Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Have a Magical New Year
Happy New Year!
This year, I have decided to be gentler on myself. I'm a mom and a wife. I have a full time job that tends to be rated as "very stressful". (I don't want to be all up on myself. I'm not a surgeon or an air traffic controller. Still, stress is stress.) I have a series of home renovations in progress or coming up. Things are busy. So I need to take it easy on me. That started as "I am going to do things for myself, like blog once a week and go to yoga and lose five pounds and...." and then I realized that resolving to do all those things is not taking it easy on me, and is not really setting me up for success.
So, I have made a decision, not a resolution.
My resolution is already met: I resolved to learn to crochet, which I did over winter holidays. I can make granny squares! Pictures coming soon. I already know how to knit, and I think the skills transfer pretty well.
The family joke is that when the zombie apocalypse comes, we are in good shape. My brother is really the time to be good with a flame thrower or a sawed off shot gun. My sister in law is a nurse. My husband can (in theory) hunt and fish and butcher his own kills.* I can cook and bake and knit and sew and basically keep us clothed and fed. I don't know why I find this so funny, but I really do.
(*This is amusing because right now we eat fish but no red meat or poultry. But seriously, folks, we are talking about an apocalypse!)
This break, in addition to learning to crochet, I made my first no knead bread. I was surprised how well it worked! I mean, really, you just chuck a bunch of somewhat mixed ingredients into a bowl and wait. Very exciting! This one I probably should have let raise a bit longer the 2nd time, but it tasted great. The crust reminds me of the crust you get when you order "soup in a bread bowl". I will totally be making this again. It's like magic!
Speaking of magic, my husband does not believe in knitting or crocheting. He has decided that it is actually just magic to him and he accepts that it happens.... all through magic. We work in the tech field, and another friend of ours talks about "people who understand computer science at a deep level, and people who work with computers but really believe in magic." I told my husband "hey, if some people believe in computer magic, and you believe in fiber arts magic, I wonder what magic I believe in."
Then it dawned on me. 'Oh! I believe in actual magic!'.
So with that, I wish you all a magical 2011. Take it easy on yourselves, folks. Magic is hard.
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This year, I have decided to be gentler on myself. I'm a mom and a wife. I have a full time job that tends to be rated as "very stressful". (I don't want to be all up on myself. I'm not a surgeon or an air traffic controller. Still, stress is stress.) I have a series of home renovations in progress or coming up. Things are busy. So I need to take it easy on me. That started as "I am going to do things for myself, like blog once a week and go to yoga and lose five pounds and...." and then I realized that resolving to do all those things is not taking it easy on me, and is not really setting me up for success.
So, I have made a decision, not a resolution.
My resolution is already met: I resolved to learn to crochet, which I did over winter holidays. I can make granny squares! Pictures coming soon. I already know how to knit, and I think the skills transfer pretty well.
The family joke is that when the zombie apocalypse comes, we are in good shape. My brother is really the time to be good with a flame thrower or a sawed off shot gun. My sister in law is a nurse. My husband can (in theory) hunt and fish and butcher his own kills.* I can cook and bake and knit and sew and basically keep us clothed and fed. I don't know why I find this so funny, but I really do.
(*This is amusing because right now we eat fish but no red meat or poultry. But seriously, folks, we are talking about an apocalypse!)
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| Magic Bread, Magic Knots |
Speaking of magic, my husband does not believe in knitting or crocheting. He has decided that it is actually just magic to him and he accepts that it happens.... all through magic. We work in the tech field, and another friend of ours talks about "people who understand computer science at a deep level, and people who work with computers but really believe in magic." I told my husband "hey, if some people believe in computer magic, and you believe in fiber arts magic, I wonder what magic I believe in."
Then it dawned on me. 'Oh! I believe in actual magic!'.
So with that, I wish you all a magical 2011. Take it easy on yourselves, folks. Magic is hard.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
All I Want for Christmas...
is this kitchen to be done. That, however, was not meant to be.
We primed the ceiling and walls last night and the night before and contractor-father-in-law made the opening between the dining room and kitchen and laid the subfloor this week. Progress! It's being made! Hopefully, we'll be talking about cabinets here in like two weeks.
Unfortunately for me, my little camera card reader doohickey has died a horrible, horrible death, which means I can not get any pictures off my camera to show you the opening or the walls. Sad!
I need to pick up another one this week. Today, we got paint samples for the trim and more paint to fix up the dining room wall and potentially paint the kitchen. (The same bamboo shoot green as the rest of the downstairs.) More details when I have the actual pictures.
In the meantime, my awesome husband got me How to Survive a Garden Gnome Attack: Defend Yourself When the Lawn Warriors Strike (And They Will)
for Christmas. Attack Gnomes! Awesome!
I am thinking about getting this this growth chart to hang up somewhere in the kitchen. My parents would measure us when we were growing up on various walls in various kitchens, but we moved every three or four years, so I kind of like the idea of something we can take with us. Not that I am going anywhere, when this kitchen is done.
In any case, we had a great holiday, and I hope you all did, too!
Read more >>
We primed the ceiling and walls last night and the night before and contractor-father-in-law made the opening between the dining room and kitchen and laid the subfloor this week. Progress! It's being made! Hopefully, we'll be talking about cabinets here in like two weeks.
Unfortunately for me, my little camera card reader doohickey has died a horrible, horrible death, which means I can not get any pictures off my camera to show you the opening or the walls. Sad!
I need to pick up another one this week. Today, we got paint samples for the trim and more paint to fix up the dining room wall and potentially paint the kitchen. (The same bamboo shoot green as the rest of the downstairs.) More details when I have the actual pictures.
In the meantime, my awesome husband got me How to Survive a Garden Gnome Attack: Defend Yourself When the Lawn Warriors Strike (And They Will)
for Christmas. Attack Gnomes! Awesome! |
| Looking very innocent, isn't he? |
I am actually wondering if my red/white/green thing I end up having in the house is really gnome related and not very woodland-ey at all.
In any case, we had a great holiday, and I hope you all did, too!
Thursday, December 23, 2010
How we bought our house
A friend at work recently asked me for advice about buying a house. Although I have only purchased 2.5 houses in my life, I am full of advice for a few key reasons.
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- I am an irritating know-it-all/ex-librarian who over researches everything.
- I just got done buying basically the house my friend was looking for, so I knew what I did.
- My parents bought and sold houses (and in some cases still do) to make their livings my whole growing-up life.
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| This gnome has nothing to do with anything, except that I love gnomes and he's in my yard. |
Another friend who lives in Finland recently advised me to buy an apartment in Estonia. Sorry, pal, I have no immediate plans to procure an apartment in Estonia, but apparently they are going on the Euro in 2011. His belief is that he will buy now, and then their economy will shoot up over the next year, making his purchase worth heaps more than he paid. I wish him luck! I do not think my husband would be amused if I bought an apartment in Estonia.
In any case, I thought I would babble on here a bit about how we went about buying our current house, which was a much more organized deal than our first house, which was basically:
- Mom called me, told me a house was for sale across the street.
- Husband looked at it and told me not to buy it while he was at a conference.
- I met the owner and agreed to buy it while husband is at said conference.
I should also point out that I am not a real estate agent or any sort of financial professional, so this is all me babbling about what I thought and did, and not meant to be anything other than that.
In the current house, I spent a good long while figuring out what we were looking for. It came down to wanting to be in a good school district, a neighborhood that's walkable to useful stuff, not on a street with any double yellow lines.
After going to like fifty open houses and viewings that was amended to add "cheap enough that we can put in a new kitchen". It turns out that, as someone who loves to cook and bake, I am EXTREMELY picky about kitchens and there were plenty of newly renovated kitchens for sale that were laid out poorly, did not have enough counter space, or otherwise just did not work for me.
So, really, knowing what you are looking for is step one.
Step two turns out to be knowing what I was comfortable spending. I point this out because the bank and your real estate agent and the internet will ask you some questions about your income and your debt and give you a figure that represents "what you can afford to spend". In my experience, that number is super high! We live in an area where home prices are thankfully low, so if you are in California or New York you might have a different philosophy about this. We basically took the amount they said we could afford, and chopped it roughly in half. That number got us to where we could put 20% down, not need an FHA mortgage and have a monthly payment that is about what our old monthly payment was. It also gave us a good estimate of "how much we can afford to spend on the addition", but I won't even tell you how well that worked out, because that budget is long blown. But hey! This is a post about buying a house, not staying on budget while building a huge kitchen.
The last step, before putting in an offer, was doing my homework about the neighborhood and house we decide to buy. Trulia gave me an average price per square foot for the neighborhood. That's useful to have. In our area, the county has a web site that gave me the square feet of the house and property, as well as what the current owners paid for the house. I can also look up what the owners mortgaged the property for. This will vary based on where you live, but it's probably worth poking around your county or municipality websites and see what you can come up with.
Having this information is important for a few reasons. I calculated for myself what the house 'should' be worth. I got a rough idea of what the current owner owed on the place using the mortgage information. I definitely wanted to make an offer I was confident meant the owner would not need to bring cash to the closing.
The first time we put an offer in on this house, there were 2 other offers, so we brought a good "what we think is fair" price. In general, though, I want to offer less than what I want to pay. The seller will probably want to counteroffer me, right? So start low. Great.
In our case, some other buyer initially put in a higher offer than we did, and 'got' the place. That was OK, we started looking at other places. Two months later, our agent called. The folks who put in the highest offer could not get a mortgage, so it was back on the market. Queue our reasonable, fair offer again, which we increased by a thousand bucks. After some negotiation, we landed at a price that was $5k over our very first offer, that was still totally within the range of "what I thought was a fair price for the house based on the information I had."
Going over what I had researched and decided is a fair price has a few implications. First off, if for some reason, we need to leave the house or the area sooner than we expected to, I wanted to make sure I could sell it to someone else without too much fuss. Pay more than the house is worth, and then we'll be the one bringing cash to the closing. Do not want! Also, having the most expensive house on our block means that I'm not going to get a good return on any improvements we make. We knew we wanted to things like build a new kitchen and upgrade a bathroom, and did not want to be in that situation either.
Wow, this was long winded. I did say how much I over research stuff earlier, though, so hey, what can I do. I should also point out that I am pretty sure I drove my husband nuts during this whole thing, by plying him with more information than he wanted. He is a little more "seat of my pants offer" than I am, though. Between us, it seems to have worked out.
I am pretty curious how other people went about figuring out where they wanted to live and what they wanted to spend, so if you have a different way of going about this, post a comment! I'm a data girl, so of course my process involves a lot of information gathering.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Construction!
Did you guys know they now make drywall lighter? Seriously 30%, and apparently it's not BS. Husband told me the he could pick up a 8' section with no effort, and the 12' ceiling sections went up awesome.
I am only super exited about this because it means that my drywalling is basically done. Two days and done! Now it needs to be primed (5 gallons of primer for this, says contractor father in law!) and painted.
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| srsly, it says this right on the sheetrock! |
Check it out.
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| Beautiful Sink Windows! |
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| Transoms / Clerestory Windows |
Also, crazy pro tip: want a counter depth fridge, but don't want to pay the extra coin and lose the fridge size? Contractor father in law and his buddy determined that we could recess the fridge into the wall! Awesome!!!
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| Hole in drywall for fridge |
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| Close up. |
I think we are getting 2 inches out of it. I think that it's more like 5 inches difference between regular and counter, but it should help a bit to make it look closer to counter depth. Really, I am mostly excited about having a bit more clearance in that section of the kitchen.
Woot!
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Cookie Day!
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| In the Oven! |
Every year, the Saturday before Christmas, my mother and I get together to bake ALL the cookies. OK, we are not really baking all of the cookies, but it's a ton of cookies. Depending on which ones we make, it ends up being something like 60-ish dozen. Everyone has their favorite cookie, and we have to make them all. We use them to take cookie trays to everywhere, work, parties, all the regular stuff.
Yesterday was Cookie Day. Mom woke up early (at like 6 am) and started making buckeyes and pecan tassies. I got to mom's house around 9 and we made peanut butter blossoms, snickerdoodles, russian tea cakes, toffee cookies, thumbprints, cut out cookies for my three year old to decorate, and candy cane cookies.
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| Before and After |
You'll have to forgive the terrible iphone pix. We were too excited to get to cookie day and forgot the real camera. Oh well. In recompense, I'll give you all the recipe.
Candy Cane Cookies
Ingredients
1 cup powdered sugar
1 cup butter
1 egg
1 1/2 teaspoons almond extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon of salt
red food coloring
Granulated sugar for sprinkling
Directions
- Preheat oven to 375
- Mix powdered sugar, butter, egg, and extracts in a bowl. (I used a mixer.)
- Sift in flour and salt and mix well.
- Divide the dough in half and color one half with the red food coloring.
- For each candy cane, take 1 teaspoon of each dough and roll into a 4 inch strip.
- Twist together and shape into a candy cane.
- Sprinkle with some granulated sugar and bake until very light. (About 9 minutes).
They look really cute on a cookie tray, and they are not too sweet, which you might appreciate if you had just baked 60 dozen cookies but still needed something to eat with your coffee.
I have not had much of a chance this weekend to post about the construction progress, which is really what I am supposed to be blogging about. Between cookie day and two Christmas parties, we're pretty beat. If you want a construction project fix, see this amusing picture of my current kitchen door, which opens to..... the drywall for the new kitchen.
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| Doorway to Nowhere. I feel like I'm in Coraline. |
When the new kitchen is done, this doorway will be blocked up and the existing kitchen will become a mudroom and powder room. It used to open onto a small deck.
I think the drywall taping and mudding and sanding will be done tomorrow (Woo!) and then we'll be opening up the windows from the dining room to be the doorway to the new space.
Super, super, super exciting.
Giveaway Day Winner
Hi Folks!
The winner of my giveaway day prize is melaniesenko@yahoo.ca, who I will be emailing shortly.
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The winner of my giveaway day prize is melaniesenko@yahoo.ca, who I will be emailing shortly.
Thanks for playing, everyone! |
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Drywall is in the Building!
Drywall was delivered and is being hung!
This means we have passed all the inspections (5, I think) except for the final!
I can't even tell you how excited this has me.
(I'm posting from work, so I do not have pics. Having a job really gets in the way of your renovation projects. But it also pays for them, I guess.)
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This means we have passed all the inspections (5, I think) except for the final!
I can't even tell you how excited this has me.
(I'm posting from work, so I do not have pics. Having a job really gets in the way of your renovation projects. But it also pays for them, I guess.)
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