Dag Nabbit

When we moved into our house last August, it wasn't long before we noticed that we had a little furry friend that liked to frequent our "park-like" (as described by the seller's agent) backyard. It wasn't Tessa, of course; it was a cute little fuzzy bunny.

We spotted him (her? who knows) every once in a while, hopping along through our grass, near our bushes, under our trees. We saw him less during the winter months, but as the weather grew warmer again, the sightings increased. Then, within the last few days, it started to seem like this bunny was everywhere.


You know that saying, "multiply like rabbits"? Yeah, well... you know what's coming next, don't you?

There are multiple bunnies.

They look a lot like this guy (Credit: Wikipedia)

I woke up to a beautiful morning today, bright and sunny. I stumbled into the bathroom to get myself into the shower, and I took a few moments to look out over our backyard and admire how well the greenery has all filled in now. Immediately, I spotted our furry friend. And then a second bunny came out of nowhere and started chasing him. I continued getting ready to shower, then took another peek. Now, I saw one bunny hanging in the middle of the yard, and noticed some activity toward the back of the yard--TWO bunnies running around. 1 + 2 = THREE BUNNIES.

I quickly walked downstairs to alert Michael to the bunny baby boom, then went back upstairs to get my butt in the shower. It was getting late now.

But then I took one more look out the window and OH MY GOD THERE WERE FOUR BUNNIES.

We have a bunny infestation, y'all.

I like them as much as I can like a wild furry creature. I mean, out of all types of infestations to have, I'm happy to have bunnies, of all things. But, uh... what do we do?

A few weeks back, we were talking to our next door neighbor and somehow got on the subject of the wild little rabbit we had seen many times before. He actually said to us, "You guys have to be careful about your deck. A few years back, the previous owners had a problem with a bunch of bunnies living under there." At the time, we were all, "Oh, really?" and kind of brushed it off.

Apparently, bunnies find our deck (and our yard) to be quite a cozy home.

Michael did some research this morning and it seems that there isn't really an easy way to get rid of them. Some solutions involve moth balls, or predator urine. Which begs the question: where the hell do you buy predator urine? Plus, Tessa would have a BALL rolling around in that. Yum.

We're leaning toward trying out my mom's tender heart trap and then driving the bunny wayyyyy down the road to the country and setting him/her free. And then repeating that step into infinity until we somehow capture them all.

Gahhh. Let the adventure begin.

Has anyone ever had their yard overtaken by rabbits? How did you handle it? Any advice?

(Also, did you know that "dag nabbit" derives from "dang rabbit" from the old Bugs Bunny cartoons? You learn something new every day.)

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Smells Like [Christmas] Spirit

We didn't waste any time making the transition from Thanksgiving to Christmas. I've always been one to respect the turkey, but as of 8:00 a.m. on Black Friday, we were off and running to Christmas-ify the house.

The main driver of this activity was the fact that it was 60 degrees outside, and that is basically unheard of for November in these parts. If we had to be outside putting up lights on the house, we wanted to be doing it without frozen fingers. 'Nuf said.

We started with a morning run to a nearby Walmart to get supplies. Since we had never had an exterior to decorate when we lived in the condo, we were lacking a lot of the basics. After we loaded our cart with an ungodly amount of boxes of lights, we were on our way. Once home, we put Nora down for a nap and got working. It was seriously beautiful outside.

Nora blessed us by taking a really long nap, so we were able to get a lot done. Once she was up, we drove out to a local tree farm to meet up with my brother, Tyler, and sister-in-law, Marie. This is our first year getting a real tree (never bothered to do it in the condo) so we were excited.

I wore Nora in the Ergo for the hunt. First, Marie and I plotted out our route using the map. :)

Then, we were on our way.

Initially, we all thought we wanted blue spruces, but once we checked them out up close and personal, we realized that they have REALLY sharp and prickly needles. With a little one in the house, we decided against that.

After a little more hunting and exploring the different varieties, we found our winners. Coincidentally, they were right next to each other!

Tyler cut theirs down first...

...and then Michael took care of ours.

We're used to freezing our asses off during Christmas tree hunting, so to do this so comfortably was a real treat. :)

After hauling the trees back to the cashier, getting them trimmed and bailed, we loaded them onto our cars and headed back for a few more photos ops.

First, Nora was happy to sit with Santa in his sleigh.

"Not so fast, Santa. I'm not done telling you what I want for Christmas."

I don't know what it means when she does this with her hands, but I absolutely love it.

Then it was time to haul our tree home, have some dinner, and get Nora into bed.

Once Nora was down for the night, we finished putting up the lights in our windows, and brought our tree inside.

Like my candy cane pajama pants? Festive.

Finally, it was complete. We promptly collapsed on the couch to watch Home Alone, but both passed out about 20-30 minutes into it.

I love Christmastime.

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Two steps forward; One step back

Well, hell. A week gone by without blogging.

It's not coincidental that the last time I blogged was last Monday--that was the day before all hell broke loose. Last Monday, our family room project still looked like it was going to be complete by the weekend. Even after experiencing a setback, we were in good spirits because we had busted our asses all weekend, were back on track, and were moving forward.

Then, Tuesday night, things fell apart and I pretty much had a nervous breakdown.

Long, long story, but essentially, we got primer and both coats of paint on the new ceiling before we realized that things weren't looking quite right. Each joint (the seams) where the pieces of drywall came together was producing what appeared to be shadows when looking up at the ceiling. Needless to say, it kind of looked like shit. Imagine your nice, smooth ceiling (that you have worked SO HARD for), but with shadows criss-crossing their way over it, making each individual piece of drywall stick out like a sore thumb. It wasn't going to fly.

At first, I thought it was an issue with the primer that we used. I was so, so pissed, but thought that the problem could be fixed by starting over with the painting portion--a coat of different primer, plus another two coats of paint. But, after snapping some pics, sharing with our knowledgeable friends and my dad, we were told that it wasn't a primer issue--it was a drywall mud issue. In other words, we had messed up during the mudding/sanding stage.

And at that time, I just really wanted to crawl into a hole and die. Dramatic? Yes. But holy hell, to know that all of the blood, sweat, and tears that had already gone into that room were for nothing was just devastating.

Thankfully, we have great people in our lives, because our friend Pete came to the rescue, spending Thursday and Friday at our house fixing it for us. I am still too scared to proclaim it all a success, but I will say that we've put primer and one coat of paint on the ceiling so far, and things are looking much better. We are working hard to try to get the room painted and ready for the carpet guy to FINALLY come to install the new carpet on Friday so that we might POSSIBLY have a real live FAMILY ROOM this weekend. You know, with a couch to sit on. And carpet for the baby to play on. And a TV with a DVR (hooray!). I don't even remember what it's like to be able to relax on a couch with a glass of wine. I have big plans for reacquainting myself with that, though.

Still, I'm so traumatized by all of the setbacks we've experienced that I'm afraid to get my hopes up. BUT we'll see. If there's anything we've learned been reminded of so far, it's that things just NEVER go as planned. Why is that? It is just so defeating. It makes me never want to take on any home improvement project ever again, which is a shame since we have a houseful of them. Maybe it's kind of like childbirth--I just need some time and distance to "forget" what a pain in the ass it all is before taking on something else. Which is hard when you have a half-finished kitchen project staring you in the face every day.

Baby steps. I'm trying to take baby steps.

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Neverending

It seems like our lives will never be "normal" again.

I think back to the days when all we had to do was a few chores in the evening. Make dinner. Do dishes. Wash and prep Nora's bottles, make our lunches for the next day. Maybe a few loads of laundry. Clean a bathroom. Then? Collapse on the couch with the laptop or the remote control. I had time to upload and sort through pictures. I had (some) time to blog.

Weekends were full of errands--some fun, some not. We had family dinners. We occasionally went out to eat. We spent plenty of time playing with Nora. Once she was in bed, we'd watch TV, or maybe rent a movie.

Life is just so much different right now.

I don't really mean to complain--I know how lucky we are to have a house, even if it is one that takes up so much time. And despite the imperfections and the amount of work it is requiring, I really do love it. I love having space. I love having a driveway, and a backyard. An actual dining room. Multiple bathrooms. It's just that I guess I thought that after five weeks of living here (six since closing), we would be able to sit back and enjoy it a bit more.

I never intended for us to end up with a fixer-upper. I knew that this place needed some work, but it all seemed so minor when we were looking at it. But it turned out that things that seemed small ended up being a bigger deal than we thought. And simple things take more time than we planned. The funny part is that compared to other houses we looked at, this place needed considerably less work. Can you imagine if we had ended up with one of the other ones? Good god.

Before Nora's birthday party, the pressure was enormous. My dad was coming to stay with us, and if we didn't get the upstairs in decent shape and prepared for new carpet--and then get the carpet installed--we couldn't get our new bedroom furniture delivered, and my dad would not have had any place to sleep. Plus, we invited like 50 people (we are crazy) to our baby's first birthday so we wanted the house to look at least somewhat decent.

During those first weeks, we worked ourselves ridiculously hard. There was no rest. During the week, we worked full-time jobs, came home with Nora, fed her, (briefly) played with her, bathed her, and put her to bed. Once she was down, we maybe ate something, and then we worked, worked, worked until we collapsed into bed at midnight. The next day, we'd do it all over again. Weekends consisted of multiple trips to Lowe's and Home Depot. My mother-in-law generously offered to take Nora for a few hours each day, so that we'd be able to get more work done. When we did have Nora, one of us took care of her while the other did some kind of project around the house. It was exhausting.

The week leading up to the party was crazy, but we did it. The carpet was installed on Thursday, my dad arrived on Friday, and our bedroom furniture came a few hours after he did. The party on Saturday was a success.

After all of that, you'd think we would give ourselves a little break.

You'd be wrong.

On Sunday morning (Nora's actual birthday, mind you), two of our (very handy and do-it-yourself-savvy) friends arrived at 10:00 a.m. I took Nora on a very hefty Home Depot run while Michael, our friends, and my dad ripped down nearly all of the drywall in our family room and started to replace it.

Two weeks later, we are still working on that damn drywall project in the family room. Last night, we went to put primer on the new walls and ceiling (finally!) only to be faced with a fairly significant setback.  :::sigh:::  Such is life.

Last week, I came down with something--extreme nausea and dizziness--so I was down for the count for five days. On the one hand, it totally sucked to feel like that, and to be so unproductive. On the other hand, OHMYGOD IT WAS SO NICE TO CATCH A BREAK. But as soon as I felt decent again (on Friday), I put myself back to work.

The past two weekends, we've slowed down a lot. We do our projects when Nora is napping or in bed for the night, but otherwise, we are trying to treat our weekends like normal weekends. Still, I just want to know when this is all going to be over. If you've moved into a house that had a lot of "projects"--how long was it until you were truly settled? (Please don't tell me never.) I know that "constant" home improvement projects come with the territory of homeownership, but this is just ridiculous.

The place is starting to feel like home, but like I said before--I just want to be able to enjoy it. Is it too much to ask?

On the bright side, Nora's room is nearly complete (finally) as we have been working on hanging things up on her walls. And we just finished the dining room this past weekend, so that's something. Photos to come soon. :)

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Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Or, at least that's what they say. So y'all have to be IN LOVE with me by now, right?

Kidding.

Seriously, though, I miss everyone. I miss writing. But believe me when I say that there is just NO.TIME. I have high hopes that life will return to some semblance of normal in mid-September. We shall see.

I did want to drop in for a little update, though.

First of all--we've reached a resolution (albeit a temporary one) with the condo. Last week, we were still meeting with potential tenants (found through Craigslist) pretty much every day. Things were getting somewhat discouraging. We had a lot of traffic, but no one had gone so far as to submit an application or make a friggin' decision.

On Thursday, however, we met with a woman who spent five minutes walking through the place and then turned to us and said the magic words, "I like it. I want to fill out an application." Music to our ears, I'll tell you. Things seemed good from the start, except for one thing--she couldn't move in until October 1st at the earliest. This wasn't entirely unexpected, given that we were now in the last full week of August, and most people cannot pick up and move within a week or so. But still, we figured if we could get a lease signed--great. It beats living with the burden of knowing we have an empty property for who-knows-how-long. So, when I got back to the office, I quickly shot her an e-mail with the application.

Meanwhile, our friends came back into the picture. You know, the ones who I told you about a few weeks back, who actually responded to our ad on Craigslist without knowing it was our place. It was only through e-mail that we discovered each other's true identities. HA! Anyway, when that first came about, we were hesitant to rent to friends (you know, the whole mixing personal and business thing), but brought them by to look at the unit anyway. After some consideration, they decided to keep looking because our town was not their first choice location. We figured it wasn't meant to be, and let it go, continuing to look for tenants through Craigslist.

Well, fast-forward to last week. A few weeks had passed from our initial conversations with our friends. We hadn't yet found tenants. They hadn't yet found a place, either. And so we somehow ended up back together, in a full-circle moment. They came back to us, asking if we would be willing to do a six-month lease with them, because now they're actually not even sure if they're going to stay in the state--they're considering moving south in the spring. After discussing, Michael and I countered, asking if they would bump it up to an 8-month lease instead. We didn't want to end up with an empty property in February, because it's a crappy time of year to try to rent/sell.

Done deal. Lease was signed that same evening. Win-win situation for all. Or, at least it should be, if everything goes according to plan. Which we think it will.

We still could've moved forward with the application and signing the lease with a stranger, but there were some obvious cons associated with that arrangement--the biggest of which was the timing. With her, we would've been entering into an October 1 to September 30 lease, and let's face it--that is not the best time of year to be doing ANYTHING related to the real estate market in this area. In a year (or whenever she decided to vacate), when we accounted for transition/vacancy period, we would likely have been looking for a new tenant for November 1 or later, which is not ideal. Plus, trying to put the condo back on the market that late in the year was not going to be great for us, either.

With our friends, the lease runs through April 30. Sure, it would've been nice to be able to breathe a little easier for a whole year instead of just 8 months, but this way, our friends have the option to move out of the area in the spring, and we are able to put the condo back on the market during the "best" time of year to do so. In the meantime, we'll be able to look for new tenants as well, and the spring/early summer is the best time for that, too.

Oh, and did I mention that our friends already moved in? :) That was one of the other benefits--they were actually squatting at his parents' house with most of their stuff in storage, so they were MORE THAN READY to get out. We signed the lease on Thursday night, they moved in on Sunday. And we were paid rent for September, saving us from that mortgage payment--meaning we never had to pay for the condo for any sort of vacancy period. AND they didn't want us to bother repainting the place for them.

Seriously.

With that quick turnaround, though, came some added stress, of course. On Friday morning, the condo was NOWHERE NEAR move-in ready. We still had random stuff around. There were holes in the walls from our frames and such. Everything needed to be scrubbed like whoa.

After Nora went to bed on Friday night, I spent 4.5 hours at the condo by myself, removing the rest of our stuff, cleaning blinds, spackling holes, etc. etc. Then, on Saturday, we had to spend the majority of the day out of town for our nephew's birthday. When we returned in the evening, I put Nora to bed and once again went over to the condo--but my mom came with me to help. And thank goodness, because the two of us spent 6.5 hours finishing the place. By the time we were done, we had scrubbed every nook and cranny. I painted touch-ups on the walls where we had spackled. I caulked. We swept out the garage. I pulled weeds. My mom made the kitchen and bathroom SPOTLESS.

And it was also 2:00 a.m. It sucked. But it was done.

(For the record, Michael was home working on some "new house" projects during all of this. Someone had to stay back with Nora. I just don't want anyone to be all, "Where was Michael in all of this?")

In short, I learned that preparing for tenants is ridiculously hard work. It was like preparing for house guests x 1,000. Especially since *we* had been the ones living there, and we knew the tenants moving in--we didn't want them to discover any grime and think, "OMG, Heather and Michael are so disgusting!" :)

As much as it REALLY stunk to miss out on all of those hours working on the new house, it was nice to have a resolution for the condo, and so quickly. We took the condo off the market, and will plan to re-list in (likely) March to see what happens. Our friends have already said that they'd do everything to help us sell it when the time comes--keeping it clean for showings and such. (Add another point in the "why this arrangement works" column.)

So, now we are back to busting our asses on the new house in prep for our very first house guest (yayyy for having room for house guests!)--MY DAD--who arrives next Friday for Nora's birthday party. And, you know, all of the short-term guests we will have at the actual party. Eeeek! Every night, we come home from work, feed/play with Nora, put her to bed, eat something ourselves, and work until 11:30-ish, falling into bed (hopefully) by midnight. It's exhausting.

Oh, and this has got to be Nora's least-photographed month of her life. :( It's sad; I feel like time is slipping away. We are so close to the big birthday! I hope to make up for it in the next few weeks.

That's the latest. Hopefully I'll be back with more soon!

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Glimpse

I'm alive!

Though some days, I've questioned that--the late nights up working on the house have resulted in some zombie-like mornings, that's for sure.

We're work-work-working away, trying to get as much done as possible so we can get settled and, you know, host a first birthday party. (We're CRAZY.)

What's important to know is that we're officially moved into the house. We got a crew together on Saturday and moved all of the big stuff, and started sleeping at the house that night. But we're not at all settled, that's for sure. So much work to be done, so much unpacking to do... I honestly try not to think about the entire scope of things, because then I get overwhelmed.

Anyway, all of this + no internet access = I don't have much time for a post to tell you all about what we're working on. Plus, it'll be more fun to show you and give more details when we have "before" AND "after" shots to share--so I'll just leave you with a few pics to give you a glimpse into our lives these days! Some of these are from the new house, some are from the mayhem that became the condo during the packing stages. Oh, and note--these are all taken with our point-and-shoot. Our DSLR hasn't even made it out of the bag in like a week. (SAD!)

Enjoy!

As you can see, we are dealing with some BEAUTIFUL carpet. And by "dealing," I mean RIPPING THAT SHIT OUT.It's really satisfying to take a knife to ugly carpet. I'm just sayin'.

Outdated style abounds. We've been removing wallpaper in our kitchen. We had contests about who could rip off the largest pieces without it tearing.

(I won.)

Who doesn't love a fresh coat of paint when they move into a place? We're no different--but trying to paint the entire house has been a challenge, to say the least. We have exactly *ONE* room done, and that is Nora's. This pic is of our living room. We have one coat done, but need to do a second one + priming and painting the trim. Ick.

Back at the condo... Moving day.

The moving crew. Love every single one of 'em!

And, of course, we had to end with a quick shot of our sweet girl playing in her new front yard.

More to come!

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Unsettled

We finally got into our new house on Friday evening.

And after working tirelessly the entire weekend, trying to do as much as possible in too short a period of time, we are back in our condo for one more week. And instead of being ridiculously excited about it all, I am feeling...

...unsettled.

I am sore. From the muscles in my head and neck, all the way down to my toes. Carpet ripping, wallpaper stripping, ceiling painting, paint rolling and cutting in... it's exhausting. All of that work, and we still have MILES to go. In all reality, the house is nowhere near ready to move in. But we sort of have to, given that we can't get much done until we do. The issue we have is that Nora's bedtime is so early that we can't get over to the house to do anything during the week. And to become strictly weekend warriors would mean that it would take FOREVER for us to finish everything. At least, if we're living there, we'll be able to do things like painting after Nora is in bed each night.

So, this week, we're preparing to pick up and move from a perfectly good, remodeled, clean, lovely little condo into a bigger, creaky, messy, torn apart house. We're leaving "home" for... not home. It just feels like it's going to take forever to make this new place ours.

Is it normal to feel like this? For months, we've been discussing the thousands of reasons why it is such a good thing that we are moving. We've talked about the hundreds of things that we will not miss.

Now, I find myself feeling incredibly sad about leaving. I am feeling nostalgic, and catch myself thinking things like, "This is our last Sunday night in this condo. We will never again enjoy a weekend here." I think about how this is the only home that Nora has ever known, how she's comfortable here and knows it's her house. And how we'll be taking her away from it forever. AND IT MAKES ME WANT TO CRY. I swear, tears are welling up in my eyes as I type it this very minute.

Adding to the unsettling feelings is the fact that we still do not have a resolution for the condo. Still no word from the (seemingly promising) buyers who came through the past few weeks, so we're assuming nothing is going to happen there. And now the tenant who we thought was a sure thing is being a little wishy-washy with us, so we're not feeling very confident about that, either.

So, I prepare to pack. To leave comfort and head to a place that still feels like someone else's house.

I hope it's going to start feeling like home soon.

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