Happenings

Lately, not too much has been happening, but at the same time.. a lot has.

It's mostly house related as you can see from previous posts.. getting one house ready to sell and the other house ready to occupy. This takes up a lot of time and leaves little time for other activities.

Luckily this past weekend, I took friday off and Alex and I completed the majority of projects. We put in phase 2 of the quarter rounds, we painted the 3rd floor hallway flooring and cleaned/packed/moved things all over the place. We were tired by the end of the day but felt very accomplished. The next morning we of course had to do some more packing/moving things to the new house. We're so lucky we can store stuff there! Then I hurried and wrapped a bridal shower gift and got ready and off Laurel and I went to Stephanie's shower. Very classy, great food and always fun! Afterward, I headed home, packed an overnight bag and met my mom at a turnpike exit to head up to Monmouth University to surprise my youngest sister, Julia for her 21st birthday which was Saturday. She was very surprised, so success on our part! We hung out at her suite while she got ready with her friends and then we all headed over to a club called The Avenue for the rest of the night. It was on the beach and was pretty awesome! Expensive, but fun!

Sunday morning we did some shopping (i didn't buy a thing!) and then had lunch and headed home. Too bad it wasn't nicer out this past weekend to walk on the beach. But when I got home we did some more housework and then got some time to relax together. Yesterday we did more moving of things to Martin.

Today, we meet the realtor after work to sign the papers to put it on the market officially. Tomorrow is the photoshoot, which we won't be home for. And then it will be up! Let the selling begin!! Hopefully someone wants to buy it! We still want to do more packing, tonight I think Alex is going to take a bunch of stuff to the Salvation Army. That should clear up some space.

I have my first class of my 2nd real estate course which starts tonight. I'm really hoping the teacher is as good as my 1st course and lets us go early. Wishful thinking!

So literally, that's all that's happening. This Friday we're having dinner with family friends and then of course it's easter! I have off work on Friday which will be nice to start removing some wallpaper at the new house and maybe even start painting! We definitely miss having free time to hang out with friends and family. It will be so nice once we're finally in the house in May and won't have anything to worry about again. But that's a whole month and week away! Here's to hoping time flies (which I know it will with as busy as we are!)

Happy Tuesday!

Painting and painting and painting..

Well we're making good progress on the house. Things are looking fresher and newer, especially on the 3rd floor. Though i don't enjoy the look of all white, i'm not going to worry about painting it a different color for the new owner. Everything is going to be white. Last night I finished up the hallway on the third floor, cutting anyway.. now I just have to roll a pretty small area and move onto the master bedroom ceiling. This should be interesting but not too hard. Main problem is the parts of the room where i don't have anything to stand on and can't reach the ceiling. This will be figure out though.

Alex will be working on cutting quarter rounds all day today and tomorrow. Hopefully it won't take that long but we need good measurements to start with (which i don't think he has yet?) regardless, it will look much nicer with quarter rounds in. Small dent in the wallet though, they cost over $1/ft and we have a lot of feet to put in. Guess we'll be moving some furniture around.. might as well move out the guest bedroom set (as much as possible) and the mattress on the 3rd floor. Lots of work this weekend to say the least! We really hope to get everything done though, do a master cleaning session, pack some more and maybe even get some prep done at Martin.

I grabbed paint swatches at Lowe's the other day and we decided on the final colors for the rooms. I'm not sure which job i'm going to give alex yet when it comes to painting.. i'm thinking about the cutting job because everything will be taped and errors won't be on the trim/ceiling, they'll be on the tape. Then I can focus on rolling a nice thick coat so that we don't have to do more than one. I think that's what's going to happen. With two people we should be able to knock it out of the park pretty quickly. The next two weeks on weeknights/weekends (minus easter sat/sun) we'll be prepping or painting and hope to have it all done by the 11th of April. Then we can have a free weekend before the sale weekend followed by another free weekend and then moving weekend. In the midst of all the free weekends, i'll have to start cleaning Martin as well so that it's spotless when we move in. Which we can't wait for!

In non-housework related news, I finished my first real estate class and the next one starts next tuesday. That will end the 20th of April. Not really sure if i'm going to go for the license, just kinda wanted to see what it was all about. I'm trying to find places to take Appraisal classes now and that's proving to be a more difficult feat. They sure don't make it easy! But it should work out. An online course would be best for my schedule but i'm up for taking in person courses too. Trying to figure out what I want to do for the rest of my life is pretty hard.. but hopefully I like appraising. Plus, I just got a small increase at work with another increase coming soon.. an actual promotion. So that's exciting. Just don't know how long i'm going to stick around. I think maybe that's why some appraisers also sell real estate.. during the 2+ year training period you can't really have a full time job (i'm assuming) so you have to have something to supplement the income. If that's the case, at least I have the real estate education and i'll just have to take the test.

Not much else happening.. we hope to have all of this done soon so we can do some more social stuff.. we miss our friends :)

Housework Accomplishments

Well there haven't been many, but some. We have an extremely long to-do list involved in getting our house ready to sell and getting a new house ready to move into. We had a reality check after talking to a realtor and now we're kind of in stress mode. And i don't do stress mode. I'm barely stressed, and I don't feel too stressed right now, but that's because i'm not really thinking about it.

Here's the low down on what's up at the brubaker house..

This weekend we painted a bunch. Luckily, Laurel and Courtney came over on Saturday to help. They painted a whole room which i finished on Sunday. Friday night, I re-cut the 2nd floor hallway/1st floor living/dining room.. looks way better now. After painting, we headed over to a friends to hang out/watch the first 3/4 of the ugly truth. pretty funny. Saturday, up around 7.. shower, study, class 9-11:30. back home to have some lunch, clean and get ready for our meeting with a realtor at 1. she charges 7% commish so that she can have 4 and the buyers agent can have 3.. i don't blame her, she works hard. but this is a lot of money.. money we have but don't necessarily want to spend. ho hum. so we didn't sign, because we knew at 5 pm we would have a private showing which i will go into in a couple more sentences.

Laurel and Court came over at 2:30 and we painted until 4:30.. they worked on the on the 3rd floor back room and I cut in the front room.. this needs another coat. The paint is old and 'gloopy' and i really should just go buy a quart to paint with instead of using the old stuff. i may do just that! And Alex started the hallway which I took over but we didn't complete before 5:00.

The private showing went well? We don't really know.. because we were outside while they explored. They seemed super nice and they asked a bunch of questions.. they said it will either be within a month or later in the fall that they want to buy. But they said this is the nicest place they saw so far with a nice backyard, etc. So maybe that will help. We told them we'd hold on getting a realtor for a little so they could decide.. this really only helps us because it will save us money. We're going to fill out a sellers disclosure tonight and send it to them tomorrow and tell them they have until friday to let us know if they're serious. Which means i need to call the realtor and tell her we're going to wait until the following monday to make a decision about listing. It would be so nice if this couple wanted to buy it.. total wishful thinking but really.. could we get any luckier in life? that would prove that we could.

So after the showing, I relaxed, Alex went and fed the sheep at his parents and then i went to meet Laurel and Court at Rita's for the free ice. They didn't end up getting one, but i did.. mango, mmm! We headed over to Martin quick to show Court our new place. We will live 3 minutes from Ritas.. niice. And of course 3 minutes from Saigon Cafe which Alex loves. Best Pho in Lancaster he thinks. After that I headed with the girls to Marion Court for dinner and drinks, then bed by 10:30.. it was a long day.

Sunday we woke up at 8 am.. I did some more painting, finished the white room and the top trim in the front room after hitting Lowe's for some more white paint. I even painted some of the hallway.. not much left to go! Then we headed up to Harrisburg, lunch with my sister Jess and niece Makayla at Passage to India, over to my parents to chat for a while, then eventually went to my grandparents for my grama's birthday dinner. Headed home and watched the new series Life on TLC.. shower, bed.

So all that's left to do in our house (that we'll be working on this week) is:
-2nd coat cut on the 3rd floor front room
-finish the hallway/stairwell walls/trim
-paint the floor in the hallway
-paint the master ceiling
-touch ups in the master and guest room
-bottom trim in guest room
-quarter rounds on 2nd and 3rd floors
-packing and moving stuff to Martin (boxes and small furniture)
And then we're done! Can't wait for that moment! Then of course, the painting begins at Martin..
-paint the living room, master bedroom (after removing paper border), family room/kitchen (after removing wallpaper), and 2 upstairs bedrooms .. we have the whole month of april to do it, lots of empty weekends to fill with painting/moving stuff

Have a good week! Easter is almost here!

Paint colors

I'm not exactly the best room decorator, but i'm going to try really hard with this house to make it pretty. There is a struggle though.. or struggles. First, Alex is having a hard time picturing it as our house because he spent so many years there as a grandchild. I can understand this, but the reality is.. we're moving in. So let's get used to thinking about it as our house. I obviously have no problem with thinking of it as my house.. but the other struggle is that it's mainly traditional. The kitchen hardware has gold in them, which irks me but it's something i will not/cannot change. Gold hardware is my nightmare. As are the lights in the hall on the 2nd floor and the chandelier. I digress.

Alex and I decided on paint colors last night.. surprisingly painless considering our paint color dilemma with our first house. But the good news is, I will never pick the same colors from our first house so things can only go up from here.
We choose (these are all Valspar):
*Summer Wish (yellowish cream) for the office (which is the formal living room).
*Ancient Scroll (tan-ish) for the family room/kitchen
*Tempered Gray (purple hued gray) for the master bedroom
*Quiet Mint (which is a light blue mint) for one of the upstairs bedrooms
*Apple Slice (light pastel green) for the other upstairs bedroom

I definitely need to see a wall swatch of the yellow one, i really struggle with yellow on walls. Painting all of these rooms and the family room ceiling is going to be a giant project. But at least we get to tackle it prior to moving in.

Tomorrow I'm taking a half day to work on our current house and we have a meeting with our lawyer to talk business. :) I hope to get a lot done tomorrow and then on Sunday as well. Painting our little rooms shouldn't take any time at all.

We're thinking about getting a realtor to sell our home. I asked my teacher the other day about FSBOs and she basically convinced me otherwise, so I need to make an appointment with someone, don't know who yet, to get it sold for the best price and fast. If we have to pay a buyers and a sellers commission.. we need to make a pretty penny on the property :)

Happy Thursday!

It's official: We're moving

So last week we made the big decision to move. We're headed out of Lancaster City and into a lovely home in East Petersburg formerly owned by Alex's late grandparents. It's a beautiful home and we're very excited!

Of course, through this excitement is the reality that we have to sell our current home. Before we can put it on the market we need to finish up some projects in order to make it fully presentable.

When we moved in, it wasn't in the best shape. It wasn't terrible.. but everything needed painted, there were holes in some of the walls that needed patched, then we decided to rip up all the carpet and underlying vinyl tile to get to the hardwood flooring, while having the full electrical system updated.

Here's what we need to do:
*Finish painting the 3rd floor bedrooms: The front room was light blue with dark blue trim... i'm on coat 3 with the trim.. i will never paint trim any color other than white because of this, i don't know what they were thinking (that they wouldn't be the ones to repaint, probably).
*Paint the 3rd floor stairwell/hallway
*Paint the master bedroom ceiling
*Some patching and touch up painting on the 2nd floor
*Put quarter rounds in on the full 2nd and 3rd floors (these were removed for the flooring project.)
*Clean clean clean, organize and pack

We plan to have this done in a couple weeks so we can go on sale on Monday the 22nd! Then since we're selling it ourselves I have to make some copies of our flyers to give out to local real estate offices and the hospital up the street since we're in the 'zone where people who work at the hospital can live at some sort of discount (or program)'.

After we complete this work, it's onto the next house.. paint paint paint. We're going to paint the living room, family room/kitchen, master bedroom and the two upstairs bedrooms. Of course there's some wallpaper that needs to be removed first, i ordered wallwick yesterday so we'll see how that works. Picking paint colors is very hard though.. Alex and I have very different taste in that regard. He suggested a deep raspberry for the office, which is what the living room is going to be for us. I just can't imagine painting a room with a dark color for some reason. We think that we'll be done with all the painting by the end of April. Then the estate sale is April 24th, which will clear out the house.. and we hope to move in the 2nd weekend of May!

We're very excited!

Happenings

For some reason i've been loving italics lately.

On Feb. 22 i started a little 'get into shape for spring/summer' deal and so far it's been going well. I'm doing the south beach, sort of? i'll just call it a no carb diet. No carbs for 3 weeks, such as bread, sugar, fruit, potatoes, etc. Of course most food has a little bit of carbs so i consume less than 50g a day which seems to be working out.

This is week two. I have lost a total of 5 lbs.. most i'm attributing to water weight. I've been working on almost everyday. Last week I took a day off, friday. But this week I should be able to do pilates everyday and volleyball on Mondays. My goal weight is 130 lbs. I weighed less than this in high school by 5 lbs but 130 seems like it would be a happy weight. So 13 lbs to go! I've given myself until the end of April to achieve this. This week and next week are no carb, the following two-three weeks will include one carb once per day, like fruit or a potato or a slice of homemade bread. Then i'll hit up the no carb for another week or so depending on how the weight loss is going.

My reward for this is a new bikini for summer and a dress for a wedding in May. Not to mention the reward of feeling awesome at 130 lbs. I can't wait. Alex has been a tremendous help as well. There are bagels at my work right now about 5 feet away.. I love bagels, but I won't eat one because i have my eye on the goal. I've been tracking all of my food and exercise in my blackberry which comes in very handy as well.

In other news, I started my real estate pre-licensing courses last night. There are 2 courses required to take the state exam and I should have them completed by the end of April. It went really well.. we read chapter one and then had a question/answer session since it's a realtor that runs the class. She answered a lot of questions and i'm sure our class will have more over the next 9 sessions. She makes me excited to work as a realtor. Even if i just start part time, the possibilities are endless in terms of income.

Also, we may be moving. This is not a definite yet, the numbers need to be run and some questions need to be answered but it's a possibility that Alex and I are very excited about. If this does go through, we should be a year closer than we thought to starting a family! It's nice because with this realtor knowledge, I should be able to sell my own house, hopefully.. and save some money while selling houses part time so that Alex can stay home for a couple years to raise babies.

Alex is getting a raise in May and I should be hopefully be getting one soon as well. YES! and Finally! : ) That should help with our savings to eventually build a house on the Brubaker Farm.

So, not much else is going on i don't think.. I did list a lot of stuff above, so that's enough happenings to fill the next couple months.

I do want to share some recent recipes though that people who read this might enjoy. On Monday we made acorn squash soup which was delicious!