Sad to see you go . . .

Even the stuffies get in on the fun.

Quite possibly the one thing we have been the proudest of, and will miss the most, is our climbing wall. It began as a joke when we were originally house shopping: "I like this house, it has a nice kitchen, big yard, 27 bedrooms, but where would the climbing wall go?" Then last year for D's birthday I gave  him a set of climbing holds, sort of as a gag gift. He ran with it. Within a month, that wall was erected in our 2 story stairwell. Now, every kid who comes to our house scampers up that wall as soon as they're in the front door (a few grown ups have too!) It's also created some great bonding time for my boys and their daddy.

We'd originally thought that we could put a sign on it telling potential buyers that the wall could stay or go, their choice. But when the stager came through, it was one of the first things she said to get rid of. D pouted for a few days, but ultimately was happy about it since: a) deep down he really wanted to keep it, and b) if it had to come down sometime, better for it to happen before the painters came through rather than after.


So up he shimmied with his drill all ready to take out the screws holding it in place. He designed it to be easy to remove (see, I told you he really didn't want to leave it behind), but unfortunately, a few of the screws didn't get the memo and that you-know-what was a blankity-blank to get down! Oh well, it is down now and even left smaller holes in the walls than some of our shelves! And I got a great view while D was working. ;-)

Buried in Boxes

With only 4 short days until we will officially be moved into our temporary home, and we are completely surrounded by boxes. I'm starting to become melancholy. This is the first and only home we have ever owned. We did so much to personalize it, things we couldn't do in a rental, like installing a climbing wall. As I go from room to room emptying all our treasures into boxes, I'm frustrated and stressed. But when I stop to look at naked walls and empty shelves, that's when the reality of our move truly sets in. Tomorrow the moving truck comes for the big furniture and boxes, so I really should be doing more packing, but somehow, I just can't. The emotions are pretty overwhelming.

On the one hand

Back in 2010, when we were house shopping previously, we had our choice of properties and must have looked at more than 100 before we chose our lovely townhome. This time around, not so much.

As you can see, there are fewer houses in our price range on the market than schools in North Seattle right now. I'm trying not to be discouraged, especially since we haven't even officially listed our house, but since I'm more of a long-view type of person, I am worrying about our ability to buy a new home in a timely manner.

But on the other hand, in our neighborhood, west of I-5, there are absolutely NO townhomes for sale.  And only one east of I-5! There are tons of townhomes in our neighborhood, it's just that most of them were purchased at the height of the real estate boom here in Seattle. While we are experiencing an upswing, it hasn't come up enough for all those homeowners to make back their investments, so they are holding on to them. We, on the other hand, purchased at the very bottom of the market, quite by accident. It just happened that we were able to buy in 2010, not before, so we will get our entire investment back, maybe a bit more. And since we will have virtually no competition in this neighborhood, maybe a bit more than a little? Keep your fingers crossed, because that little bit more may mean we will be able to find more houses on the market in our price range further down the line.

Now back to packing. UGH.

First world problems. . .

  One of the joys of moving to a new place (read: horrors!) is what to do with all the food we have on hand. During previous moves one of the following happened: 1. plan move way in advance and eat everything in the stockpile, 2. be a poor student so there never was a stockpile.  This time around, we didn't really "plan in advance" the move, and I'd started getting into couponing. (Quick sidebar: I never did the hoarding part of couponing, but I did stock up on things that we used regularly when it was on sale.)

So, we are fully stocked on food and we are moving in just over a week. EEK!! As you can see, I have a standing freezer to go along with the unit on our fridge, plus we have our pantry and canning shelves to clear out. I was just over at the house we are moving into that our very dear friends are loaning us for about 6 weeks, and they only have the under-the-fridge unit. I'm not real worried about our pantry stuff, I can box that up. And the stager wants my canned goods to stay on the shelves. It's all that frozen stuff I'm worried about. How can we possibly get through it all in such a short period of time?! My best guess is that we'll be eating from there, morning, noon, and night until the move, and possibly giving some away to friends and family. Let's just say this hasn't ever been a problem I've had to deal with before, and I feel so blessed that it's a problem now. There are too many people in this world who don't have enough to eat, thankfully, even with our tight budget, our family isn't one of them.

La Sigh

I had such grand plans of blogging all about our home redecoration project over the course of the summer, but something happened on the way to the hardware store: the real estate market when through the roof here! We've been outgrowing our townhouse steadily ever since we bought it two and half years ago, and our oldest REALLY needs a yard and I'm sure little brother isn't too far behind. I've also been pining for a garden as well as a full sized couch (the whole living room/dining room combo thing only allows a love seat.) So when the opportunity to move into another home, but only for a very specific time frame, for low rent while our townhouse would be on the market came along, we just couldn't pass it up.

GULP!! So we are working on packing up our home and moving into someone else's while we try to find our forever home. Since we are looking for a cosmetic fixer, my dream of blogging about home renovation will someday come true, but for now, I get to blog all about the joys of moving and house hunting in a seller's market. Yay?