spacious

It's too late to write again but I was just marveling at how large and clean my living room looks again, now that the Christmas tree is gone. It always amazes me. I do miss the nativity scene tho'. It was absolutely beautiful... the muted colors against the green wall behind it. I hope I took a picture. That scene may not happen again. Today I went apartment shopping. No real news on that front yet. But it may be coming soon. Good night. :)

Once was Lost. Now is Found...

This picture shows two very momentous events in my Arkansas history:

1. The first snow of the year! (tho a week or so ago we had some flurries and even collected a flurry drift in our doorway... so even tho' this is the second time I've seen snow fall from the sky it's the only time the ground has begun to turn white) They predicted 3-5 inches! For all of you mid-westerners who are sick to death of snow, humor me. It's super exciting! :)

2. Marion got a Starbucks! I'm drinking a chai tea latte from only 5 minutes away instead of 25 or 35 or 45 (those are the three Starbucks in Memphis that I know of). The line for the drive thru was out of the parking lot and on to the street. I knew it would be a hit. Now if only a target would move in next door (there's a movie theater slated for the area too) I know it would be a hit.

SO also the picture shows that we found our camera. It was hiding on our bookshelf under a big dark drop cloth in the living room. Also, the whole ground is white now. I should have waited to take the picture till it looked like a good-ish amount of snow... but why risk it? It might melt or I might get busy and forget to document this once in a year experience. YAY FOR SNOW!

Here's some more proof that our camera is back safe and sound. ;)

This is our yard on Wednesday after a big rain storm. This lake ate up almost a third of our yard and a third of the street as well.
Maybe I should have made this picture bigger. This abandoned house is a few roads away from ours. I absolutely love it.
This is Bell Road, driving up to our house. :) Isn't it lovely?

Here's the first day of ceiling sanding and the cats enjoying the ladder in the new addition to the living room.

This is Walter after a few minutes on the job (the dust you see is in the air. I thought it was on the lens. Nope, it's just that dusty) and a larger view of the room a few days ago. Now all that's left is to sand the kitchen and paint the room. Can't wait! (oh and flooring... but that's next)

thanks to walter

wally was absolutely wonderful to me and took time with mike to take pictures of our house to show my mom (i ran out of time while packing up for the flight). here's what he sent me:


here's the view from our living room into our kitchen and dining rooms. notice the brand new dryer through the open door. it came while i've been in chicago and i can't wait to get a chance to try it out! the other door leads to a small porch, our back yard, and a field of (once) sunflowers (their season is officially over in AR). the small porch is attached to a decently sized storage room that we're going to open our house into, put in grand windows and make a sun room/breakfast nook. hooray for beautiful views and sunny skies! Oh, and there are many plans on how to fix up our kitchen. The only constant one is to remove that wallpaper (and fast).


Here's the view from our dining room into the living room (complete with Sputnik).



Here is our office, so far. I spent a good part of the day clearing out boxes and organizing books so that this room could finally be walkable. We're planning to do some renovating so it's hard to know always how much to unpack and how much to leave for a short ways (we hope) down the road. it's a balancing act. our desk, on the other hand, is super cool. ;) that's something i do hope to fix before too long.

Here's Walter's work out room. He's been super dedicated lately! You really can tell. He's losing weight and gaining muscle and looking super hot. i don't mind one bit. :)

Here's our bedroom (again, with Sputnik... but no Calvin, wonder where he's hiding). We're still working on getting our bed completely put together. A few pieces of hardware got lost in the move and we haven't replaced them yet. I love laying on the bed and looking out in to the hall where the walls are a beautiful green. The yellow of the bedroom walls and the green of the hallway seem peaceful and restful to me. They make me happy. We also have half bath attached to our bedroom.


This is the full bath down the hall. It's a work in progress as well. I found some fabric I'd like to make a shower curtain out of today. I'm pretty excited about it!


This, my friends, is a testimony to my geekiness. I needed a place to store my pictures until I found permanent wall space for them. I shoved them in this basket and then shoved it into the bathroom. I glanced at it later and realized that it was a "basket of flowers" and decided it must be meant to be. Walter (or Mike) rearranged this so more of the flowers are visible. I'm very happy with our house. It's by no means decorated yet but it is visibly lived in and becoming wonderfully cozy. I love seeing things begin to take shape and I'm ecstatic that it's stayed as clean as it has. I'm building in good habits. It's definitely an up hill battle. Not having a car or job to take me away from my house has been a big help, however. It's a good time to in grain some habits. :)

Hope you enjoyed the tour. I'm off to bed so that tomorrow I can finish painting my mom's room, spend lotsa time with Karla, finish making our flower (my rose, her cana) craft together, buy some quick essentials I haven't found in Memphis yet, and repack to head home the day after. Tomorrow will definitely come quickly (and speed by, I'm sure)!

good day sunshine

we're officially in our house! everything we own is officially not there yet... but it's moving over in small batches. life seems a bit more manageable that way, i believe.

we began moving our furniture in on Thursday, added just a little bit on Friday, more on Saturday and church and family on Sunday. Monday we finally set up the bedroom and brought the cats to stay.

Last night was our first night in our new home!

We had Josh and Jon and Pam over to watch Tombstone, eat popcorn and enjoy the quiet surroundings together. This morning I got out of bed and glanced out the window and was amazed at the beauty of it all: the blue sky, large yard, and field of sunflowers just behind... all that framed by gauzy white curtains in my very own bedroom. what a great start to the day!

I made my way to the door to go for a short jog but opened the door to too much heat and absolutely no shade. I'm going to have to get up earlier in the morning to take advantage of our long private road. that's the goal for tomorrow.

August has been blistering. 5 people have died so far in Memphis due to the heat. We're in a drought and it's easy to tell which fields are watered and which fields rely on rain. Thank God our fields are doing all right. On August 2nd the temperature hit 102 and it hasn't dipped below 100 since. It's been prime swimming weather if you can just stay inside until evening (tho' the water almost gets too warm). Today I spent the entire day inside cleaning my kitchen and bathrooms and unpacking boxes. Tomorrow I'll make a point to leave my home and take a dip in the pool.

poised and ready

we put money down on a house!!

as walter put it, we are no longer homeless. hip hip hooray!

we did not choose either of the houses i'd last talked about. an offer on the house i'd asked for prayer concerning never materialized. However, i think that God used the time we spent waiting in limbo to prepare us and give us clarity to make our decision our own. i couldn't be more thankful for how he worked that out. He is good.

We chose to live in and renovate the small house on 3 acres that we'd looked at and considered buying sight unseen from PA! How funny is that? We could have bought it 3 months ago and ended up with the same exact location... but not the same exact experience. I'm sure I wouldn't have known it was the exact right thing for us to do. And for that assurance, I'm glad God stalled our plans for a bit.

I'm happy to go into why this is such a perfect fit for us... as long as it's not tonight. It's been a long day and i am dang tired. I got up and went swimming, did laundry, made lunch, went out to explore the outsides of our new home, ate sunflower seeds fresh from the sunflower (soon to be OUR sunflowers!! :) ), ran around in the hot sun, drove around in the hot sun exploring our farm land, came home, talked to mom before heading out to east memphis to buy a cardigan (i also got a dress. now i have two outfits for sundays. yay i'm going to church!) and then on to dorothy's for a cookout. Nothing was too stressful but being outside can take it out of you and we didn't get home until 10:40 at least. So I am done. Plus, I need to be in a good mood so church can be a positive experience.

I am really excited about living in that house and growing a lush garden and hanging up clothes to dry and and building and fixing up our house. I just can't at all portray it in the tired state that i'm in. you'll just have to take my word for it. :)

WE GOT A HOUSE! HOORAY!!!

(oh, and the current home owners left for vacation this morning so we have to wait until august 8th to close and move in. it'll be soon!)

waiting (copied from my xanga)

We put an offer on a house (a beautiful house) that will soon go up for auction due to foreclosure. The "owner" approved the offer but we are waiting on the bank (since "owner" is probably not the best term for someone sitting on foreclosure). We gave them until Friday at 5 to give us some sort of answer (yes, no, counter offer, something...). They called us and said they needed one extra business day and we gave it. Monday came and went and our realtor called them to find out what was up. They told her they'd call her with news the next day at 1:00. Yesterday at 4:00 we told them they need to get back to us finally. They have until today.

Please pray that we have some sort of answer here today and that we do not need to remove our offer from the table.

We know that God has a house for us and that it may not be this one. I'm ok with that. I would like to hear the word, however. Even if they come back with a no that at least is an answer.

Thanks

(ps. the movers came!! everything we owned was in there!! Praise God! we've got our filing cabinet full of important documents again.)

a place for hammocks

We put an offer on a house. It isn't absolutely everything we wanted but I don't feel as though I'm settling. The floor plan is open, spacious, and airy. There are millions of windows to let in the sunlight! There's a fireplace, little ledges on which to place things, a bay window in the front, and a room above the large attic. The lot is small but situated beside the community's lake/common area giving it a larger feel and space enough for a larger dog. Out the backdoor is a small gravely type porch that we want to build a pergola on top of.



We would grow morning glories and grape vines up the posts and over top for shade. It would be serene, especially with the lake immediately to our left.

Only time will tell. Our offer is good until Friday. How very exciting and very scary. :) I am quite pleased.