I can't hear you...I'm going through traffic???

So this week has been a busy one. Our house is officially on the market. YAY!! The sign went in our yard Tuesday afternoon, the pics were taken, and we were up and running on the internet by Wednesday. I found myself feeling extremely anxious when we were officially "for sale". Not worried like we made a bad decision---just worried in general. I was more anxious then excited, which I did not expect to feel. Maybe it's because we've been in this house for 5 years and I've got used to being here, maybe its because I like this house, maybe it's because our Bug has spent the first year of her life here.....I don't know, but I kind of felt sad.

I also started thinking of all the craziness that could happen these next several months. What if our house sells and we haven't found a place?? What if there's a period of time between this house and the next?? Where would we go? I started mentally going through my friend list---nope, they don't have room for us, nope, they already have a dog (or dogs in some cases) and would definitely not want us with our 2 dogs, nope, they don't have a dog...for a reason. They hate dogs and wouldn't want us. We would have NO WHERE to go! Then I started looking up apartment complexes (seriously, this is how far I went with this fear that hasn't happened) and couldn't find any that did a month-by-month situation. After looking into a handful of apartment complexes, I realized I'd lost it. I didn't need to be worrying about something that hasn't happened. So yeah, initially, I wanted to run right back out in my yard and take down the For Sale sign. Sure, we could happily fit all 4-5 kids we hope to have, plus all the family visitors we like to have in our 3 bedroom house with no basement. We can stay here! I don't want to be homeless!!

The house has been on the market for just under a week, and I've calmed myself down. Well, at least about the issues I mentioned above. Instead, my crazy energy has gone toward the showings. It was raining and really crappy the days right after it was listed. Saturday, though, was beautiful. I met for coffee with a Mommy Group (tell you about that next post) after an hour and a half of attempting to put Bug down for her nap. She's SOOO sick. She's got the worst cold. She can't breath, or nurse well. She's coughing all the time. She's had a fever and has actually lost her voice from coughing so much. Poor thing is miserable. It breaks my heart to see her like this. It's taking me forever to get her to sleep without her waking up from coughing her lungs up. After I got home, I had to get my sick Bug ready to head to her best pal's 1st bday party (yes, I told the mom (one of my besties) that Bug had been sick...we were only going to be there for a while).

This is Bug and Cleopatra.....this picture shows exactly how she felt the past few days--MISERABLE.

After the party, Darling Dearest, Bug, and I were going to get some lunch with Cleopatra and her hubby. On our way there, I was trying to do a on-the-go nursing session as we cruised down the highway. This was when we got our first call for a showing!! Oh my gosh! Was the house ready?? We had just been working on a project the night before and the house smelled like glue. Did I have things put away? I don't think so...we were in such a rush to get to the party. Not to mention, Hubby accidentally answered the phone when he was fishing it out of my purse. I picked up to someone saying, "HELLO, HELLO??" Oh my gosh, who is this?? Should I recognize this voice? I was panicing and completely out of sorts. My boobs were out and about. This lady is asking to see the house and she's RIGHT IN FRONT OF IT. I'm frantically racking my brain to recall the condition of our home. You would've thought I'd never spoken to anyone in my life. In my attempt to buy time and mouth to Hubby "What does the house look like??", I was trying to tell the lady to repeat herself because I had static on my end. What did I say instead??? "UM, I'm sorry. Can you say that again? I'm going through TRAFFIC."

WHAT???? TRAFFIC?? DID I SERIOUSLY JUST SAY THAT?? SOMEONE SHOULD TAKE THE PHONE FROM ME NOW!

Did you think that was bad?? Well, it gets worse! Hubby tells me that he DID crate the dogs (against his will because I was being "optimistic"--his words--for thinking someone would come see our house so soon). "Yes, realtor lady you CAN come see the house." Oh what?? Darling Dearest NOW remembers that he set the alarm system. OOPS! "Nevermind, realtor lady. You will be treated like an intruder and the police will be called if you enter our house. We need to run home and turn off the alarm (aka, spray Febreeze everywhere and do last minute cleaning right before we turn off the alarm)".

So we make a quick turn back home. I call Cleopatra to let her know plans had changed and they'd have to come for lunch by my house. We got the house in tip-top shape in 2 minutes and left (Cleopatra and her hubby helped too). I was a frazzled mess. This is NOT an exaggeration. If anyone who saw me in the midst of this shinanigan was writing this post...they would concur that they'd never seen me such a hot mess (and trust me, I can be the definition of "hot mess" so that's how bad this was).

Yep, it was bad...really bad. How can I expect people to come see my house when I can't seem to speak coherently to the realtors?? Well, you'd be happy to know that we had another showing yesterday (Superbowl Sunday) and another today. I actually remembered that I had NOT been living under a rock since birth. That I had actually gone to school, even grad school for that matter. That I, at one point, TAUGHT proper English and grammar usage. The 2nd and 3rd time around, I saw that the number was unfamiliar, picked up expecting a realtor, and scheduled a showing like a real life human being. IMPRESSIVE!!

So yeah, that's the update. I told you I'd be better about blogging and now that I've written a book, I have zero time (or desire) to edit it *SURPRISE, SURPRISE*. Please forgive me in advance. I already told you I don't speak English. I'm sorry, I can't hear you...I'm going through traffic!

Projects & Pics

So in the effort to become more crafty, I've managed to complete some DIY projects for my house. I did a couple Christmas decorations that I'll put up once I finally get all my Christmas pics in one place. Yep, you'll probably get my Christmas pics update in February. :-)

ANYWHO....As you know, we're going to put our house on the market soon. It was supposed to be right after the holidays, but my house currently looks like a hot mess and I feel like I'm starting from square 1 all over again. It's just so stinkin' hard to get to finish my to-do list when I'm chasing around Bug all day.

Then why are you wasting your time on this thing right now?? Yeah...I heard you. You asked it.

Beats me! I probably shouldn't be...but it is nice to have a couple minutes sitting in bed and doing my own thing...even if it's only long enough for me to write this post.

So I've begun the process of making my house less personal---taking down the pictures, etc. Let me tell you, my house was pretty much covered in pictures. Since I'm not about to decor me out of house and home, I decided to make some of it. I saw this project on Michaels.com using styrofoam materials. I got some foam board, spray glue, and scrapbooking paper and off I went......here are the results. They're not perfect, but they're cheap, they'll do, I did it myself, and so----I love them.

I just cut the foamboard into 12x12" squares (some of them I pieced together from leftovers because you can only get 2 whole 12x12 squares out of one piece of foamboard---better to use the leftovers and tape them together.), sprayed it with spray glue, put the scrapbooking paper on the top & smoothed it out, then covered the edges with ribbon. The ribbon didn't exactly lay flat because I definitely hacked up some of the edges of the foamboard when cutting, but at least you can't see my hack job. :-) Pictures below (I was messing around with the settings of my new camera & I still don't have a good program to do any editing in---any ideas??).

And while we're at it....some other pics of the house (ok, I just wanted an excuse to mess around with the Canon Rebel XSi I got for Christmas...yay!)

I tbought these wall hangings with the candles for like 8 bucks together at Ross. I need to go back to find some centerpieces and decor for my mantle.

Let me just say that the balls in this bowl smell like YUMMY cinnamon (or used to...how can I get their scent back?)

So can I keep these berries up as "winter" decorations and not Christmas decorations for when my house is for sale?? They're neutral enough, right?? Please say, YES!

Yes, I know the sap is coming out on some of these Ikea mirrors--already bought replacements. :-) Still more berries in this room.

Don't these fake hydrangeas look real?? I have them in my bathroom too.

PS....I'm not editing this post because Bug just woke up and I need to go be a mama. :-) Sorry for any typos or misspelled words in advance.

Imaginary House Hunting

Please tell me I'm not the only one imaginary house hunting right now! We have more than outgrown our house. Yes, we've got enough rooms for us and the bug currently, but we have zero storage and our stuff is starting to need a house of its own. We don't have a basement, and between all of the baby stuff we're no longer using and and entire classroom's worth of teaching stuff (materials, books, crates, supplies, rugs, shelves), our garage looks like it's thrown up a dump truck! Bug and I have to squeeze our way through mountains upon mountains of STUFF just to get her in the car. One time, I even knocked over a gas can that was against the wall of the garage far from where I was because Bug's carseat knocked into something, which tipped over something else...and so on until a gas can fell over and leaked all over the floor. What makes it worse is that I didn't even realize it until I came home from our errands and the stench (even though I'm typically one of those weirdos who love weird smells like gas...creepy, I know) was overwhelming. We were high off gas fumes for days, even after clean up.

Aside from our hideous mess of a garage, all of our closets are overflowing with CRAP too. It doesn't help that I'm a HUGE slight pack rat and don't want to get rid of my textbooks and binders from my graduate (and some undergraduate) courses...plus, my husband's stuff. We're a mess and are in need of more space  plus someone to throw away our stuff in the middle of the night so we don't put up a fight.  There is no way we can be in this house when we have another baby. We just don't have the room.

The problem is, you can't sell a house that looks like a tornado whipped by and threw all of the neighborhood's junk strategically in your garage and closets. "Hey, come buy this house...plenty of room for all of your needs. Great storage. Perfect for your family!! Make this mess your home!" For whatever reason, that argument doesn't seem to work.

So we've found ourselves looking for imaginary homes. Why are they imaginary?? Well, we have a house that's about as far away from selling/renting condition as possible (ok, this might be a slight exaggeration since I'm Queen of that. My mom totally has it worse, right ma? We just need to de-clutter). We haven't even considered putting it up for sale right now. Oh, and did I mention we don't have money to front two mortgages??? SO why are we torturing ourselves by looking at the imaginary houses in glass boxes?? I don't know, but darnit...there's so many good deals on houses right now. So do we take less for our house to get a house for less than it's worth? Do we do all the work to get our house on the market only to be lucky to break even? We're in a slight predicament, and don't know what would be the wisest decision...so we've got a lot of research and educating to do. But you know me...I'm a totally nerd, so I eat this stuff up! My husband thinks I should've been in business instead of teaching. But hey...we teachers are smart! :-)

Until then, I am living in my imaginary world where we move into a house complete with areas for storage, rooms for our family (and future family members), and even room for our extended family to visit us.  Darling Dearest is also on this fantasy ride with me...so who will snap me out of it?? What makes it worse is that my college friend, N (I'll have to think of a cute nickname that fits her later. Hmmm...another project!), has embarked on this imaginary house journey with us....and we're imaginary neighbors in this beautiful, older neighborhood with majestic trees and big yards (real place, but "imaginary" for us in that neither of us have houses on the market). Oh, and did I mention the imaginary house she found on realtor.com has a pool and is beautiful??? Unfortunately, she's staked her claim into this house, so Dean and I can't pursue it on our imaginary househunting journey. Hmmm, maybe we could have an imaginary bidding war against our college friends!

N asked me what I wanted for my b-day coming up on Friday and Darling Dearest told me to tell her that she didn't need to get me anything since she already found a house with a pool for a sickeningly cheap price for us (I mean...the kind of house that you'd totally deal with a sink hole just to have --or at least, I would..hehe). To which she replied, "and coincidentally there will be a fire set to that house immediately after you move in." YEP...full on fighting words in our imaginary war over imaginary houses. Are you getting sick of me saying IMAGINARY yet?? I'm sure sick of writing it. :-) 

What makes things worse is that realtor.com is not super up-to-date with their properties and several of the ones I loved (You know, the kind that make you pee your pants a little bit in the excitement of just thinking about them??) already were under contract. Crazy things start happening in my head at that point. I think....hmm, maybe we could put a hit on the buyers or develop some sort ridiculous scandel so the contract would fall through and we'd come trotting in on our white horse (yep, myself, Darling Dearest, Bug, and the two pups on a white horse...awesome mental picture, huh?) to save the day and sweep up the damsel in distress (in this case...our coveted imaginary house). But, instead of resorting to plan A (crazy plan detailed above), I glumly agree to plan B (moping at the loss of our imaginary home that we can't buy anyway).

Why am I so emotionally involved with some of these houses?? I mean, how can I have enough love in my heart to share between Darling Dearest, Bug, my pups, my new boyfriend (DELL), and now my new rotating crushes---imaginary houses?!? At least with the others, I know they're always there for me....but as with all crushes, they'll soon break your heart!! And so far, they've done it 3 times (Truth: Yes, we've even driven around to look at these imaginary houses and 3 of them are out of commission due to silly little detours like UNDER CONTRACT signs..boo!). How much more rejection can a girl take?? Why am I putting myself in this misery of this fantasy to begin with?? Maybe it's DELL's fault for seducing me into the world of realtor.com! Well, boo on DELL then too. Maybe he isn't always there for me like I said before.

Please tell me some of you have made the same stupid decision as I have. Why must we want what we can't have?? Oh, I will be accepting donations. You can write your checks to the "Helping First Time Mommy Turn an Imaginary Home into a Real Home" fund. OR, you can buy my house...complete with overflowing junk!! Either way, it's a steal! Any takers???