little woman

After we signed the paperwork on Wednesday, I had to go back to work and Paul went right to the house to get started! Soon Mom and Mary arrived to help us paint and get the curtains up. They left on Thursday. Dad arrived on Friday with the truck with some furniture donated to the cause by Mom. We went and got a load of stuff from the apartment with Paul Leonard’s help but didnt break our backs because of the huge effort planned on Saturday.

On Saturday, some amazing people arrived at the PLV to help us move. We had a great crew! We got out of there in no time. We went back to the house to unload and have some pizza before heading over to the storage unit. Next we went to Castle Greybeard to get the washer and dryer. Everyone came back and unloaded one last time and relaxed a bit. I took a bath in our new amazing bathtub…

Seriously, we would not have been able to do that without all that help! Thanks to EVERYONE that came out. I can’t wait to have you all over for dinner… just as soon as I can get the kitchen out of boxes…

Sunday was spent emptying and cleaning the PLV one last time. We (ok I) got a little teary as we were walking out the door because I know Petra would have had SO much fun exploring the new house…

After we spent some time putting things away at the house, we went to Central Market to get supplies for our two year anniversary dinner.

We watched Contact (one of our favorite movies) and had a very tasty, very spicy dinner

Hatch chile chicken sausage with onions and gnocchi in a hatch chile poblano pesto. For not making meat on a regular basis, I was quite pleased with my sausage cooking skills… But it really isn’t that hard. I just seared them in a pan and then cooked them in some home brew with the onions.

For dessert…

… a hatch chile apple pie with Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla. With a glass or two of carmenere, it was the perfect way to end a hectic, but very satisfying, weekend. Now… back to it…

Yes! It has finally be confirmed that we are able to close on the house tomorrow! If there are any able-bodied friends reading this that would be so kind as to assist us in our moving endeavors…

~

You are cordially invited to join

Katelyn Patterson & Paul Swan

at

Park Lane Villas, Apartment #221

Saturday, August 29th at 10am

to help them move all of their belongings

~

PS: Bring a swimsuit (and a towel) so you can jump in the pool to cool off! The community pool is right behind our house! Also, we will have a Penske truck (not pink… Penske. Think Uhaul.)  to help cut down on trips! You will be well rewarded with copious victuals. If you can’t make it at 10am but are still willing to help, just let us know when you prefer. We can be reached at Katelyn 817-291-2318 or Paul 512-507-5403. We just thought the earlier the better…

Thanks to all for putting up with my relentless documentation of all that has gone on in the house-buying process. It has been a lot of fun!

Everyone said if Paul and I could survive building a home together, we must have something special. I think it is kinda neat that we are celebrating two years together on Sunday of the weekend we are moving into our house!

Well we had a minor scare yesterday that the closing date was going to have to be moved. It has always been on Wednesday, August 26. But during our final walk through with the builder, we noticed a scratch on the island counter top. They would have had to special order another one, it wouldn’t have gotten here by that closing date and they can’t close on a house that has any outstanding issues.

They were going to move it to Friday… which wouldn’t have been the end of the world REALLY. But we have been ready to move in for the last month. We decided to ignore the tiny scratch to avoid moving the date. Mom and Mary are coming on Wednesday and we have things scheduled for Thursday… It was just better that way. YAY!

This week we moved large sums of money around in preparation of closing. And after two Saturdays of Abbie coming over to help us pack (THANK YOU, ABBIE!), one musical and Star Wars IV, V, and VI [and I ! -paul] later, the books and the kitchen are packed up! We need to get busy to have it all done!

Mainly books…

SOOOOO if anyone knows that you don’t already have awesome plans on Saturday, August 29, would you maybe want to help us move?? We are going to have a Penske van to move things and plan to have it all boxed up and ready to go… we want to make this as easy as possible!! You will be rewarded with beer and pizza at the very least

The landscaping in the front of the house is now complete. They finally painted the front door, shutters and the garage door. I am pretty sure it is all finished except for the medicine cabinet in the master bath. There are probably other things that I just don’t know about though…

We have our final meeting with the builder next Wednesday morning. If there are any problems, they will fix them and then we close the following Wednesday.

We are going to have to move some of those trees around…

We got the dishwasher and oven/stove delivered today!

flat top stove! get excited!

And I might have made the best house purchase EVER last night…

We got this to hang above the front door.

Don’t worry… This will all be over soon and I will talk about other things… eventually.

15 days to go!

We now have gutters and shiny new doorknobs throughout the house! Also mirrors in the bathrooms. Oh and we got a ridiculously awesome refrigerator today We did a lot of research… the freezer on the bottom is more energy efficient (this is energy star, of course) and ergonomically better because you aren’t always bending over to get everyday items. It also has a little filtered water spout just inside the door.

18 days to go!

Tonight we went by the house with Sonny to see our fenced in backyard. Turns out they also laid the carpet and put in the garage door opener.

carpet is a little hard to see in this picture

Sonny agreed to pose… for scale

21 days to go

The color scheme has changed from what we originally talked about… I love deep cranberry colors and colors that are so neutral that they could be grey, blue or beige. Now we have completely switched gears to…. green!

We wanted something warm and comfortable… I realized what made me think of this shade of green. I had a town home in Fort Worth just out of college with a friend of mine. We did some really funky stuff (one wall was green, one wall was blue) but it worked!

The lady in red is (dancing with me… cheek to cheek) Emily, my old college roommate, with her parents and her, now, husband and baby daddy. The green on the wall might be slightly more yellow than the green we are going for now, but it is pretty close.

Here are the curtains we have chosen so far… the green will go in the living room and the white with butterflies and flowers will go in the kitchen.

TADA!

This morning before coming to work we needed to discuss the mortgage. As I have said before, we keep getting opinions from everyone… and they all seem to be different. We pretty much decide to do one thing, but then something else comes up that makes me want to rethink it. We are also getting quotes on homeowners insurance… how much personal property do we need? Do we go for a lower deductible? Do we need flood insurance? Blah, blah, blah…

I left for work stressed and confused…

By the time I arrived at work Paul had emailed me a link to today’s XKCD… this could not better describe how I feel about home ownership… and being an adult in general.

We now have tile in the entry, bathrooms, utility room and kitchen. It looks great! Electric and plumbing are scheduled next week.

Now we are just trying to get all the financial stuff worked out… do we lock down a rate? Do we buy down the rate? We seem to be getting pretty conflicting info from everyone… and it doesn’t help that I ask perfect strangers for their advice.

And after much deliberation I/we decided to buy curtains instead of making them… for now. It seems to be much more cost effective. Oh well! That will just have to be a fun project for the future.