We Closed!

It's official! We are homeowners, I can't believe it. What a headache closing this house was. But, we have the key and the papers, and lots of debt, so we're all set now.

I have some pics we took last night. They're not very exciting, and the house is REALLY dirty, but it shows more of the house. Blake mowed the lawn last night...it was a jungle. That mower was on the highest setting too. He had to mow it twice and it's still pretty long. I think we're going to get a crew to finish it up nice.

Album

Cooking

I have actually cooked the past 2 nights! I can't believe it. Monday I made Refried Bean Soup and Blake loved it. I thought it was pretty good...next time I would add more black beans and more Tabasco sauce and maybe more chili flakes. I thought the flavor was a little boring straight off the recipe. Can I note that my meals did NOT look like these pictures, haha. You can click the pictures to view the recipes.

Refried Bean Soup (Vegetarian)

I also just quickly cooked this soup on the stovetop and we had dinner rolls with it.


Then I made this last night:

Slow Cooker Beef Bourguignon

Mine certainly did not look like this. I used just a cheap cut of meat and it fell all apart, but it tasted good. I think making a roast this way would be DELICIOUS. I really liked this recipe apart from all the grease from the bacon floating around. Next time I am using turkey bacon. Sorry, Blake.

Tonight are open-faced sandwiches and I need to go get a french bread loaf. If I remember right, you cut the loaf lengthwise and open it up flat, then put chicken and cheese and bacon on top of it and broil it in the oven. I may need to get some chips for this meal ;)

We are so ready for the house thing to be done with. We are supposed to close tomorrow, God willing.

Things have been good lately. We've been really busy, but it's been a good busy. I am missing my friends a lot right now. We won't be in town until late November for a full weekend. We got to have a really fun dinner with The Morrows and Trainas last night. Mary made her chicken tortilla soup and it was good! And Brandi brought a chocolate cake! She thought it was ugly, but it sure tasted good.

I'm starting to get really excited about our house. We close on Tuesday. I already have the roofers scheduled for the new roof and rafter repair for Wednesday, then the carpet cleaners on Friday, and then the next Monday I have the pest-guy coming out. So looks like the week of October 5th we'll start trying to move in. It's going to be hard! We'll have to move little bit by bit in the evenings after work. I don't know where to start packing! I'm letting our groceries dwindle away so we don't have to move much of them. We're still waiting on one major document to be signed and turned in by the seller....if they don't do it soon I think closing will be delayed so that is kinda stressful.

I'm starting to try to envision a plan for decorating...I'm bad at decorating! I think the house will be mostly creams/browns/robin's egg blues/green and a little daffodil yellow. That's what I'm into right now. I'm hoping since I work at an architecture firm, the interior designer here might help me with an overall plan. I've been visiting Marthastewart.com alot and like her decorating by color suggestions. I like the neutrals and the yellows actually. I don't know if this particular house we are getting would do well with yellow or not though. Who knows.

So, if you are a good decorator and want to take a crack at my house--let me know! :)

Please pray the closing goes through as expected and we can get everything done!

Pictures I like:

Great News

Got some great news just now, the major horrible repair that we need to do...turns out won't be out of our reach expense-wise after all! We can handle it with the money set aside by the bank for repairs...so we are proceeding after all with the house! Man, what a roller coaster. How do you people do it who move often??

We are set to close officially Sept. 29 at 11am, provided the Lord wills it :) Definitely seems like He has guided every step of this so I am at peace if this deal goes through!

Stupid House

Okay. What a crazy week this has been. If you follow my facebook, you've seen my barrage of posts about the house.

Wednesday Blake and I went to meet with the lender at 8am. Who is wonderful. We love our lender. We had a house inspection and termite inspection scheduled for the house at 10:30 am the same day. The lender mentioned we hadn't gotten a signed agreement back from the bank putting in writing everything they'd agreed to. So we pressed our realtor to get on that. Sure enough, we get a call around 9am that the bank only was going to offer a certain amount of money toward a new roof instead of shelling out the complete dough to pay for the roof. We were infuriated. They quoted about $1000 under our lowest roof quote we got. Really is maddening them trying to push us around. So, I called the roofer and asked if he'd replace the roof at what the bank was willing to pay for...and he was wonderful and said yes! So, a big victory there.

Then, we go to the house inspection. Termites = negative! House condition = awesome! Then we're wrapping up the inspection and one of the guys is taking a while in the attic. Come to find out, our roof is caving in. That is a little strong...I guess our roof is "sagging" because it's current shingles are too heavy for the original framing and then to top it off, when the house owners had the heat and air moved overhead some genius installed it in the attic and cut some crucial support beams to get it to fit. So there is a visable sag especially in the attic that needs attention. From what I understood, this is fixable and wouldn't be cause for future alarm if fixed. If not fixed...that is alarming. So I'm in the process of gathering quotes from framers to see what it would take to fix it.

After that we face the dilemma of approaching the bank with our revised offer. Do we say 'hey! you pay for it or we walk!" We risk the whole contract being thrown out and starting from square one. I'm hearing different things like people are impressed on a short sale that we got the bank to pay for anything. And then I'm also hearing, hey to sell it the bank has to fix it anyway. So pray that we can make a wise decision once we have all the facts together. I'm kinda numb to the whole house thing right now. So many big events happening at once: a house, a new CD release, and the National Quartet Convention (the climax of our year in Southern Gospel field). I'm pretty impressed I'm handling everything as well as I am right now. I'm discouraged about the house but don't know whether to let it go without a fight, or walk away from it and have the bank try to get us to still take it. The other houses available on the market right now just aren't as amazing as this one. But, I don't need amazing, I need a quality house that suits our needs. So, Lord please lead us as we have to make life changing decisions next week.

We got the house!

We got the Ashford House we put an offer on! The bank accepted and even agreed to put a new roof on it for us -- Praise the lord! He answered our prayers for a beautiful home in the country that is safe, affordable, and is plenty big for us to stay a very long time. Also, it's a blessing because if we ever have to relocate, the house is very desirable and should resell quickly.

We are now waiting on the bank to turn on the electricity so we can get an inspection. Strangely, the bank is dragging their feet in this, but want to close on the house Sept. 30th. They'd better get on the ball. I'm trying to be patient.

If all goes to plan it looks like we will be moving into this home in late October! I am so excited. :)

Recording and Premature House Update

So this post may be premature. But I have a hunch. Not a good hunch. About that house we put an offer on. We put an offer on that beautiful Ashford house and we're so excited, but we are still wary of that 15 year old roof. I am antsy to find out what the roof inspector from our insurance guy found (if he's even gone yet. I need to make a phone call on that). If he finds the roof is not damaged in any way, then that still leaves us with a 15 year old roof in Oklahoma where roofs only last here about 10 years or so...so I'm told. If he finds the roof is damaged, then it's uninsurable. So we'd not be able to even get a loan for the house because they won't give you a loan for a house without insurance. So, I guess our next step would be to see if the bank's insurance would replace the roof. This would be the ideal situation where we still could buy the house. But, most people are telling me banks don't ever pay to fix anything. So I don't know what happens then...retract our offer? Revise it $20,000 lower so we could pay to get a roof? Who knows. So I'm kinda preoccupied and disappointed already. But, if this is the house God picked for us, then I know it will work out! If not, then good riddance I guess.


This week Blake records the vocals for his new CD! Then the studio mixes it, then masters it and then we print it! So all is on schedule to have the CD in hand by the second week of September. So far so good, Blake texted me that this morning has been going well on his first day there. Apparently I scored bigtime with our $50 Priceline hotel we got...The Hilton Suites at Brentwood! I can't wait to see it, Blake says it's amazing. I'll post videos and pictures when I get there. :)

Ashford House

We found a house we love! We are putting an offer on it. I'm not going to get too attached though because it's roof is 15 years old. We can't buy a new roof, and insurance is telling us they probably won't insure it. So in our offer we have to stipulate the bank pays for a new roof (it's a foreclosure). So, if they do it's a go! If not, then we'll move on. :) I posted pics and a dark youtube video (the electricity had been turned off). It's located in North Yukon, in the Surrey Hills area, so still 15 min from my work, but about 30 min from our church and friends.

Click the photo to see the photo album:

House Hunting

It's official. Blake and I are house-hunting! I can't believe it's even a possibility let alone us actually looking and being ready to make an offer on a house. We got pre-approved this week and things have just been rolling. Every night this week we've been driving up and down streets in Yukon, OK looking for "For Sale" signs. It's a little scary and we can't buy a big expensive house or anything, but it's looking like we'll probably end up with a 1,400-1,700 SF home in the Yukon, OK area. Our current neighborhood has just gotten too dangerous. I didn't realize until I actually counted that we've had 3 break in incidents on our car and home in just a year and a half at our current rent house. Our neighbor has had 2 breakins in just the past 2 months. So, it's time to leave.

So far we don't have any really viable options. We found this one house that was built in 1983 that is 1922 SF! The really cool thing is that it has an outdoor atrium/courtyard in the middle of the house. I've never seen that before! It's probably a 10x10 space that is completely open to the outside (like a doughnut). Blake and I have discovered we get depressed in a house without light pretty easily. In our current house it has SO many big windows and that has been a big blessing. So, having an outdoor atrium in the middle of the house would be wonderful. I love everything about the house except for that it's on a 1/3 acre of land (who's gonna mow that?), the master bath is open to the masterbedroom (like the sinks are on the side of the bedroom and you enter a little door for the toilet and shower), and that it's a smoker's house. Do you think a new coat of paint and new carpet would take care of that?

Then we got all excited about a house in our favorite neighborhood, but then found out it was under contract. So, it's very up and down emotions-wise. So we'll just wait and hope and pray the right house comes along :)