Can't resist Cupcake

We got a new cat yesterday. Her name is Cupcake, but we've decided to call her Cici for short. I saw her Saturday while volunteering at Humane Society of Indianapolis. We went back yesterday and she took to us like a fish to water. She's already settled in, just hanging out and being cute.

Here's some pictures of her from her Petfinder profile.




I wish I had better pictures to share, but the camera cable is in my suitcase in the closet. The stupid doorknob fell off and we can't get it open. Gotta love old houses!

Aaron's House Remodel Part III

I'm afraid I won't even recognize my house when I get back there on Thursday.

Before:


After:


His newest effort - he ripped up this stupid piece of wood that sat at the base of the deck. It was wobbly and water just pooled up underneath it whenever it rained. The wood wasn't even attached to anything, just lying there. Underneath it he found a bunch of cement pieces that match the little planter to the side, so he used those and filled it in with pea gravel.

He also fixed that first step on the deck that was uneven too.

I'm not sure what's gotten in to him, but maybe I should start a list.

House to Home

Slowly but surely we're making this place our own. This week's additions:

We finally got our wedding "album" back from Michael's, where Aaron took it to get framed. They did an amazing job.


We'd talked about painting our mantle brick red, and it turned out awesome. We also got some sconces. Next up - getting candles for them.


Aaron found the PERFECT bench for our entry way. We'd looked at a couple options but nothing was quite right. This one is beautiful, sturdy, and best of all - was on clearance. The throw pillows from our couch work perfectly.


I love our home more every day.

Let the games begin

We had a general contractor out this morning to do an estimate on expanding our upstairs bathroom. Aaron just cannot abide by how small it is, and must have a jacuzzi tub.

The fence guy came around 2 to give us an estimate on fixing the fence. Obviously, this is our first priority since it blew down last week and it's currently propped up by a couple of boards.

The window guy will be here in the next 20 minutes to give us an estimate on putting vinyl windows in the bathroom. Since the house was built in 1925, the windows are all framed in wood. Back then they didn't have showers - just claw foot tubs. With a shower in there, we've got a shower curtain over the window so the wood doesn't get wet. It's kinda dumb.

Goodbye tax refund, and vacation fund, and tv fund...

When it rains, it pours

And your fence falls down.

Actually, it wasn't even raining, just reallllllly windy last night.

The timing couldn't have been better. We have an outrageous electric bill and a wedding coming up in a month.

Thank goodness the tax returns are on their way.

Hooray for home ownership!

6 weeks.

6 little, tiny, meager, wee weeks.

I am starting to bubble over with excitement! (and nervousness, but hey, that's what the therapist is for haha).

My wedding jewelry arrived on Saturday. It looks awesome. I'm so jazzed. The "guest book" also arrived. I'll just need to get a cool pen for it. My mom said the cake stand was delivered, but she hasn't opened it yet to make sure all the pieces are there and not broken. I'm just waiting on my hair stuff and we still need to get our attendants gifts.

I was supposed to have my first fitting for the dress this weekend, but we pushed it back. Rachael, maybe knowing me too well at this point, assured me it will be done in plenty of time and I shouldn't stress out.

I wish we'd gotten our electric bill BEFORE we made the honeymoon plans... our bill is $900! That's a month in the old house, and 6 weeks in the new house. Painful. I hope spring gets here quick so our sad furnace can stop working so hard. Aaron and I are already on spending lockdown.

We're finally getting our AT&T Uverse installed tomorrow. It's only been 6 weeks since we've been without a DVR. It's actually kind of nice, but we've been going out a lot to entertain ourselves. With the aforementioned spending lockdown, the TV will be a cheaper alternative.

HOLY COW WE ARE GETTING MARRIED IN 6 WEEKS!

Success.

We officially have the internets again.

I guess the tech had to come out to the location to set up the DSL, and he saw all the drama we'd been having with AT&T, so he decided to just come to the house and help Aaron install it.

Of course, that was after I spent $27 to overnight the stupid install disk back to Aaron. Oh well. You know that karma (being what it is), would have prevented the DSL from being ready today if I hadn't. I'm considering it a $27 donation to cosmic good will.

Let's just hope the Uverse installation on Feb 2 goes more smoothly than the DSL install did.

Speaking of which - I gotta find us somewhere to watch the Charger game this weekend!

Woe is Aaron.

There will be no DirecTV at the new house. They can't get a clear line of sight for the dish, except to possibly put it in the front right corner of the house.

Um, no. There will be no satellite dish on the FRONT of my house. Yuck.

AT&T Uverse is available at our house, which actually makes ME very happy because we will only have one freaking bill again. So nice. Plus, the total for Uverse (phone/TV/internet) is about what we were paying for the DirecTV alone. Save money too! Yay!

I feel bad though, that Aaron may not always get the games he wants to watch.

Oh well. We all have to sacrifice sometimes.

I hope we don't have any more problems because the customer service at AT&T sucks the big one. Our DSL was supposed to get hooked up a week ago, and still isn't. Every time they say "It will be on by 8pm this date" and it's not, we call, sit on hold for an hour, go through a huge drama, and then are told something different. Sales told us one thing, service another, provisioning another, tech support another. Good lord people. How many different software applications do you have? None of them talk to each other? (on a side note - hope they aren't clients of ours lol)

Aaron finally had to lay the smack down today. Hopefully it works and it will be all set tomorrow, as promised. Of course, I realized about 5pm today that I accidentally took the install disk with me to Roanoke, so I had to run to FedEx and overnight it home. Oops!

Love being a homeowner!

Well, hello 2009!

I've been without Internet for just about 2 weeks now. It's been... uh, liberating? Actually, it was really great. I got a lot of stuff done!

Aaron and I headed to San Diego for Christmas. Everyone knew but his mom. It was really fun showing up on her doorstep on Monday. I just wish I could have seen the look on her face. Oh well, that's what I get standing behind a guy almost a foot taller than me.

We got back to Indy on Dec 27 and moved into the new house on Dec 29. IT IS AWESOME.

We were smart and just paid movers which was worth every penny - if only to avoid what would have been the inevitable frustration and arguing. We only had a couple casualties - a small ding in the wall of the old house by the door, a scratch in my dresser, and two broken drinking glasses. I would bet that's far far less than if we'd done it ourselves.

The first two nights in our house were weird - it was soooooo quiet! The house is masonry, which blocks out a lot more noise than a sided house. Also, our street is much quieter. The only thing we can hear is the occasional fire truck (and the loud drunk people slamming taxi doors on NYE). Plus, with the furnace in the basement, we don't hear any of that noise, unlike our old place where the furnace was basically right outside our bedroom.

The house is mostly unpacked - except for Aaron's office. His desk wouldn't fit out the doorway of the old house (it was assembled inside), so we elected to buy a new one rather than try and salvage the old piece of junk. We figure that once we attempt to disassemble it, it will just fall apart. It was put together with a prayer initially anyway.

We had a bit of a plumbing fiasco on NYE which resulted in us shutting our water off for 24 hours... but Aaron successfully fixed it and now we can use the shower in the master bath. YAY!

By the way, don't start house projects on a holiday. You'll inevitably need to run to Home Depot 354 times before it's fixed, and that's no bueno when HD closes early.

Speaking of New Years - Aaron and I are party animals! We ate some dinner, watched a movie, and were in bed at 9:30. We did wake up at 12:10am (slamming taxi doors and all that) but promptly went back to sleep. Scandalous!

I've got a few New Years Resolutions though.
1. Lose some weight before the wedding so that stupid dress fits
2. Learn how to use my sewing machine
3. Live more in the moment. Plan for the future, but quit worrying about it.

So far, 2009 has been AWESOME (man, am I from California or what?). We are in our new house. The Chargers beat the Colts. I think this is gonna be a great year!

Holy Cow

We did it.

I made it home on Thursday night.

We closed on the house Friday morning. It's honestly and truly ALL OURS. AIEEEEEE!

The closing was a bit of a fiasco. There was some disagreement about the estimated taxes and the seller did not want to budge. Well, neither did we. Contractually, he was bound to pay the taxes. Sorry dude. That got worked out but then the bank wire from our loan company wasn't funded yet, so we couldn't have the keys.

We left around 11:45am and went to get some lunch, thinking it would be done before we got back. Well, then I remembered I had a doctor's appointment at noon. Rushed over there, and Aaron headed to the new house to wait for the guy coming to change out the water meter.

Of course, the guy showed up at 12:05pm and Aaron was there at 12:15. How come those guys only come at the beginning of their time block when you're not home? If you are, of course, they show up 5 minutes before the end of the time frame. Whatever. They are coming back tomorrow.

We officially got the keys to the house at 1pm.

Our friends all came over around 6pm to have a glass of champagne and tour the new house. We have great friends.

Aaron and I then celebrated with a delicious dinner of Taco Bell, because we both were just too exhausted to cook or go somewhere to eat.

I decided yesterday that we needed to paint Aaron's office before we move in. It was a nasty sherbert yellow color. Today - it's a beautiful deep olive which goes perfectly with the mustard yellow in the dining room. I can't wait to paint the upstairs rooms too.

I'll post pictures soon.

Home ownership is awesome.

Hiccups

We're closing on the house at 9am tomorrow.

Of course, all flights from Roanoke were cancelled after 10am today due to fog.

There's a number of other airports within a few hours of Roanoke, so another gal and I drove 3 hours to Charlotte, NC.

I'm booked on a flight direct to Indy at 8:10pm, arriving at 10pm.

So far, it's not delayed or cancelled. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

One Week and One Day

8 days from now we'll be signing our lives away to the mortgage company. I feel like this is just a crazy damned time to be buying a house, but it got us a good deal and a low interest rate, so I have to just be thankful.

It's hard for me to make any kind of serious commitment. I just don't like it. Heck, I even have trouble sometimes deciding what to eat for dinner! Should I go with the new entree that sounds interesting and delicious, or stick with my tried-and-true favorite that I know will satisfy me? (In case you're wondering, I almost always go the safe route and get the same thing)

I've been trying very hard not to let myself panic over all this. I love this house. I know we will be happy there. I think it's a good investment. We aren't being crazy and buying more than we can afford - in fact, we're being very prudent. I know that we're financially capable of making the payments and still having money left over for those crazy things that seem to crop up at the last minute.

To be honest, I could have had $100k in the bank before we started this process and I'd still be crazy. It's never enough.

Sometimes you just have to throw caution to the wind and take a chance. I don't know why, in my wise old age, I'm getting so conservative. I used to risk everything - all the time, for a little glimpse of fun or happiness. I guess maybe that's growing up. It kinda sucks.

So I'm hanging on... a little bit not dealing with the house, but a little bit of secretly planning how we'll decorate for Christmas next year, where my dishes and pots and silverware will go in the kitchen, what color tile I'll want in the bathrooms, where the heck all my clothes will go since our closet is the size of a small suitcase.

This is exciting, and terrifying, and awesome.

Things are moving along

Things with the house and the wedding are moving along.

We've been crazy busy this week rounding up all the documents that were needed to complete our home loan process, but it looks like there's only 2 documents remaining and both should be complete tomorrow.

We're also getting the home inspection tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, I have a training call from 11-3pm so I won't be there. Probably better anyway, I tend to get a bit stressed with all that stuff. I'm not 100% sure when the appraisal happens, but our loan rep is pleased with everything, so it must be okay.

We've started getting response cards back for the wedding. YAY! So far everyone has responded yes, but that's only 6 people haha. Hopefully not everyone can come or I may be scrambling to find a bigger reception hall! I already know that not everyone can make it, and a lot of the people we invited are little kids who don't really take up much space or food.

I should ask the owner of the Irish Pub if I have to pay for open bar for the kids. That could save us some dough! *grin*

We also decided to go for the photographer... and we actually found one that we both liked. Unfortunately, the guy seems to be a little slow with email, which is really the only way I communicate. Especially being 3 hours ahead here on the East Coast. When I'm ready to talk to people, they are usually still in bed!

My low-key wedding is somehow got complicated. Boo.