Gifting

It's the time of year I love but also dread: Christmas shopping. I love shopping and I do have most people, like my family, under control. It's the other people I dread.

The "other people" are Emily's teacher for preschool and dance and my Secret Santa. What do you get the Secret Santa who doesn't really say much on the paper they filled out? A gift card just says I couldn't figure it out.

The teacher part is really hard to figure out. Emily's dance teacher will probably end up with lotion because I don't know her all that well. I know she dances and drinks Coke after classes, but other than that I have no idea!

Emily's preschool teacher is even more difficult! Not only is she Em's teacher, she is also a very good friend of mine. I know some of her likes and dislikes but I also know she is particular. Shopping for a teacher is hard, because even though I am a teacher I know the kinds of typical teacher gifts that "rock" and the kind that just plain old "suck".

I will probably wander around the mall today looking for the perfect gifts. I just hope I don't jump out the nearest high window during my search! HAHA! :)

An Offer

Yesterday we recieved our first offer for the purchase of our house. While it should have been very exciting, it was not. It was in fact the opposite. It was offensive.

Our house is listed for $139,900. The market is slow because of the time of year so, we knew going into yesterday that the offer coming in was "low". How low we didn't know. I was prepared for a low of $135,000, even $130,000. I was not prepared for the offer of $119,000. That is less than what we paid for the house 7 years ago. I was shocked that someone would even offer that low!

We countered back with $138,500. The replied back with $126,800. Our realtor told their realtor that until they had a realistic offer we would not entertain any further offers. Today they offered $130,00. We countered back with $136,500. They countered back with $136,500 plus our couch downstairs couch and our dining room furniture. We countered back $137,000 and the furniture.

SOLD!

After their trying to get something for nothing, I wonder if it would be appropriate to leave them a house warming gift of a dead plant?

House Pictures

Last time I wrote about the house, now here are some visuals!

Exterior of the house!

Master bedroom

Emily's room

Living room





Living room, kitchen, dining

We are moving right along and we will have a home before we know it!

House Update

It has been a busy few weeks. Everything seems to be flying by, so before it's Christmas I thought that I would share a little about the house.

First, it is all framed up; in fact it is drywalled inside, but I have not yet seen it as the weather was not nice last weekend when I could have made the drive and this week has been rather snowy! From what we have heard, the drywallers are a little behind because we are now unable to go out to the house and paint some rooms because the spraying will not be complete.

Everything for the house is ordered. I finally picked out chandeliers and ordered those last week and that was a job! Too many things to pick from - long hanging, semi-flush mount, oil rubbed bronze, what color of glass...and on and on! The wood for the kitchen came in this week and is sitting in the garage, along with all the tile for the bathrooms and entryways. The garage is starting to look like a regular Lowe's!

Our current house is still for sale and the market is very slow moving right now, so we have not had many lookers. Hopefully it will sell before we have to make 2 mortgage payments!

The new house, by the way, is set to close on Dec. 28. It will be here before I know it!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from "Daphne"!!!

Choices

As anyone who has ever built a house knows, there are only about say one gazillion choices to be made!!

We have appointments like crazy with defferent vendors over the next two weeks to make these choices. Our first and probably biggest choice to be made was house color.

When we built our twin home we fell in love with green immediately and we still love it 7 years later. So, that is our new house color as well - sage green. The rest of the colors are as follows: stone: black, roof: black, soffits and facia: black, garage door and pillars: clay. Can you sense a theme of black and sage? Can't wait to see it. I hope it doesn't suck!

Our next choice was the one that I was most looking forward to: APPLIANCES!! I love to bake and cook and I need my appliances to function really well in my kitchen. So we went with all stainless steele upgraded appliances.

Our fridge has French doors on top and a pull out drawer on the bottom. That awesome fridge has a drawer that can be removed on the bottom for large platters or cake. (CAKE!) Bryce's favorite part of the fridge is the pop can holder in the door.

Next is the microwave: nothing too special there. In fact it is the only appliance that isn't upgraded!

The dishwasher too is pretty cool. It has special scouring jets at the back of the dishwasher for the crusty pans and the top rack is adjustable up and down.

Now for my favorite appliance of all the oven! I got the exact one that I wanted. It has four burners on top with a warming spot and the two front burners have the option to be nine or twelve inch burners. And the oven is Accubake and Convection. Can't wait to bake some cakes in that bad boy!!

Our next choices are going to be plumbing fixtures, toilets, and tubs. I just yawned as I typed that!!

Scraped

Today our lot for our new house was scraped. Tomorrow it will be staked. Friday we will have a hole! Things are getting going...now we hope for no rain!

This is the lot before it was scraped, taken about 2 months ago!

This is the lot after scraping. It's strange to think that a house will go here!

First Day of Preschool

Yesterday was a major milestone for our family: Emily started preschool! Holy cow! How can this little girl already be going to preschool? Wasn't it just yesterday that I brought her home from the hospital? How did this happen?

First Day of Preschool

Long story short...Emily did great. She could have cared less that I was around and even told me to go and ran away from me as I tried to get a quick picture of her and kiss her cheek before going to her classroom! I know this is just the beginning!

Emily lining up with her class

Running away from me!

Floor Plan

Here is a drawing of our future home!

Here is a blue print of our future house. There are a few minor changes that we have made. We will be putting the master closet where the bath is and then putting the bath into the closet. We will have double vanities in the master bath. We decided to have a full pantry installed instead of a Lazy Susan (which I hate!). For now the basement will remain unfinished and it is where the toys will go and where I let Emily ride her trike this winter. I can't wait!! :)

Our Home

Bryce and I moved into our current house almost 7 years ago. We moved into the house in October 2003. I think we have a great home. We have made so many memories in this house. This was the first place that was "ours". We got engaged at the island in our kitchen on my 24th birthday, we lived here when we got married, I was pregnant with Emily in this house, and this is the home we brought Emily Marie to on January 28, 2007. We became a family here.

We have had a lot of joy and happiness in this house but alas, it seems we have outgrown our home. Toys are spilling out of their shelves, closets have been known to explode, and drawers are stuffed. We need more space.

How to solve the problem...clean stuff out? pack up toys and give them away? move? We tried the first two options. We decided to try out the last option. Where to was the biggest question. I didn't want Emily in West Fargo schools. We can't afford the area we like in Fargo. So we were at a standstill. Bryce and I decided that we would wait and see if there were any new developments that might get going in the next year or so. We were saving all of my paychecks.

Then one day while Bryce and his friend Chris were looking for a house for Chris, Bryce came across a house for sale in our price range. We decided to look at the house. It was a nice enough house but we knew it was not what we wanted. We noticed that right next door were two lots for sale. So we played around with the idea of these lots that were not in Fargo or West Fargo. We had John the Realtor call and get us some info on the lots and they were a steal compared to Fargo! We were still thinking though. No minds were made up.

One HOT Sunday about a month ago Bryce went golfing. Em and I hung out and were lazy. I texted Bryce to see if he wanted to go look at open houses to get a feel for what we like so when we were ready in a year we would know more about what we wanted. He agreed. SHOCKING!! We looked at one house in our range and then two more that were way too expensive for us, even in our dreams. But the third house we liked a lot, as far as cosmetic details went. We talked to the builder's rep there that day and she sold us on a floor plan that was just what we wanted.

In the last two weeks we have been meeting with builders and John the Realtor a lot. The reason for that is because we have decided to move! The builder is Heritage Homes. They built the Extreme Makeover Home Edition house in Minot. We are very excited to be moving. We are also nervous too because we will be about 25 miles from Fargo.

Where to you ask? We are moving to KINDRED! As of last week we have a tentative closing date of Dec. 15. But we will know more about that in October after the foundation is poured. We have a lot to do until then. Right now we are cleaning and getting rid of the stuff that builds up after 7 years.

Below I have posted some pictures of the lot that is ours. We will be on 1/4 acre. We won't have backyard neighbors. Our house will face west. There are two cul de sacs on our street.

The lot with a daycare in the background. It looks close, but it is not.

Our next door neighbor's house.

Our 1/4 acre

Now we just have to sell this house!

Barn Hunting

For Mother's Day Bryce and Emily got me a new camera. The camera I got is a Nikon D3000. It shoots really good photos and it makes me want to learn how to take better pictures.

Butterfly on a wildflower

That being said I don't want to photograph people for portraits, though I do want to capture my family. However, I want to take pictures of nature and the sky and get ready for it...BARNS!! I have always loved driving along the interstate or a country road and seeing old barns and tattered houses. I don't like new, pretty barns. I like the old ready to blow over with the next strong gust of wind type. The kind that are all weathered with broken windows. The kind with holes in the roof. The kind that makes you wonder who or what used to live there.

Burned trees and a rusty bus

This last weekend I got the chance to go out with my photographer friend Sabrina. We drove south down to Kindred and back up near Grandin. We had no plan other than to keep our eyes open and drive. I was surprised at what we found. We have plans to go out again when the weather changes everything from green to golds and oranges. I am lucky too because my pal is also teaching me a few tricks on how to take better photos! I hope you enjoy some of my photos...I sure do!

Door on a building for grain storage

Red Barn

Sunflowers and hay bales

An old school house.

Our first barn of the day

Picture Perfect

This evening we went to our church to have our family pictures taken for the church directory. Normally I love doing pictures, especially with Emily since I think she is so adorably cute. Tonight was a VERY different case. Tonight we were led into a dimly lit room where we were posed and told how to stand. At one point my arm was used as a chair for Emily as I held her and then I was asked to get down a little bit so I wouldn't be so tall over the seated Bryce and Emily. Since I couldn't get down low enough with just bending my legs I had to stand like a man with my legs spread apart...wearing a dress!! As if that wasn't bad enough, we were asked to bend slightly at the waist while we held Emily, turn our head this way and tilt it that way, and in generaly just pose. Please tell me how this would create a "natural" family photo?

Don't get me wrong...I have done studio portraits in the past and I have had wonderful results. Most of which were done at JCPenney and I would recommend them to anyone, but I have found that going with a person who specializes in capturing people as they are is my way to go. I have gone with two different companies and had two very successful photo sessions. The first time we used this was with MJOY Photography last fall. Emily warmed up to the photographer so quickly that we had some amazing photos to sort through in about 2 hours. We did some at home and some at the park. The second time we did photos was with a friend of mine who has started a photography business out of her house. SK Photography is my new favorite photographer. Our photographer was so awesome with Emily. She truly captured Emily as herself. The beauty of photographer outside of a studio is that they will usually go wherever you ask them to go and they capture "you".

OK now that that rant is over I need to go book my fall portrait session!!

3 Year Picture by SK Photography

Fall 2009 pictures by MJOY Photography

I Have a Dream

No, not that dream!

I have a crazy dream...I want to bake and decorate cakes and sell them to people. I love to bake and would bake every single day if I had the time and I wanted to be a fat old lady! ;)

Recently I have taken a couple of cake decorating classes at Michael's. The first class I took was Basics of Cake Decorating and it was all about icing cakes and decorating the cakes with the fancy tips and icing bags. I learned a lot of great techniques that I have a used a for a couple of cakes. The class that I just finished was Fondant and Gum Paste. I love the look of fondant and how easy it is to work with.

So now back to my dream. I think that with a little practice I could do some cake business out of my house and earn a little extra cash. I even have a name in my head for the cake business..."Cake Mama". Because after all I am a mama who loves to bake cake!

Final Cake from my first cake decorating class

Owl cake using fondant

Boobie cake made for a 30th birthday

The first cake I ever decorated using cake tips and decorating bags

Harassed!

It has recently been brought to my attention that it has been over a month since I last posted anything so here is another catch up of what our little family has been doing!

Father's Day: We went mini-golfing and we got Bryce a new TV for the bedroom and we have been enjoying lazy weekend mornings watching cartoons! Please note that when Emily wake up she no longer lays in her bed until we come and get her...she instead likes to sneak up on us and crawl into bed for snuggles!

Sick Days: Unfortunately Emily got sick right after Father's Day. She complained on and off for a few days that she had a tummy ache and she really had no appetite, so after this going on for a few days I took her to see the doctor and they found she had strep throat. This was her third case since April! Thankfully the meds did the trick and quickly!

Vacation: The last week of June I had the week off. We spent this time hanging out at home for a few days and then weheaded to Bismarck for the 4th of July. While we were in Bismarck we were able to enjoy the Raging Rivers Water Park, Dakota Zoo, Art in the Park, and the Mandan Parade. Emily also was able to enjoy fireworks for the first time, even though she fell asleep half-way through. Considering the whole fireworks show was under 20 min., she didn't make it very long! Emily loved spending so much time with her grammas. They both spoiled her rotten! Gramma Faye bought her toys and snacks and lemonade, Grampa Don bought her a doll carrier and a pet rock, and Gramma Joann bought her her first set of golf clubs! The girl really does have everything!

After the 4th: After the holiday we spent some days unwinding and relazing. We did some playing by the pool. Emily had another bout of strep throat. That made it her 4th case in 4 months. She was prescribed a stronger antibiotic in hopes that it will kill the virus in case it wasn't clearing up completely. Luckily after a recheck she is strep free. We spent one Saturday at Detroit Lakes. Emily had a ton of fun. She really enjoyed splashing in the lake but she enjoyed searching for shells. She found 10 little ones and 2 pretty big shells. We can't wait to go back!

Fishy Fishy: We decided t0 get Emily goldfish. I had three coupons for a local pet store for a free goldfish, so we got them and set the little aquarium up in her room. She named them Treasure, Goldilocks, and Tiger. Three days later Tiger died. We didn't tell Emily. Two days later, Treasure died. I told Emily her two fish were dead. She got really mad at me and told me they were hiding in the rocks. Yesterday, Goldilocks died. I showed her the dead fish and she declared it was disgusting and we better get rid of it and get a new sucker fish. Tonight we went to Wal-Mart and got 2 new fish. One is HUGE - like golf ball size. The other is normal size, but with bubble like eyes. Bryce thinks the eyes are ugly and creepy. The big fish is named Sugar, because she is white and the black fish is named Bubbles, because of his bubble eyes. We'll see how long they last!

Whiney Wendy: Emily has been doing A LOT of whining and pouting as of late. It drives me beyond crazy!!! I don't know is this is just 3 year old behavior or OCS (Only Child Syndrome). She also wants a doll crib for her Baby Ally. So we are earning "crib coupons" to earn a baby crib. Emily must earn 7 coupons before she gets her crib. If she pouts and shows excessive attitude, she has to give all of her crib coupons back. So far we have restarted 3 times, with 3 days being the record. I just made a visual reminder with pictures so we will see if this cuts down on her whining.

Right now: We spent the weekend just hanging out. We did a little shopping on Saturday and bought Emily a new dress for church pictures. We also had a yummy cookie at Mrs. Field's. Today we went on a picnic for breakfast. We had muffins and raspberries and then played on the playground at the park. After the park she got to swim at her bestie Rayna's house. We had to go in for awhile so Rayna could take a nap, but afterwards she swam again. She really is getting so comfortable in the water. This next week will be a little busy. We are heading to a family picnic next weekend in Dickinson. I have cake decorating class two evenings this week and I have to bake 2 cakes and do some laundry...but I can't wait!

Catch Up

Since my last post which seems like a bazillion years ago some stuff has happened. I will try to go in order of what happened when.

November passed with the one year anniversary of potty training Emily. Hooray for Emily!

December marked a very merry Christmas. Emily got what she had been asking Santa for: a Snow White Dolly. He was also super nice and brought her a baby doll and buggy as well.

In January we found out that my dad had more tumors, but they were able to remove them successfully and no chemo was needed. Emily also turned 3 and we marked the event with a Princess party!

In February Bryce and I traveled to Playa del Carmen, Mexico. It was a beautiful and exciting trip and we can't wait to go back again!

In March Emily had the flu and her first case of strep throat. Boo for that.

April was a beautiful month and Easter was celebrated with my aunt, uncle, and cousins.

In May I got a new camera from Emily and Bryce for Mother's Day, so I have been having fun taking pictures with that. My dad had another tumor removed and he began chemo. Emily had her first dance recital. She was the cutest little dancer out there and I even had people walk up to me and tell me that!

June is still beginning and I hope to keep posting more often. Thanks for coming back!