Archives – July, 2006
So. Keely started using her "wand" to turn on and off lights. We thought that was pretty clever of her. Then, today she got out her dress-up clothes and put on her "fairy" dress and started turning on and off all the lights.
It clicked in my head that she got this from her newest favorite book, "Alice the Fairy" by David Shannon. Since she doesn't really watch much tv, I guess she has to immitate book characters. Which is fine by me, at least her book characters are mostly nice.
She also thinks it's just great to lay on her stomach and look at books, just like Alice does. Keely's outfit was a modified fairy, with the addition of her racoon hat. Keely doesn't like crowns.
While she continued to do that. Mommy went for some more of Daddy's yummy iced coffee, a summer time staple at our house.
I came back and she was still studying Alice's details. "Mommy I need my black shoes, like Alice."
She dug through her drawers to find the "perfect" ones.
"Mommy, these will be great."
She continued "Alice-ing" through the house until she was worn out.
My fairy lady .
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It is SO hot we aren't feeling like doing much at all. That picture sums up how we're feeling pretty well.
July 31, 2006
Alrighty, we slept in late today and now I'm ready to give it to ya. So, we drove down south aways through country roads. I forgot how much open land is still out there. We started to approach our destination and came to this town. Two whole stoplights. Wow. I started thinking maybe this wasn't the right direction for us. We drove another 30 miles and got to the our spot. Yikes people. The main street/town was about 1 1/2 blocks of abandoned shopfronts. And the rest was sad discount stores and your basic post office, bank etc. And there were NO stoplights in this town. There is a neighborhood on each side of Main street. One side had all the big 'ole homes and the other side had smaller homes. We went to the big side.
Our agent guy was late, very late, so we found the house and snooped around the outside. This neighborhood had giant houses on pretty nice sized lots.
This is across the street. That scary house was for sale too. The other building is a church. It's bells ring every half hour. It sounds pretty, but I think it would get on my nerves being so close and loud. So, the house was built by this Josey guy. He apparently settled and owned most of the little town. He had a plantation house out in the country and he owned (his family still does) the big lumber mill in the town. He had the yellow house built for his in-town home. Not much of a town buddy. It's a little sad that there at one time was all this money in this little place, enough so that half of the homes are gi-normous. Now though, it really is a sad, run-down, very poor, little destination. No energy. No good vibes. Barely a pulse.
So, the Josey house stayed in the Josey family from 1882 until 2003. A man from a different state bought it and has been updating it. I guess he lost steam on the big project and now wants to sell it. He had all the electrical, plumbing, heating/ac updated and some painting done. Now, on to the interior. It is a basic 4 over 4 plan with a central hall, which is the style of home we are interested in. When you open the front doors, this is what you see. The center a hall. Two rooms off the right (men's parlor & din. room), two rooms of the left (ladies parlor & dining room- now a master bed.). And straight through the back is a screened in porch. I love the doors at both ends of the central hall and the 12 ft. ceilings.
This could be a two lane bowling alley, huh?
Parlor, eeeek to the wallpaper. The floors are all heart-of-pine. I love that the windows are to the floor.
dining room. Most of the windows have interior shutters.
master bedroom. Wallpaper much y'all?
Ummm. yeah. YUCK! The kitchen was built onto the back of the right side of the house. It needs to be gutted and re-done. Carpet in the kitchen?
This is the other side of the kitchen, that door (along with 3 others) open up onto the long screened-in porch. The whole kitchen wing is this long line of built-on additions, each one has their own door.
See? This is the outside view of the kitchen row. 1st is a kitchen, then a little (sewing?) room (originally, I'm sure it was the cook/maid/servants quarters), then a weird little office, then a storage space.
Let's go upstairs…
upstairs landing.
Bedroom. I like the wall color. I think I'm going to paint our current living room this color.
another bedroom
original fixtures. There are two other bathrooms but they are too gross to post.
Another bedroom. What's that? A little chair on the mantle? Huh? What's that? No, I didn't see a chair there. What chair?
Oh come on! A little chair AND 5 kiddie pianos!?
Me, spying on Keely dancing.
The back yard. The little building is a smoke house. Ya know for the hams I'll be smoking.
So, that's enough photos, right? While waiting for Sir Chats A Lot the agent to come. Hubby went to call him. We could get no cell phone service there (No DSL internet either). He left us at the house and went to town (two streets over) found a payphone and while calling, some guy who was just released from prison came and hit him up for $5. The guy knew hubby wasn't from there. He said, "What you doin' here?" Hubby said, just visiting. The guy said while scanning the crap main street, "You must reeeeeally like visiting."(because there is obviously NO reason to come to this town) Crack me up. The guy then said, "You don't wanna live here. It's one ignorant town."
So, the town's webpage is quite funny. Most towns have some kind of "look at the pretty and great stuff we have in our town" photos on their main page. This town has a photo of it's motel. Because it HAD a motel. And that apparently, is a big deal around dead-ville. We were trying to figure out why anyone would stay there though. I'm not exaggerating, there is NOTHING there…or even close to there.
Needless, to say, we are not considering moving there. The house was really neat and I'd buy the house if it were somewhere other than nowhere. It wasn't as structurally sound as the farmhouse was, but it still had a lot of potential. The addition rooms had some sloping, and lots of the rooms weren't exactly 4 straight corners. Some of that is to be expected in OLD houses, I know. Anyway, we had fun getting to go inside of it. Hope you enjoyed the vicarious house snooping.
July 29, 2006
Wow! I'm so pleased you all like to look at old houses! I had no idea. I thought most people liked new, clean, easy to maintain homes. I'm glad to know that so many of you are interested in our old house hunt. Come along y'all.
So. here is the rebounder. House #2 in the search.
It's big and yellow and has lots of intricate woodwork.Also, a patterned slate roof. Click it for a better view.
And a nice porch
Pretty, no?
Well, I'm beat after a long day at the house (with world's most talkative real estate agent) and in the car and the 101 degrees!!!! So, tomorrow after I sort through all 100 of my photos and cool off, I'll post what's behind the doors. Such suspense huh?
Those doors are sooooo cool.
I got lots of photos and a little bit of history on the house to share tomorrow.
Also, I added a house hunting category over there on the right.
July 28, 2006
When one door closes, a window opens?
Right. so. I think I've made it clear than we (me in particular) are crazy people. If I have not yet convinced you of this…read on.
We are going to go look at another. giant. old. house. tomorrow.
ha ha ha ha. What, 3 days after losing the dream farm house?
It's our rebound house. The first one dumped us. Kicked us to the curb. So now we are going to see someone better. and bigger.
It's so big it's funny. Seriously, ( I like to say seriously) our current bitty home is about 1100 sq.ft. I told you it was small. The one we are going to look at tomorrow is almost 4400 sq. ft. Ha ha ha ha. It is just us 3 and we are almost always in the same room together. That'd be one big empty house, huh? The price is really low. We are curious. Something must be really wrong with it.
It is an 1882 Victorian. It has 5 bedrooms and 3 baths. Did I mention 4400 sq. ft? All of our furniture would fit into maybe 2 rooms of this place. funny. It isn't a farm house. It's in a small town about 2 hours from us. I'm not really impressed with the what I've read about the town or area, but I'll save my judgements for tomorrow.
So we thought it'd be fun to take little (short) road trips to see any houses that sparked our interest and maybe we would find the perfect house, come closer to deciding on some features we really want to have in our next home, or discover a town or area that we really liked to further pursue house hunting in. That's this week's plan anyway. So, I'll post some photos of the rebound giant house when we get back. I don't know if you all love looking in houses, but I do. If you don't, my blog may start to bore your pants off. Sorry 'bout that.
My neck is still not being nice to me, so I have done nothing crafty in 2 weeks! I have projects lined up and waiting though, so maybe next week. Don't give up on me yet.
July 27, 2006
I got this nice selection of prints thrifting this morning. A couple of them are clothing and the others are napkins and a old, soft tablecloth (far right). The little ships are so cute too. All were less than .99.
And then I found this crazy quilt. It is really big and heavy. I like the blue and orange section. I wish it was all in those fabrics. This is the top half.
The bottom half.
I told you it was crazy. It is well made though. The back is even weirder. Big patches of random cotton and polyester fabrics. I can't pass up a quilt though. It was $8.
July 26, 2006
Alright we did a very scientific number draw for the turtle over here. It was the comment numbers on papers in a bowl and was very dramatically drawn by the hubby. Drum roll please……..
Commenter #3: Madmommy you are the winner of a turtle! That was fun. I'll do another give away one of these days, k?
July 26, 2006
Today is my hubby's birthday.
I was really hoping on that whole house thing to be his present.
Sorry 'bout that babe. Instead you get mopey me!
Keely drew him this "Birthday Bug". I said, "Keely do you want to draw daddy a picture for his birthday?" She said, "yes" and this is what she drew with no help or prompts from me. We are, as always, so impressed. She's just shy of 3.
The little cake even has candles…and 3 of them, just like hers will soon. Too cute.
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Now, thank you all for all the nice things you said about the house and for wishful thinking and also for being a little excited with me. You all made yesterday even more exciting than it was. Of course, we are a bit down today. I usually try to respond to everyone individually via email but I don't always have the time to do that so I'll answer a few questions some of you asked here.
We are not going to bid again because it is getting a bit too rich for our poor blood. We could technically bid again, but #1. There are now 6 or 7 other bidders (all with more money than us for sure. and #2. If we did win we might not have enough money up front to fix some things that really needed to be fixed in the house before we moved in ( the bathrooms, kitchen, some water damage). So, we are bowing out sadly. It is a bit hard to let go of the big dream so abruptly. We have been so worked up over it for almost 2 months. The house has been fully moved into, remodeled, and decorated in my mind. I really saw us living there. I have been a bit drunk with all the pretty thoughts and now the high is over. We never thought we'd be able to own such a large, historic, and neat property so with this one dangling in front of us we were feeling quite optimistic. That is rare for us.
We kept saying, "No way could WE win this bid." but we said it with a little smile and a glimmer in the eye. When we found out that our bid had been upset we were both kind of floored and shocked and that's when we realized we had both secretly been thinking that we were gonna win it. It is nice to know that our usual pessimistic selves had the optimistic thought. I know it's not the end of the world. It was just a house. In the scheme of things that ARE important (our family, our health etc.) the house is nothing. I know that these sorts of things don't really matter in "the big picture." I do believe that things usually work out for the best. I know we'll find something else eventually.
We are trying to decide what we want to do now. We had previously been thinking (pre neighbors noisy pool) that in 10-15 years we would buy a giant farmhouse in the country. Then, the noisy pool came and we decided we have to move much sooner. Then, we found THE house and we decided we'd win that baby and move to it next summer.
So now we are going to start looking for a similar (ha! good luck with that) property. It would be financially better for us to buy something in a year or two. That sounds so boring though. I can't get jazzed up about "in a year or two." Anyway, we are still considering having another child and the hubby does have a new job starting in September and our current home (inside) is quite cozy (translate:small) and nice. If we find something soon that be groovy, but I guess we need to just find a way to be happy in the now and trust that we will find something perfect for us when the time is right. blah, blah, blah.
The hubby suggested I take one of the farm house photos and put it in as a new blog banner but photoshop in a whole bunch of grafitti all over it. That's the spirit hon! No bitterness here.
bye bye farmhouse, bye bye
If I could play a little bit of old school Boys II Men here, I so would.
sing it with people: "Although we've come to the end of the road, still I can't let you go. It's unnatural. You belong to me, I belong to you."
That's right I am a corn muffin! and proud!
*I'll draw a name for the free turtle tomorrow probably.
July 25, 2006
We've been outbidded.
Thanks for all the crossed fingers y'all. Guess it wasn't meant to be.
I'm going to go pout for a good long while now.
July 24, 2006
There are currently FOUR hours left on the house bid. I can't believe no one has bid yet. We are still 90% sure someone will bid today. There is no way we could win this bid. I am a bit scared and excited at the same time. 5 o'clock is a long time away now.
So, Keely has taken the chair thing to another level. She has set these up on my nightstand. I am not aloud to touch them. This is just where they go. "No, Mommy! These are my chairs. This is where I want them to stay." right then.
Check out these neato little charms. I think they'd be perfect on a little necklace for a small softie or tied on the tag of a tiny handmade gift. They have "Made With Love" on them. Daw!
and also, check out miss Keely stirring her ice-tea on the porch.
I still have nothing crafty to post. I have some serious neck issues and we won't talk about it now because it just depresses me. Anyway, it is very hard for me to sew or look down for any period of time when my stupid broken neck is acting up. Sigh. So, that's my no crafty stuff to share on this supposedly crafty blog excuse.
FOUR MORE HOURS PEOPLE! 8-O
July 24, 2006
Kisses from the pool~ Keely & Daddy
July 22, 2006
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