I woke up this morning and thought I was in Cincinnati!

That is what my backyard looked like. I knew that we were going to get some snow but I really didn't believe it.

I had just told Gary that Cincy was getting snow on Christmas and that if we still lived there, he would be getting his white Christmas. Little did I know that we would be getting one too, just a day late.

It snowed all day long. It started melting some this afternoon and I think that it has finally stopped. All I know is that the sun will be shining on Tuesday. HELLO SOUTH:) No snow on the ground for 2 1/2 months straight and no having 4 weeks straight of gray skies and no sunshine. I am a happy girl.

Gary just told me that it was going to be 70 degrees on New Years!

I could take a few days of snow if it turned sunny and 70 the next day;-)

I did do a lot of this today.

And I got the tree down. Yeah me!

Have a good week,

Mel

Almost Here.

The moving day is almost here. It has been a stressful 3 months. More stressful than any other move that we have had. It all started with the house and finding one that was headed (or in) foreclosure. I say that because we were told that it was headed there but at closing the attorney said that it was in foreclosure.

Either way, we closed last Friday. We didn't close on time but we closed. The painter has been over there since last week caulking, touching up the trim, and painting. The biggest headache has been the builder. He builds a good house but he procrastinates. THAT has been the biggest stress. He is suppose to be finished today and sending a person over to clean the house.

I really hope that he does because the moving semi will be showing up bright and early tomorrow morning. Come Friday, I will be knee deep in boxes and happy to be with my 'stuff!' It is a running joke with everyone because I love my stuff, meaning our furniture. I guess I have learned to not love a house but to love us being together as a family and our things.

Getting your heart broken over a house will do that to you. That and moving a lot;-)

So, I will be away for a few days getting the furniture moved in and will be unpacking boxes. I hope to take a few photos and post them on Friday morning. I have so much to show you girls and will have plenty to blog about.

I am leaving you with a picture of Lake Tahoe that I took while we were on vacation. It is not photoshopped. The water is truly that color.

Enjoy. (believe me, there are many more to come of that! :)

Melanie

Three Houses.

That is what we have lived in in less than a year! Can you believe it? I sure can't.

Can you say LONG YEAR?!?

We went from Florida.....

to Cincinnati.....

to South Carolina.

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. We are suppose to close tomorrow at 10 a.m. and then we will move in next weekend. The house is being painted and the builder is finishing up some last minute things.

I hope that we will now be able to breathe some. I want our family to be settled. I want Gary to be able to come home to a home cooked meal, his TV, and his recliner. I want Caden to have his own room again and his normal schedule. I want to walk on the treadmill every day, read, and play in my scrapping stuff.

I want us to feel at home again.

And I think we will be, very soon.

Hope you all have a great weekend.

Melanie

Sneak Peek Time.

I thought that I would give y'all a sneak peek of the new new house instead of the old new house:)

So off we go.

The is a view from the family room looking into the dining room. I love love love the front door. Everyone in the neighborhood has their door covered up with blinds or a curtain but this girl won't be covering hers up:) I love the light that comes in and I don't mind people being able to see in the house. I will be changing out the lights though and replacing them with the lights that I had in Kentucky.

We are having a cabinet (or hole) built above the fireplace for the 55 inch LED TV that Gary bought for the basement. The basement that we don't have anymore. LOL! I am praying that it looks okay because the builder and Gary decided what it would look like. We were going to have doors on it but that didn't work out because the TV is to big. It will also have molding around the cabinet too.

I am a little concerned about the width of the family room. I guess you could say that it is going to be a little cozy:) I am not going to have enough room for all of our furniture but we will make it work somehow.

Here is the coffered ceiling in the dining room. I.LOVE.IT! The molding is painted a creamy color that is really nice and the black paint is going to be fabulous! I am changing out that chandy too.

This is a look down the hallway. This leads to our bedroom and the bonus room above the garage. There is a closet at the end of the hallway that will hold linens and another closet on the righthand side. I am going to use that closet as a pantry. You girls know that one closet is not enough to hold our food:) On a side note, look at the heavy molding and the old look of the doors. Swooning.....

A view up the stairs to the bonus room. This room will be for both of us to use as our office space. We are going to share that room because Gary didn't want me to get rid of my office furniture. The room is a nice size and has a full bath and two closets. It would make a great room for Caden but that just wasn't practical.

A peek at the master bathroom. It is not large but it is nicely done. There will be clear shower doors and of course it will be repainted.

Built-ins in the closet.

This is a small look into the guest bathroom. The color is wonky but it gives you an idea. We are changing out the vanity because the floor is very busy (ie. ugly) and it was the easiest thing to change out. Everything looks very yellow but that is just my mad photography skills:) I am having the bathroom painted too so I think that in the end, it will be a good bathroom for Caden.

And lastly, a peek at the kitchen. I am having a tiled backsplash put in and I am having the kitchen painted. I love that I am getting more counter space but I don't like that the kitchen of closed off from the family room. Gary likes that because in our last two houses our kitchens have been opened to the family room and it is always loud. I am glad that I will be able to see the tv but not happy that I won't be able to see into the great room.

So that is the a tour of the new new house. It is smaller and there will be some adjustment but we made the right decision at this time in our lives. As soon as we have it painted and move our things in, it will be home.

We can't wait. It's been a long year and a half and Gary & I are very tired. It has been beyond a stressful time and we have decided that the last year has not been fun. Not a fun time or a happy time. We are feeling like there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I am hoping that by the first of the year, we are totally settled in and back to normal. We haven't felt normal since we lived in Florida.

See, I told you it had been a long year and a half. :)

Melanie

Linking toThe Brambleberry Cottage Met Monday Just a Girl & My Romantic Home

Maybe we don't have a house!

Whomever said that moving was an adventure, they would be correct!

Yesterday I got the mail and I sat down to go through it and our appraisal on the house in SC came in.

Good news for us, bad news for the seller. It appraised at $14,000.00 less than we agreed upon. This comes one week before closing, one week for the builder to finish the house up, and one week before I fly to Cincy to meet the movers! Meet the movers to move our furniture to.....wait, I might not have a house. I don't know where the movers will be taking the furniture.

This could not happen at a worse time. Gary has had to work the night shift since Saturday and to top that off, he only slept 4 hours yesterday when he had to get up to get on a conference call. Then it was off to the realtor's office.

We now wait to see if the builder can come down to the appraisal price. If he can't, we are back to square one. Not somewhere that we want to be.

All in all, I am taking it surprisingly well. I am like "whatever." There is another house somewhere. Gary is not happy at all. He is ready to be in a house. I am usually the one that is saying that but this time the roles are reversed.

So I will let you know when and if we have a house to move to:)

Melanie

Not feeling very confident....

This has been a looonnnggg week! We sold the house last Sunday (yeah!) and it has been nonstop paperwork. We have the relocation company actually buying our house from us to sell to the new owners, so we had to get a ton of papers signed and notarized. Then we have the house that we are buying here. We had to get a lot of stuff done with that house too and I also had to pick out paint.

Not feeling so great about having to do it all in a day. I mostly went with the same colors that were in the dining room, great room, and Caden's room at the house in Kentucky. I changed up the guest room and the master bedroom. I was going to go black in the dining room. Yes I was!

I was really thinking about it.

I have always wanted a black dining room. I saw one in a house in Georgia about 9 years ago and I knew that I would have one someday. It just won't be this day;-) I was under the gun to get all the colors picked out and I only had 4 black swatches, so I decided that I wouldn't do it this time.

That is a color that you have to get right and not be rushed while picking it out. We have heavy molding in the new house and there wouldn't have been a lot of area painted black, so it would have looked great. Not having my furniture to match up to was also a problem.

So no black this time. But you never know when I will get a wild hair up my bum and paint it.

But for now, it will be green.

I will leave you with a sneak peek of the new house. I hope to get some photos next week while they are over there finishing things up.

Things are moving along. It won't be long now.

Have a great weekend and see y'all next week.

Melanie

I wish!

I would love to buy this house. It just screams 'southern!' It would be a low country house in low country territory;-)

Doesn't it remind you of Paula Deen's house? Um, maybe not on her scale but it does look like something she would live in.

Can y'all tell that Gary has been looking at houses? I am getting hives just thinking about it. I love houses and love to decorate them BUT two in one year is a bit much for even me. He has been down there for two weeks now and has seen about 20 or so houses. He has lived with me for over 19 years, so he knows what I will like and don't like. He narrowed down his list and emailed it to me. I crossed off around four of those and added a few more.

I like expensive:-)

Who would have guessed that? LOL! We have a good realtor down there, so when I get to head south, we will go house hunting together. I am very decisive when it comes to houses. It won't be very hard to narrow them down. The problem is going to be finding one that doesn't require us to sell our son to be able to buy.

Which leads me to this house.

I wish Gary wouldn't have found it because I have fallen in love with it and I haven't even stepped foot in it. I love old houses but Gary doesn't. This would be the perfect combination for us. Looks old but is new. I don't understand why it has been sitting for 3 years empty. No one has bought it, so it hasn't been lived in. It is completely finished now and really there is nothing not to like. The back is as pretty as the front. When Caden got there on Saturday, Gary drove him by some of the houses that he had found and what was Caden't favorite? You guessed it, the most expensive one. I guess he is my son afterall;-)

I am overwhelmed by all of this but I am taking it a day at a time and and one appointment at a time. The railroad has a great moving package and yes, they do come and pack the house for me but that doesn't take care of all the doctors, car tags, insurance, etc. You get the picture. It is just a lot to deal with.

But to make myself feel better, I can always go back and tour this lovely house again and again. It sure beats what I have been doing....stuffing my face. Now I have 5 pounds to lose instead of 3:( ugh! Hello treadmill and goodbye sweet tea & coke!

I do hope that y'all take the tour yourself and enjoy it.

Have a good Monday,

Melanie

ps. I am using Blogger to blog this morning so who knows what it is going to look like. Still trying to learn the other program that is compatible with Mac.

pss. How do I make the photo larger in Blogger? I can't figure that out.

ETA: I took down the link. Someone text me about crazies out there and posting the address.

Guess What?

Yep, we’re moving!

AGAIN!

Every one pick your mouth up off the floor because I know that’s where they’re at;-)

I know, I know. We just got here 9 months ago. So is life with the railroad.

When we built our home in Florida, we knew that we would be moving to Cincinnati but we didn’t know when. We lived every day for three years waiting on the call. When it came, we were glad that we just knew when we were leaving.

Try living every day wondering when you are moving 800 miles from home.

I told Gary that when we got to Cincy, we had to stay put for at least 2 1/2 years so that Caden could stay in one high school and graduate.

Then we moved.

We got here on November 7th and by the end of January we heard rumblings that Gary could get a promotion that would require yet another move.

I would not hear of it.

Then in April, we heard more rumblings. By then I had made it through my first big winter and was missing the south terribly. I had not adjusted to the north like I thought I would and come to find out, neither had Caden.

Gary and I had to really discuss what we would do if we got the call. I didn’t want to discuss it. I wanted Caden to be settled in his school and in our house.

But then my head took over and I let my heart go. I had to quit thinking about it from a mom’s point of view and think about it as something that was happening for me and Gary. We couldn’t pass up a promotion no matter what. (Okay, I lied. We could pass it up if it were to New York or Maryland. I couldn’t go anywhere colder!)

The only thing was telling Caden.

Another move. Another school. Another half year of living unsettled.

But come to find out, Caden was all for it. Maybe not the unsettled part but the south part. We had decided that if we got the call, we would have to take it. Now, the only thing was telling Caden. I told Gary that he would have to do it this time:)

It ended up that I told him and he was fine with it. He missed the south as much as I did and he wanted to move back.

We got the call last Friday.

Gary left Tuesday.

It all happened very quickly.

So now we are South Carolinians.

Y’all get to watch me decorate another house and go through the process all over again. Needless to say, I am a little overwhelmed. This is why I have been a little absent from the internet. Between vacation, Caden’s mouth surgery, a broken laptop, trying to find a school over the internet, and the transfer, it has been a busy month.

Now the question is what am I going to call my blog? Keep it the same name or rename it something else?

Priorities people, priorities;-)

Melanie

PS. I have added a lot of my blog friends to my blog roll. Please check them all out. If you see your name and would rather it not be there, let me know and I will take it off. I didn’t email everyone to ask if they minded that I put their blog on my roll. Thanks.