it was our first one and I didn’t really know what to look for. I just knew what I liked. Now I’ve learned some lessons and will have a better eye when doing the walk throughts. There are some nice ones on the list though so fingers crossed that one of them works out.

I’ve been really bad about taking before/after pics of the house as we work on it but I’ll try to be better. I’ll definitely have after pics of all the rooms to show.

More to come!!

If you liked this, you might also like:

Weekend Wrap Up

Resolutions Update 3

Resolutions Update 2

11Apr2011

Ghostly Grass

Posted in House and Home, Miscellaneous, Uncategorized by teamtradermom

So I think our house is haunted.

Yes I totally believe in that stuff. I’ve never really bought in to the concept that when we die, that’s it, end of story, finito. I’ve always believed that our spirits live on. I don’t know if it’s in heaven or the afterlife or what, but they go somewhere.

And sometimes they like to come back and visit.

Here’s what happened Friday night. Isabella woke up around 2 a.m. crying. I went in to check on her and she asked for juice. I picked her up and we headed down the hall to the kitchen. I got her sippie cup out of the fridge and handed it to her. With gusto, she grabed the juice and was in process of lifting it to her mouth when she stoped in mid-air and started staring at the microwave. I urged her to drink her juice and then she whiped her head around and was looking in to the dining room.

Then she said, “Someone over there.”

Cue goosebumps up my arm. I looked in to the dining room and didn’t see anyone. I now strongly encouraged her to drink her juice and she says it again, “Someone over there.”

At this point I make a hasty retreat to her room and close the door. I again ask her to drink some juice but she has lost interest so I rock her for a bit and put her to bed.

As I’m leaving her room, I look down the hall and wonder “who” is there. It could be CJ’s mom who passed away in 2009 or my grandma who died last year. Or it could be some random spirit popping by for a visit. So I say in a whisper, “Dorothy or Ma, if that’s you, thanks for visiting and watching over Isabella. If it’s someone else, please leave.”

Then I ran back to our room and jumped in to bed next to my strong husband with the big biceps. As if having muscle is going to make a difference to a ghost. It’s not like he can beat them up or anything. But it made me feel better.

I told him about it the next morning. CJ was like, “Oh yeah, there are definitely spirits here. I hear noises all the time when I’m up at night.”

Um, WHAT?!?!?

Apparently he’s heard doors opening/closing when we’re all in bed. He’s heard door handles rattling. He even felt someone brush his ear as we were sitting there talking.

Ok, whatever spirit you are that’s touching my husband, you better back off sista!

Anyway, he decides that our house needs to be smudged to remove the spirits. We decide to do it later in the day, when Isabella was gone. So we go about our day doing work around the house and I forget about the incident.

It was a busy day and by the end, I was exhausted. I fell in to bed and was down for the count.

Until about 1:30 a.m.

I woke up to an interesting smell. My sleepy and tired mind thought it was pot. I seriously woke up and was like, “Who is smoking pot in my house?” Then I opened my eyes and saw CJ walking around the room with a burning bundle of sage telling the spirits to get out of our house.

I thought I was dreaming. I blinked my eyes a couple of times and stared. Yep, it was for real. I found out later that he had gone down to the garage and while he was in there heard our trash cans falling over. It was very distinctive and unmistakable. At first he didn’t think much of it, as it was a windy night. Then he remembered that all the cans were all loaded down with lots of trash from our day of work and definitely too heavy for the wind to knock over. So he went and looked and they were all upright just fine.

It was at that moment that he decided some ~~pot~~ sage was in order. It just so happens that we had some because we used it to cleanse the house when we first moved in. Guess it didn’t take. Or it’s something you have to do repeatedly, like the dentist (ahem, Cheri). At any rate, it’s now been done so we are spirit free. I think. I hope.

Unless the spirits like sage. Maybe they were hanging around looking for a good high and now we’ve just given it to them. That would be my luck too.

If I see an empty bag of Cheetos on the floor when I wake up in the morning I’ll know for sure.

If you liked this, you might also like:

The Island

Posted in Friends and Fun, House and Home by teamtradermom

A few months ago, thanks to a co-worker, I discovered the Wall Street Journal House of the Day. I will admit to being a bit of a voyeur. Yep, guilty as charged. It’s why I love reading other people’s blogs and why I like to visit friend’s houses. I want to see what other people are like, and how they live.

Confession time – when driving around at night, I will look in to the windows of the houses I pass by. No, I’m not a perv. What I’m really looking at is the decor. I want to see how people decorate! What color of paint do they have on their walls? What kind of furniture? How do they have it arranged. I am endlessly fascinated by this and always looking for ideas. I probably should have been an interior designer or something instead of in technology. So I have to satisfy my need for all things design by looking into YOUR windows! 😉

That’s why the WSJ House of the Day was so much fun to me. Here was a chance to look inside million dollar (and in most cases, multi-million dollar) homes and see what they are like. The site runs the gamut from modern to traditional, Victorian to country and everything else you can think of.

They even had an island one time.

And on this island was an AMAZING house. To be honest, I don’t even remember what the house looked like or what made is so amazing. I just remember that I liked it so much, I forwarded the link to my best Skype bud, Rhonda. She thought it was awesome too and we immediately made plans to buy it.