A Graduation and A Vacation

With the house sale pending, it was time to take in some relaxation!

Come May it was time for another special event: Hannah (college graduate) graduated from Texas A&M University. We all convened in College Station to celebrate.

On Saturday, we headed down to Sugar Land for the day to find a place to live. After a long search, we settled on a 2 bedroom 2.5 bath townhome in nearby Stafford. We'll hang here for a while until we know where I'll be working and we get to know the area a bit better.

Then it was time from vacation. Travis had just left his company and spent some time with his family in Iowa. I went to Miramar beach with my family. For a week. It was wonderful.

View from the deck of our beach house for the week!

Mom wins best decision for vacation: coconuts for coconut drinks!

Sunsets on the beach!

Some fun extracurricular activities! It's a....table.

Our beach house for the week!

Couldn't pass up a little crafty baking! *Note the awesome shark attack cupcake top right.

Beautiful!

Travis started with his new company right after returning from vacation while I stayed in Lubbock to get things packed, sold, and wrapped up with my work commitments. Came home to this lovely dust storm. Yay, Lbk!

Experienced some awesome weather a few days later...

This was the night I got locked out of my house: in my pajamas, at 7:30 at night, in a thunderstorm, while my husband was in Houston. Thank goodness I had my phone with me. I was saved by a rather large pacific islander in flip flops who emerged from the smallest car I've ever seen an hour later who didn't need to see my ID with address, because he didn't think anyone could/would make up the story I had.

And again a few days after that...

That's 105* outside in early June. Wasn't even the hottest part of the day yet. Unfortunately, I left my unopened diet coke in the car. Came back and it was opened...by the sun. Thankfully, the diet coke only ended up in the cupholder directly behind the can. Somehow, there was none anywhere else. Yucky WTex weather.

Ok. We'll move.

Staging and Selling

Now what? Sell the house. Ugh. I loved that house.  Not everything about it, but the big living room, new appliances, big patio, pergola, and new backyard landscaping? Yes. I loved that. Sigh.

We had a wonderful real estate agent who we had used twice before. Met with him and spoke about our situation and goals for the sale. He told us that there'd weren't a lot of comps in the neighborhood our size that were completely move-in ready-which was a good thing. We were looking at pricing on the higher end of our range for financial reasons and for the fact that we had done so many updates (wood, tile, trim, bathrooms, appliances, pergola,  patio, etc.).

He let us know average market time in the LBK was about 60 days with closing around 75 days. We were looking at exactly 60 until my last day of work and proposed moving day. A little tighter than we had hoped, but we were ready.

He was on board and gave us a few things to work on before we listed. These were minor things like paint touch-up, replacing our standard vanity mirror with a new framed mirror, and checking light bulbs.

After those minor repairs, we started in on the cleaning/staging/storing leg of our adventure. Of course, I was worried about making the house perfect. Hoping to make an easy sale so we didn't have overlap in two cities. I also wanted to get everything set because we knew Travis would be moving to start his job before I moved down. 

Here's a few of my tips for staging:

1) Get rid or move into storage 1/2 of your "stuff."
No joke. Think of it like this: the more you get rid of, the more someone will want your house. You want to show off your house, not your stuff when staging. The less "stuff" you have, the more spacious your home will feel. Empty space is good.
We rented a storage space (for what ended up to be 3 months) to store our "stuff." We allotted half of the space to "plan to keep" and half to "garage sale/craigslist."

2) Price as you go for garage sales/craigslist items.
Ugh. Who wants to think about that when you're planning a move? Trust me. Buy some neon dots, grab a sharpie, and price your heart out. It makes you decide in the moment whether you're selling it or not (lean towards sell-sell-sell). Also, prevents the mass-pricing frenzy that comes with prepping a garage sale. This also allows you to pre-sort as you stage.

3) Exchange most photo frames from personal pictures to generic scenery.
Buyers don't want your vacation pictures. They want their vacation pictures in your house. Make it easy for them to see their things in your home. I used some pictures of our succulents, sunsets, and scenery pictures to replace our family photos with. Leave your pictures in, just put the new ones in front. That way when you get to your new home, you just flip the pictures and you're good to go.

4) Clean baseboards. With a terry cloth towel and 409.
Never realized how much baseboards contribute to the "clean feeling" of a room. Turns out they do. And if you live somewhere dusty (like we did), those suckers are icky. Don't forget to clean the other frequently-missed places like window sills, fans, etc.

5) Stage what you don't initially see.
Our real estate agent told us people would open everything that wasn't locked. I took this with a grain of salt, but staged the inside of our refrigerator, freezer, junk drawer, pantry, closets, bathroom cabinets, etc. I mean, I wouldn't do that when touring a house. (Who wants to see someone else's underwear drawer? Ew.) After the first showing, my hope chest drawer was left open. That was a piece of furniture. Not for sale with the house. Tacky. Hopefully they rummaged through the freezer, too.

6) Deodorize your house.

Now, I like to think my house isn't smelly. But, I do like to cook. With garlic. All the time. Also, we have two fur-babies that, despite their cuteness, do tend to stink up the house with their -ahem-
facility partaking. We reduced down to 1 litter box, I unplugged my wallflowers, and we used a natural "home deodorizer" recipe. There's lots from the fun WS store like this one or these. Worked like a charm.



Alright! We were ready to list the house. Photographer came, signed the papers, and met our real estate agent once more. He seemed pretty pleased with how the house looked. I made my list of all the short errands I had been putting off for the last 3 weeks. These, I thought, would be my small 30-minute trips when the house was being shown. I was prepared. 

Here's the actual listing description:

Adorable 3 bedroom, 2 bath, 2 car garage home with numerous updates and upgrades. Great backyard with pergola, recent paint, wood floors, fixtures, appliances, tile work and more. Included with the home are washer, dryer and fridge. Call for your private showing today! 

*GUSH* The first word is "adorable"! Not even really sure if I read past that at the time. 

So we listed on a Wednesday evening.

Thursday: 3 showings.

Friday: 2 showings.

Saturday: 2 showings (one that fell through).

Sunday: 0 showings.

Monday: 3 showings (at least 2 of which were repeaters).

Tuesday: Offer.

Wait. What?! I thought we had an average of 60 days? I thought I'd have to leave the house on a moments notice. But I didn't even get to run any errands! What about all the stuff I had been putting off?

Listed the house and 9 showings and 6 days later had a full cash offer willing to wait until end of June to close.

Ok. We'll move.

Getting Ready for Fall Football!

I think this poster on Pinterest pretty much sums up the football season. Of course, I love my husband more than anything. College football Saturdays are pretty fun, though. Love seeing lots of people and enjoying food, fellowship, and football.

{source}

In preparation for football season I put together this awesome wreath!

To make this wreath, I used the tutorial for a red burlap wreath found here. The only modification was that I didn't cut the ends of my squares and instead used a technique for folding more like the book page wreath tutorials out there. I also left some of the stray "hairs" from the burlap on. I like the rugged look.

For the letters, I painted the edges white and the tops got a coat of black and a coat of glitter black paint. For those of you who watch Texas Tech football, you know the famous helmets - I call them "black sparkle helmets." These letters are "black sparkle helmet" inspired.

Perhaps I'll make another similar one soon and take some better pictures as I go. For now, Enjoy these few pictures with my awesome camera!

Christmas Presents 2011

Our wrapping theme is red, black, and white to go along with our Scarlet and Black Tree this year. I found all of my wrapping paper at HobLob over the past 3 years. I tried to stick with graphic prints in the target colors. Polka dots, stripes, and swirls. Also, HobLob had a whole black, red, and white sparkly ornament line of Christmas decor this year! Yum!

Also, note that there are no plastic-y bows to be found! Mr. Baxter and Mr. Winston love plastic-y bows...and curly ribbon...and sparkles. So, in order to avoid a ginormous vet bill, we opt for classic fabric bows. A tad more pricey, but not as expensive as an x-ray and surgery for the little ones!

I love tying bows. I don't know why. Just plain old bows. Not fancy ones. I love the look of a perfectly tied fabric bow.

I also added a few embellishments this year, including a sparkly snowflake and some jingle bells.

Christmas Tree 2011

Our house is a perfect Christmas house. I know a lot of people say this, but ours is, too! We have a great space to entertain, a warm and neutral palate that compliments Christmas colors, and a perfect spot for our tree right in front of the window!

We didn't have a Christmas tree for our first Christmas. I saved a bunch of money for a whole year so that I could buy Christmas ornaments on the day after Christmas. Then, I saved a bunch of money for another whole year so that I could buy our perfect first tree. We ended up having to call the tree company because the middle strand of lights was out, but it was well worth it!

And let me tell you...this is our perfect first tree!

Our tree is a red, black, and silver Texas Tech tree! Since we are both alumni living in Lubbock, we figured there would be no better time in our lives to have such a tree. We've been collecting Texas Tech ornaments to add to the shatterproof (kitty-proof) red and black bulbs.

It's still a work in progress (as every tree is), but I'm so happy with (and proud of!) what has taken 3 years to come together!

Succulent Garden

For some added greenery and life to our patio, we added a succulent garden.
Stephanie over at Under The Table and Dreaming has an awesome tutorial for creating your own succulent dish garden.

We used her tutorial plus a few googled tutorials/images to decide what we wanted ours to look like. When making a succulent garden, rocks are added at the bottom to ensure proper drainage. This creates an awesome layered look. We wanted to take full advantage of this, so we opted for a glass container.

First we added a layer of small river rocks about an inch deep. Next layer was a mix of potting soil, perilite, and sandy soil from our yard. The exact ratios of each of these is debatable. I encourage googling in regards to this. Next it was time to plant the succulents!

We selected 9 succulents from WallyWorld and TheOrangeStore with different growth patterns, colors, and shapes.

Our final layer was some more small river rocks to prevent the soil from moving around, assist with drainage, and look awesome.

Here's the final product. Love those layers!!

It has a nice home on our coffee table on the patio. They require thorough watering once weekly. It becomes quite easy to tell when it's time to water. The plants droop, discolor, or wither some when they need water. After watering, they return to their healthy look in just a few hours.

Operation Back Yard Part 6

When living in the "city," one has a house in the middle of a lot. Also, six feet of yard on either side. Hence the name "side yard." This area is often used as a walkway. Sometimes it's used as a junkway. 

This was the case with our East side yard. It never grew grass very well because it only received sun from noon to 3, never got rain, and was hot because of the large amounts of brick and concrete around. We used it as a graveyard for all our junk we didn't want to look at and didn't have space for in the garage.

Ew.

Solution? Lava rock and lots'o'weed block.

Step 1: Clear out the junk.
We trashed a lot of stuff: wood scraps, extra trash cans, old potting soil, ugly metal fence panels, and trash. We also stored a lot of stuff where it should go: speedy weedy, gas crawfish boiler thingy, other garden tools, and pavers.


Step 2: Eliminate weed-trees and grass.
There are these lovely weed-trees that tend to grow just about anywhere out here in W.Tex. We've always cut them back but never got rid of the root. Well we dug out about three that were about 3-4" diameter.

Next, we used some fancy-shmancy grass killer to kill off all the bermuda and other weeds. This made them easier to pull out from the root just before raking.


Step 3: Rake and grade ground.
We took a rake to the tree/grass-free yard to get rid of the extra dead leaves/grass/big clumps o'dirt. Travis took a shovel and chopped up the dirt to give us some extra to work with.

Because we don't want water pooling around the foundation, we graded the dirt from West to East and North to South. Slightly higher next to the house so water would drain away. Slightly higher toward the front of the house so water would drain toward the back yard.

We could have been really picky, but because we're lazy we eyeballed it.


Step 4: Weed block the world.
We were real tired of the "landscaping fabric" method of weed-controlling. So...we decided to just kill whatever the heck was planning on growing below it. A roll of 6 mil black plastic was our weapon.

Step 5: Lava rock it.
We wen't to a few places to check out prices on lava rock. Apparently they vary way more than I thought. For our space we needed approximately 6'x30' which is about 180 sq ft.

Our local nursery sells bulk materials and was very helpful deciding how much we should estimate for. They have information on cubic feet and yard coverage by square footage and depth here.

We compared prices based on approximately 1 cubic yard [CY] (27 cubic feet [CF]).
$100 + $45 = $145.00 Local Nursery - 1 CY Bulk + Delivery
$4.99 x 27 = $134.73 Local Nursery - 1 CF Bag
$3.99 x 54 = $215.46 OrangeStore - .5 CF Bag
$3.80 x 27 = $102.60 BlueStore - 1 CF Bag

Um....OrangeStore?! What the french toast?! We even asked the cashier to double check the price. That was way unexpected. Initially, the bulk load sounded like the best idea, but with the hassle of delivery plus the extra cost and having to wait to complete the project we nixed it. We didn't check WallyWorld because they employees there are never helpful and I pretty much avoid that store if at all possible. The BlueStore ended up having the best price so we went with them.

We started with 15 bags, which got us about 2/3 finished. We made a second trip for 10 more and were able to go about 3" deep in some places.


Step 6: Reflect and Enjoy
Total cost for this side-yard makeover:
$00.00 - Clean Up
$20.00 - Black Landscaping Plastic
$102.84 - Lava Rock (Self-Delivered and Installed)
-----------
$122.84

Also, this was a single-day project. In fact, it was a 5-hour project. Perfect for my short attention span!

Well worth it if you ask me. No more trees. No more mowing. No more spiders living in the old wood (ew). Looks nice with very little effort.

Operation Back Yard Part 5

I'm not gonna lie...I'm pretty much in love with our patio! It did need a few final touches, including some lighting and accessories.


Step 1: Lighting

Soft lighting was a must, and I just love the traditional/industrial look of clear glass bulbs. We went with these lights from TheRedStore.

{source}

We used a total of 3 strands, and we bought two extras for replacement bulbs. They're currently powered by an extension cord that's strung to an outdoor outlet on the side of our house. Eventually our goal is to wire a more permanent set-up. 

When it decides to rain out here in W.Tex we'll also have some nice light coming from the fire pit in the yard. 

Step 2: Accessories

This is a great time of year to purchase outdoor accessories. They're all on sale/clearance! Pillows were a must for our economically-friendly furniture set. We went with four square pillows from TheOrangeStore on sale for 50% off! We used coordinating fabric for the tie backs for the curtains, also.

For my birthday this year, my coworkers bought me this mini fire pit from World Market. It fits nicely on a wrought iron plant stand we had. It works great as a mini smoker with some mesquite chips to keep the mosquitoes away (although that is the only good thing about no rain...no mosquitoes!).

Step 3: Plants

For the centerpiece on the coffee table, we created our own succulent container garden! More on how we did that to come.

We also purchased some tall, green planters that were on sale at TheOrangeStore. They coordinate perfectly with some sweet potato vine and purple fountain grass! Plus, the sweet potato vine grows like a weed and fills in and spills over the containers nicely.

Operation Back Yard Part 4

We love West Texas. We do. Great people, all the amenities you could ask for, big blue sky, and football. 

What we do not love about our beloved W.Tex is the sun and heat. Hence, the pergola. The sun sets in the West, giving us breathtaking sunsets.

{source}

However, when entertaining in our new back yard, sun is the enemy. Direct sun = heat. Lots of heat. Sometimes up to 20* difference between sun and shade. 

Solution? Outdoor curtains!

Step 1: Plan, plan, plan.
I definitely wanted curtains on both the East and West side of the pergola (2 panels each). I also wanted some smaller panels on the South side (2 panels). So, a total of 6 panels is what I decided on.

Can I BuyIY (BuyItYourself)?
Quick answer? Nope.

Sunbrella curtains from Ballard Designs cost about $100 per 84" panel. At six panels, we're talking $600 on a good day, $650 with tax, and over $700 with fixtures. Ew. I wanted curtains but not that badly. Also, they come in a couple of shades and are one sided (there's a right and wrong side) which is not very practical for curtains if you want to stand in the yard and see them.

There are a few cheaper options, but they're still nowhere near practical for me. Pottery Barn has drapes on clearance now for $41 per panel. That would be $260 with tax and over $300 with fixtures. Half price, but still too rich for my blood.

So...DIY it is. 

Pinterest and google are great. I found some awesome inspiration pictures like these:

{source}

{source}

There's a great tutorial over at Everyday Expressions for the above DIY outdoor curtains that gives good information, too.

I decided to go with burlap. It's a material that will weather fairly naturally. It comes in a variety of neutral colors, and those colors will hide our beloved red dirt/dust nicely. Also, it's pretty inexpensive.


Step 2: Gather your materials.
22 yards of burlap x $3.99 at HobLob - 50% off coupon = $47.51

3 Threads x 2.79 - 40% = $5.43

4 pkg X-Lg Eyelets x 9.99 - 50% = $21.63

Washers = 10.00?

Total of  $84.57

Yup, I'll take it.


Step 3: Measure a billion times, cut once.
I have a separate post talking about the methods of cutting and squaring burlap here.

The dimensions for each panel I made were slightly different because of the slope of our concrete patio. For a custom look, I measured each hem separately.

The South panels were the easiest. One panel width was 48" (stock width of burlap). So all I had to do was hem the top and bottom.

The East and West panels were a little more difficult. I patched them to create a wider panel. Each panel ended up being 72" (48" + 24"). To seam them, I sewed using a zig zag stitch with the zig on one piece and the zag on another. I'm no seamstress, so please don't judge my homely sewing!

Step 4: Get your hardware.

Instead of traditional large curtain grommets, I went with smaller "Extra Large Eyelets" which were about 1" diameter. They felt sturdier to me. Just a personal preference.

To hang the curtains on the pergola, we used your basic cup hooks just like these:

{source}

Like I've mentioned before, W.Tex is pretty windy. To keep the curtains from blowing around, we added washers in pockets in the bottom hem.

To keep the curtains contained when they're not needed for shade, we created some basic sashes to tie up the curtains. The fabric for these was about $10 with a 40% off coupon from HobLob.

Step 5: EN-Joy!
And.....here is the finished product!

We love it!

I wouldn't take on a project this big every month, but I think if these last us a couple of years it'll be well worth it! We're not leaving them outdoors when we're not using them to try to extend their life. They  block a ton of sun (and wind) when they're up. Perfect for the W.Tex sun!